One of America’s most beloved storytellers, Louis L’Amour’s vibrant tales of adventure bring the American West to life. Now, in this sixth volume of collected short stories, L’Amour takes us beyond the frontier with thirty-three gripping stories of crime, sports, and the murky world where the two often meet. From suspenseful whodunits to rueful tales of fortunes gained and lost, this remarkable collection will enthrall and entertain L’Amour fans old and new. Traversing a vivid landscape, from sunblasted hills and canyons to the nighttime streets of America’s greatest cities, some of Louis L’Amour’s most compelling fiction was set in his own time—whether in the naked electric glare of boxing rings where men go head-to-head with their dreams and demons in an underworld rife with corruption, or along freight docks where laborers toil to earn just enough to get by, or in the penthouses of the rich and arrogant who calculate the odds of how to get even more. Here are tales of innocents caught in the schemes of criminals, detectives hunting down truths that hide more lies, gamblers and beauties, wiseguys and cops. Here is a world populated by the kinds of people who risk their lives to right a wrong, make a buck, or save a friend. A war veteran makes a journey to visit the man who saved his life in Korea. Instead he uncovers a killing and finds his own heroic cause…. Confronted with an easy chance to steal, an honest man gives in to temptation—and finds himself ensnared in a web of blackmail and violence…. An elderly Hawaiian seafarer is found dead with a hand-carved figure beside his body. Unraveling his murder will mean solving the mystery of a shipwreck—and of the forces that drive some to take fatal chances and others to kill. Brimming with thought-provoking characters and situations—from a man who awakens from unconsciousness to find a fortune in a burning house to a man who meets a killer who is supposed to be dead in a seedy diner—these thrilling, atmospheric stories course with authenticity and bear the mark of a timeless master. " The stories reflect the author's own youthful wanderings.... No L'Amour fan will want to miss this collection." -- "Publishers Weekly " "The stories reflect the author's own youthful wanderings.... No L'Amour fan will want to miss this collection."--"Publishers Weekly " "L'Amour never writes with less than a saddle creak in his sentences and more often with a desert heatwave boiling up from a sunbaked paragraph. A master storyteller.... for reading under the stars." --"Kirkus Reviews With more than 120 titles still in print, Louis L'Amour is recognized the world over as one of the most prolific and popular American authors in history. Though he met with phenomenal success in every genre he tried, the form that put him on the map was the short story. Now this great writer - who "The Wall Street Journal recently compared with Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson - will receive his due as a great storyteller. This volume kicks off a series that will, when complete, anthologize all of L'Amour's short fiction, volume by handsome volume. Here, in Volume Two, is a treasure-trove of 35 frontier tales for his millions of fans and for those who have yet to discover L'Amour's thrilling prose - and his vital role in capturing the spirit of the Old West for generations to come. Our foremost storyteller of the American West, Louis L’Amour has thrilled a nation by chronicling the adventures of the brave men and woman who settled the frontier. There are more than three hundred million copies of his books in print around the world. Unguarded Moment Arthur Fordyce had never done a criminal thing in his life, nor had the idea of doing anything unlawful ever seriously occurred to him. The wallet that lay beside his chair was not only full; it was literally stuffed. It lay on the floor near his feet where it had fallen. His action was as purely automatic as an action can be. He let his Racing Form slip from his lap and cover the billfold. Then he sat very still, his heart pounding. The fat man who had dropped the wallet was talking to a friend on the far side of the box. As far as Fordyce could see, his own action had gone unobserved. It had been a foolish thing to do. Fordyce did not need the money. He had been paid a week’s salary only a short time before and had won forty dollars on the last race. With his heart pounding heavily, his mouth dry, he made every effort to be casual as he picked up his Form and the wallet beneath. Trying to appear as natural as possible, he opened the billfold under cover of the Form, extracted the money, and shifted the bills to his pocket. The horses were rounding into the home stretch, and when the crowd sprang to its feet, he got up, too. As he straightened, he shied the wallet, with an underhand flip, under the feet of the crowd off to his left. His heart was still pounding. Blindly he stared out at the track. He was a thief . . . he h