His captors had been attending to his every need because they wanted the splendid figure of a man dangling from the end of their rope, to prove they hadn't mistreated their prisoner. The hanging would be in a public square, with little children watching and clapping their ...
The gap seemed to widen every day, and Don Carlos was chagrined to notice yet again that he was becoming an old man with a pot belly, his worst nightmare come true. He looked at himself in the mirror, and loose flesh hung where straps of muscle had once bound his bones. He...
GIBSON AND HIS carpentry crew heard a large number of riders headed toward town on Monday morning. At first they thought it was an Indian raid, but then Mr. Phipps shouted from atop the roof, “It's Big Al Thornton!” A smile wreathed Mr. Gibson's face, because the Bar T was...
It was the largest taxi garage in Manhattan, with a fleet of three hundred cabs.It was four o’clock in the afternoon. Kowalchuk approached the garage, wearing his blue bomber jacket and gray peaked cap. He had a five-day growth of beard which effectively obscured his features. He’d been spending ...
The driver flicked his whip across the horses’ haunches, as moonlight reflected upon buttes, spires, and caprock escarpments on the distant horizon. Inside the cab, a salesman, two soldiers, a lawyer, a cowboy, and a hatless young vagabond sat with knees jammed together, e...
He dressed in new black jeans with a blue shirt that Maggie had bought him, then pinned the tin badge above the left pocket. It was time to go to work. Slipping outside, he saw a big crescent moon hanging over the rooftops of Escondido. He eased down the alley beside the s...
The front page reported the Gold Scandal of ‘69, which Stowe had read about in detail before, but the El Sombrero had no other printed matter, so he perused the amazing story again. In an audacious, scurrilous plot, two New York financiers named Jay Gould and Jim Fisk had ...