Trailin’ by Max Brand

Book Details

Trailin’ – Anthony Woodbury is a motherless young man raised among the aristocracy of the East. Woodbury witnesses his father being gunned down and heads out into the western territories to hunt down the murderer. Skilled with horses and guns, Woodbury is still a greenhorn with a lot to overcome before he can track down his father’s killer.

Upon his father’s death Anthony goes into his father’s private study and finds two pictures and a little wooden box. The wooden box had contained the pistol that his father oiled every day in preparation of this event. One of the two pictures was of a woman – his mother! The other picture was of a ranch house with two mountains in the distance.

These are his only clues to hunt down his father’s killer.

Trailin’ (1919)
Chapter I. – “La-adies An’ Gen’l’mun.”
Chapter II. – Sporting Chance.
Chapter III. – Social Suicide.
Chapter IV. – A Session Of Chat.
Chapter V. – Anthony Is Left In The Dark.
Chapter VI. – John Bard.
Chapter VII. – Bluebeard’s Room.

Part 2 – Preceding Chapters Briefly Retold
Chapter VIII. – Marty Wilkes.
Chapter IX. – “This Place For Rest.”
Chapter X. – A Bit Of Stalking.
Chapter XI. – The Quest Begins.
Chapter XII. – The First Day.
Chapter XIII. – A Touch Of Crimson.
Chapter XIV. – Lemonade.

Part 3 – Preceding Chapters Briefly Retold
Chapter XV. – The Darkness In Eldara.
Chapter XVI. – Bluff.
Chapter XVII. – Butch Returns.
Chapter XVIII. – Foolish Habits.
Chapter XIX. – The Candle.
Chapter XX. – Joan.
Chapter XXI. – The Swimming Of The Saverack.

Part 4 – Preceding Chapters Briefly Retold
Chapter XXII. – Drew Smiles.
Chapter XXIII. – The Comedy Setting.
Chapter XXIV. – “Sam’l Hall.”
Chapter XXV. – Hair Like The Sunshine.
Chapter XXVI. – The Critique Of Pure Reason.
Chapter XXVII. – The Stage.
Chapter XXVIII. – Sally Breaks A Mirror.

Part 5
Chapter XXIX – The Show
Chapter XXX – The Lamp
Chapter XXXI – Nash Starts The Finish
Chapter XXXII – To “Apprehend” A Man
Chapter XXXIII – Nothing New
Chapter XXXIV – Criticism
Chapter XXXV – Abandon

Part 6
Chapter XXXVI – Jerry Wood
Chapter XXXVII – “Todo Es Perdo”
Chapter XXXVIII – Bacon
Chapter XXXIX – Legal Murder
Chapter XL – Partners
Chapter XLI – Sally Weeps

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, among others.

Trailin’ is a six part serial novel that was published in All-Story Weekly in 1919. It was made into a silent film in 1921 starring Tom Mix and Eva Novak.

Files:

1. Brand-Trailin’.epub

Excerpt: Trailin’

Chapter I.

“La-adies An’ Gen’l’mun.”

ALL through the exhibition the two sat unmoved; yet on the whole it was the best Wild West show that ever stirred sawdust in Madison Square Garden and it brought thunders of applause from the crowded house. Even if the performance could not stir these two, at least the throng of spectators should have drawn them, for all New York was there, from the richest to the poorest; neither the combined audiences of a seven-day race, a prize-fight, or a community singing festival would make such a cosmopolitan assembly.

All Manhattan came to look at the men who had lived and fought and conquered under the limitless skies of the Far West, free men, wild men—one of their shrill whoops banished distance and brought the mountain-desert into the very heart of the unromantic East. Nevertheless from all these thrills these two men remained immune.

To be sure the smaller tilted his head back when the horses first swept in, and the larger leaned to watch, when Diaz, the wizard with the lariat, commenced to whirl his rope; but in both cases their interest held no longer than if they had been old vaudevillians watching a series of familiar acts dressed up with new names.

The smaller, brown as if a thousand fierce suns and winds had tanned and withered him, looked up at last to his burly companion with a faint smile.

“They’re bringing on the cream now, Drew, but I’m going to spoil the dessert.”

The other was a great, gray man whom age apparently had not weakened but rather settled and hardened into an iron-like durability; the winds of time or misfortune would have to break that stanch oak before it would bend.

He said: “We’ve half an hour before our train leaves. Can you play your hand in that time?”

“Easy. Look at ’em now—the greatest gang of liars that never threw a diamond hitch! Ride? I’ve got a ten-year kid home that would laugh at ’em all. But I’ll show ’em up. Want to know my little stunt?”

“I’ll wait and enjoy the surprise.”

The wild riders who provoked the scorn of the smaller man were now gathering in the central space; a formidable crew, long of hair and brilliant as to bandannas, while the announcer thundered through his megaphone:

“La-a-a-dies and gen’l’mun! You see before you the greatest band of subduers and breakers of wild horses that ever rode the cattle ranges. Death-defying, reckless, and laughing at peril, they have never failed; they have never pulled leather. I present ‘Happy’ Morgan!”

Happy Morgan, yelling like one possessed of ten shrill-tongued demons, burst on the gallop away from the others, and spurring his horse cruelly, forced the animal to race, bucking and plunging, halt way around the arena and back to the group. This, then, was a type of the daredevil horse-breaker of the Wild West? The cheers traveled in waves around and around the house and rocked back and forth like water pitched from side to side in a monstrous bowl.

When the noise abated somewhat, “And this, la-a-a-dies and gen’l’mun, is the peerless cow-puncher, ‘Bud Reeves.’ “

Bud at once imitated the example of Happy Morgan, and one after another the five remaining riders followed suit. In the mean time a number of prancing, kicking, savage-eyed horses were brought into the arena and to these the master of ceremonies now turned his attention.

“From the wildest regions of the range we have brought mustangs that never have borne the weight of man. They fight for pleasure; they buck by instinct. If you doubt it, step down and try ’em. One hundred dollars to the man who sticks on the back of one of ’em—but we won’t pay the hospital bill!”

He lowered his megaphone to enjoy the laughter, and the small man took this opportunity to say: “Never borne the weight of a man! That chap in the dress-suit, he tells one lie for pleasure and ten more from instinct. Yep, he has his hosses beat. Never borne the weight of man! Why, Drew, I can see the saddle-marks clear from here: I got a mind to slip down there and pick up the easiest hundred bones that ever rolled my way.”

He rose to make good his threat, but Drew cut in with: “Don’t be a damn fool, Werther. You aren’t part of this show.”

“Well, I will be soon. Watch me! There goes Ananias on his second wind.”

The announcer was bellowing: “These man-killing mustangs will be ridden, broken, beaten into submission in fair fight by the greatest set of horse-breakers that ever wore spurs. They can ride anything that walks on four feet and wears a skin; they can—”

Werther sprang to his feet, made a funnel of his hand, and shouted: “Yi-i-i-ip!”

If he had set off a great quantity of red fire he could not more effectively have drawn all eyes upon him. The weird, shrill yell cut the ringmaster short, and a pleased murmur ran through the crowd. Of course, this must be part of the show, but it was a pleasing variation.

“Partner,” continued Werther, brushing away the big hand of Drew which would have pulled him down into his seat: “I’ve seen you bluff for two nights hand running. There ain’t no man can bluff all the world three times straight.”

The ringmaster retorted in his great voice: “That sounds like good poker. What’s your game?”

“Five hundred dollars on one card!” cried Werther, and he waved a fluttering handful of greenbacks. “Five hundred dollars to any man of your lot—or to any man in this house that can ride a real wild horse.”

“Where’s your horse?”

“In a Twenty-Sixth Street stable. I’ll have him here in five minutes.”

“Lead him on,” cried the ringmaster, but his voice was not quite so loud.

Werther muttered to Drew:

“Here’s where I hand him the lemon that’ll curdle his cream.” and ran out of the box and straight around the edge of the arena. New York, murmuring and chuckling through the vast galleries of the Garden, applauded the little man’s flying coat-tails.

He had not underestimated the time; in a little less than his five minutes the doors at the end of the arena were thrown wide and Werther reappeared. Behind him came two stalwarts leading between them a rangy monster. Before the blast of lights and the murmurs of the throng the big stallion reared and flung himself back, and the two who led him bore down with all their weight on the halter ropes. He literally walked down the planks into the arena, a strange, half-comical, half-terrible spectacle. New York burst into applause. It was a trained horse, of course, but a horse capable of such training was worth applause.

At that roar of sound, vague as the beat of waves along the shore, the stallion lurched down on all fours and leaped ahead, but the two on the halter ropes drove all their weight backward and checked the first plunge. A bright-colored scarf waved from a near-by box, and the monster swerved away. So, twisting, plunging, rearing, he was worked down the arena. As he came opposite a box in which sat a tall young man in evening clothes the latter rose and shouted: “Bravo!”

The fury of the stallion, searching on all sides for a vent, but distracted from one torment to another, centered suddenly on this slender figure. He swerved and rushed for the barrier with ears flat back and bloodshot eyes. There he reared and struck at the wood with his great front hoofs: the boards splintered and shivered under the blows.

As for the youth in the box, he remained quietly erect before this brute rage. A fleck of red foam fell on the white front of his shirt. He drew his handkerchief and wiped it calmly away, but a red stain remained. At the same time the two who led the stallion pulled him back from the barrier and he stood with head high, searching for a more convenient victim.

Deep silence spread over the arena; more hushed and more hushed it grew, as if invisible blankets of soundlessness were dropping down over the stirring masses; men glanced at each other with a vague surmise, knowing that this was no part of the performance. The whole audience drew forward to the edge of the seats and stared, first at the monstrous horse, and next at the group of men who could “ride anything that walks on four feet and wears a skin.”

Some of the women were already turning away their heads, for this was to be a battle, not a game; but the vast majority of New York merely watched and waited and smiled a slow, stiff-lipped smile. All the surroundings were changed, the flaring electric lights, the vast roof, the clothes of the multitude, but the throng of white faces was the same as that pale host which looked down from the sides of the Colosseum when the lions were loosed upon their victims.

Excerpt From: Max Brand. “The Trailin’.”