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Bullet and Other Stories by Hapsburg Liebe

Bullet and Other Stories by Hapsburg Liebe

Bullet – He was just a button but when trouble popped those hard bitten men of Gold Rock had to admit he was man-sized! Seven classic pulp Western stories by Hapsburg Liebe.

Book Details

Book Details

Bullet and Other Stories – seven classic pulp Western stories by Hapsburg Liebe. Hapsburg Liebe was the pseudonym of Charles Haven Liebe (1880-1957).

Vengeance In A Bottle  (1945) – Dingdong Bell Had a Reputation for Tellin’ the Truth, Even When He Was on the Owlhoot

Cayuse Cowman  (1942) – The news that Bender’s younker was heir to a million dollars traveled quickly through the town.

Bullet (1937) – He was just a button but when trouble popped those hard bitten men of Gold Rock had to admit he was man-sized!

Dangerous Ground  (1944)- A Lot of Folks Have Died Because They Knew Too Much

All The Cards Were Black  (1949)- Trust Cow Folks to Get the Right Angle

Bullets Across The Border  (1948) – That wild, young owlhooter didn’t even trust his own shadow —yet he left himself wide open for a double-crossing drygulcher’s Bullets Across The Border

Stickup at Stafford’s  (1949) – A Long Hate Is Hard to Contend With

Bullet and Other Stories has 15 illustrations.

Files:

  1. Bullet.epub
Read Excerpt

Excerpt: Bullet

“SOMEBODY comin’ up the south trail, Hape. Just one hombre. Too far away to tell anything about him. This place looked like a peach of a owlhoot hideaway, but maybe it’s not. Me, I think we better high-tail it right now for the other side o’ the Catalinas. What you think, Hape?”

Long Jim Romine was very tall and very lean. His face was leathery, his eyes like nothing so much as blue flint. Under each hip he carried in a half-breed holster a big, ivory-handled Colt six-gun. He stood at a south window of the isolated, tumbledown old house, which once had been a cow outfit’s headquarters, staring off toward the Border. Absentmindedly he fingered the red-stained bandana bandage over a bullet-hole in his left forearm.

“You hear me, Hape?”

Yancey, his partner, rose stiffly from a blanket on the musty floor. Heavily built, and dark, Yancey was as hard-bitten as Romine. He, too, had two big ivory- handled Colts.

“Yeah, Jim, I heard you,” he growled, “and I think your hunch is right, though this bullet-gash in my leg is sore for hawss-back work. That new Gold Rock City sheriff is one keen jigger. Well, what’re we waitin’ for?”

Romine’s keen gaze was still riveted upon the lone rider. Hape Yancey limped over to Long Jim.

“Closer now, Hape, and I can see him fair. Only a kid, ridin’ a stack-o’-bones roan cayuse. Rope bridle, and no saddle at all . . . Hell, pardner, that’s Bullet!”

The rider, little and starved-looking, was ragged and barefoot, his face was freckled and much tanned, and his hair had been burned by the sun to the yellowish hue of sulphur. It stuck out like a tuft of wiregrass through his battered, wholly crownless Mexican straw hat. The lad’s eyes were as blue as Long Jim’s. Not so hard, perhaps, but hard enough . . . Bullet Romine was the image of Long Jim, his father. He’d had no other given name that he could remember. He might have been fifteen years old, he might have been eighteen. To him, his age didn’t matter.

“Hi!” he called joyously, halting the stack-of-bones roan in front of the tumbledown house. “You got comp’ny!”

The two men were on the porch now. They saw that the newcomer had slung over one thin shoulder an ancient cartridge-belt to which was holstered an ancient, very heavy six-gun. The effect was ludicrous, but neither man smiled. Bullet slid to the ground and walked toward his father and Hape Yancey. Long Jim frowned hard.

“What you doin’ here, kid? How’d you know I was here?”

“I been huntin’ you for two weeks, dad,” said Bullet ingratiatingly. “Jest stumbled on you, I reckon. I—I couldn’t stay with Jose and Serafina any longer. They got enough young ‘uns o’ their own to feed—eight! Not that they run me off. Them Mexes is mucho bueno. You see, I—I wanted to be with you, dad. I can ride and I can shoot. Jose gimme this gun and hawss, when he seen I was goin’ anyhow. I can stay, cain’t I?”

Quickly Jim Romaine shook his tousled blond head. “You ain’t goin’ to be any owlhooter, Bullet. No, sirree. The owlhoot is hell. Plain hell, nothin’ else. You had a good mammy. Pity she had to go when you was so little. I want you to remember her and forget me. I got some money now, a heap of it. You’ll take it and give it to Jose and Serafina for keepin’ you. Too late in the day to start back now, but you’ll go first thing tomorrow. Come in, and Hape’ll have supper ready. I’ll stake the roan to grass.”

There wasn’t much to eat. The dog-hungry youth got most of it, Long Jim and Hape lying like a pair of horse-thieves.

Dusk gathered thickly. The three sat on blankets on the floor of the old living room. Hape Yancey was about to suggest that he and the elder Romine head out for safety in the badlands beyond the Santa Catalina range of desert hills, they could trust Bullet to spend the night there and start for the Border home of Jose and Serafina at daybreak, when the hard voice of young Sheriff Tom Braley shattered the evening quiet.

“The place is surrounded, hombres, and there’s no use to show fight. Rather not kill you, but we will if it’s necessary. Come out with your paws straight up. Pronto!”

As one man, Jim Romine and Hape Yancey snatched crumpled, banded sheaves of banknotes from their pockets and crammed them inside Bullet’s tattered shirt. “Hide—quick,” whispered Romine to the youngster, “and ride back to Jose tomorrow, remember!”

He and Yancey walked out with their hands in the air. A dozen grim-faced men surrounded them with drawn weapons, disarmed and ironed them, went through their dusty clothing. They noted that tall, gray-faced, efficient Tom Braley had a bandage about his temples.

“Fell down on your gun and it went off, I reckon, Tom,” hooted Hape Yancey. “I guess you’ll blame that on us, too.”

“No, we bumped into Bill Snarr and his mangey gang at Riffey’s Wells last night when we was huntin’ you. Old friends o’ yours, ain’t they, Long Jim?” Braley said dryly.

But he knew better. The enmity between outlaws Jim Romine and Bill Snarr was a part of Gold Rock County tradition. Romine swore loudly. “It’ll be a lot in you two’s favor,” the sheriff went on, “if you’ll tell what you did with the dinero you got in the bank stickup.”

Hape and Long Jim winked at each other in the near darkness.

“What bank stickup?” they said in one voice.

Now it was Tom Braley who swore. “A dozen people recognized you in spite of your masks,” he growled. “But I see you won’t talk—yet.” He turned to his men. “Them of you that’s got matches, see if you can find any bank money in the house there. Not much chance, maybe, but try it.”

Bullet Romine was resourceful beyond his years. He had discovered a loose floorboard in the kitchen, and was now hidden under the old house. The searchers did not find him, and consequently they found no money. The elder Romine had staked the kid’s rawboned cayuse apart from his and Yancey’s horses, so the posse didn’t find the roan, either.

Excerpt From: Hapsburg Liebe. “Bullet and Other Stories.”

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