Peter Blue: One-Gun Man

His right hand could never recover. He had been told so by a doctor who never missed in his judgments any more than Peter Blue, in the old days, had missed with a gun. Nothing but the left remained to him, and with that left he knew that he could never attain the old heights of skill. He mastered himself with a great effort, but, as he walked out through the hills, he wondered what he could do. In a wave of weakness, he wished to let the world know of his stricken condition. Very shame might then hold back his enemies. No, the hundred faces looked suddenly in upon his mind—dark eyes, sneering lips, keen, cruel faces, as merciless as the faces of wolves. They would never forget and they would never forgive, and they would pity him no more than the wolves pitied a failing moose, caught in the snow.

Although the majority of Max Brand's’s Western stories were published in Street & Smith’s Western Story Magazine, “Peter Blue, One-Gun Man” appeared in Street & Smith’s Far West Illustrated, in the issue dated June, 1927. Two of Faust’s serials for that year were also published in Far West Illustrated. It was Faust’s intention for the story to be titled “Barnegat, Barnegat”, after the song sung by various characters, but it was changed by the magazine to the name of the story’s protagonist, Peter Blue, the infamous gunman. The storyline reflects one of Faust’s favorite themes, the redeemed outlaw.