Tinhorn's Daughter
Read Tinhorn's Daughter Online
Authors: L. Ron Hubbard
S
ELECTED
F
ICTION
W
ORKS
BY
L. R
ON
H
UBBARD
F
ANTASY
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
S
CIENCE
F
ICTION
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
A
DVENTURE
The Hell Job series
W
ESTERN
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
© 2014 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.
Horsemen illustration and Glossary illustration from
Western Story Magazine
and “When Gilhooly Was in Flower” story illustration from
Romantic Range
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 978-1-59212-620-0 EPUB version
ISBN 978-1-59212-790-0 Kindle version
ISBN 978-1-59212-372-8 print version
ISBN 978-1-59212-343-8 audiobook version
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007928448
FOREWORD
Stories from
Pulp Fiction's
Golden Age
A
ND
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 pricesâand 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 entertainersâreal 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 historyâhundreds 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 livesâand 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 Dumasâmany 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 Heinleinâand, 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 enduringâhence this seriesâand 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 admiredâas 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 romanceâaction 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.
âKevin 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!
Tinhorn
's Daughter
CHAPTER ONE
Kidnapped
E
ARLY
that morning, when they had left the stage station, Betsy Trotwood had supposed that they would reach the clearly outlined Rockies by midmorning.
But at noon, the Rockies were just as far westward, apparently, as they had been at the start. And even now, with dusk coming on, the rolling
Concord
stage and its six chunky horses were just entering the foothills of the higher peaks beyond.
In truth, Montana was an amazing country, especially to a girl outside the city limits of Boston for the first time in her life. The land was so
BIG
, so lacking in people, so empty of women!
The Concord's rumble and creak made small headway against the silent immensities and Betsy Trotwood thought that if she had to sit silent and alone much longer she would go mad.
The stage rolled into Twin Pines and the resulting commotion spared her sanity. Red-faced men in big hats, all dressed in stained leather, each one burdened with an enormous revolver and belt, gathered around the pausing stage for news.
The log stage station, scarred by arrows and bullets, looked very isolated, backed by the rearing foothills and dwarfed by the skyward rearing pines.
The half-dozen men had approached with loud, coarse shouts addressed to the messenger and driver, but Bat had scowled and jerked his thumb down and the crowd had instantly removed hats, shuffled, peered and had begun to walk around on tiptoe. They still wanted news but they asked for it in whispers.
Betsy Trotwood knew that she was the cause of this sensation but she could not understand it. They acted as though she were dead and on her way to a funeral.
Her appearance belied anything like that. Her voluminous skirts were patterned in gay little flowers and her ripply brimmed hat was tied under her chin with a bright blue ribbon.
Bat Connor, the messenger, climbed down from the
box
and went inside. He came back a moment later swiping his hairy hand across his bleached whiskers and looking guiltily toward Betsy to see if she had noticed anything wrong.
Horses were being changed as this last run from Twin Pines to Puma Pass would be completed before midnight, and while Tom, the sober-faced driver, tried to remember to swear under his breath as the horses were changed, Bat took advantage of the pause to shift his
Winchester
into the crook of his arm, put his boot on the step and converse with the passenger. He wanted the boys to see the intimate terms he was on with her.
“Ridin' easy, miss?” said Bat, spraying a hub of tobacco juice.
“It is a little rough,” ventured Betsy.
“Won't be no more stage when the railroad gets through here and across the Rockies,” volunteered Bat. “Steel's better ridin', I guess, but it shore looks like the country is gettin' all settled up. You goin' as far as Puma Pass, ain't you, ma'am?”
“Yes, if my father is there,” said Betsy.
Bat turned to the crowd. “Slim Trotwood still in Puma Pass, boys?”
The group looked thunderstruck for an instant and then brightly nodded all together.
“He's still in Puma Pass,” relayed Bat. “And we'll git you there. Just you wait and see. Ain't a
road agent
could ever get up nerve enough to hold up any stage of mine!”
“Road agent?” said Betsy, startled.
“Shore,” said Bat. “We call 'em road agents because they stops us where they ain't no station, see? Bandits.”
“You mean there are robbers in these hills?”
Bat grinned confidently and patted his Winchester as though it were a cat. “Now don't worry none about it, ma'am. You got me ridin' the box.”
The station boss felt a little jealous of Bat's intimacy. He growled, “Sunset Maloney wasn't scared none the
last
time.”
“You've been held up?” said Betsy quickly.
The crowd was instantly all compassion again. She looked very small and very pretty and just now, scared.
“Aw, it ain't often,” said the station boss.
“But you
have
been held up,” she insisted to Bat.
He looked uncomfortable and gnawed a chunk from a villainous black
plug
before he answered. “Well, yes. A young feller named Sunset Maloney's been holdin' up stages every time they's a money sack goin' in to your old man.”
“He's been stealing from my father?”
“Sure. Slim Trotwood, as agent for the Great Western Railroad, is always havin' a wad shipped in to him. In fact, we're carryin' one right now.”
Bat saw glory in his role. “Last time I put up a rarin' fight and this time he won't have nerve enough to come within six miles of the stage. You just trust to me, ma'am.”
“What sort of fellow is this Sunset Maloney?” said Betsy.
“Pretty wild,” replied Bat judicially. “Pretty wild. Faster'n a greased rattler with a six-gun. He's ornery as a barrel of wildcats. But we won't have no trouble.”
Tom was hitched up again and Bat dragged himself back to the box, Winchester prominently displayed. The half-dozen station men tipped their hats to Miss Trotwood and the Concord rolled on its dusty way again.
The horses labored as they pulled the long grade. The road began to wind around high hills, and far below, Betsy could see winding streams all silver with distance. The world was turning scarlet and gold as the sun dipped behind the backbone of the continent. But none of this warm beauty lightened Betsy's heart.
She felt very small and helpless, shaken like a die in the otherwise empty coach. And now she had a new worry. Her father was losing his money to a road agent. Was that hurting the project about which he had waxed so enthusiastic?
She had never seen her father that she could remember. He had come from fully as good a Boston family as her mother, but he had never seemed to fit in the East. At least that was what her mother had said. Her other relatives had been less kind.
Betsy's mother had not been dead half a year before her father had begun to communicate with Betsy. Relatives said that he was interested in the fortune her mother had leftâas her mother's purse had been trap-tight as long as she had lived. But Betsy had liked to think otherwise.
Her father had written many times that he was now an agent for the Great Western, the first railroad into Montana, but that he needed money to buy up the
right-of-way
in advance of construction. Puma Pass, he had said, had been selected as the only possible crossing of the Continental Divide and if he could buy this land for the railroad he would be rewarded.
It had seemed very good to Betsy. She had liked the feeling of importance his letter had given her. She had sent money and then more money and finally, as a surprise, she had come west, against all advice, to help her father in every way she could. He did not know she was coming, but in a matter of hours â¦
The brake shrieked; the coach lurched to an abrupt stop and almost threw Betsy headlong against her largest trunk, which had been too big to go outside.
She sat hastily back and righted her bonnet, while the dust caught up with the stage which had made it and curled smokily past the windows.
A voice so clear and so brutally cold that it made her tremble knifed the evening chill.
“Throw down your rifle, Bat!”
The dust thinned and Betsy, leaning sideways, looked ahead. A man on foot was standing across a newly felled tree which blocked the road. He was a terrifying sight to Betsy as he stood there balancing a huge revolver in each hand. His face was completely covered with a red bandanna into which two crude eyeholes had been cut. He was dressed in a white buckskin shirt, flaring chaps and high-heeled boots. He looked very tall, very grim.
Betsy wished fervently for Boston and its solid policemen. Up on the box were ten thousand dollars in silver and billsâher money destined for her father. And it would all be gone in an instant.
She twisted at her hat ribbon. Two bright tears welled up in her large blue eyesâtears of terror. This must be Sunset Maloney. He hated her father. What would he do when he found that she was also a Trotwood? Shoot her, most likely.
The tall man was stepping down from the tree. Bat's Winchester rattled into the dust as he dropped it.
“Now, Sunset,” whined Bat. “Don't go gittin' nervous. I can't reach no higher.” And in a hoarse whisper, “Git your hands up, Tom, you fool. T'hell with them horses.”
“What are you carrying?” said the clear, chill voice.
“Got it right here,” cried Bat, anxious to please. The express box hit the road leadenly.
“Who's inside?”
Bat would not answer that. Betsy swiftly withdrew her head from the window. He had not seen her in the dusk. She knew he would kill her just as soon as he discovered who she was. She mourned for faraway Boston. Why had she ever taken this foolish trip?
She moved swiftly across the seat, hitting her knees against her big wicker and leather trunk. In it were skirts and hats, carefully packed.
With brilliant inspiration, knowing that her fate depended upon her action, Betsy threw the trunk lid up, cast out the cardboard hat boxes and rolled hastily into the yielding mass of her piled skirts. There was just room enough with the hats out. She dropped the lid just as she heard his footsteps grating in the road beside the stage.
She heard something else. The patent locks clicked shut as the lid fell. But she had no fear. Bat would let her out as soon as the danger was past.
Sunset threw open the door, right gun ready to chop down if anyone had been waiting inside. He stood there for an instant, inspecting the place.
“Empty, huh?” said Sunset.
Bat leaned far over and looked down with jaw sagging. “Huh?” He blinked hard and leaned farther, almost falling from his high perch.
“Something wrong here,” said Sunset. “You don't want me to look this over. What is it? Another messenger box?”
The stage creaked as he mounted the step. He looked at the shipping tag which had been affixed at the last outpost of the slowly advancing railroad.
“âTrotwood, Puma Pass,'” read Sunset. “So it
is
something else.”
He gave the trunk a hard shove. It shot out the other door and slammed to the ground, bottom side up. Sunset jumped down beside it and heaved it over.
“It's heavy enough,” he said. Turning to look up at the box, he added, “I think that's downright thoughtless of you, Bat. You know I'm interested in anything goin' to Slim Trotwood.”
“Sure,” shook Bat. “Sure, Sunset. I ⦠I guess I kinda forgot, that's all.”
“Next time kinda remember to remember,” threatened Sunset.
Deliberately he drew out a bowie knife and hacked down two small pines. He lashed these, one on either side, to his heavy
rimfire saddle
, making a specie of Indian travois.
Across this he placed the trunk, tying it in place with his
lariat
. Finishing, he turned to Bat and Tom. “When you get to Puma Pass, you tell that damned
coyote
Trotwood that I still aim to fight him as long as I got lead to sling and strength to pull a trigger. Savvy?”
“We told him last time and he damn near skinned us alive,” complained Bat.
“Tell him again,” said Sunset.
“You bet,” said Bat quickly.
Sunset took his reins and led his mustang onto a game trail at right angles to the wagon road. With the trunk bumping along on the travois, he made his way between the pines, finally disappearing from view.
Tom, always short on words, growled, “You done it again.”
“Can I help it?” blustered Bat. “He'd of shot me if I'd moved my little finger.”
“You wouldn't be in with him, would you?” growled Tom.
“Me?” cried Bat. “In with a road agent? Why, you low-down lobo, I ought to ⦔
“Save it for a road agent,” said Tom. “You better see if that girl ain't dead from heart failure.”
Bat remembered then. He swung down and looked into the stage. He stuck his shaggy head inside and peered into all the corners. He looked under the wheels without result and then stood back scratching his head.
“She was here a minute ago,” said Bat.
He made a complete circuit of the stage and again inspected the interior and again scratched his head. “All she left is a few hats. Now where the ding-dong do you suppose the critter went?”
Tom got down and looked with no more result than Bat. Together they walked down the grade, peering into clumps of bushes. They came back and searched the coach again.
“If that don't beat hell,” said Bat. “She's
gone to glory
.”
“Damned if she ain't,” said Tom.
“Never did trust Boston nohow,” said Bat, spitting into the dust. “We better get that tree outta the road and git the word to town.”