Resumen
Resumen de La cuenta pendiente del pistolero
Para quién es
Readers who love Westerns with quick draws, bluffs and gold camps, and anyone who enjoys a clever hero, a scheming villain and a love story told through risky deeds.
De qué trata este libro
Gunman's Reckoning is a Western by Max Brand, who wrote it for the pulp magazines of the early twentieth century. It follows a red-haired tramp named Donnegan, a small man with a quick hand and a sharp mind, who leaps from a freight train and lands in the middle of a scheme he never planned to join.
The book gives you a fast, scene-by-scene tale of a gold camp called The Corner, where fortunes rise overnight and killings are counted by the day. You meet a scheming colonel in an invalid's chair, a golden-haired girl who obeys him without question, a dance-hall beauty who loves a spectacle, and an outlaw chief known as Lord Nick. Donnegan plays a part for every one of them, and the part keeps changing.
The story asks what a man will give up for a woman who may never look at him kindly. It also asks what a reputation costs when you have to keep living inside it. Let us begin with the freight train, a knife in the dark, and a tramp named Lefty Joe.
En este resumen
- 1A knife in the dark on a freight trainFree
- 2Donnegan hunts a red-haired man with a birthmark
- 3A ruined ranch and the colonel's trap
- 4The Corner and a plan built on rags
- 5A sprig of mint and a bullet in the sand
- 6The clock, the draw and the shot
- 7The colonel's second bargain and a girl's anger
- 8Stealing a wounded man by night
- 9Two red-haired men and a word from the past
- 10What the book is about and how it is told
Idea clave 1 de 10
A knife in the dark on a freight train
The story opens in Jericho Pass, where a long train of empty freight cars rattles through the night. A tramp called Lefty Joe sits with a brakeman and boasts that he once led a whole gang. He names Kennebec Lou, the Clipper and Suds as his men. Then he tells how a man named Donnegan broke the gang apart, one fight at a time.
Lefty says Donnegan beat Levine, a knife fighter, and then Kennebec Lou, who is two hundred pounds of muscle. Suds ran off in fear before Donnegan even arrived. With the two strongest men gone, Lefty could not hold the rest together. He hates Donnegan with all his heart.
The brakeman guesses the truth. Lefty has followed Donnegan for two thousand miles, and Donnegan is asleep two cars back. Lefty pays the brakeman off with a large bill, and the man leaves his post.
The tramp creeps along the roof of the train. He slides a door open a little at a time so the motion will look like the swaying of the car. He drops inside with a Spanish steel knife between his teeth, certain that he is about to rid himself of his enemy.
The chapters that follow show how little that certainty is worth. A board cracks across his shins, and the fight begins in the dark. Brand makes the scene a lesson in balance and speed, and it shows Donnegan's character before the hero has said a single word about himself.
By the end of the first chapters, you know that Donnegan is small, fast and hard to read. You also know that people tell stories about him that grow larger with every telling.
That’s 1 of 10 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about La cuenta pendiente del pistolero
What is Gunman's Reckoning about?
It follows Donnegan, a small red-haired tramp who is drawn into a scheme over gold mines in a rough mining camp called The Corner. He tries to win a girl's happiness while facing a scheming colonel and an outlaw chief.
Who is Lord Nick in Gunman's Reckoning?
Lord Nick is a tall, red-haired outlaw leader who runs a gang of gunmen and takes a share of Jack Landis's mining gold. He is clever at staying on the right side of the law and proud of his name.
Who wrote Gunman's Reckoning and when?
Max Brand, the pen name of Frederick Faust, wrote it. Faust died in 1944. It is a pulp-style Western from the early twentieth century, full of quick scenes, gun play and bold characters.
What does the title Gunman's Reckoning mean?
A reckoning is a settling of accounts. The title points to the way Donnegan's choices, his tricks and his past come together when he must face the men and the debts that he has built up in the camp.
Is Gunman's Reckoning easy to read?
Yes, in the sense that it moves quickly. Chapters are short, the plot is clear, and the scenes are built around gun fights, bluffs and talk, with many cliffhangers that keep you turning pages.