Lost City of Desert Death by Harry F. Olmsted

Book Details

The ancient Aztecs are reborn in the 1940 novella, Lost City of Desert Death. Human sacrifices must be made!

Out of the trackless Mexican desert rose the Fuente Grande temple of Aztec doom, built on the side of a mountain of gold. To this last lost stronghold of a vanished race, Arch Courier led his tenderfoot caravan- to learn why no white man, or woman, had ever left Fuente Grande alive!

Chapter I – Backtrail for a Jailbird
Chapter II – Job For A Gunman
Chapter III – Guide For The Desert
Chapter IV – The Devil’s Cavalcade
Chapter V – Fuente Grande
Chapter VI – Inside Dead Walls
Chapter VII – Voices From The Well
Chapter VIII – The High Cacique
Chapter IX – Out Of The Living Grave
Chapter X – Will Of The Gods

Harry F. Olmsted (1889-1970) was a Western pulp fiction writer from the 1920s-1940s. He was born in 1889 in Santa Ana, California, the son of a prominent Los Angeles engineer. Olmsted graduated from the University of Southern California with a Bachelor of Science in engineering and began his career as a civil engineer. Writing for Olmsted was initially a hobby but after publishing some of his stories, he gave up his career as an engineer and became a full time writer of western pulp fiction in the early 1930s.

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Excerpt: Lost City of Desert Death

Chapter I

Backtrail for a Jailbird

SIX months of freedom had done nothing to restore the carefree good nature that had once been the dominant characteristic of Arch Courier. Instead, it had but added to the sullenness, the bitterness of spirit engendered by five dragging years in that hell hole at the mouth of the Gila River—Yuma Prison. Five years of torment, slaving under a cruel sun, sweltering at night in the barred rock catacombs, living on slop too foul to feed a mangy dog. And all because he had killed a human polecat he had found breaking a woman with his hands.

True, reflected Arch, as he stirred his bony crowbait along the winding road through the creosote weed, he hadn’t known the woman. Nor had she asked him for help. She had been too far gone for that. Maybe he should have ridden past and closed his eyes to such brutality. But that would have made him someone else—not Arch Courier. It hadn’t helped any that his victim was drawing pay from the biggest politician in the Yavapai country. So he had served his time, counting himself lucky that it hadn’t been worse. The worst hadn’t come until after his discharge.

“Wait till you get out,” old Lonzo Luther had told him in the prison. “Nobody will give you a chance. You’ll butt yore head ag’in’ closed doors an’ be told polite to go starve to death, You’ll stand it so long, then you’ll go outside the law just to be able to live. An’ they’ll have you back here, pronto. I’m in for life, an’ I reckon I’m luckier’n you.”

At the time, Arch had considered that just talk—his cell mate salving his own misery. “I’ll take my chances outside,” he had answered, optimistically. “If I get far enough away from here, they’ll never know I’ve been behind stone walls.”

“Think not?” Lonzo had chuckled acridly. “They brand you here, son. It will show on yore face an’ out of your eyes. One look at you, after you leave here, an’ a gent will opine he can’t find nothin’ for you to do . . . sorry. Nope, you can’t run away from five years here, Arch. But before you go, I’ll write you a letter to a good friend of mine. A man that won’t ask-no questions, who’ll find work that you can do best an pay you honest an’ fair for it. Go to him when you’re up against it, an’ tell him Lonzo Luther sent you.”

How true old Lonzo’s words had been, regarding the prison brand. For six long months Arch had been living from hand to mouth, begging in vain for honest work and the chance to restore his confidence and pride. And now, hungry, ragged, desperately discouraged, he was riding to San Gorgonio . . . . and Killian Blench.

SAN GORGONIO lay a mile ahead, lifting its unlovely head like a scaly lizard from the burning border sands. For the hundredth time, Arch got out the letter to Killian Blench and read it. In homely range lingo, it commended the bearer, Arch Courier, as a good man who could be trusted to keep his mouth shut and do a business-like job of tracking a danger trail.

Somehow, it seemed like a poor hook on which to hang his hopes of a decent job. Even as he rode into the environs of the somnolent adobe village, he could imagine Killian Blench’s curt but polite excuses. It was always the same. The prison brand was on him, burned deep and indelible.

In the center of the town, where the road along the Border crossed the one leading northward across the Line from Hermosillo, Arch reined his crowbait to a rack, dismounted and walked into the Cantina Allegro. The place was dim and cool and redolent of sour maguey beer. The fat, sleepy cantinero opened one eye and squinted at him.

“Que hay, señor? What would you have?”

“Tequila,” said the ragged man, and tossed one of his last three nickels to indicate the quality. He flipped salt on the back of his hand, took it off with his tongue and swallowed the nasty-tasting lechuguilla. Then, shuddering: “Where can a man find Blench—Killian Blench?”

“Ah-h-h!” The Mexican came alive. “Señor Blench . . . yes. He ees the beeg man of thees town, the gran rico. You find heem, I theenk, at the beeg general store.”

“Store?” Arch scowled,

“Si, señor.”

“Hell,” muttered Arch. “What a dash I’ll cut working in a store.”

He was hardly aware he had spoken out loud until the Mexican rubbed his thick palms together, beaming,. “Oh-h-h, I see. You work for Meester Blench, eh? Bueno. Eef you do not like the store, maybe you like a bank, eh? Or a mine? Or the beegest ranch een the county, no? Or maybe you would tend bar, like me. Por dios, eet makes no difference; Senor Blench owns them all. Si, and more too. Very so reech, thees man. He have plenty kind of job for you. What you do, eh?”

“They say,” answered Arch, with vast bitterness, “that I kill. You understand me? Cut throats and the like of that.”

And with the saloon keeper staring strangely after him, he walked out into the bright, hard glare of the street. A hundred yards down the walk a swinging sign invited him. It said:

SAN GORGONIO MERCANTILE CO. ALMACEN DE ROPAS Y MERCANCIA.

Killian Blench’s name was printed beneath. With one sweeping look, Arch saw the same name in three other places—the bank, a big saloon and on second floor windows proclaiming the offices of the “Blench Investment Company—-Lands, Mines and Livestock.” Truly, this man carried plenty of weight in San Gorgonio. He’d have about as much time for a smudgy, penciled note from a lifer in Yuma Prison, or a drifting derelict from that devil’s corral, as he would for the smallpox. With jaws locked grimly and the old chip perched precariously on his shoulder, Arch set his sights toward the store.

Excerpt From: Harry F. Olmsted. “Lost City of Desert Death.”