Saturday Morning Western Pulp: New Western Magazine, July 1951

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. I’m not sure who the cover artist is. Possibly Robert Stanley. But it’s a good cover no matter who painted it.

As always with a Popular Publications pulp, this issue of NEW WESTERN has some good authors in it. The author of the lead story, John Prescott, is a familiar name to me, although I’m not sure if I’ve ever read anything by him until now. The “Man-Sized Novel” as it’s referred to on the Table of Contents page, “Bad Trouble in Lincoln County”, is more of a novelette, taking up a mere 15 pages in the magazine. But it’s a darned good yarn about a fictional clash taking place on the periphery of the historical Lincoln County War. His family wiped out in a raid on their ranch, the young protagonist sets out for vengeance but finds some unexpected enemies and allies. Prescott has a little more literary style than some of the Western pulpsters but doesn’t skimp on the hardboiled action, either. I need to read more by him.

Edward S. Fox wrote scores of Western and sports stories in a career that lasted from the early Thirties to the mid-Fifties. “A Man’s Land Is His Own!”, despite the exclamation mark, is a low-key tale about a young rancher battling a drought. It’s very well-written, and between that and the subject matter, it reminded me a little of Elmer Kelton’s work. I have to say I hated the ending, though.

I read a decent story by Marvin De Vries in another pulp recently. His story “Loot-Starved!” in this issue of NEW WESTERN falls into the same range. Set in Death Valley, it’s about how the search for a lost mine turns into a quest of another sort. It’s okay, certainly readable enough, but not very memorable.

The other “Man-Sized Novel” in this issue is “Sons of the Gunsmoke Breed” by Walt Coburn, which is a little longer than Prescott’s story but still basically a novelette. By this stage of his career, Coburn’s work was pretty hit-and-miss, but this is definitely a hit. It’s the story of two step-brothers, one an honest cowboy, the other an outlaw’s son who inherited his father’s gun and dishonest tendencies, who travel with a trail drive from Texas to Montana and stay to make a name for themselves in different ways. In Coburn’s best work, there’s an epic feel, and that comes through in this one as it builds to a very satisfying conclusion.

I generally enjoy Tom Roan’s work, but from time to time he wrote animal protagonist stories, and although I read and liked a bunch of those when I was a kid (Jim Kjelgaard’s dog stories were some of my favorites), I have a hard time with them now. Roan’s “Fangs of the Brave” in this issue features an old wolf, and although I tried, I didn’t make it all the way to the end.

I usually enjoy Frank Castle’s stories, too, and I’m happy to report that “Born Bad” in this issue is a good one. It’s from fairly early in Castle’s career, and he hadn’t yet developed the oddball style that marked much of his later work. It’s a more straightforward yarn about a rancher waiting for his ne’er-do-well brother to arrive on a train. The rancher has vengeance in his heart because his brother stole his girl from him a few years earlier and they ran off together. The girl came to a bad end. Now our protagonist plans to gun down his brother as soon as he steps off the train. But, not unexpectedly, things don’t quite play out that way. This one has some good action and a nice hardboiled tone. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

The issue wraps up with the novelette “Don’t Brand Him Yellow!” by Stone Cody, who was actually Thomas E. Mount. It’s a reprint from 1936, but there’s a bit of a mystery that goes with that. There’s no story by that title in Mount’s listing in the Fictionmags Index except this appearance in NEW WESTERN. So either its original appearance was a pulp that hasn’t been indexed yet, or it appeared under some other title, perhaps under Mount’s other pseudonym Oliver King. Whatever its origins, “Don’t Brand Him Yellow!” is a terrific story, with a professional gambler as the protagonist for once, rather than one of the villains. Bret Carew is an honest gambler and a fast gun, although he refuses to fight when accused of cheating because after a saloon shootout he promised his late wife that he would never kill another man. Carew’s beautiful daughter Pat travels with him, and when they run into trouble in a town run by a brutal saloon owner, it looks like luck has gone bad for both of them. Mount was great with action, and there’s plenty of it in this story. There’s also a late twist that’s somewhat predictable, but it still results in a great ending. This is my favorite story in this issue, and Mount is becoming one of my favorite Western writers.

This is a really strong issue of NEW WESTERN considering how late it came in the pulp era. The Coburn and Mount stories are excellent, and the ones by Prescott and Castle aren’t far behind them. If you have a copy of this one, it’s well worth pulling off the shelves and reading, especially those four stories.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Mammoth Western, October 1950

Robert Gibson Jones is probably best known for his covers on the Ziff-Davis pulp FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, but he did quite a few covers for Z-D's MAMMOTH WESTERN, as well, including this one which I like quite a bit. I'll always be fond of gun-totin' redheads, and this one is in an intriguing situation. "Robert Eggert Lee", author of the lead story "This Grave for Hire" (a nice title) was actually Ziff-Davis stalwart Paul W. Fairman. Also on hand in this issue are John Reese. writing as John Jo Carpenter, John Prescott, and Peter Germano writing as Barry Cord. Those are the Western writers of note in this issue, although there's also a story (and I'm sure a good one) by William P. McGivern, and yarns by the likes of Frances M. Deegan, Karl Kasky, and Larry Becker.   

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: Thrilling Western, January 1953

This is a pulp I own and read recently. The scan is of the copy I read. The cover is by Kirk Wilson, one of the lesser-known pulp cover artists who did about a dozen and a half covers for various Western pulps during the Fifties, as well as interior illustrations for men’s adventure magazines during the Sixties. That’s really all I know about him.

For many years, THRILLING WESTERN was the home of the Walt Slade series by A. Leslie Scott, writing as Bradford Scott, as well as the Swap and Whopper series by Syl McDowell. By this point in its run, those series had dried up and the magazine was publishing all stand-alone stories. The lead novel in this issue is “Satan’s Range” by Joseph Chadwick, and at 55 double-columned pages, it actually is long enough to be called a novel, at least one that could have been published as, say, half of an Ace Double.

Years ago I read some of Chadwick’s pulp novels featuring the Thrilling Group’s series characters Jim Hatfield, the Rio Kid, and the Range Riders, and I didn’t like them much. The writing was okay, but I felt like he didn’t have a good grasp of the characters. So I’ve tended to avoid his work. In recent years, though, I’ve read some of his stand-alone Western stories that I liked a lot better, so it may be he was just one of those authors who’s not cut out for writing series books. “Satan’s Range” is an excellent hardboiled range war yarn that finds the protagonist, rancher Ed Conover, caught between the local cattle baron/range hog and the smaller ranchers in the area, who are not very trustworthy or likable, either. Conover has enemies on all sides, but the situation worsens when he has to testify in the murder trial of a neighboring rancher, who is married to a beautiful woman for whom Conover has fallen, although he’s too honorable to act on his feelings. Chadwick really puts Conover through a lot in this story, and every time it looks like he’s going to come out on top, something else bad happens. I enjoyed “Satan’s Range” quite a bit, enough that I’m going to have to pull some of my Chadwick paperbacks down from the shelves, and I may see if I have any of the hardboiled mysteries he wrote under the name John Creighton.

John Prescott wrote a number of paperback Westerns during the Fifties and Sixties, none of which I’ve read, but based on his short story “The Medicine of Malpais”, he was a pretty good author. This tale of a couple of prospectors in Arizona and their encounters with a band of Apaches is very well-written and doesn’t play out like you might think it would. Prescott does a good job with the narrator’s distinctive voice.

D.D. Sharp wrote both Westerns and science fiction and turned out a couple of dozen stories in his career, but I don’t recall ever reading anything by him other than his short story in this issue, “Tenderfoot Beef”. It concerns an elderly sodbuster put on trial for rustling and is also well-written, but it suffers from never really amounting to much, plot-wise, and reads almost like the first chapter of a larger work.

“If We Die, We Die” by Worley G. Hawthorne has an unusual setting for a Western pulp yarn, the end of the Civil War, as a stagecoach driver faces problems delivering the message that the war is over. It’s an interesting plot and the story has some good action. Hawthorne is totally unknown to me and has only three stories listed in the Fictionmags Index, all around this time and appearing in Thrilling Group Western pulps. I don’t know what happened to him, but based on this story, he had some talent.

There’s one novelette in this issue, Ray Gaulden’s “Me, Gunman”. It’s a bit of an oddity for the Western pulps in that it’s written in first person. The narrator is hired gun Wes Durgan, who’s on his way to a job when he comes across a beautiful redhead taking a bath in a creek. Before you know it, he’s mixed up in a mystery that involves not only the redhead but also a beautiful saloon singer who’s an old flame of Wes’s. He’s accused of murder, and while he’s never in any real danger of being convicted for the crime, he still wants to get to the bottom of things, which he does in very good hardboiled fashion. This is the second pulp story of Gaulden’s that I’ve read in recent months, and I enjoyed both of them quite a bit. I really do need to read some of his novels.

There are also assorted features in this issue, which as usual I skimmed but didn’t really read. The features aren’t why I collect Western pulps, although I do enjoy the occasional poem or column by S. Omar Barker. Overall, this is a really good issue of THRILLING WESTERN. The Chadwick and Gaulden stories are excellent, the Prescott is pretty good, and the other two are reasonably entertaining. If you have a copy on your shelves, it’s worth pulling down and reading.