Showing results by author "Max Brand" in All Categories

The day Jingo rode into Tower Creek, the town was busy celebrating its 20th anniversary. The big event of the festival was a high-stakes poker game in Joe Slade's saloon with Wally Rankin holding most of the chips. But it didn't take long for Jingo to figure out why: Rankin was cheating. And it would only take a couple of well-placed bullets to reveal it to the others in the room.

Steven Train is and has long been a thief and card sharp. He has gone by other names. He is sought out by another crook, John Ranier, with a proposal. Rainer saved a rich rancher, Patrick Comstock, from serious injury and was rewarded with an easy job, working for Comstock. Rainer tells Steve Train that Comstock is looking for an honest man who is also adept with firearms to undertake a very dangerous and responsible mission. Comstock has asked Ranier to help find such a man.

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.

The mining certificates granting ownership of the Christabel mine that Edward Dugan inherited from his father had a face value of $250,000, but the mine itself had been declared worthless. Still, Henry Christian, the man that had sold them to Dugan's father, said he'd buy them back for $1,500.
Penniless, Dugan decided to walk the 3,000 miles from his home in Boston to the mine in the Southwest to check out the offer. But along the way he meets a travel companion named Red. Red knows Christian by reputation, and by another name: Bonanza Chris.

When Andrew Apperley visits his brother David in the East, he brings along an unexpected companion. Andrew's giant wolf dog, Comanche, is so wild that he has to be chained up for the safety of others. However, when the Apperley brothers come across a man drowning in the East River, Comanche breaks loose from his chains and swims to the man's rescue.

Smoke Bellew enters a remote Mormon settlement only a jump ahead of a posse. Finding employment as a ranch hand working for a dowager Mormon, Smoke finds that his life undergoes a transformation and he is able to make her ranch a financial success, at the same time falling in love with her wanton daughter, Rebecca. But it is too good to last. The law follows him.

The Untamed is a pioneering Wild West novel. Whistlin' Dan Barry is the hero, with his black stallion Satan and wolf dog Black Bart. The villain and leader of the gang of thugs, Jim Silent, is a thief, a killer, and a liar. He kidnaps Whistlin’ Dan’s adopted father and the woman he loves, and then war ensues, with a riveting end to the thugs.

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.

A collection of classic Western tales including Tappan's Burro by Zane Grey, Jargan M by Max Brand and The Trail to Crazy Man by Louis L'Amour.

Werewolf by Max Brand in Western Story Magazine (12/18/26) involves just such an inward journey for Christopher Royal, who is convinced he is a coward and flees a confrontation with Harry Main, who is a gunfighter. There comes a time in this story - when Christopher encounters the aged Indian, the old wise man - that the terrain shimmers with the multiple affinities of meaning conjured by the unconscious, which Vergil once sought to capture within an image both awesome and sinister: numina magna deum [the great divine power of a god].

Lew Sherry and Pete Lang accept an offer they simply can't resist. Oliver Wilton is willing to pay the cowboys $1,000 a day for ten days to protect him from danger that has him living in a state of terror. A seafaring man has arrived at the inn in town and has made no secret of the fact that he's come to settle a score with Wilton.

Sixteen In Nome is narrated by young Joe May, an Arizonian who has come to Alaska to "make his stake for a ranch." Joe finds being on his own difficult as he reflects "Sixteen is a bad age for a boy. It is too full of growing and not enough full of strength." Joe's coming of age story in Alaska during the gold rush of the 1890's is an intertwining backdrop to the conflict between Hugh Massey and Arnie Calmont.

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.

"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.

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.

When Lorrimer Weldon rode into San Trinidad, he found he immediately had two job offers: the outlaw Roger Cunningham wants Weldon to join his smuggling operation as a hired gun, and Dr. Henry Watts wants to hire Weldon's gun as well, but as muscle to protect a patient dying of consumption, the beautiful Helen O'Mallock. Weldon finds Watts' proposition far more attractive, so he accepts the offer, knowing that Cunningham will resent the decision.

Recklessly, joyously, Black Jack had ridden into town to see his infant son. Then a shotgun fired from a window had blasted him from his horse and flung him to his death in the street.

When Samuel Cross was growing up, he was rarely found without a book in his hands and that was the way his mother, a widow, wanted him raised. His uncle, Stephen Larkin, a frontiersman like Sam's father, wanted him to be strong and able to fend for himself, so he would take him into the mountains every summer to teach him how to fight and use a weapon. He proved to be as adept at these subjects as he had been at book learning.

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.

Barney Dwyer is a gentle giant who has yet to find a place in the world. Capturing two notorious outlaws has made a hero of him, so much so that rancher Robert Parmelee offers him a job on his ranch to put a stop to persistent rustling. Taking the job promises an income sufficient for Barney to marry his sweetheart. But this promise for the future falls into jeopardy when the outlaws escape, determined to kill Barney.