Ride the dusty trails of the Old West in eighteen hard-riding tales pulled from the golden age of the pulps. Gunfighters, cowpunchers, pony express riders, prospectors, and range-war veterans come alive on every page, their fortunes turning on a sudden draw, a cold camp, or a glance across a crowded saloon.
From a drifter "on the dodge" running one jump ahead of the law, to a lonely rider strung out across the sage on a killing errand, these stories capture the frontier as readers first met it-vivid, violent, and honest about the cost of survival. Rustlers circle the herd by moonlight. A greenhorn learns that courage and a six-shooter don't always travel together. Old feuds ripen into gunsmoke beneath a pitiless sun.
Included are:
"Sixteen to One on Friday," by W.C. Tuttle"Gold," by Burt Leslie"Bound South," by Ernest Haycox"On the Dodge," by Will James"Conversation," by J. Frank Davis"The Man from Oregon," by Mary B. Arbuckle"Old Slowpoke," by Howard E. Morgan"The old 'Yaller' Shirt," by Ray Humphreys"War Paint," by Robert Winchester"The Bar Act," by Bud La Mar"A Perfect Gentleman," by Mark Price"Mountain Killers," by Thomas Barclay Thomson"Empty Bottles," by Raymond S. Spears"Gun play," by Michael J. Phillips"The Man Who Hated Himself," by Walt Coburn"The Pony Express Rider," by Earl C. McCain"Where the West begins," by Austin Hall"The Strike at Too Dry," by Willis BrindleyCollected here for the first time, these adventure yarns deliver the real pulp-era West: lean prose, bigger- than-life heroes, and a horizon that always seems one more ridge away.