Showing results by author "Max Brand" in All Categories

Jimmy's an ace with a gun in either hand - but he's got to wake up now or he's dead. There's one killer in his room, another in the hall and an axe-wielding lunatic is hiding downstairs. Will he live long enough to fight the giant who leads the gang?

Blackie and Red were running away from the orphanage when they were found by Andy Connell. He offered them a home with him and his wife. The boys were as different as the color of their hair, and each had his own approach to getting ahead in the world. Blackie scorned Red's proud determination to be his own man. And, when Andy Connell struck it rich, Blackie just knew that life was going to give him everything he deserved.

Lew's skill with firearms gets him a job as a hunter with a trader heading onto the prairies to barter with the Indians. There he meets young Chuck Morris, and together they take on a Cheyenne attack party. Finding shelter in a Sioux village, they absorb the native culture. Lew comes to know the great Sioux chieftains, becoming blood brothers with Sitting Wolf, while Chuck marries the beautiful maiden Zintcallasappa.

In the black darkness of night, Ronicky Doone overhears the plans of Jack Moon's ruthless gang of cutthroats to kill someone named Hugh Dawn for deserting the gang. While Ronicky doesn't know Hugh Dawn or Jack Moon, he is always ready for adventure. With the aid of his trusty, well-trained horse, Lou, he outraces Moon's gang and successfully warns Hugh Dawn of his danger.

Tom Converse was the kind of man to pull a Colt from his back pocket faster than the seasoned gunslingers could draw from a hip holster. It seemed to come easy to him - like breathing in and out. But was he also the kind of man to make a whole town trigger-happy with fear? Did he hide behind a dark mask and come back for vengeance? Was he The Shadow? Sylvia didn't think so. "I'm the only one who knows the face of the real Shadow," she said.

Young Jim Curry's father is killed unjustly by an enraged mob, and the boy barely escapes the same fate. He shoots two pursuers and assumes they are dead, and in desperation becomes a most unusual outlaw, the Red Devil. He never kills, takes only ill-gained money, secretly returns it to the rightful owners, and escapes every pursuit on his remarkable horse, Meg. Spoiled Charlie Mark has left home to seek thrills and easy money. He vows to find the Red Devil and discover why he is so merciful and so particular about his victims.

In the dreary kitchen of a rough hotel in a lonely one-horse town a tough-talking young woman toils amid endless abuse from crude and cruel cowboys. The wildness starts after a stranger spots the beauty behind the grease. A sagebrush cinderella story

As he comes of age, Ed Raleigh disobeys his wealthy rancher father, Pete Raleigh, and escapes to the Bald Eagle Mountains to prospect for ore. When he stops at the town of Sierra Padre, he visits his father's old haunts and meets up with many of his father's old friends. One former friend, Jim Martin, however, is now his father’s sworn enemy who he has vowed to kill Pete Raleigh for taking away the woman they both loved, now Ed Raleigh's mother. Ed Raleigh is shocked and worried, for how will a declared murder attempt on his own father be prevented?

As an intern in the accident room of the local hospital, Jimmy Kildare cannot accept any money for his work. Circumstances force him to perform emergency operations while he is in town on and for local toughs. They try to pay him, but he always refuses. Then he learns that his mentor, Dr. Fearson, is being threatened for not paying his gambling debts. Kildare is called to perform another secret and dangerous operation. Will he finally accept payment and save his mentor?

Speedy probably had a last name, but no one knows it--a young man, a loafer, a drifter, a tramp. He does not usually use a gun, although in "Nighthawk Trail" he does, but it is only an elaborate illusion. Speedy is regarded as one of the most dangerous men in the West. The object of his quest is to find the great horse Nighthawk, bought for $7,000 by old Joshua Crane.

When a mysterious man on a white horse robs a series of stagecoaches on their way from the little town of Appleton to the Concord railroad station, everyone in town suspects a young and enigmatic man named Slim Malone. The newly elected mayor decides to bring in outside help, a deadly gunfighter named Lefty Cornwall.

The wounded outlaw blurted out the warning to range boss Jim Seton, and Seton knew that if he wasn't careful, the man's words would prove true; Doug Walters' men were out for his blood. After five years in prison, Seton dared to return to the hostile town he called home - and within shooting range of the one man who would pay a fortune to see him dead.

This is a story of a wild horse who many said could not be caught or broken, and the man who set out to prove them wrong.

Jim Gore is dreaming of striking it rich. He is a man as lonely and forgotten as the nearby ghost town itself, San Filipo. That is, until an earthquake uncovers the abandoned town's long-guarded secret - a treasure in silver! Jim meets the mysterious Chris Estaban, a man with secrets of his own. Jim knows his only chance to get the silver is to team up with this mysterious gunman and gambler. But what he doesn't know is that his easy-going life will end forever when greed, violence and betrayal take over.

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.

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.

A nasty little cardsharp shoots a New York detective and bolts for the Wild West. Through dumb luck be becomes a heroic gunfighter - then he cleans out the town that admires him. He's going too far, getting too cocky. He'll pay the price.

Jargan is a summer gambler wintering in the western town of Big Horn when he saves the life of Don José Cordoba and unwittingly acquires a new job. Soon he finds himself on a boat to Buenos Aires, having gained passage as the horse handler of two extraordinary horses: one called El Pantera, and a killer named Asesinato. He must use his innate wisdom and survival skills to protect himself and his charge against malignant men with a brutal love of cruelty.

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.

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.