Gun Boss of Tumbleweed, page 1
SELECTED FICTION WORKS
BY L. RON HUBBARD
FANTASY
The Case of the Friendly Corpse
Death’s Deputy
Fear
The Ghoul
The Indigestible Triton
Slaves of Sleep & The Masters of Sleep
Typewriter in the Sky
The Ultimate Adventure
SCIENCE FICTION
Battlefield Earth
The Conquest of Space
The End Is Not Yet
Final Blackout
The Kilkenny Cats
The Kingslayer
The Mission Earth Dekalogy*
Ole Doc Methuselah
To the Stars
ADVENTURE
The Hell Job series
WESTERN
Buckskin Brigades
Empty Saddles
Guns of Mark Jardine
Hot Lead Payoff
A full list of L. Ron Hubbard’s
novellas and short stories is provided at the back.
*Dekalogy: a group of ten volumes
Published by
Galaxy Press, LLC
7051 Hollywood Boulevard, Suite 200
Hollywood, CA 90028
© 2013 L. Ron Hubbard Library. All Rights Reserved.
Any unauthorized copying, translation, duplication, importation or distribution, in whole or in part, by any means, including electronic copying, storage or transmission, is a violation of applicable laws.
Mission Earth is a trademark owned by L. Ron Hubbard Library and is used with permission. Battlefield Earth is a trademark owned by Author Services, Inc. and is used with permission.
Cover art and story illustrations: © 1949 Standard Magazines, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Hachette Filipacchi Media. Horsemen illustration and Glossary illustration from Western Story Magazine are © and ™ Condé Nast Publications and are used with their permission. Fantasy, Far-Flung Adventure and Science Fiction illustrations: Unknown and Astounding Science Fiction copyright © by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Penny Publications, LLC.
ISBN 978-1-59212-567-8 ePub version
ISBN 978-1-59212-274-5 print version
ISBN 978-1-59212-384-1 audiobook version
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007903611
Contents
FOREWORD
GUN BOSS OF TUMBLEWEED
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
BLOOD ON HIS SPURS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
STORY PREVIEW:
KING OF THE GUNMEN
L. RON HUBBARD
IN THE GOLDEN AGE
OF PULP FICTION
THE STORIES FROM THE
GOLDEN AGE
GLOSSARY
FOREWORD
Stories from
Pulp Fiction’s
Golden Age
AND it was a golden age.
The 1930s and 1940s were a vibrant, seminal time for a gigantic audience of eager readers, probably the largest per capita audience of readers in American history. The magazine racks were chock-full of publications with ragged trims, garish cover art, cheap brown pulp paper, low cover prices—and the most excitement you could hold in your hands.
“Pulp” magazines, named for their rough-cut, pulpwood paper, were a vehicle for more amazing tales than Scheherazade could have told in a million and one nights. Set apart from higher-class “slick” magazines, printed on fancy glossy paper with quality artwork and superior production values, the pulps were for the “rest of us,” adventure story after adventure story for people who liked to read. Pulp fiction authors were no-holds-barred entertainers—real storytellers. They were more interested in a thrilling plot twist, a horrific villain or a white-knuckle adventure than they were in lavish prose or convoluted metaphors.
The sheer volume of tales released during this wondrous golden age remains unmatched in any other period of literary history—hundreds of thousands of published stories in over nine hundred different magazines. Some titles lasted only an issue or two; many magazines succumbed to paper shortages during World War II, while others endured for decades yet. Pulp fiction remains as a treasure trove of stories you can read, stories you can love, stories you can remember. The stories were driven by plot and character, with grand heroes, terrible villains, beautiful damsels (often in distress), diabolical plots, amazing places, breathless romances. The readers wanted to be taken beyond the mundane, to live adventures far removed from their ordinary lives—and the pulps rarely failed to deliver.
In that regard, pulp fiction stands in the tradition of all memorable literature. For as history has shown, good stories are much more than fancy prose. William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas—many of the greatest literary figures wrote their fiction for the readers, not simply literary colleagues and academic admirers. And writers for pulp magazines were no exception. These publications reached an audience that dwarfed the circulations of today’s short story magazines. Issues of the pulps were scooped up and read by over thirty million avid readers each month.
Because pulp fiction writers were often paid no more than a cent a word, they had to become prolific or starve. They also had to write aggressively. As Richard Kyle, publisher and editor of Argosy, the first and most long-lived of the pulps, so pointedly explained: “The pulp magazine writers, the best of them, worked for markets that did not write for critics or attempt to satisfy timid advertisers. Not having to answer to anyone other than their readers, they wrote about human beings on the edges of the unknown, in those new lands the future would explore. They wrote for what we would become, not for what we had already been.”
Some of the more lasting names that graced the pulps include H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Max Brand, Louis L’Amour, Elmore Leonard, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, John D. MacDonald, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein—and, of course, L. Ron Hubbard.
In a word, he was among the most prolific and popular writers of the era. He was also the most enduring—hence this series—and certainly among the most legendary. It all began only months after he first tried his hand at fiction, with L. Ron Hubbard tales appearing in Thrilling Adventures, Argosy, Five-Novels Monthly, Detective Fiction Weekly, Top-Notch, Texas Ranger, War Birds, Western Stories, even Romantic Range. He could write on any subject, in any genre, from jungle explorers to deep-sea divers, from G-men and gangsters, cowboys and flying aces to mountain climbers, hard-boiled detectives and spies. But he really began to shine when he turned his talent to science fiction and fantasy of which he authored nearly fifty novels or novelettes to forever change the shape of those genres.
Following in the tradition of such famed authors as Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Jack London and Ernest Hemingway, Ron Hubbard actually lived adventures that his own characters would have admired—as an ethnologist among primitive tribes, as prospector and engineer in hostile climes, as a captain of vessels on four oceans. He even wrote a series of articles for Argosy, called “Hell Job,” in which he lived and told of the most dangerous professions a man could put his hand to.
Finally, and just for good measure, he was also an accomplished photographer, artist, filmmaker, musician and educator. But he was first and foremost a writer, and that’s the L. Ron Hubbard we come to know through the pages of this volume.
This library of Stories from the Golden Age presents the best of L. Ron Hubbard’s fiction from the heyday of storytelling, the Golden Age of the pulp magazines. In these eighty volumes, readers are treated to a full banquet of 153 stories, a kaleidoscope of tales representing every imaginable genre: science fiction, fantasy, western, mystery, thriller, horror, even romance—action of all kinds and in all places.
Because the pulps themselves were printed on such inexpensive paper with high acid content, issues were not meant to endure. As the years go by, the original issues of every pulp from Argosy through Zeppelin Stories continue crumbling into brittle, brown dust. This library preserves the L. Ron Hubbard tales from that era, presented with a distinctive look that brings back the nostalgic flavor of those times.
L. Ron Hubbard’s Stories from the Golden Age has something for every taste, every reader. These tales will return you to a time when fiction was good clean entertainment and the most fun a kid could have on a rainy afternoon or the best thing an adult could enjoy after a long day at work.
Pick up a volume, and remember what reading is supposed to be all about. Remember curling up with a great story.
—Kevin J. Anderson
KEVIN J. ANDERSON is the author of more than ninety critically acclaimed works of speculative fiction, including The Saga of Seven Suns, the continuation of the Dune Chronicles with Brian Herbert, and his New York Times bestselling novelization of L. Ron Hubbard’s Ai! Pedrito!
Gun Boss of
Tumbleweed
CHAPTER ONE
Blackmail Job
SOME day, hombre, one of these squeezed-out rancheros is goin’ to get past your guns, and when he does, they’ll be measurin’ you for a sod kimono. And personally, it’ll do my heart a world of good to see you skippin’ over the red-hot coals of hell.”
Mart Kincaid said it with insolence, a wicked flash in his eye. But somehow it was tired, too—tired with the weight of five years on the payroll of Gar Malone, King of the Concha Basin.
The sun was August hot in the searing blue bowl of the Southwest sky, but it wasn’t the sun which made Gar Malone jerk his hat lower to hide his eyes.
They sat their horses for a little, on the edge of the trail, neither one of them willing to let it drop without further venom—for they hated each other as the rattlesnake hates the gila, and they had hated each other for a long, long time.
Gar Malone was corpse-thin, hot for gain, killer-ruthless in his sway of range in four hugely unsurveyed counties. His eyes were dark, his teeth were black, there was no light whatever to the flame of thirsty ambition which scorched within him, searing him on to further power, further wealth, further conquest.
He was no coward, Gar Malone, but he knew his man.
“What objections you got? Seems like you’re kinda late, Kincaid.”
“Sure, sure. I’m the fallen sparrow and my hands ain’t fit to touch a decent horse. But they ain’t my crimes, Gar Malone.”
“Crimes? Why for cripe’s sake, what kind of a baby have you turned into? What’s criminal in bein’ the biggest horn toad in this furnace? What’s so damned dirty about shovin’ weaklings and peewee stockmen out of the country? Did they invent it? God made it, Kincaid, and it’s for the one that can take it and keep it.”
“God may have made it,” said Mart, “but He sure didn’t count on a brand artist comin’ along and turnin’ it into what it is. There ain’t fifty decent people from here to Tumbleweed. It’s gettin’ kind of monotonous pitchin’ into every poor citizen that wants to eat, work and prosper within a hundred miles any direction. I don’t object to dirt but I get tired wallerin’ in it and pretendin’ it’s rose petals.”
“You goin’ to Tumbleweed, or ain’t you?” snapped Gar.
“Oh, sure, sure. I’ll go to Tumbleweed. I’ll knock out the Singing Canyon spread. I’ll stand back and let the boys throw lead into honest punchers whose only crime is bein’ loyal to a good boss. Sure, I’ll do it.”
“Now, that’s better,” said Gar, mollified considerable. “You’re the best gun in the state and the gold I pay clinks. But by all that’s holy, Kincaid, if I have to go on takin’ all this off’n you, you think I’m goin’ to forget what I know?”
“Dead men ain’t got no memories to speak of at all,” said Kincaid.
Gar’s dark gaze fastened upon the silver-chased cannons in Kincaid’s buscadero belt. His breath went shallow. “Try it, Kincaid. Go ahead and try it. And the Saturday I don’t appear in Lawson, Jeb Barly takes the sealed packet out of his bank safe and puts it in the hands of the US deputy marshal. You won’t be the only one that will get green-gilled that day. Think twice, gunman. Think twice.”
“You ain’t panicky, are you?” said Kincaid. His laugh was insolent, without any amusement whatever.
“You think I don’t know your fanning? Why do I pay you? And we both know why you go on workin’ for me. I need you. You and Gary O’Neil need me alive.” Gar’s mood changed into pretended lightness and warmth. “I hear,” he continued, “that young Gary’s ma got herself a new house on her birthday. Now wasn’t that just wonderful of you boys? I tell you, it does my heart good.”
“You know, hombre,” said Mart, “there’s times when I just plain itch to let the desert breezes fan gently through yore hide.” And as swift as lightning he rolled his guns and slammed four rapid shots into a cast-off canteen beside the trail. The first made it leap into the air, the second, third and fourth rent it apart before it could fall once more.
The first shot Gar had felt in his own flesh. He didn’t breathe comfortably until the white powder smoke had drifted well down the trail.
“I guess,” said Mart, “that I’ll be headin’ out for Tumbleweed.”
He jerked his pack horse forward and spurred his gray. If he had looked back he would have seen Gar Malone still sitting his bay beside the trail, looking after him with eyes which sought furtively for a way to end this tension and still rule the Concha Basin.
But Mart Kincaid didn’t look back. He was in a more than usually bitter mood. At twenty-five, he felt, he should be well on his way toward making a decent man of himself, carving a fine future from this gaudy but fertile desert realm. But who was he? Gar Malone’s peacifier. At twenty-five he was Mart Kincaid, general of the forces of Concha Basin’s private and personal devil, a man who used him as guns and brains and kept him chained as thoroughly as Gar’s big greyhounds, imported from the East to run down and kill wolves.
It was sixty miles as the buzzard soars to Tumbleweed but it was better than twenty-nine more if one connected with the water holes and used the better trails. But Mart was in no hurry and he added six more in a detour past O’Neil’s small ranch.
He felt bad and his eyes were turned so far in that as he came through the canyon below the ranch he did not see, there on the narrow trail before him, the six Malone punchers, part of the home ranch crew.
Johnny Destro saw him and pulled up, halting the others behind him with a half-raised hand. Destro had no love for Kincaid, for Destro considered himself something of a gunner—a fact which he wisely kept to himself. Destro looked at the rangy gray and the slender rider and narrowed his eyes.
Just as Kincaid would have collided with him, unseeing, Destro yanked his reins and climbed the wall.
“Hello, Mr. Kincaid,” said Destro, hurriedly assuming a smile.
“Nice day, Mr. Kincaid,” said others of the crew.
Mart rode on through them at a brisk trot, packhorse following. The last man in the line saluted with careful carelessness.
“Hiya, Mr. Kincaid.”
Mart, aware of the group for the first time, glanced over his shoulder at them and said nothing.
The group dropped uncomplainingly back into the trail and rode on.
Mart leaned out of the saddle and opened a gate. He tied his pack animal there, for he did not intend to linger, and rode on up to the house. Nobody answered his hail and he reined into a gravel path and went out through the garden to the cottage they had built for Gary’s mother.
Mrs. O’Neil had the stout heart and proud head of her Irish kings and the sorrows she had experienced were well hidden behind her fine old eyes. Aproned and flushed with the heat of a stove, she came out of the summer kitchen of her small house, carrying an apple pie which she set in the shade to cool.
She didn’t see Mart until his jingle bobs sounded immediately behind her and she whirled to find herself hugged.
“Hello, Mother!”
“Mart, you set me down. For shame, you’ll have scared the lights out of me! Sneakin’ up that way!”
“Where’s Gary?”
“He’s out with the boys putting some cattle in the south pasture. That nice Mr. Malone’s men brought them up for him. Cut them out of their herd, they did. And that’s what I consider as right thoughtful. But come in, come in and sit down and I’ll put some weight on you. My, my, Mart, how thin you are! Oh, those ranch cooks. Food spoilers, that’s what they be.”
“No, Mother,” Mart said. “I’ve got to ride and I may not be back until around the first of October.”
“Oh, another one of them special jobs. Mart, I can’t see why Mr. Malone can’t send somebody else once in a while. He wears you down razor thin, he does. But here. Take this pie. I’ve got two more and I was just a-thinkin’ you might be by. Take it. Now, right in this sack. And mind you don’t spoil it.”
Mart kissed her and swung back on his gray, pie precariously in hand. He tied it carefully on top of his slicker, right side up, obeying all instructions and then, with a wave, he rode down to the gate.
Gary had seen the pack animal and was waiting, mounted.
They shook hands, no greeting other than that necessary or more expressive. Of the two Mart was the hard, tall one, the leader, and Gary, smaller and softer, was the worshipful follower.
