Produced by Suzanne Shell, Bill Walker and PG Distributed Proofreaders
By Max Brand
1919
To
ROBERT HOBART DAVIS
Maker of Books and Men
The characters, places, incidents and situations in this book areimaginary and have no relation to any person, place or actualhappening.
All through the exhibition the two sat unmoved; yet on the whole it wasthe best Wild West show that ever stirred sawdust in Madison SquareGarden and it brought thunders of applause from the crowded house. Evenif the performance could not stir these two, at least the throng ofspectators should have drawn them, for all New York was there, from therichest to the poorest; neither the combined audiences of a seven-dayrace, a prize-fight, or a community singing festival would make such acosmopolitan assembly.
All Manhattan came to look at the men who had lived and fought andconquered under the limitless skies of the Far West, free men, wildmen—one of their shrill whoops banished distance and brought themountain 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 sweptin, and the larger leaned to watch when Diaz, the wizard with thelariat, commenced to whirl his rope; but in both cases their interestheld no longer than if they had been old vaudevillians watching a seriesof familiar acts dressed up with new names.
The smaller, brown as if a t