Showing results by author "Max Brand" in All Categories

Winsor Glanvil pays court to Louise Carney, heiress to a fortune, and she agrees to marry him. The marriage is opposed by big Jack Rutledge, a jealous rival and formidable foe, so Glanvil and Louise plan to be married in a sequestered valley by a local clergyman. Rutledge and his supporters, learning of the plan, arrive in the valley ahead of the two and seize Glanvil. Glanvil is beaten mercilessly and Rutledge disfigures him, destroying one side of his face with the cutting edge of a spur. Rutledge then rejoins his gang in the clergyman’s house.

This bundle features “The Danger Lover” and the title story, in which 22-year-old Lewis Dikkon has led a sheltered life, working seven days a week as a shoemaker for his taskmaster uncle, Charles Bender. Being inside most of the time, he knows little of the town and its inhabitants. A stranger named Sam Prentiss begins showing up at 8 p.m. every Saturday night to sit in a chair in the shop’s doorway and look across the street for an hour. Their conversations, though limited, begin to set Dikkon’s mind to work and before long he decides he wants to buy a gun.

His name is Dan Barry, and they call him "the Manslayer." His best friend is a savage wolf dog no other man can touch. They say his gun is faster than summer lightning and has never missed its mark. They say no bullet yet cast can kill him. His lifeblood is danger, and it flows with the cool recklessness of a surging mountain stream.

Terry Shawn was a kind-hearted outlaw. He took from the rich and gave to the poor and while doing so, stole the heart of a beautiful young woman. Infuriated lawmen could never catch up with him. But deep in one secluded valley lived an older man with such a haunted past, he chose the solitude of a wild mountain range to find peace for his troubled soul. From this man named Shannon, Terry came to know the real meaning of honesty and friendship.

Black Jack Hollis was a daring outlaw before he was shot down. In the wake of his death, it's discovered that Hollis left behind an infant son. Elizabeth Cornish, coowner of the Cornish Ranch alongside her brother, Vance, takes it upon herself to raise the child as her own. Elizabeth names the boy Terry Colby and gives Terry a fictitious aristocratic background, believing the way the boy is raised will determine the man he will become. But Vance is convinced that Terry is destined to become an outlaw himself.

Born in Brooklyn, Sammy Gregg is small in stature and naive to the ways of the world, yet headstrong and resolute to save enough money to marry Susie Mitchell. Gregg calculates that he needs $15‚000 and figures he can earn enough in six months out west. Although he is a small man who knows nothing of fighting‚ guns‚ or horses‚ he takes his $5‚000 in savings and heads west‚ arriving in Munson‚ a tough, lawless town.

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?

"The Seventh Man" (1921) is a unique western novel with well-sketched characters by Max Brand. Excerpt: "A man under thirty needs neighbors; and to stop up the current of his life with a long silence is like obstructing a river - eventually the water either sweeps away the dam or rises over it, and the stronger the dam the more destructive is that final rush to freedom. Vic Gregg was on the danger side of thirty and he lived alone in the mountains all that winter.

A dying man, Hank Peyton, tells his son Jerry Peyton that, after a lifetime of evil deeds, his only gift to his son will be his extremely valuable gun called The Voice of La Paloma. When Jerry is wrongfully accused of horse thievery, a cunning sheriff blackmails Jerry into stealing the gun from his father in exchange for a clean slate, even though the sheriff has already found the real horse thief.

"Steady, Borgen," said a terrible and familiar murmur behind him. "Steady, man. If you turn, I shoot."

There was a tidal wave of crime, of murder, of robbery. Here and there, separated at distances of 500 or even 1000 miles, crimes were committed which were carefully prepared with a painful and laborious hand; and then they were executed in an instant by one or two bold spirits directed by one man - one quiet-voiced, uncannily brilliant outlaw who seemed to know everything.

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.

In Pete's Bar in the Bowery in New York, Pete tells some newspaper friends the story of Morgan the Fearless, a notorious desperado in the West. After terrorizing the Bridgewater region, the mayor hires Buck Christie to confront and defeat Morgan. Christie makes sure his challenge is heard. One night, Morgan enters the bar in Bridgewater with both guns trained on Buck Christie. The bar patrons freeze, and the atmosphere turns deathly quiet. Which one will walk out alive?

Harry Camden came out of the wilderness unwillingly. It was a girl who attracted him. But Sparrow Roberts, a fight manager, used this romantic lure only to attract Harry into his own sphere, because he knew that Camden had a truly devastating punch.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.