Saturday Morning Western Pulp: New Western Magazine, November 1952

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. Like all the Western pulps from Popular Publications, NEW WESTERN MAGAZINE consistently delivered good authors and stories, and most of the covers were pretty good, too. I have no idea who painted this one. It’s not one of my favorites, but it’s certainly not bad.

I’m not sure why I haven’t read more by George C. Appell. Every story I’ve read by him was very good. I own several of his novels but haven’t gotten around to any of them. His novelette “Hired Gun!” leads off this issue, and it starts off as a very standard story about a gunfighter, in this case a Texan named Hayes Hockaday, going to work for a corrupt saloon owner/cattle baron but having second thoughts about it when he starts falling for a girl who works in the local mercantile. Appell has a very effective twist up his sleeve in this story, though, and he enlivens the plot with some gritty action scenes and some good descriptive writing. This is a top-notch yarn.

Leonard Huish published only three stories, according to the Fictionmags Index, and I don’t know a thing about him. “The Terror of El Toro Blanco” in this issue is a humorous story about a widow with an axe destroying the various saloons where her late husband quenched his thirst for tequila. El Toro Blanco is one of those saloons, located in a Texas border town. There’s also a bet between a couple of Mexicans with murder as the stakes. My tolerance for comedy Westerns is pretty low, as I’ve said many times, but this one isn’t bad. The author avoids goofy slapstick for the most part and even manages to strike a poignant note or two. This story surprised me by being worth reading.

When you see a story in a Western pulp bylined “Doc Winchester”, your first thought is that the name has to be a pseudonym or house-name. Mine certainly was. But that turns out not to be the case. The author of the novelette “Pit of the Living Dead” in this issue is actually Charles Ward “Doc” Winchester, born in Nebraska in 1888, who appears to have spent most of his life in Wyoming and then died in New Mexico in 1954. Other than that, I don’t know anything about him. Was he actually a doctor, or was that just a name he or someone else hung on him? If anyone knows I’d be happy to learn more. As for the story itself, which is the first one I’ve read by Doc Winchester, it’s about a couple of men doing some scouting, surveying, and mapping for the government who run into an archeologist and his beautiful daughter who claim to have found Cibola, the fabled lost city of gold. It’s an interesting plot, and there’s even a Lost Race to liven things up (I love me some Lost Race yarns), but the whole story is rather muddled and the prose just isn’t very good. I wanted to like this story just because it’s by somebody called Doc Winchester, but unfortunately, I didn’t.

Hascal Giles was a long-time newspaperman in Tennessee who wrote more than 60 stories for various Western pulps in the Forties and Fifties, including several Masked Rider and Range Riders novels. After retiring from newspaper work, he wrote several more novels published as paperback originals in the Nineties. I haven’t read much by him. His story in this issue, “Reunion in Blackjack”, finds two ex-cons, recently released from Yuma Prison, heading back to the town where they have a grudge against the sheriff. They have very different plans on how to proceed once they get there, however. This is a well-written story, and I admire the way Giles tries to give its resolution a fresh angle, but I’m not sure it really works. I really ought to read one or two of his novels, though.

Bruce Cassiday wrote dozens of Western and detective stories for the pulps in the Forties and Fifties, but I know him mainly for the many paperbacks he turned out later in his career. He wrote some of the Nick Carter, Killmaster novels, entries in the Phantom and Flash Gordon paperback series under the name Carson Bingham, and quite a few softcore novels, also under the Bingham name. His novelette in this issue “The Bigger They Are—” is interesting in its approach. For once, the point-of-view character is the bad guy, a cattle baron/town boss who brings in a town-taming lawman to enforce his will, only to have things not go the way he’s expecting. It’s kind of a gamble to tell a Western pulp story like this, but Cassiday makes it work for the most part with interesting characters and top-notch writing. I read some of his Carson Bingham books years ago and enjoyed them. He’s a mostly forgotten writer, but I think his work is worth reading. (Bold Venture Press has reprinted some of his mystery novels, and I really need to read them.)

“Nobody’s Pardner” by Stone Cody (Thomas E. Mount) is a reprint of a story published originally as “A Maverick Fights for a Brand” in the July 1937 issue of STAR WESTERN. Mount was a top-notch Western author who has become one of my favorites in recent years. This story is about a young tinhorn gambler who has to decide whether he wants to continue his shady ways or reform and make something of himself, even though the process is definitely a reluctant and unpleasant one. While not as good as Mount’s Silver Trent or Five Mavericks stories, this is a fine yarn that I really enjoyed.

This issue wraps up with a novelette, “Last of the Llano Kid!”, from another favorite, C. William Harrison. In this story, a bloody Texas feud reaches out with its violence all the way to Arizona, and as a result, an Arizona lawman trails a killer back to the Lone Star State for a showdown and gets involved with the fugitive’s beautiful sister along the way. This is a very good story marred only by an ending that’s not as dramatic as it could be.

In fact, several stories in this issue featured endings that were a bit of a letdown. I don’t know if this was something the editors at Popular Publications wanted in order to increase the realism of the stories, but if so, I’m not sure it worked. These are Western pulps! I want leather to be slapped and powder to be burned. Despite that, this is a decent issue of NEW WESTERN MAGAZINE. Not one to seek out, maybe, but worth reading if you have a copy.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Dime Western, September 1948

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my somewhat tattered copy in the scan. I’m not sure of the cover artist. Might be Robert Stanley, who did a lot of Western pulp covers for Popular Publications during this time period. But it might not be.

DIME WESTERN, like the other Popular Publications Western pulps, always had good authors, but there’s a particularly strong lineup in this issue, leading off with a surprisingly good Walt Coburn novella, considering how late this story came in his career. “Shoot or Git Shot!” is a son-of-an-outlaw yarn, where a widowed rustler leaves his six-year-old son with the father of his late wife. The old-timer raises the boy to be a good man, rather than an owlhoot. But as usual in a Coburn story, there’s a lot of back-story and not everything is as it appears to be at first. There’s nothing in this one you won’t see coming, but it’s well-written and has a nice epic feel to it for a novella. Plus there’s a great, brutal fistfight and a spectacular shootout to wrap things up. Coburn was inconsistent by this point, but “Shoot or Git Shot!” is as good as most of his stories from ten or twenty years earlier.

Frank Bonham probably would be annoyed that one of the main things he's remembered for these days is his slightly embittered essay “Tarzana Nights” about his time spent ghostwriting Western pulp stories for Ed Earl Repp. But he was an excellent writer and that’s on display in “Good Squatters Are Dead Squatters”, his short story in this issue. It’s a big rancher vs. small rancher story, but it’s very well-written and does a fine job of capturing the Texas Panhandle country. The resolution is maybe a little hard to swallow, but this is still a good story from a consistently good writer.

Clifton Adams was one of the best of the hardboiled Western writers who broke into the pulps in the late Forties and then went on to write dozens of excellent novels during the Fifties and Sixties. His story in this issue is a novelette about a wounded outlaw on the run called “There’s Hell in His Holster!” It’s a good story in its own right, but it has some historical significance, too. I believe it’s the first appearance of Tall Cameron, who, a couple of years later, would be the protagonist of Adams’ iconic Gold Medal novels THE DESPERADO and A NOOSE FOR THE DESPERADO. Neither of the novels is an expansion of this story, which is sort of an alternate universe take on the character, but Adams took a lot of Tall Cameron’s history from this tale.

Wilbur S. Peacock was a pulp editor as well as a writer. He turned out scores of Western, detective, and science fiction yarns and appears in this issue of DIME WESTERN with a short-short called “Reward of Merit”, about an old sheriff who’s been pushed out of his job in favor of a younger man. It’s well-written but the ending falls flat as far as I’m concerned. I generally like Peacock’s work but think this one was a misfire.

I’ve read good things about George C. Appell’s stories but don’t recall if I’ve ever read anything by him before. His short story “The Search” relies on a gimmick: not revealing one character’s true identity until the very end of the story. That’s kind of interesting, and the search of the title, a hunt for hidden loot, has promise, but overall the plot is muddled enough that it’s hard to follow and I didn’t care much for this story, either.

Peter Dawson, actually Jonathan Glidden, brother of Frederick “Luke Short” Glidden, was always dependable, and he comes through in this issue with the novelette “It’s Your Town—Die in It!” The story concerns a new marshal who believes he’s been roped into a town-taming job under false pretenses. He wants to abandon the job and leave town, but a beautiful new seamstress just arrived in the settlement, so maybe she’ll provide a reason for him to stay and have a showdown with the local hardcases. There’s really not a lot to this story, but it’s well-written and entertaining.

This issue wraps up with a novella by an author I’ve read quite a bit by lately, E. Hoffmann Price (although he’s credited incorrectly as E. Hoffman Price on the cover, TOC, and the story itself). “The Cowman Who Damned His Brand” has a very intriguing twist: the protagonist, a prospector who enjoys hunting for gold, falls in love with a woman who wants him to buy a ranch and settle down. So he buys a spread and inserts himself into the middle of a range war, fully intending to be a failure so he can convince the girl he needs to go back to prospecting. Of course, things don’t work out as he planned. This offbeat plot and Price’s talent for storytelling combine to make this a very good yarn.

This is a solid issue of DIME WESTERN with top-notch stories by Coburn, Bonham, Dawson, and Price, and the stories I didn’t much care for are readable and might be more to someone else’s taste. If you have a copy of it, it’s well worth pulling down from the shelf and reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Story Magazine, August 1953

Once again, an Old West poker game is about to end badly. This is from the usually forgotten Popular Publications incarnation of WESTERN STORY, after it was cancelled at Street & Smith four years earlier. The magazine lasted only about a year and a half at Popular, but its lack of success didn't have anything to do with its quality, in my opinion. It generally had good covers, such as this one by Charles Dye, and excellent authors. This issue contains stories by Will Cook (twice, as himself and as Frank Peace), George C. Appell, William Heuman (a reprint from FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES), Fred Grove, Leslie Ernenwein, Bruce Cassiday, lesser-known pulpster Frank Scott York, and Richard H. Nelson, who was really William L. Hamling, science fiction fan, editor, and publisher of the SF digests IMAGINATION AND IMAGINATIVE TALES, as well as the publisher of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of soft-core novels in the late Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Dime Western, May 1950

That's another Old West poker game interrupted. On this issue of DIME WESTERN, the words "Combined With WESTERN RANGERS" were added to the title, although I'm not sure why since the pulp WESTERN RANGERS hadn't been published for many years at that point. A couple of years after this, that title was spun off for a short run of its own. Maybe Popular Publications was just testing with the waters with this move. At any rate, there are some fine authors in this issue, including Frank Bonham, Wayne D. Overholser, George C. Appell, John M. Cunningham, and Dee Linford, as well as a Tensleep Maxon story by house-name Bart Cassidy. I like this cover but have no idea who painted it.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Dime Western, August 1949

Well, that's gonna hurt! And that's one ugly varmint tusslin' with the star packer. Inside this issue of DIME WESTERN are stories by a couple of long-time top-notchers, Walt Coburn and Giff Cheshire (although Coburn was past his prime by this point), as well as George C. Appell, John Prescott, Kenneth Fowler, and Robert L. Trimnell. I'm not sure who did the cover art on this one. Robert Stanley, maybe? The lawman looks a little like Mike Shayne on those Dell mapback covers Stanley did for the Shayne series. But that's just a guess and I'm not convinced it's right.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: New Western, September 1952

I don't recall seeing a railroad handcar on a Western pulp cover before, but I'm sure there were others besides the one on this issue of NEW WESTERN. As always with a Popular Publications Western pulp, this looks like a solid issue with stories by E.B. Mann (a reprint from a 1934 issue of STAR WESTERN), George C. Appell, James B. Hendryx (a Black John yarn), Hascal Giles, Robert L. Trimnell, and Clark Gray.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Fifteen Western Tales, July 1954

This guy's hat is okay, but I'm afraid his cigar is done for. Those hombres shooting at him will pay for that, I'll bet. This issue of FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES has some pretty good writers in its pages: Gordon D. Shirreffs, Norman A. Fox, Frank Castle, George C. Appell, J.L. Bouma, Rolland Lynch, Robert E. Mahaffey, Richard H. Nelson (actually William Hamling, better known as an editor and publisher of SF magazines and softcore paperbacks), Richard Ferber, and house-names David Crewe and Dave Sands. Shirreffs and Fox are reason enough to read an issue of a Western pulp, and I'll bet most of the other stories are pretty good, too.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: New Western, April 1950

I'll resist the temptation to make a cliffhanger joke here. This looks like the usual fine issue of NEW WESTERN, with stories by L.L. Foreman, Giff Cheshire, George C. Appell, Rod Patterson, W. Edmunds Claussen, Max Kesler, and Robert L. Trimnell. With the exception of Foreman and Cheshire, those aren't big names, but the other guys were pretty solid pulpsters for the most part.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Max Brand's Western Magazine, September 1953

That's a nice atmospheric cover by H.W. Scott on this issue of MAX BRAND'S WESTERN MAGAZINE, and only the Max Brand story appears to be a reprint (from the January 2, 1937 issue of ARGOSY). The other authors in this issue include H.A. DeRosso, George C. Appell, Gordon D. Shirreffs, Fred Grove, and the house-name Bart Cassidy. That's a good bunch of writers.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: New Western, November 1951

I don't believe I'd ever read an issue of NEW WESTERN until now, but this is an issue I own and read recently. Most of the Western pulps from Popular Publications are pretty much interchangeable. Their two flagship titles, DIME WESTERN and STAR WESTERN, ran more novellas, especially STAR WESTERN, but other than that the same authors appeared in all the titles across the line and the magazines featured good, solid hardboiled Westerns, for the most part.

This issue gets off to a good start with "First Stage to Sundown", a novelette by George C. Appell, whose work appeared frequently in a variety of pulps during the late Forties through the Fifties. This story uses a fairly standard plot: a stagecoach has to make a long, dangerous run in a set period of time in order to secure a government mail contract. Along the way, the coach and another wagon that accompanies it are plagued by a gang of outlaws. Appell throws in a couple of decent twists and there are several tough action scenes, along with some nice descriptive writing in places. Appell was never in the top rank of Western writers, but he seems to have produced some pretty good work. I've enjoyed the few stories I've read by him.

Next up is "Cactus-Eatin' Lady" by Robert Trimnell, an author whose name I've seen, but I don't know anything else about him. This is a humorous tale about a couple of cowpokes and a camel. It read like it might be part of a series, but I don't know for sure about that. As I've said before, with a few major exceptions, comedy Westerns just don't work for me. This is not one of those exceptions. I didn't care much for this story.

James B. Hendryx's Halfaday Creek series, featuring the good-hearted outlaw Black John Smith and Corporal Downey of the RCMP, ran for many years, mostly in the iconic pulp SHORT STORIES. "Black John—Claim Jumper" is a late entry in the series. How it wound up in NEW WESTERN, I don't know, but it's a good yarn about Black John helping out a young couple who get caught up in a mining swindle. This story could have used a little more action, but it's very well-written. This is actually the first Halfaday Creek story I've read, but I'm going to have to try some more of them.

"The Drifter Stops Off" is by James Charles Lynch, an author I know nothing about except that I think I've read somewhere he ghosted some for Ed Earl Repp. This is a pretty good story about a hobo and former printer who runs afoul of the most powerful man in town and takes measures to settle the score with him in unusual ways.

"Gun-Fighter's Brand" by John C. Colohan is a reprint from the August 1934 issue of DIME WESTERN. I've probably read a few stories by Colohan—he was a prolific contributor to the Popular Publications Western pulps—but nothing that I recall. This yarn is about a wounded lawman who has to couple of people who have a grudge against him, one a killer and the other a beautiful young woman. It's fairly well-written and has a nice twist ending I didn't see coming.

Bill Colson was actually Verne Athanas, who was more well-known under his real name. As Colson, he wrote a series about stagecoach driver and teamster Seven-Foot Sanders and his sidekick Shorty Shamrock. This sounds like a comedy series, but the entry in this issue, "Seven-Foot Sanders' Private War", is a fairly straightforward tale about trying to get a stagecoach and then a freight wagon full of supplies through Apache country. The tone is a little light in places, but there are also some gritty action scenes. I enjoyed this one enough that I'd read more in the series.

"The Hoodoo Trail Drive" by Stone Cody is another reprint, originally appearing under the title "Signed On With Satan" in the May 1937 issue of STAR WESTERN. It features a thinly disguised version of real-life cattleman Shanghai Pierce, here called Shanghai Pearson, and is about a danger-filled, seemingly cursed trail drive from Texas to Kansas. It's an excellent yarn and achieves an almost epic feel, which is hard to do in a novelette. I enjoyed it a lot, more than any of the other stories in this issue, in fact. Stone Cody was really Thomas Mount, the first husband (if I recall correctly) of bestselling author Laura Z. Hobson. I'm sure I've read his work before, but I'll be keeping a better eye out for his stories in the future after reading this one.

There's one other thing of interest in this issue of NEW WESTERN: a little house ad for the then-current issue of Popular Publications stablemate DIME WESTERN that includes the line A Riproarious "Tensleep" Story by Harry F. Olmsted. Well, other than the word "Riproarious", which I like, the interesting thing about this is that all the Tensleep Maxon stories (and there were scores of them) were published under the name Bart Cassidy. Only in the last year or so has Harry Olmsted's name been linked with that pseudonym, but here's another indication of it. Cassidy may have been used as a house-name at times, but I'm starting to believe that Olmsted was responsible for most of the stories published under that name. (Something similar happened to me many years ago, when the November 1978 issue of MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE had a house ad in it listing the next issue's Mike Shayne story: "Death in Xanadu" by James M. Reasoner. When they were making up the issue, they obviously got my name off the manuscript and forgot to replace it with the usual Brett Halliday pseudonym. As far as I know that's the only time a prose Shayne story was credited to someone other than Halliday.)

Overall, a decent issue of NEW WESTERN, with several good stories, several readable ones, and only one that I didn't finish. The scan, as usual with this sort of post, is of the copy I read, and it's a pretty good cover.