Paul Varner's Blog: Zane Grey's The Heritage of the Desert--How Zane Grey became an author - Posts Tagged "classic-westerns"

THEY CALLED HIM THE SHIFTER
When Harry French left home he was just another kid looking to make his way. But when he came back four years later, things were different. He was different. Or at least the town thought so. Now nobody looked him in the eye. Conversation stopped when he walked into a room. Even his old friends were afraid of him. He wasn’t just Harry anymore. . . now he was the Shifter, a gun-fighter who brought trouble with him wherever he went. And as hard as Harry tried, he found that a reputation was a hell of lot harder to put down than a gun.

WOLF AND MASTIFF!
Babe Rourke and Angus Cairn are two giants among men whose similarly large reputations make them adversaries before they actually meet. Their enmity goes through several permutations after a chance encounter occurs in a cabin in the pines. (Definitive text from The Overland Kid, 2003)

Facing the Mob!
Doc Cambert called: “Hey you. . . Camden!”
The big man yawned in their faces and made no other reply except to shut his strong white teeth with a click.
“We’ve come to give you a runnin’ chance! Come out of that there brush and we’ll give you a twenty-yard start on the hosses to get back to the hotel. If you make it. . . you got an hour to get out of town. If you don’t make it. . . .”
“Shut up, Doc,” cut in Josh Williams. He don’t get no runnin’ chance. We’ve had enough of that devil. We’ve had too damned much.”
“You want me?” Camden said. “Then come and take me!” With that, he stepped forth from the shelter of the trees and began to walk toward the hotel, slowly.”
They trooped their horses after him, but no man spoke, no man moved a hand. There was something too formidable about the light-footed bulk—that terribly soft-stepping monster of a man. He seemed capable of leaping at them like a mountain lion. They held their distance until Josh Williams, with a shout as though at a roundup, whirled the noose of his rope and spurred forward.

THE JAWS OF A FEROCIOUS WOLF GUARD THE SECRET OF A DEAD MAN’S GOLD!

Bill Gary was near death. Blood gushed from the gaping wounds inflicted by the giant wolf who now lay stunned at his feet. Slowly, agonizingly, he drew a diagram, stuffed it inside his dead dog’s collar, and fastened the collar around the neck of the wolf. Then with excruciating effort, he opened the trap and released the wolf.

In that collar Gary had tucked a map to the location of a vein of gold he had discovered only hours before. This most vicious of timber wolves was now guardian and executor of his estate. And Silvertip, to carry out the dead man’s wish, must find Frosty, the wolf.

THE SHERIFF AND THE BANDIT
Sheriff Caradac had tracked down his man. As he sighted the rifle muzzle on the muscular body of his unsuspecting victim, he realized there wasn’t another man in the West like him. For a moment he hesitated. Then. Almost automatically, he lifted his gun and shifted his left foot a bit forward. As he fired, he felt a stone turn under him, and even before his finger fell from the trigger, he knew he had missed.
Out of that strange twist of fate, there grew an even stranger friendship—one that took a sheriff and an outlaw on a trail of high adventure that could have destroyed them both!