Showing results by author "Max Brand"

The house on the hill in Merridan belongs to Captain Slocum - a place of mystery, protected by guard dogs that run the grounds at night, and patrolled by armed men. 

Rusty Sabin was a child when Cheyenne Indians raided the Sabin homestead and killed his mother. Just before she died, she put a rawhide cord with a green scabbard around his neck. Raised by Spotted Antelope and Bitter Root, Rusty, now known as Red Hawk, refuses the compulsory and brutal initiation into the tribe when he is 15. Abandoned as dead by his Cheyenne family, Red Hawk takes the advice of a white trader and rides to Witherell, the nearest settlement of whites.

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.

This Raging Bull Publishing box set contains four classic Western books by Max Brand: Black Jack, Harrigan, Riders of the Silence, and The Untamed.

On a cold, gusty night in Circle City, Alaska, Sammy Day walks into Nagle's Bar. He is only 22, but he has been on his own for 10 years. He has worked cattle from Montana to Chihuahua, but a little "accident" at a poker table in Montana sent him on a forced march to Alaska to avoid a posse. He is down to his last 50 cents. 

Don Sebastian Valdivia and his secretary, Juan Carreño, attend a horse auction at the Garrison Ranch, where an outlaw stallion, Twilight, is held back until last. The only man who can ride this magnificent beast is Charles Dupont, known as the Crisco Kid, who has bonded with the horse since he was a colt.Because gunman Bud Carew despises the Kid, he desperately wants to possess Twilight. Those attending the auction know that no matter who wins, a gunfight is sure to follow.

During the Klondike Gold Rush, two prospectors and their wolf dog, Chinook, encounter a mysterious woman travelling with her dog team. One man warms to her - the other distrusts her.... 

After 10 years of wandering, during which he has lived the life of a gambler and learned the ways of devious men, Tom Keene returns home, only to find his father alone and dying. Old John Keene’s sole legacy to his son is a Bible, so with his father’s passing, Tom Keene renounces his selfish, worthless past and sets out to preach to others that the greatest happiness is born of trust in one another.  

Doc Oliver and Bob Melville are two fugitives eking out a living in Alaska. Then their solitude is disturbed by the arrival of the man who framed Melville years ago....

In this dramatic and strange story, Lefty Bill Ranger, an Alaskan mail carrier, travels to Circle City through a terrific snowstorm. There he meets Menneval - a man who is widely feared throughout the territory - and is offered a job. He is to go to Tuckerville, California, and from there to the mountain fastness where Peter Crosson and his son, Oliver, live in total isolation. Menneval wants Ranger to watch and report what he sees for a period of six months. The pay for this espionage will be $6,000 in gold.

Raw frontier action is epitomized in Lee Porfilo. With a penchant for settling his problems with his fists, Porfilo is always in trouble. And trouble comes to stay when he beats a rich man's son. Now he has an enemy for life. Framed for murder and sentenced to the penitentiary, he is saved by Tex Cummins' small steel saw and heads for the mountains.

Peter Dunstan is a big rancher who wants to become bigger, to control more land. So when he buys Dr. Henry Morgan's ranchland that has been unsuccessfully converted to farming, it is his intention to return it to open range. The only stipulation the doctor makes is that Dunstan must retain Sandy Sweyn, who has more or less been Dr. Morgan's ward. Though the man is of age, he is generally considered a half-wit, even by the doctor. Still, Sandy has a fabulous gift: He can communicate with animals.

Three Western stories. A man on a mule must intercept a killer on horseback. A sharpshooter threatens a trench of soldiers. An old prize-fighter has a task to perform. 

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.

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 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.

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.

Geraldi finds himself intervening in a kidnapping - but only because he has an eye on the victims' treasure for himself....

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.