Max Brand

"In three Western stories: 'Paradise Al', 'Paradise Al's Confession', and 'The Quest', misunderstood men find the chance to prove themselves"--

In Master and Man, Bobbie is a black man who can outride, outfight, and outshoot any white man in the mountain desert. His unwavering moral code serves as a model for his often cruel and dissolute white master. A Lucky Dog is a tale of desperate flight by a jewel thief named Hagger from the man he robbed. In Colorado, facing a battle with winter cold and snow, he comes upon an isolated cabin and its sole occupant, a weakened bull terrier left there...

"Andrew Apperley is in the East, visiting with his brother David, who he has persuaded to join him on his ranch in the West. Accompanying Andrew is a giant wolf dog named Comanche who is so wild that he has to be chained up at all times. But after Comanche saves escaped prisoner Single Jack Deems from drowning, Deems wants the dog for himself, and he follows the Apperleys west."--jacket.

Freedom can mean a lot of things, but the hardest to earn and most rewarding will always be wild freedom. Max Brand turned Westerns into an art form with cleverly crafted tales like this one. Plot twists, adventure, suspense, romance, and humor combine in this delightfully fulfilling read.

Big Jim Conover's reputation as a ruthless gunfighter had driven him away form the Western mountains. Now five years later, he returns as a broken and crippled man. But the injury has transformed Jim from the fighting terror he once was, into an honorable leader of men.

I figure a gent gets his reward when he sees other people happy. As long as I can help other people to their happiness, I don't require no other reward.'

He dipped out of the brighter level into a premature night below; evening was gathering quickly, and with each step Connor felt the misty darkness closing above his head. He was stumbling over the boulders, downheaded, hardly able to see the ground at his feet, yet when he reached the bottom of the little ravine which ran toward the entrance, he looked up to a red sky, and the higher mountains rolled off in waves of light. Distances were magnified;...

You don't get a much more evocative opening than that for a Western novella called „Werewolf", and the story lives up to both its title and that opening in ways you won't expect from Max Brand who did write some fantastic fiction. On that bitter night Chris Royal walks into Yates Saloon to escape the storm where Cliff Main, gun happy brother of killer Harry Main, is looking for trouble over a girl both like. Words are exchanged, and there is the...

Now you can enjoy one of Max Brand's classic short novels, a form that flourished during the heyday of American fiction magazines. Too short to stand alone and too long for most anthologies, such stories as these have been largely lost to Western fiction fans until now. 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

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If Randal could make his ranch pay, he stood to inherit his grandfather's fortune. But a cattle-rustling band of ranch-hands were robbing him blind, and he had to do something to stop them. He sent for Kitchin, the toughest man he knew - the man he had once sent to Fulsom Penitentiary. Even though Kitchin would as soon break an hombre in two with his bare hands as shoot him, even with the offer of a fabulous reward, Kitchin wasn't sure he'd live long...