by Max Brand
“Yes, a drink is what I need,” Speedy concurred. “But wait a minute.” He paused, raising his hand in the dimness of the hall and canting his head to listen.
“Aye,” said the sheriff, “they’re all contented enough now. There was a rope around the neck of Fenton ten minutes or so ago . . . and the girl was breaking her heart for him . . . and John Wilson was thought as yellow-livered as a Chinaman. And now listen to the three of ’em laughing together.”
“They’re laughing,” Speedy agreed as he moved down the hall again, hooking his arm through the sheriff’s. “I only hope that they’re not laughing too soon.”
“Now, whacha mean by that?” asked Sam Hollis.
“Nothing, nothing,” said Speedy hurriedly. “Let’s get to that drink.”
About the Author
Max Brand® is the best-known pen name of Frederick Faust, creator of Dr. Kildare, Destry, and many other fictional characters popular with readers and viewers worldwide. Faust wrote for a variety of audiences in many genres. His enormous output, totaling approximately 30,000,000 words or the equivalent of 530 ordinary books, covered nearly every field: crime, fantasy, historical romance, espionage, Westerns, science fiction, adventure, animal stories, love, war, and fashionable society, big business and big medicine. Eighty motion pictures have been based on his work along with many radio and television programs. For good measure he also published four volumes of poetry. Perhaps no other author has reached more people in more different ways.
Born in Seattle in 1892, orphaned early, Faust grew up in the rural San Joaquin Valley of California. At Berkeley he became a student rebel and one-man literary movement, contributing prodigiously to all campus publications. Denied a degree because of unconventional conduct, he embarked on a series of adventures culminating in New York City where, after a period of near starvation, he received simultaneous recognition as a serious poet and successful author of fiction. Later, he traveled widely, making his home in New York, then in Florence, and finally in Los Angeles.
Once the United States entered the Second World War, Faust abandoned his lucrative writing career and his work as a screenwriter to serve as a war correspondent with the infantry in Italy, despite his fifty-one years and a bad heart. He was killed during a night attack on a hilltop village held by the German army. New books based on magazine serials or unpublished manuscripts or restored versions continue to appear so that, alive or dead, he has averaged a new book every four months for seventy-five years. Beyond this, some work by him is newly reprinted every week of every year in one or another format somewhere in the world. A great deal more about this author and his work can be found in The Max Brand Companion (Greenwood Press, 1997) edited by Jon Tuska and Vicki Piekarski.