In “Luck and a Horse,” Tommy Grant works day and night on the farm of the tyrant and master manipulator Sylvester Train, who has not paid him for nineteen months. The man runs roughshod over Tommy as well as his niece, Margie Train. When Tommy balks at using his horse, Brownie, in the plow, Train sends him to Fruit Dale with two wagons of grain and a shopping list. In town, he learns that Lefty Lew Hilton is looking to gun down the jailbird, Bert Ellis. Events take a strange turn when Tommy finds himself in the back room of a saloon, playing cards with Ellis. When Ellis is shot in the middle of the game, a hundred posse men give chase to Tommy, who is believed to be the killer of Ellis.
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.