About this ebook
The Broken Bit boys shot Sheriff Ben Borders after the nesters and law-abiders had re-elected him. Old Ben lay dying on the courthouse steps with Jim Keene looking down at him.
"You stayin'?" said Ben.
"I'll be staying," said Jim.
"Well, when you get to the other side of the hill—remember this, son—the only thing you'll find there is just what you brought with you."
Jim Keene had ridden a thousand miles to get to Cloud Valley and away from trouble. He was a strong man and a fighting man, but he always took sides. He couldn't help fighting for the underdog. And when he got to Cloud Valley he found that he couldn't run away from himself.
With the sheriff dead, there was no law. So Jim Keene dealt himself in on the fight—on the side of the weak—and shot his way to justice...
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About the author
Ernest James Haycox (October 1, 1899 - October 13, 1950) was an American author of Western fiction.
Born in Portland, Oregon, to William James Haycox and the former Martha Burghardt, he attended local schools of both Washington state and Oregon. He enlisted in the United States Army in 1915 and was stationed along the Mexican border in 1916. During World War I he served in Europe, and after the war he spent one year at Reed College in Portland. In 1923, he graduated from the University of Oregon with a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism. He married Jill M. Chord in 1925 and the couple had two children.
Haycox published two dozen novels and around 300 short stories, many of which appeared first in pulp magazines in the early 1920s. During the 1930s and 1940s, he was a regular contributor to Collier's Weekly from 1931 and The Saturday Evening Post from 1943. Fans of his work included Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway.
His story Stage to Lordsburg (1937) was made into the movie Stagecoach (1939), directed by John Ford and featuring John Wayne in the role that made him a star. The novel Trouble Shooter (1936), originally serialized in Collier's, was the basis for the movie Union Pacific (1939), directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea. Haycox wrote the screenplay for Montana (1950), directed by Ray Enright, which stars Alexis Smith and Errol Flynn.
Haycox died in 1950, at the age of 51, in Portland. In 2005 the Western Writers of America voted Haycox one of the 24 best Western authors of the Twentieth Century.
