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.45 Fever by L.P. Holmes
.45 Fever – Five stories about taming the Wild West. From gunhawk outfits masquerading as cattle ranchers to greedy men inducing Indian attacks on stagecoaches, the West was wild and violent. And needed taming.
Book Details
Book Details
.45 Fever – Five stories about taming the Wild West. From gunhawk outfits masquerading as cattle ranchers to greedy men inducing Indian attacks on stagecoaches, the West was wild and violent. And needed taming.
.45 Fever in Mesabe (1944)
A couple of two-bit outfits were turning that peaceful cowtown into a bullet battleground. But when they scoffed at the warning of the six old men of Mesabe, a six-gun surprise awaited them. For the oldsters hadn’t forgotten how to use the tactics of pistol pioneers.
Death Cracks the Overland Whip (1947)
Steve Leland had his gunwork cut out for him when he bought that stage line. For holdup hombres had already salivated his three predecessors. And Steve now found himself the shotgun guard of a stage bound for boot hill.
A five chapter novelette.
Blacksmith’s Black Magic (1942)
Nobody could figger why the jiggers’d stick up the stage and risk their necks where there wasn’t no profit. Then Mody Burnside got the hunch that the sidewinders were throwin’ a long rope round Lawman Powers’ job. But the outlaws didn’t realize that their wide loop ended in a hangman’s knot!
Bleached Bones At Scalpknife Station (1946)
Butchering, blood-crazed Indians kept a safe distance away from the lonely, horror-haunted stage stop. Burk Stanley came from the battlefield to find out why—and learn how evil death could be.
A six chapter novelette
Gun-Shy Hero (1947)
To hide his saddle sleuth mission, Rick Linton had to play a coward’s role in that livestock swindle. But just when Rick was ready to make his six-gun showdown, he was trapped by drygulch disaster.
A four chapter novelette.

Llewellyn (Lew) Perry Holmes (1895-1988) was born in a log cabin at Breckenridge, Colorado, atop the Rocky Mountains. After graduating high school Holmes began to write for pulp magazines and was a major contributor for Leo Margulies’ Standard Magazines, known also as Thrilling Publications or The Thrilling Group. Beginning in the 1950s he concentrated on writing western fiction and moved away from pulp writing. Holmes wrote westerns under his own name and the pseudonyms Matt Stuart, Dave Hardin and Perry Westwood.
.45 Fever has 12 illustrations.
Files:
- LPHolmes-45Fever.epub
Read Excerpt
Excerpt: .45 Fever in Mesabe
“IT HAD been a particularly pointless, savage, messy killing. The victim a Triangle Bar rider, the killers four Broken Circle M men. They got him crossing the street, right out in front of Charlie Lott’s store. They let him get well out, with no vestige of cover anywhere I about him. Then they showed, the four of them, two on each side of the street, all of them opening up in a deadly cross fire.
Charlie Lott saw all of it. He saw the luckless victim spin and jerk, pounded this way and that by the crashing lead, then finally go down all loose and broken up. After which the Broken Circle M men calmly rode out of town.
Gathering with the rest of the crowd, Charlie Lott ordered the body carried over and out of sight in Ben Spann’s livery barn.
“Better send your roustabout out to the Triangle Bar and tell them to come and get him, Ben,” Charlie suggested.
“All right,” nodded Ben. Then he added, his voice somber, “This is the fourth in little over a month. What’s our town coming to, Charlie?”
Back in his store, Charlie had quite an influx of callers. Most of them, knowing that Charlie had seen it all, were just morbidly curious about the details, and with these Charlie was short and curt. So they left, to go and hang around the livery barn, waiting for someone from the Triangle Bar to come and claim their dead. Left at the store were finally some half-dozen old men.
Charlie Lott, for one. And Abe Connors, the saddle maker, Doc Terwilliger, who ran the hotel, Pete Evans, the blacksmith, Henry Caldwell, the freighter, and Buck Handy, who owned and ran the Sunset Saloon. Buck’s saloon was one of the oldest and most venerated establishments in the town of Mesabe, a place where men drank their liquor like gentlemen, never drank too much, and played their draw and stud poker games for relaxation and nothing more.
NO TOCSIN had been rung, no call sent out to bring about this gathering. Nor had it just happened. Each one, it seemed, had felt that this final killing had brought about a crisis and a need for some kind of action beyond just a negative acceptance of an intolerable condition.
Pete Evans said slowly, “A few more like this last one and our town will have a name to scare little kids with.”
Doc Terwilliger combed his white imperial with thoughtful fingers. “We’ve kept it a good town for a long, long time,” he said in that quiet, precise way of his. “We’ve watched it grow from a crossroads junction. Back in our tough days we had our shooting affairs, but they were mostly man to man, the honest settling of differences by a mode long accepted as reasonably honorable and decisive.
“Gradually, as we grew up, we managed to discourage even that. Those who felt they just had to swap lead, learned it was safer for the victor to have that smoke-slinging take place somewhere else than in Mesabe. We made it tougher and tougher for a self-defense plea to stand up. In that way we became a decent, law-abiding community. Now we are right back to a condition worse than any we ever knew. Gentlemen, we must do something about this state of affairs.”
“That was murder out there today,” said Charlie Lott. “Cold-blooded, deliberate. Four against one, with the one having not a chance for his alley. Though it might have been just the other way around, the Triangle Bar doing the shooting, a Broken Circle M man the victim. Yet, it was murder!”
Said Abe Connors, “Those two loco outfits are making a slaughterhouse out of our town.”
“It is the kind of news which travels far,” Buck Handy growled. “And it lures the blacklegs, the tinhorns, the gun-throwers and all the rest of the worthless riff-raff. Take those two outfits. On the one hand, we got Buzz and Slide McCabe; on the other, Stud Darwin. The Broken Circle M and the Triangle Bar. Not big outfits, not good outfits, not sound outfits. Haywire layouts, both. Together they don’t get out one really worth-while shipping herd a year.
“They ain’t really interested in raising cows, by the looks of things. Just in hellraising. Sore at one another, both sides taking on gunhands instead of cowhands. First thing we know they’ll be involving some of the reputable layouts here about. They can throw the whole range into a shootin’ war. It’s happened other places; it can happen here. Which is hell for everybody. So we got to do something about it!”
This was a long speech for Buck Handy to make. Usually he was markedly chary of words. Which showed the depth of his feelings in the matter.
“What can we do?” asked Henry Caldwell, a good man and a sound one, but inclined to caution.
“Call ’em together, maybe,” suggested Pete Evans. “Get the McCabes and Stud Darwin to meet along with us and iron the whole thing out peaceful-like.”
“Not a bad suggestion at all,” nodded Doc Terwilliger. “One well worth trying, I believe. What do you think, Charlie?” Charlie Lott shrugged. “No harm in trying.”
“It won’t work,” grunted Buck Handy. “I’ve seen it tried before, in my time. Buzz and Slide McCabe fancy themselves as a pair of tough ones. Stud Darwin would have you believe he wears barb-wired underclothes. Only one language they understand, that breed. Knock hell out of ’em.”
“I’m inclined to side with Buck there,” drawled Abe Connors. “Yet, if there’s a peaceful way out, I’m for it.”
Doc Terwilliger looked at Buck Handy. “If we could be unanimous in this—” Buck hunched his gaunt shoulders. “I won’t kick, even if I say again, it won’t work.”
“It is decided, then,” said Doc Terwilliger. “I will make all arrangements. I will let you know when the time and place is set.”
“Ben Spann will want to be in on this,” suggested Charlie Lott.
“He will be,” said Doc. “I’ll see to that.”
THE McCabes came into Mesabe full of wary suspicion. They were small, dark, wiry men, with thin, bleak faces, restless, catlike, dangerous. Doc Terwilliger met them at the hotel steps.
“Glad to see you, gentlemen,” he said pleasantly. “Come along inside and make yourselves at home.”
“If this is some kind of a trap,” said Slide McCabe in a voice dry and toneless and vicious, “You’ll die with two gunloads of lead in your belly, Terwilliger.”
“Make it four gunloads, Slide,” droned Buzz.
“I gave you my word,” reminded Doc Terwilliger gently. “And my word is something I do not lightly toss about.” They followed him in, spur chains scuffling, their black eyes darting, watching, suspicious. In the hotel parlor were the old men of Mesabe. There was a bottle and glasses. The McCabes took theirs neat, tossing the liquor down with single gulps. Then they sat where they could watch windows and doors, built cigarettes and smoked in silence.
Ten minutes later Stud Darwin rode in. With him was his foreman, Bert Klowans. He had refused to come unless he could bring a man with him so he would not be outnumbered when he faced the McCabe brothers.
Stud Darwin was a bull of a man, his face square and knotted, eyes protuberant and aggressive, his voice loud and offensive. Terwilliger met him and Klowans with the same quiet dignity. Darwin voiced the same suspicion the McCabes had shown.
“If you’re trying to pull a fast one, Terwilliger—”
“I gave you my promise,” said Doc. “That should be sufficient.”
Darwin laughed coarsely. “I put my faith in these.” He slapped his guns.
A taut and deadly tension lay across the room when Darwin and the McCabes faced each other. The hatred, the avid lust for each other’s blood, were so real and”
“virulent, Buck Handy slid something out from behind his chair and laid it across his knees. It was a sawed-off shotgun. Buck let one hand play about the locks.
“I brought this along,” he growled, “jest as a little insurance that you hombres behave yourselves. Either of you start anything, he gets it. All right, Doc —get your meeting in order. We’re all here.”
Buzz McCabe stirred restlessly. “That’s right. Say your say, Terwilliger.”
“Briefly, it is this,” said Doc gravely. “The Triangle Bar and the Broken Circle M are at war. Like all wars, in the end everybody loses. My friends and I, here in Mesabe, would like to see this thing stopped, now—and any differences settled by verbal agreement.”
Slide McCabe said sneeringly, “What did I tell you, Buzz? A lot of mealy-mouthed guff by a lot of sanctimonious old roosters. We’re wasting our time.” Stud Darwin stared at Doc Terwilliger. “Is that what you brought me and Bert all the way in from the ranch for? To try and sell us on the idea of getting along friendly with a nest of murderin’ snakes? Why, you damned old fool!”
“A gleam came into Doc Terwilliger’s mild old eyes. “Let me remind you, Darwin—and you, Buzz and Slide McCabe— that this bloody feud you are engaged in hurts many outside your own outfits. Oh, not directly, perhaps, but it hurts them just the same. And it is a hurt you have no right to inflict. The interests of these others must be safeguarded. What do you propose to do about that angle?”
Slide McCabe got to his feet. “This is getting sillier by the minute. Let’s go, Buzz.”
“Sit down!” rumbled Buck Handy. “Doc ain’t through, yet.” Slide looked at Buck’s sawed-off slaughter gun and sat down.
Stud Darwin bawled, “The only thing I ever did or ever will agree with a McCabe on is that our little mix-up is none of your damn business, Terwilliger. Or of any of the rest of you old goats sittin’ around here.”
Buck Handy said, “You see, Doc? Was I right?”
Doc Terwilliger nodded, a little sadly. “You were right, Buck.” Doc stared at the floor for a moment, then his head came up. “Very well, Darwin—and you McCabes—you have had your say. Now I, on behalf of my old friends here, will have mine—and theirs.”
Excerpt From: L.P. Holmes. “.45 Fever in Mesabe.”
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