Showing results by author "Max Brand" in All Categories

The knife missed him by a fraction of an inch! Then he reached under his pillow, grabbed his gun and fired into the darkness. If Alvarez survives, he'll look for one man, an unbeatable bodyguard or the assassin who wants him dead. Either will do.

Haypress feeding is a brutal test of strength that can kill a man. Cafferty isn't worried. He's going after Frenchie's record anyway - the prize is a dream come true.

Hagger is a man on the run, a thief and would-be killer. He's no good on a horse, and feels miserable and out of place in the snowbound high country. But, then, Hagger comes upon a white bull terrier, abandoned in a mountain cabin, and his whole life begins to change.

A Caribbean hurricane smashes a revolutionary army before they can fight. Then a fearless stranger is washed ashore and leads the ragtag soldiers into battle. Who is he and why does he risk his life?

Jack Sherry and Bill Garvin are both dealers in wet cattle until Jack Sherry is caught and forced to take the grim trail to the gallows. Bill Garvin is left behind, bitter and distraught, but hopeful that somehow he will be able to mend the bullet-frayed fabric of a broken faith.

Tom Dallas has changed his way of living. All the shootings in which he was involved were justified, but there are many who want his scalp which prompts him to make a vow that he will not pack bullets in his .45 for a year. Then a situation develops that can only result in breaking his vow.

When Harry French left home he was just another kid looking to make his way. But when he comes back four years later, things are different. He's different. Or at least the town thinks so. Now nobody looks him in the eye. He isn't just Harry anymore, he's the Shifter, a gunfighter who brings trouble with him wherever he goes. And as hard as Harry tries, he finds that a reputation is a lot harder to put down than a gun.

Dick Rutherford, known simply as the Colonel, had set out into the West to find his fortune, accompanied only by his young companion, Christy Deever. But it looked like the frontier would provide more danger than money...until the Colonel and Christy met Stone-That-Shines, a Mandan warrior who possessed a medicine stone that gave him his name. As soon as the Colonel got a close look at the medicine stone, he knew immediately what made it shine — a rich vein of quartz gold.

The front sight of the gun ripped across his hand. The horse is acting strange, the cabin seems different, Chuck's Uncle Cal has disappeared - something's horribly wrong.

Having been away from Yellow Creek for eight years, Jimmy Geary was happy to see the town again. But there are three men who aren't happy to see Jimmy Geary return, and they conspire to make his stay this time very short.

The state built a dam and the water's rising. Will Pete Harrison get out of prison before it covers the $10,000 dollars he hid?

When two men riding on horseback meet on a trail in the mountains, it proves to be so narrow that neither man's horse can be turned around, or aside, or backwards. So the two now have no choice but to determine who is to be pushed off the trail to certain death.

A back-stabbing murderer meets Happy Jack, the deadliest fighter in the southwest, and tells him about a safe full of cash. It's too well guarded for gunplay, but a dangerous trick might work. Has Happy Jack got the nerve?

Jeremy Dice leaves New York City for the Far West. His career as a tailor had been anything but spectacular. But arriving on the frontier, he witnesses two notorious bank robbers kill each other over the division of their spoils. When the sheriff and a posse arrive, they hail Jeremy as a great hero, believing he killed both men. And then there is the hefty cash reward. 

For years, Camden lay awake every night, torn with guilt over the crime he'd committed and waiting for the man who would come to take revenge. Now it's time - he's been found at last - but he won't go down easy. 

Recently, a number of Western stories have been discovered among Max Brand’s unpublished works and the first story in this book, "The White Streak", is one of them. Its protagonist is 21-year-old Jimmy Babcock, a former football star, but now a worker at the local bank run by William Parker in the town of Dresser, which has changed from cattle country to one made up of oil and alfalfa fields. When Parker fires Jimmy, all Jimmy can think is how he will hurt Muriel Aiken, his fiancée, who wants to marry.

Peter Quince was a fighter born and bred. Orphaned at a young age, he remembered an old woman saying that he was a bad one and would cause a lot of trouble in the world. Others claimed he had bad blood, and it would show up sooner or later. But Bill Andrews felt a connection with the boy, took him home, and raised him as one of his own despite his wife's misgivings. Peter soon learned he could manipulate people by withholding his true feelings. He had learned that battles should be won by cunning and strength, with cunning being far more important.

Max Brand (real name: Frederick Faust) wrote hundreds of stories, books, films, and TV shows. His output was so voluminous that though he died in WWII, posthumous books have been published approximately every four months since. This book collects three stories from his early work in Western pulps.

After hitting a rich vein of gold on the back of Champion Mountain, Blondy Kitchin heads to the big city to have a good time, but there his luck runs out and he ends up spending two years in prison. The prison's chaplain helps educate him, smooth out his rough edges, and convinces him that the range is the place for Kitchin to make use of his brute strength and free spirit.

Within 10 days of stepping out of the woods near the town of Moose Creek, Duval is the most popular man in the district. After all, what's not to like? He is a good listener, generous with his money, a great cook and host, and a hard worker on old Dad Wilbur's place, which he bought for $1,500. He wins the admiration of Sheriff Nat Adare when he quells and befriends the often-wild Charlie Nash and pays for the damages Charlie has caused in the town saloon. The only person in the town that he doesn't win over is the sheriff's niece, Marian Lane.