Good Men And Bad & Other Stories by Harry Sinclair Drago

Book Details

Good Men and Bad men, cheating, gambling, murder and honor or the lack of it, in the old West.

Good Men and Bad (1926) – The Story Of A United States Marshal Who Believed That Even An Outlaw With A Price On His Head Deserved A Square Deal. A six chapter novelette.

Without Benefit of Law (1937) – Trapping in the Country of the Deadly Assiniboines Certainly Keeps a Man Quick with His Trigger Finger
I – Articles Of War
II – Dead Man’s Gamble
III – A Long Bluff
IV – The Green-Eyed Devil
V – Hands And Hearts

The Wild Bunch (1933) – All Wild Things Are Kin
Chapter I – Where The Dark Angel Walks
Chapter II – On The Shelf
Chapter III – The Trail To Yesterday
Chapter IV – Easy Money
Chapter V – In The Clear
Chapter VI – Renegade!
Chapter VII – The Broom Tails
Chapter VIII – “Talk Is Cheap!”
Chapter IX – The Price Of Freedom
Chapter X – The End Of His Tether!
Chapter XI – Where The Winds Blow Free

Harry Sinclair Drago (1888-1979) was born in White Plains, New York. He held a number of jobs in the writing and publishing industry, including reporter and columnist for the Toledo Bee in Toledo, Ohio and Hollywood scriptwriter (1928-1933), but is best known for his historical fiction, most of which was set in the American Southwest.

Drago was a prolific writer, averaging three books a year, and wrote more than 100 westerns, some under the pseudonyms of Bliss Lomax and Will Ermine. The two were reported to have been President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s favorite authors.

Good Men And Bad has 8 illustrations.

Files:

1. GoodMenAndBad.epub

Excerpt: The Wild Bunch

Chapter I

Where The Dark Angel Walks

IT WAS white winter. Far out on the great Amargosa Desert, two shadowy figures, bent nearly double against the storm that had been slashing at them for three days, trudged slowly through the murky gloom of mid-day.

Bandy-legged Nez Smith and Shorty Ducro! Two good men and true with a price on their heads! Reckoned in years, they were old men—gnarled and hard bitten like the twisted, tortured cedars that lean against the blasts at timberline. Through squinting, red-rimmed lids they peered with bloodshot eyes into the inferno of stinging sand and driving snow, so cold and sharp that it cut their faces and bit through their clothes. Hoary brows were white with rime; their lips, cracked and bloodless.

Here was no friendly cutbank, offering a respite from the fury of the storm; no rock outcropping in the lee of which they could find shelter. This was a wilderness of sand—naked and heartless —drifting about their feet, filling the air, trying to pull them down.

The wind screamed at them, and it was like the drunken revelry of the fiends of hell. The world was being made over. Greasewood and sage were disappearing before the onslaught of those marching hills of sand.

Under the angry buffeting of the relentless gale that scoured the flats the snow seemed to strike the ground and bound back into the air to be hurled half-way across Nye County before it came to earth again. In the Malpais, great deceptive drifts had formed, tamped down by the hurrying feet of the wind.

Every few minutes the man in the lead glanced back over his shoulder to see if the other was still following him. Satisfied of that, he trudged on. No word passed between them. Slung over his shoulder each man carried a pair of leather saddlebags.

Their food was in one bag. In the other, thirty thousand dollars in currency; for they were fresh from the looting of the Drover’s National Bank of Las Animas, across the Utah line.

That they found themselves afoot in the great Amargosa Desert—called by some the Ralston Desert—was not by accident. Until the blizzard struck them, every step of their carefully planned getaway had worked out as they had foreseen it. Even in the storm they found some satisfaction, for it was wiping out their tracks a second or two after they were made.

Three days of below zero weather— of cold that struck to the very marrow of their bones—of spilt lips and cracked cheeks, of never-ending agony had not disheartened them. The little affair in Las Animas had not been the first of its kind with them. Experienced hands, they had played fast and loose with the law on numerous occasions. But this time they knew they were safe. Pursuit was out of the question, and they were beyond believing that danger lay ahead.

The curtain the storm had dropped about them completely isolated them. It was impossible to see for more than thirty to forty yards in any direction. They were like motes filtering through infinitude. Fifteen miles a day! They couldn’t hope to do more as long as the storm held on. Translated into days, it meant that the better part of a week must pass before they could hope to reach the comparative shelter of the timbered crest of the San Antonio Range and take their first look at the Reese River Valley, their objective.

For three days they had seen no living thing, not even a rabbit or scavenger coyote. They alone peopled that land of icy desolation.

At irregular intervals they exchanged the bags they carried. And it was enough to send them on with renewed courage—one under the stimulus of a lightened load and the other warming to the feel of that ill-gotten fortune on his back that now was so surely theirs.

AS THE short afternoon waned and the cheerless evening settled down, they strained their eyes for a glimpse of high sage or chaparral into which they could burrow for the night. An hour passed before they stumbled upon a clump of mesquite.

The bandy-legged man in the lead, held up his hand. The other nodded. Night was on them in earnest now. On hands and knees they crawled into the brush. The mesquite was holding the snow. They went in until they reached the depth of the drift. In five minutes they had made a blowout in the snow and packed it down against the storm.

They were too cold to talk. Shorty produced a flask. Both drank from it. Then they performed a miracle: they kindled a little squaw fire!

Over it they warmed their hands. Life began to flow back into their veins.

“Ain’t stormin’ so hard no more,” said Shorty, his face haggard-looking and unreal.

“No, she’ll blow herself out tonight,” said Nez. He filled a blackened coffeepot with snow and set it on the fire.

Coffee and beans—that was their supper. They wolfed them down like famished dogs, unmindful of the sand that gritted between their teeth with every mouthful. For half an hour, then, they smoked and fed the tiny fire.

It could not warm them. But it was companionable. Shorty stared into its depths intently. His lips moved under his ragged mustache. “You’re the one who knows this country,” he said.

“Reckon you know where we are?”

Nez nodded. He was the leader.

“Mebbe ten miles out of the way,” he said. “I’ll git my bearin’s soon as it clears.” He put away his pipe. “How you standin’ it?”

“Awfully cold,” Shorty answered.

“Yeah, it’s purty cold. But we’ll make it . . . come this far.” Unconsciously his eyes strayed to the bag that held the money they had risked their lives to get and were risking a second time to keep. It was a stake worth all it was costing.

He was old. Times had changed. Outlawry had gone into the discard with the coming of the radio and the automobile. The law could ride too fast now. Luck had been with them this once, and Nez knew it was this or nothing.

“Oh, we’ll make it all right,” Shorty muttered. And he, too, glanced at the money-bag. He was as old as Nez. And he knew what Nez knew. . . . This was their last job.

They had no blankets, but they stretched out in the snow and were still. Between them lay the two bags with their food and their wealth. It was significant of their rights—that they were to share them together.

They closed their eyes. But neither slept. Sleep was impossible, dangerous. The fire had died down. Only the embers glowed, a cold, unconvincing red.

EACH was busy with his thoughts —and they were strangely alike. Thirty thousand dollars! All of it would see either of them through to the end of his days.

Excerpt From: Harry Sinclair Drago. “Good Men And Bad & Other Stories.”