The Last Half Mile and Other Stories by Allan K. Echols

Book Details

The Last Half Mile and Other Stories – New settlers plus gamblers and outlaws make for some dangerous situations and only men who can defend themselves and their families will survive. Six stories of settlers, gamblers and killers in the old West.

New Graves for Hush Creek (1951) – “You’re asking whether I killed men for the satisfaction of it; that question has been troubling me, Asa, just as it is troubling these people, now. . . They hired me because a man who could not protect himself, who could not get in the first shot, could not have done things that had to be done. The odds were against a lawman who could not, or did not, shoot faster than the men who were running wild around here. And when I knew such trash would shoot, I shot first!” A novelette of six chapters.

Cold-Decked – In Spades (1937) – The dead man’s hand, aces and eights

The Devil Is a Back-Shooter (1938) – To save the Potter spread from a cold-decked tinhorn’s ruination play, Speed Stout bought into a game with hotlead chips that snared him in a six-gun jackpot!

Gunman Wanted (1941) – The Stranger from Concho Locks Horns With the Toughest Passel of Killers in a Lawless Range!

Hoofprints to the Hangtree (1949) – You couldn’t tell from looking at Gideon Lilly about what was going on underneath his skin. And what he knew about horses was more than showed on the surface, either — as the fugitive longrider found out!

The Last Half Mile (1948) – To redeem the promise he made to trustful settlers, young Rick Tower calls for a gun-roaring showdown with Boss Tebo Langston and his tough crew of hired killers!
Chapter I End of the Journey
Chapter II Trouble with the Marshal
Chapter III In the Calaboose
Chapter IV Strand of Wire
Chapter V Singing Lead

There is very little information on the web about Allan Krech Echols (1896-1953). He was born in Lawrence, Texas and was a writer of Western novels. He was the son of Dr. John W. and Fay (Echols) Echols. (John married his second cousin). He was married to Dorothy Merrill Echols. They had a son, Allan, Jr. and a daughter, Kitty.

The Last Half Mile and Other Stories contains 25 illustrations.

Files:

1. LastHalfMile.epub

Excerpt: The Last Half Mile

Chapter I

End of the Journey

RICK TOWER was having a beer at the Kiowa Bar when a couple of other customers went over to the window and looked at the Indian Agent’s shack across the street.

“Fight,” one of them said. “Them pilgrims.”

The other man shook his head. “They ain’t wastin’ time buckin’ up ag’in Langston, are they? Green as gourds.”

Rick Tower put his empty glass on the bar and walked to the batwing doors. He pushed them open with one of his wide shoulders and went out. The smile that usually marked his face faded as he saw the commotion on the porch of the frame building across the street. He had guided these pilgrims up into the Territory from Texas, and his obligation to them was finished. Now Mary Wingate’s uncle was being beaten up by a pair of town ruffians while a third man held him by the neck. He forgot that he had no further interest in the strangers. He churned up the dust getting across the street.

He landed on the Indian Agent’s porch with one step from the street. Then he reached out and caught one of the attackers by the scruff of the neck. The other one was bareheaded, and Rick’s fingers locked in his tangled hair.

He cracked their heads together as though they were coconuts. He pounded one man’s face with the other’s head until blood spurted from his nose and his legs went limp under him. Rick turned him loose and the man sank to the floor.

Then he tightened his grip in the other man’s hair. He turned the man’s face toward him and crashed his massive fist squarely into the man’s nose. Blood spurted as though from the neck of a stuck hog. The man’s eyes became blurred and his knees buckled under him. He fell on his companion.

Mary’s uncle Dell Wingate, freed from the attack of the pair, had spun in the grasp of the man holding him, and now he smashed his fist into the man’s jaw, and when the man’s hands came up instinctively, he crashed another blow to his stomach with power enough to break his ribs. The man groaned and sank down against the wall, gasping for breath and clutching his middle. The fight was over.

BREATHING heavily, Rick stood rubbing his fist and looked at Wingate. The tall man’s face was red with anger, and he was breathing heavily through his nose.

Worst attempt at robbery I ever saw,” he said. “The whole town’s nothing but a bunch of thieves. I never came seven hundred miles to settle in a place like this.”

“What’s the trouble?”

“First place, the Indian Agent says we can’t either buy or lease Indian land without a certificate from the Kiowa Civic Association.”

“I lived here some years ago, and I never heard of anything like that before.”

“Something new, the man says. Got to be recommended as responsible citizens. The gent with your fistprint on his nose represents the association, and he tells me that a settler can get one of them certificates for a matter of fifty dollars or so. Then after a man has got that, he’s got to hire a man named Tebo Langston, who is a farm agent, to handle his transaction with the Indian Agent. The broker’s fee is a dollar an acre, same as the lease price.”

“Nobody ever had to buy a recommendation to get government land,” Rick said. “I’ve got an uncle around here who’s a land dealer. Used to live here with him when I was just a kid. We’ll get him to straighten it out if he’s still around. He’s a square shooter.”

“I told the Indian Agent he wasn’t doing right. He just said that if I didn’t like the arrangement, to go and see this Tebo Langston. Seems like this is a one-man town, and Langston is the man.

“If that’s right, then this Langston is a crook,” Rick said.

“That’s what I told ’em, and that’s what started the fight. Seems that redheaded hombre that you smashed his face in is Bud Langston, Tebo’s son. He’s the president of this Civic Committee. His dad is mayor. The other hombre you fought works for Langston.”

“It looks like you gents picked a pretty tough nut to crack when you decided to settle here,” Rick said. “Fine looking land about, but if it’s one man’s town you won’t have a look in. Think you’ll stick it out, or try on further north?”

“I’d have to talk to the rest of the folks,” Dell Wingate said. “What’s it like north of here?”

“It gets into prairie; not any too much water and still less timber. Cattle country.”

“I’m for staying and fighting it out,” Wingate said, “but it’s up to the crowd. We came together and we’ve got to stick together. Are you going to be around?”

Rick hesitated before answering, wondering if Mary had told him anything.

“I can’t say for sure,” he answered. “But I was figuring on heading back for Texas.”

He got away from Wingate as quickly as he could, puzzled because the girl hadn’t spoken to her uncle. He made his way back to the camp, half a mile across Dog Creek, where the twenty or thirty settlers’ wagons had spread out over a high place overlooking the wild raw town.

He searched for the girl, learned that she had gone off into the woods, and set out looking for her. He found her standing on a point overlooking the creek and the broad rolling land back of the settlement, now green with the new life of spring.

Mary Wingate was small, but straight as a willow shoot, and now her eyes were gleaming with emotion. She turned to Rick, and the smile she gave him did something to him that went down deep inside him. He had never known a girl who could affect him like this before.

He tried to take her in his arms, but she drew away from him, though, not with anger. It was as though something inside her had her in its grasp, something he did not understand.

He smiled at her. “The journey’s over, honey. There’s the settlement, and my job’s done. We’ll cross the creek with ’em tomorrow and get married, then light a shuck back to Fort Worth.”

The girl smoothed back her honey-colored hair on her small head, and her voice was low and charged with an antagonism which filled Rick with surprise.

“Rick,” she said, “it won’t do. We wouldn’t be happy together.”

He looked at her, a look of pain in the eyes that had been happy. And then he put his arm around her and his old self-confident, teasing smile came back.

“Don’t joke with me like that, honey. It hurts.”

SHE slid out of his arms. “I’m not joking, Rick. I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to stay right here and have a home.”

Excerpt From: Allan K. Echols. “The Last Half Mile and Other Stories.”