THIS week we have another exciting air adventure with Rusty Wade from the pen of Frank Richardson Pierce. Pierce is probably best remembered for his prolific career in the Western Pulps. Writing under his own name as well as two pen names—Erle Stanly Pierce and Seth Ranger. Pierce’s career spanned fifty years and produced over 1,500 short stories, with over a thousand of these appearing in the pages of Argosy and the Saturday Evening Post.

The top executives of a gold mine are trying to freeze out their own shareholders by looting their own mine so they don’t have to pay out dividends and then passing the gold off as coming from their unproductive and shareholder-free holdings. And although they’ve hired the villainous Hawk Breed to do the dirty work, when Rusty Wade gets involved, you know he’ll get to the bottom of it—which is right at the top!

From the pages of the May 1929 Air Trails, it’s our old pal Rusty Wade in Frank Richardson Pierce’s “Talons of the Hawk!”

Merciless and deadly was the air highwayman who held up his victims on the lonely Northern trails!

• Download “Talons of the Hawk” (May 1929, Air Trails)