A Lucky Dog

By Max Brand and Karl Wurf

Hagger is not a good man, and he's on the run, branded a thief and a would-be killer. Then, in the snowbound high country, he finds a white bull terrier abandoned in a cabin. From that point on, his life begins to change for the better.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wildside Press
• Release date: Jan 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9781667661186

Max Brand

Max Brand® (1892–1944) is the best-known pen name of widely acclaimed author Frederick Faust, creator of Destry, Dr. Kildare, and other beloved fictional characters. Orphaned at an early age, he studied at the University of California, Berkeley. He became one of the most prolific writers of our time but abandoned writing at age fifty-one to become a war correspondent in World War II, where he was killed while serving in Italy.

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Table of Contents

A LUCKY DOG, by Max Brand

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

A LUCKY DOG,

by Max Brand

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 2023 by Wildside Press LLC.

Originally published in Street & Smith’s Western Story Magazine, Oct. 22, 1927.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

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INTRODUCTION

Frederick Schiller Faust (1892 – 1944) was an American author known primarily for his Western stories, most of which were published under the pseudonym Max Brand. He (as Brand) also created the popular fictional character Dr. Kildare for a series of pulp fiction stories. Dr. Kildare character was subsequently featured over several decades in other media, including a series of American theatrical movies by Paramount Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, a radio series, two television series, and comics. The young medical intern became his most famous creation, eclipsing his western work.

Faust’s other pseudonyms include George Owen Baxter, Evan Evans, George Evans, Peter Dawson, David Manning, John Frederick, Peter Morland, George Challis, Peter Ward and Frederick Frost. As George Challis, Faust wrote the Tizzo the Firebrand series for Argosy magazine. The Tizzo stories were historical swashbucklers featuring the titular warrior, set in Renaissance Italy.

During early 1944, when Faust, Gruber, and fellow author Steve Fisher were working at Warner Brothers, they often had idle conversations during afternoons, along with Colonel Nee, who was a technical advisor sent from Washington, D.C. One day, charged with whiskey, Faust talked of getting assigned to a company of foot soldiers so he could experience the war and later write a war novel. Colonel Nee said he could fix it for him and some weeks later he did, getting Faust an assignment for Harper’s Magazine as a war correspondent in Italy. While traveling with American soldiers fighting in Italy in 1944, Faust was wounded mortally by shrapnel, ending a brilliant career by one of the pulp field’s greatest writers.

* * * *

A note for the sensitive: some of the language used is typical of the time in which the story is set and may seem racist by modern standards. Please keep in mind the era in which the book was originally written as you read it.

—Karl Wurf

Rockville, MD

CHAPTER 1

Entrances and Exits

When at last Hagger was inside the shop, he paused and listened to the rush of the rain against the windows. Then he turned to the jeweler with a faint smile of possession, for the hardest part of the job was over before he had opened the door to enter the place. During the days that went before he had studied the entrances and exits, the value of the contents of the place, and, when he cut the wires that ran to the alarm, he knew that the work was finished.

So he advanced, and to conceal any touch of grimness in his approach, he made his smile broader and said: ’Evening, Mister Friedman.

The young man nodded with mingled anxiety and eagerness, as though he feared loss and hoped for gain even before a bargain was broached.

How much for this? said Hagger, and slipped a watch onto the counter.

The other drew back, partly to bring the watch under a brighter light, and partly to put a little distance between himself and this customer, for Hagger was too perfectly adapted to his part. One does not need to be told that the bull terrier is a fighting dog, and the pale face of Hagger, square about the jaws and lighted by a cold and steady eye, was too eloquent.

All of this Hagger knew, and he made a little pleasant conversation. You’re young to be holding down a swell joint like this, he observed.

The young man snapped open the back of the watch and observed the mechanism—one eye for it and one for his customer. About two dollars, he said. I got this place from my father, he added in explanation.

Two dollars? Have a heart! Hagger grinned. I’ll tell you what I paid. I paid twenty-two dollars for it.

There are lots of rascals in the business, said Friedman, and he made a wry face at the thought of them.

I got it, said Hagger, raising his voice in increasing anger, right down the street at Overman’s. Twenty-two bucks. I’ll let it go for twelve, though. That’s a bargain for you, Friedman.

Mr. Friedman closed the watch, breathed upon it, and rubbed off an imaginary fleck of dust with the cuff of his linen shop coat, already blackened by similar touches. Then he pushed the watch softly across the counter with both hands and shook his head, smiling.

"You think I want to rob you. No, I want people