The Second Western Megapack: 25 Classic Western Stories Read online

  Table of Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFO

  A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

  THE MEGAPACK SERIES

  QUICK PAY FOR MAVERICK MEN, by Ed Earl Repp

  TOM’S MONEY, by Harriet Prescott Spofford

  WHILE SMOKE ROLLED, by Robert E. Howard

  THE AFFAIR AT GROVER STATION, by Willa Cather

  THE OUTLAW PILOT, by Stephen Payne

  READY FOR A COFFIN, by Gene Austin

  BULLDOG CARNEY, by W. A. Fraser

  DUST, by Marcet and Emanuel Haldeman-Julius

  THE JIMMYJOHN BOSS, by Owen Wister

  THE APACHE MOUNTAIN WAR, by Robert E. Howard

  ABOVE THE LAW, by Max Brand

  WITH GUTS, GUN, AND SCALPEL, by Archie Joscelyn

  THE END OF THE TRAIL, by Clarence E. Mulford

  THE WILD-HORSE HUNTER, by Zane Grey

  THE HONK-HONK BREED, by Stewart Edward White

  THE TEXAN SCOUTS, by Joseph A. Altsheler

  THE ROAD TO BEAR CREEK, by Robert E. Howard

  A KINSMAN OF RED CLOUD, by Owen Wister

  NO REPORT, by S. Omar Barke

  THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN, by Zane Grey

  GUNMAN’S RECKONING, by Max Brand

  LITTLE BIG HORN MEDICINE, by Owen Wister

  THE LONE RANGER RIDES, by Fran Striker

  MAN SIZE, by William MacLeod Raine

  COLUMBIA AND THE COWBOY, by Alice MacGowan

  COPYRIGHT INFO

  “Quick Pay for Maverick Men,” by Ed Earl Repp, originally appeared in Action Stories, June 1942.

  “Tom’s Money,” by Harriet Prescott Slofford, is taken from The Wit and Humor of America, vol. 10 (1907).

  “While Smoke Rolled,” by Robert E. Howard, originally appeared in Double-Action Western, December 1956.

  “The Affair at Grover Station,” by Willa Cather, originally appeared in 1900.

  “The Outlaw Pilot,” by Stephen Payne, originally appeared in Ace-High Magazine, March 1, 1932.

  “Ready for a Coffin,” by Gene Austin, originally appeared in Double-Action Western, January 1952.

  “Bulldog Carney,” by W. A. Fraser, originally appeared in 1919.

  Dust, by Marcet and Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, originally appeared as a novel in 1921.

  “The Jimmyjohn Boss,” by Owen Wister is taken from The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories (1900).

  “The Apache Mountain War,” by Robert E. Howard, originally appeared in Action Stories, December 1935.

  “Above the Law” by Max Brand, originally appeared in All-Story Weekly, August 31, 1918.

  “With Guts, Gun, and Scalpel,” by Archie Joscelyn, originally appeared in Big Book Western, December 1945.

  “The End of the Trail,” by Clarence E. Mulford, originally appeared in Bar-20 Days (1910).

  “The Wild-Horse Hunter,” by Zane Grey, is taken from The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories (1933).

  “The Honk-Honk Breed,” by Stewart Edward White, originally appeared in Arizona Nights (1907).

  “The Texan Scouts,” by Joseph A. Altsheler, originally appeared in 1913.

  “The Road to Bear Creek,” by Robert E. Howard, originally appeared in Action Stories, December 1934.

  “A Kinsman of Red Cloud,” by Owen Wister, is taken from The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories (1900).

  “No Report,” by S. Omar Barke, originally appeared in Ace-High Magazine, April 1931.

  The Last of the Plainsmen, by Zane Grey, originally appeared in 1908.

  Gunman’s Reckoning, by Max Brand, originally appeared in 1921.

  “Little Big Horn Medicine,” by Owen Wister, is taken from Red Men and White (1895).

  The Lone Ranger Rides, by Fran Striker, originally appeared in 1941.

  Man Size, by William MacLeod Raine, originally appeared in 1922.

  A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

  ATTN: KINDLE READERS

  The Kindle versions of our Megapacks employ active tables of contents for easy navigation…please look for one before writing reviews on Amazon that complain about the lack! (They are sometimes at the ends of ebooks, depending on your version or ebook reader.)

  RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?

  Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the Megapack series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://movies.ning.com/forum (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).

  Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.

  TYPOS

  Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.

  If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone (and email a revised copy to you when it’s updated, in either epub or Kindle format, if you provide contact information). You can email the publisher at [email protected].

  THE MEGAPACK SERIES

  Collect them all!

  The Adventure Megapack

  The Baseball Megapack

  The Boys’ Adventure Megapack

  The Christmas Megapack

  The Second Christmas Megapack

  The Classic American Short Story Megapack

  The Dan Carter, Cub Scout Megapack

  The Cowboy Megapack

  The Craig Kennedy Scientific Detective Megapack

  The Cthulhu Mythos Megapack

  The Detective Megapack

  The Father Brown Megapack

  The Ghost Story Megapack

  The Second Ghost Story Megapack

  The Third Ghost Story Megapack

  The Horror Megapack

  The Macabre Megapack

  The Second Macabre Megapack

  The Martian Megapack

  The Military Megapack

  The Mummy Megapack

  The First Mystery Megapack

  The Penny Parker Megapack

  The Pulp Fiction Megapack

  The Rover Boys Megapack

  The First Science Fiction Megapack

  The Second Science Fiction Megapack

  The Third Science Fiction Megapack

  The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack

  The Fifth Science Fiction Megapack

  The Sixth Science Fiction Megapack

  The Penny Parker Megapack

  The Pinocchio Megapack

  The Steampunk Megapack

  The Tom Corbett, Space Cadet Megapack

  The Tom Swift Megapack

  The Vampire Megapack

  The Victorian Mystery Megapack

  The Werewolf Megapack

  The Western Megapack

  The Second Western Megapack

  The Wizard of Oz Megapack

  AUTHOR MEGAPACKS

  The E.F. Benson Megapack

  The Second E.F. Benson Megapack

  The B.M. Bower Megapack

  The First Reginald Bretnor Megapack

  The Wilkie Collins Megapack

  The Philip K. Dick Megapack

  The Jacques Futrelle Megapack

  The Randall Garrett Megapack

  The Second Randall Garrett Megapack

  The G.A. Henty Megapack

  The M.R. James Megapack

  The Murray Leinster Megapack

  The Second Murray Leinster Megapack

  The Andre Norton Megapack

  The H. Beam Piper Megapack

  The Rafael Sabatini Megapack

  QUICK PAY FOR MAVERICK MEN, by Ed Earl Repp

  Crawling stealthily on all fours through catclaw and cactus, Nevada Jim pulled up suddenly and with a low, colorful oath plucked a chotta spine from the ball of his horny thumb.

  “Quit bellyachin’ and move on!” husked old Utah McClatchey from close behind him. “I’m gettin’ tired of havin’ them rundown boots o’ yours shoved in my face!”

  A dark silhouette in the pale moonlight, Nevada Jim stuck his injured member into a capacious mouth and licked the pinpoint wound which stung like fire. Then he grinned at his sour-faced old companion. “Don’t get impatient, Utah,” he said. “Good times await us at yonder mine. After we lift ol’ Dan Conover’s gold, we won’t have to do this kind of work no more—unless we feel like havin’ some fun.”

  Utah matched his younger partner’s grin. “You know,” he gave back quietly, “we’re really doin’ Conover a big favor by relievin’ him o’ his dust. Why, from what I heard in Tombstone, the poor jasper’s been worryin’ himself near to death for fear somebody was goin’ to rob him. We’ll take a big load off his mind.”

  Nevada Jim’s thin, hawk-like face assumed a benign expression. “I believe you’re right, pard,” he said. “I bet he’ll be tickled pink to see us!”

  “I reckon,” McClatchey chuckled. “Lots of other folks would, too.”

  He was right. Lawmen from Laramie to Paso del Norte would have given time from their lives to nab this pair. Many had seen the two slippery owlhooters, but none of them had been capable of laying hands on them. One reason was because there wasn’t a sheriff west of Omaha who didn’t have a healthy respect for the old Colt Pea
cemakers they wore, tied hard at their thighs. Another reason was that times had changed and the law was more accustomed nowadays to riding along fine highways in high-powered cars, than fording mean cayuses over the rough western badlands in quest of the two old-time outlaws.

  Some newspapers in the Southwest frequently referred to the pair as the Hellers from Helldorado and poked fun at the law for being unable to put them where they rightfully belonged. Others called them ribald raiders because they seemed to enjoy themselves so thoroughly when they walked into some unsuspecting cow-country bank and lifted its cash. There were still other papers, and individuals too, who mentioned slyly when the pair made front page news, that Nevada Jim James and Utah McClatchey sometimes did the country a service by preying upon their own kind. For deputy sheriffs, town marshals, and border patrolmen frequently found dead gangsters in unexpected places, with miniature tombstones carved from chaparral or manzanita placed neatly upon their chests. That was a symbol the Hellers from Helldorado always left behind them.

  “We don’t want nobody to git credit for our doin’s but us,” Utah always said. “An’ we shore as heck don’t want to git credit for orneriness that ain’t our’n!”

  They enjoyed many a chuckle over those miniature tombstones. And they were valued by the lawmen fortunate enough to get hold of one. They carried a message that was plain as the beak-like nose on Nevada Jim’s predatory face. The miniatures were more than calling cards. They told all and sundry that the Hellers’ hangout was in the old ghost town of Tombstone, Arizona, hard by the fastnesses of the Chiricahua Mountains, the Turkey Creek badlands and the Mexican border. It was an open challenge to the law to come and get them—if it could.

  But now the two pards had been forced to abandon their snug retreat in the old Oriental Saloon where Wyatt Earp had once held forth in all of his frock-coated, gun-hung splendor, for Tombstone was coming to life again. Mines were reopening and ore trucks were churning up the thick dust of Allen and Tough-Nut Streets.

  “It’s this here dee-fense program that’s runnin’ us into the hills again,” Nevada Jim complained. “It might be a good thing for the country, but it’s goin’ to make it awful tough for us to keep dodgin’ the law.”

  Utah McClatchey had squared his flaring old shoulders and snorted: “What this country needs is a few ol’ timers like you an’ me that are plumb handy with hog-laigs.”

  “We’re handy enough,” Nevada had agreed. “But we’re also pizen mean an’ ornery. Our law-dodgers say so.”

  “They ain’t lyin’,” Utah admitted. “There ain’t no Social See-curety for us, an’ we gotta make a livin’ somehow, don’t we?”

  * * * *

  Now, the Hellers were high on the flank of a barren Chiricahua peak, making their way with cat-like stealth up the tailings of an old mine dump. New streakings of ore marked it in places, for Dan Conover had recently reopened the Bronco Mine.

  “Funny Conover ain’t got his stamp mill runnin’ tonight,” Utah complained. “If it was goin’, we could’ve rode our hosses right up to his shack without bein’ heard instead of us havin’ to crawl on our hands an’ knees.”

  Nevada Jim grinned. The old renegade was always complaining about something. “You got to do a little work for yore dinero,” he pointed out, “or you wouldn’t appreciate it none.”

  He ceased talking as they reached the edge of the dump, and clamped a hand over his pard’s wrist. His bleak, wintry eyes scanned the shelf for sign of life. There was none. A waning moon shed a faint radiance over the long, narrow plateau, and the gaunt shaft house at the mouth of the mine. The stamp mill, cook shack and long bunkhouse were on the other side of the shaft house. A clammy silence held sway over the place.

  The only sign of human habitation was a pale, yellow light in one old shanty off to the right of the two renegades. Save for that, every building seemed deserted when the mine should be going full-blast. There was something subtle in the quiet that Nevada Jim didn’t like. It made the hair crawl on his thin neck.

  They stole forward again toward the lighted shack. There was a front and rear door to it and it boasted three rooms, a kitchen, bunkroom and a front room. Nevada was aware of that because he and Utah had once holed up there when a posse became too annoying.

  They saw now that the yellow lamp-light was coming from the front room. They picked their way quietly to the rear porch. Testing each step, Nevada mounted slowly. The door was hung on leather hinges, but by lifting it a little, he managed to ease it open without a sound. He stepped inside.

  The little kitchen was dark as the inside of his pockets. He paused, with Utah at his shoulder, to accustom his eyes to the darkness. After a moment he could make out the door leading into the front room. Silently he crossed to it. Left hand reaching out, he jerked it open as his right whipped his long-barreled Colt from its pouch. Like a cat he slipped through the door and took one long stride to the right. Utah, gun in hand, moved to the left. It was their system when entering a bank.

  Their guns flipped up to cover the room, then sagged. Both stared open-mouthed at old Dan Conover seated beside a stained table in the center of the room. They blinked to make sure their eyes were not playing them false.

  A dirty rag had been drawn tight between Dan’s teeth and knotted securely behind his white head. His arms were bound to the back of the chair in which he sat, and his ankles were lashed to the legs of it. Only his blue eyes were active and they were filled with hellfire and brimstone. But when he looked up at the two renegades, Nevada saw his angry expression change. The old mine operator’s shoulders shook and his chest started heaving. A sound came from behind the gag that was very much like choked laughter.

  He looked at the renegades standing either side of the door. Utah McClatchey resembled a gaunt lobo. Tall, thin as a rail, bowlegged in his ragged Levis, his blue shirt and moth-eaten cowhide vest hanging about his spare torso in loose folds, he looked like a wolf emerging from a hard winter. His scraggy, drooping, iron-gray mustache fell below his narrow chin. The battered range hat atop his bullet head had seen better days, but now the brim was warped and floppy and the crown boasted two bullet holes. He looked older than he was, for he had hit the owlhoot at twelve, and forty years of night riding since weighed heavily upon him.

  Nevada Jim flushed a little when he felt Conover’s laughing eyes go over him. He was garbed much as his old partner, but there the resemblance ended. His eyes and thin face carried an expression of ironic, devilish humor most of the time. He was perhaps ten years younger than Utah, but heavier. A sparse stubble of roan whiskers, well on the gray side, hid the weather-wrinkles etched about his mouth and flat cheeks. He always enjoyed a good laugh at the other fellow’s expense, but this time he realized the joke was on them. And old Dan Conover knew it.

  Utah was the first to speak, then explosively: “Shut yore gurglin’, yuh dang fool!” he cracked out. “You sound like a b’ilin’ teakettle! Untie the critter, Jim, before I get mad an’ shoot the gag out o’ his mouth. Of all the consarned luck I ever did see, this is the worst. Somebody beat us to our gold, by Gawd!”

  Nevada had already pouched his gun and was striding toward Conover when he saw him stiffen suddenly back in his chair as though something had smashed him in the chest. Then he saw something had, for a red stain spread quickly over the old mining man’s white shirt front.

  A sound, scarcely louder than the low hiss of a snake, accompanied the bullet. Before he could do more than spin toward the bedroom door from which he thought the mysterious shot had come, a second slug sliced neatly through the crown of his battered range hat.

  Then Utah McClatchey’s ancient Colt let out a roar that shook the shack. His heavy slug screamed into the bedroom as he yelled: “After ’em, Jim! They’re hidin’ in the bunkroom! Maybe they got our gold in there!”

  He started running, straight-up, for the door, with a reckless disregard for modern guns and gunners. But Nevada had other ideas. In a flying tackle he brought the old renegade down to the floor and rolled with him through the dark doorway just as lead from the hissing guns inside the bedroom sheeted above their prone bodies.

  Nevada Jim found it disconcerting to fight guns that made no sound. He wasn’t used to it, but he was accustomed to fighting in the dark and he had no more mercy in him now than a cougar has for a fawn between its jaws.

  Pale gun-flame stabbed out of the thick blackness from the vicinity of one of the bunks across the room. Nevada snap-shot from the floor, gun swinging up as he triggered to cover the spot of flame. Instantly he heard the thud of a falling body accompanied by a shrill, high-pitched screaming of words in a tongue that was totally unfamiliar to him. The voice gurgled off into the silence of death.