Showing results by narrator "John McLain" in All Categories

A comedic western, "Mountain Man" is about the tall tales and big adventures of Brekenridge Elkins, an exaggerated, cartoonish version of Howard himself. The story first appeared in the March - April 1934 issue of Action Stories and was so popular that other magazines asked Howard for similar characters, giving birth to an entire series full of colorful characters.

"Three years ago, when my son was still in college and my daughter lived across the Bay, my wife packed her car with her clothes and things, discussed with me her reasons for taking half the savings and, after a farewell which I cannot recall verbatim, she left..." In this short story, which won a Chicago Tribune Nelson Algren Award, a retired schoolteacher in his sunset years, gets his first glimpse at the failures in his life, cracking a window open to everything and everyone outside.