Adventures and Western. Book 17

Adventures and Western. Book 17: 1. Way of the Lawless; 2. Wild Freedom; 3. Under His Shirt; 4. The Whispering Outlaw.

1. Way of the Lawless: Published -1921.

Young Andrew Lanning made one mistake in the beginning, and now the most feared lawman in the mountain desert, Hal Dozier, is on his trail and will stop at nothing to bring the outlaw Lanning to justice. But is Andrew guilty of all the things he is being accused of? There is one, a pretty young girl, who doesn't believe all she hears about him. Again, Max Brand shows us why he is the master of the pulp western. 


2. Wild Freedom: Published -1922.

Wild Freedom has all of the elements of a great Western novel: lawlessness, rugged individualism and savage Indians (even though they are by today’s standards somewhat stereotypical). It involves animal lover Tom, the wilderness, and the love of a woman named Gloria. 

Twelve-year-old Tom Parks and his father John are crossing some nameless but frigid mountains when John is killed by a fall into a stream. So heartbroken Tom holes up in a cave, trying to attract passersby with fires (his burro has been killed by a mountain lion and his gear is too heavy to tote). He spends two weeks helping a trapped mother-grizzly and her two cubs; he catches and feeds them fish while chipping away at a big boulder. When finally released, they accept him and are his only friends for the next four years: when they hibernate, he has lonely winters. But this Crusoe idyll ends when a badman shows up, kills the mother and one cub, and is himself killed by Tom--who, while scouting nearly 100 miles from his cave, comes upon the first settlement he has seen in all this time (for human talk he reads his two books, the Bible and Morte d'Arthur). Thus begins Tom's career as a thief: he steals an untamable mustang which is about to be shot, names it Peter, and now has two friends; he steals supplies and leaves pelts behind as payment. 


3. Under His Shirt: Published -1923.

«THERE was blackest gloom in the gang of Joe Daly, gloom so utter that he himself felt the shadow to some degree. But they made one great mistake in which he did not share. They felt that because three old and trusted members of the gang had recently died, their loss could not be replaced. But Joe knew this was not true...»


4. The Whispering Outlaw: Published -1926.

Who was this whispering outlaw who could so easily slip through the hand of the lawmen Kenworthy and even baffle the seasoned and brutal gunman Lew Borgen, whom he drew to his ranks? What dark vengeance choreographed the far-flung criminal schemes of such a mysterious and evil genius? Find out in Max Brand's masterful classic western - The Whispering Outlaw. 

«The crimes of Lew Borgen were usually prepared with the greatest care; and having been plotted with the last degree of caution, they were always executed by his unassisted hand, so that there was no need either to share the plunder or to take another into his confidence, which is in the end the undoing of even the greatest geniuses who live outside the law...»