Collected here are ten Western short stories by Richard S. Wheeler, the award-winning author who makes storytelling look easy.

In 'Mugs Birdsong's Crime Academy,' celebrated criminal Mugs Birdsong decides to found an academy that will instruct lawmen on the ways and means of lawlessness. 'The Last Days of Dominic Prince' is the tragic tale of a cattle baron and his final conflict with the forces of political correctness. 'Dead Weight' introduces us to a coffin maker who constructs a work of art. And in the title story, two young men in the gold fields of California spend one last night together as one of them confronts his own imminent death.

This collection also includes 'The Square Reporter,' 'A Commercial Proposition,' 'The Great Filibuster of 1975,' 'The Tinhorn's Lady,' 'Hearts,' and 'Looking for Love at a Romance Writers Convention.'

Richard S. Wheeler is the award-winning author of historical novels, biographical novels, and Westerns. He began his writing career at age fifty, and by seventy-five he had written more than sixty novels. He began life as a newsman and later became a book editor, but he turned to fiction full time in 1987. Wheeler started by writing traditional Westerns but soon was writing large-scale historical novels and then biographical novels. In recent years he has been writing mysteries as well, some under the pseudonym Axel Brand. He has won six Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America and the Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement in the literature of the American West.