The Stone Man — Lester Dent

Doc Savage and his fearless friends find a black arrowhead that leads a trail to the treacherous Spad Ames in the Arizona Badlands. There they encounter the mysterious men who live through the mists -- men who can turn flesh into stone. Lester Dent was an American pulp-fiction author, best known as the creator and main author of the series of novels about the superhuman scientist and adventurer, Doc Savage. The 159 novels written over 16 years were credited to the house name Kenneth Robeson. Dent's Master Fiction Plot, often referred to as the Lester Dent Formula is a widely circulated guide to writing a saleable 6,000-word pulp story and has been recommended to aspiring authors by Michael Moorcock, among others.