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Blood and Iron by Frederick Schiller Faust writing as Max Brand
Blood and Iron – “One way only—Death.” This was the message that Walt Devon intercepted by chance in the gold-crazy town of West London. A murder was being arranged and Devon intended being around when the shooting started. What Devon didn’t know was that he was supposed to play the part of the corpse.
Book Details
Book Details
“One way only—Death.” This was the message that Walt Devon intercepted by chance in the gold-crazy town of West London. A murder was being arranged and Devon intended being around when the shooting started. What Devon didn’t know was that he was supposed to play the part of the corpse.
A four part serial novel.
Blood and Iron – A serial—Part I—Life is raw in the gold-mining town where Walt Devon is beset by deadly, unknown enemies
Chapter I – This Death Signal
Chapter II – The Zero Hour
Chapter III – A Confession
Chapter IV – A Gambler Shows His Hand
Chapter V – A Tip From The Sheriff
Chapter VI – In The Lions’ Den
Chapter VII – Devon Springs A Surprise
Chapter VIII – Conflicting Viewpoints
Chapter IX – A Thunderbolt From Jim
Chapter X – Telltale Footprints
Chapter XI – The Gathering Of The Mob
Part II – Part II—Death stalks the trail, as the lure of a pretty blonde complicates Walt Devon’s battle with mysterious foes
Chapter XII – Lucky Jack’s Sister
Chapter XIII – Slugger Lewis
Chapter XIV – A Bullet Between The Eyes
Chapter XV – One Way To Prevent Hanging
Chapter XVI – A Mysterious Disappearance
Chapter XVII – Devon Seeks Excitement
Chapter XVIII – The High Sign
Chapter XIX – A Cat-And-Mouse Game
Chapter XX – An Unexpected Meeting
Chapter XXI – A Bearer Of Ill Tidings
Chapter XXII – A Brutal Crime
Part III – A serial—Part III—Murder, arson, robbery and conspiracy form a grim network which a debonair gambler is trying desperately to break through
Chapter XXIII – The Cabin In The Clearing
Chapter XXIV – The Stolen Horses
Chapter XXV – A Trap For Lucky Jack
Chapter XXVI – Jack Contemplates Hanging
Chapter XXVII – The Get-Away
Chapter XXVIII – Jim Gathers Evidence
Chapter XXIX – Just A Friendly Stroll
Chapter XXX – Dead Men Tell No Tales
Chapter XXXI – The Disappearing Herd
Chapter XXXII – The Mysterious Rider
Chapter XXXIII – Prue Is Cross-Examined
Part IV – A serial—Part IV—Walt Devon’s life hangs in the balance, out on the frontier of civilization, while a gang of criminals plays its last card
Chapter XXXIV – The Yellow Peril
Chapter XXXV – A Touch Of Chivalry
Chapter XXXVI – A Rendezvous
Chapter XXXVII – A Dangerous Young Man
Chapter XXXVIII – Judas Iscariot
Chapter XXXIX – Marked Cards
Chapter XL – Devon Gets A Chance
Chapter XLI – The Unholy Trio
Chapter XLII – Uninvited Guests
Chapter XLIII – The Eyes Of Prue Maynard
Chapter XLIV – At The Trail’s End
Max Brand was the pen name of Frederick Schiller Faust (May 29, 1892 – May 12, 1944), born in Seattle, Washington. In his lifetime, Faust is estimated to have written nearly fifteen million words using eighteen different pen names including Max Brand, George Owen Baxter, Walter C. Butler, George Challis, Evan Evans, Frederick Faust, John Frederick, Frederick Frost, and David Manning, and others.
Blood and Iron is a four part serial novel that was published in Munsey’s Magazine in 1929. It was later republished as Timbal Gulch Trail.
Blood and Iron has 64 illustrations.
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Read Excerpt
Excerpt: Blood and Iron
Chapter I
This Death Signal
ALL the dark length of the rear veranda of the Palace was spotted with the glow of pipes or the pulsing red points of cigarettes.
Walter Devon looked with pleasure upon this trembling pattern of lights, for he knew that only dwellers in the wilderness enjoy a smoke in the dark—hunters and trappers, say, whose only rest comes after nightfall, or cow-punchers who toast their noses on winter nights. There was no hunting in West London, he knew, except for gold, and there was no trapping except of greenhorns and tenderfeet and fools in general, whose pelts were lifted painlessly every day; but whatever their occupation at the moment, these were men of the desert, of the mountains.
There was another breed inside, already swarming back to the gaming tables, or lining the bar; sometimes the veranda floor shivered a little with their stamping, and the air trembled with their shouts; but up and down the veranda there was never an alteration in the tone of the deep, quiet voices, speaking guardedly as though of secrets.
Now and again one of the smokers finished and went inside, and as the door opened, the droning voice of a croupier floated out.
Walter Devon listened, and sighing with content, he drew in a longer breath flavored with the fragrance of many tobaccos and the pure sweetness of the pines. He was in no hurry to go back to work, with his hands resting on the green felt; he had not even picked his game for the night!
So he dwelt with aimless pleasure upon the glow of pipes and the glimpses they gave him of mustaches, and of young straight noses, and of noses thin and crooked with age; or again he considered what the cigarettes showed him when, for an instant, they made a pair of eyes look out from the night.
These lights were capable of movements, the pipes stirring slowly, the cigarettes jerking rapidly up and down as the smokers gesticulated. By sheer chance, since he had turned his attention to the subject, he saw—or thought he saw—a cigarette at the far end of the veranda wigwag, in dots and dashes clearly made, a question mark!
Walter Devon smiled at such a coincidence of gestures and unconscious ideas, and he continued to look dreamily at the distant smoker when, quickly and neatly, he saw that gleaming little point of light spell out: “Four!”
Once could be accident; the second time could not. Devon knew that the smoker was signaling the length of the veranda to some other man. And yet it seemed very strange that signals should be necessary when ten steps would take the signaler to the other end of the porch!
Devon left his chair and went to the side of the veranda. Over the railing he glanced down the steep sides of the gulch, covered by the ragged shadows of the pines, and in the bottom the stars found the water in an open pool showing a tarnished face of silver. Opposite the Palace, Timbal Mountain stepped grandly up the sky.
“Kind of like ridin’ on the observation platform, eh?” said one who lounged near by, against the railing.
It was, Devon agreed, turning a little toward the speaker. In this manner he faced away from the signaler whom he first had spotted, and immediately, at the farther end of the porch, he saw the duller glow of a pipe spell in the air the same question mark which he had noticed before!
The heart of Devon stirred in him. There were times when he told himself that he roamed the world seeking his fortune, whether it should be found in war, or cards, or a lucky marriage; but he knew in his heart that all he wanted was the excitement of adventure.
In the thirty-odd years of his life while he had grown lean and hard with many labors, no gold had stuck to his fingers except a few thousand dollars to make him feel comfortable in a poker game of any size; but though he had won no money, he had found again and again the electric spark which leaped now in his brain as he observed this little mystery on the veranda of the Palace.
It would not be altogether safe, perhaps, to attempt to observe both of these signalers, though unless he watched the two of them he was not apt to make much from their strange and silent conversation. It was not safe, because the two men themselves dared not leave their chairs and speak together! They must be under observation of the closest kind, and they spoke by this code only in the faith that the observers would not understand what they said.
What were they saying, who were they, and who was keeping them under watch? These were small questions, perhaps, and had little to do with Walter Devon, but at least the solution would fill him with pleasure.
In the meantime he had to arrange some method of keeping his eye upon the first signaler as well as the second, but this was done by taking a little pocket mirror into the palm of his hand. The signals of Number One streaked in dim red flashes across the small surface; Number Two he was facing while he talked to the man at the railing.
“Like an observation platform,” he agreed, “except that the mountains don’t close up behind us.”
“They ain’t likely to close up,” said the stranger. “They’re more likely to spread apart, what with the gougin’ and washin’ and blastin’ they’re doin’ on the side of old Timbal.”
Across the face of the mirror streaked the signal: “One way only!”
Excerpt From: Max Brand. “Blood And Iron.”
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