Death Waits at Sundown Read online

  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

  © 2012 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, story illustrations, 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 978-1-59212-609-5 eBook version

  ISBN 978-1-59212-400-8 Print version

  ISBN 978-1-59212-407-7 Audiobook version

  ISBN 978-1-59212-438-1 eAudiobook version

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2007903535

  Contents

  FOREWORD

  DEATH WAITS AT SUNDOWN

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  RIDE 'EM, COWBOY!

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  BOSS OF THE LAZY B

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  STORY PREVIEW:

  THE TOUGHEST RANGER

  GLOSSARY

  L. RON HUBBARD

  IN THE GOLDEN AGE

  OF PULP FICTION

  THE STORIES FROM THE

  GOLDEN AGE

  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 Argos
y, 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!

  Death Waits at Sundown

  Chapter One

  LYNN TAYLOR rocketed into Pioneer leaving a hurricane of dust in his path. He skidded his buckskin stallion to a stop before the sheriff’s office and leaped down to stride with loud boots up the steps and through the door.

  Pioneer’s denizens had been startled at his abrupt appearance. The men in the sheriff’s office stared at Lynn and then shot questions at each other.

  Lynn Taylor’s square jaw was set and his eyes were chunks of ice. His batwings were thick with the mud and dust of long travel and his stubble growth of beard was whitened with alkali. But on each thigh there gleamed clean guns, tied down—and those guns and thongs meant Texas.

  “Which one of you gents is McCloud?” said Lynn Taylor, dropping his quirt with a crack upon the desk.

  The man behind it sat forward with a humorless, confident grin and pushed his white sombrero up from his sweaty brow. “I’m McCloud.” And his stare plainly said, “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m Lynn Taylor. Where’s my brother?”

  McCloud leaned back again, though the others in the room were still tensed and wary. “He’s where he belongs, fellah. You wasn’t thinkin’ of doin’ anything about it, was you?”

  “I kind of had that in mind,” said Lynn, scanning the others in the room and labeling them as hard cases. “When is the trial?”

  McCloud laughed easily. “Looks like your information come late, Taylor. The trial’s over and Frank Taylor swings tomorrow at sundown.”

  “Maybe,” said Lynn, looking McCloud over. “I’m askin’ to see him.”

  McCloud hesitated and then he shrugged. “All right, Texas. Can’t be any harm in that. But get this straight. The vigilantes has things in hand—and we don’t want no outside interference.”

  He got up and took a ring of keys down from the wall. Two of the others stood and swaggered carelessly after the big Texan. It was dark in the cells. Ahead a cot creaked and Frank Taylor rose to eye the coming party with suspicion.

  Worry and two weeks of confinement had thinned and blanched his young face. His young body was braced and surly as he waited for the head of the vigilantes. And then he gave a glad start. “Lynn!”

  “Think I’d leave you in the lurch?” said the Texan. “Open it up, McCloud. I want a talk with the kid.”

  “You say what you’ve got to say right here in my presence,” stated McCloud. “We didn’t go to all the trouble of pickin’ up this precious brother of yours just to let him get away from us again.”

  Lynn barely glanced at the vigilante chief. He moved up to the bars. “I came as soon as I got your letter, kid. What are they doin’ to you?”

  “It’s a frame!” said Frank Taylor. “I’m here because I was sap enough to build up my spread to a point where somebody else wanted it. I’m a fall guy for a set of jobs I never pulled. You got to believe me, Lynn. I didn’t rob nothing. If you want to see the guy that did it, turn around and look.”

  “Shut up,” said McCloud. “Nobody’ll listen to a lie like that.”

  “They’d listen if they weren’t scared of you!” said Frank. “Lynn, you got to set this thing to rights. I swing tomorrow night. I didn’t do a thing!”

  Lynn looked at the eager, pleading face of his younger brother. “Sure, I know that, kid.”

  “Time’s up,” said McCloud uneasily.

  “Don’t worry about anything, kid,” said the Texan, touching the hand on the bars very briefly. He turned and walked back along the corridor, the outer cell door clanging behind him.

  In the office again, McCloud looked carefully at Lynn. “Listen, Texas, I wouldn’t advise you to start anything. You ain’t got any friends in Pioneer.”

  “Have you?” said Lynn meaningly.

  McCloud laughed. “Ask around. Your brother is full of locoweed. He stopped the Overland seven times and took the weight off its springs. The last time he killed the driver. And plenty of cows have turned up missing since he started to increase his spread. I might,” he added, “go as far as to say that a Taylor would show good sense if he pulled out of Pioneer—tonight.”

  “Yeah?” said Lynn.

  “Yeah,” said McCloud.

  “Thanks for the advice,” said Lynn. He casually inspected the five gunmen who lounged in chairs around the walls and each returned his stare silently.

  Lynn walked out, conscious of the eyes on his back. He took his buckskin’s bridle and led him toward the Silver Dollar Stable for a well-earned rubdown and feed of oats.

  The stableman offered to take the rein but Lynn withheld it, preferring to stall the buckskin himself. Glitter, though tired from the wearing ride, might still have enough energy left to make mincemeat out of a careless hostler.

  Lynn poured a can of oats into the manger and went to work with sponge and brush. He was so deep in thought that he was startled when a stranger spoke behind him.

  “You’re Lynn Taylor, ain’t you?”

  Lynn turned to see a weather-beaten, sun-dried westerner whose leather vest bore evidence of having had something pinned over the heart.

  “I’m Hawkins,” said the stranger. “Six weeks ago I was the sheriff around here—but that was before McCloud and his crowd began to yell for law and order and got the townspeople behind them. If I don’t make a mistake, Taylor, you’re thinkin’ of doin’ something to keep them from stringin’ up your brother.”

  “Yeah, I did have some dim idea along those lines,” said Lynn, continuing his work.

  “I’ve heard of you,” said Hawkins.

  Lynn stabbed a questioning glance at the old man.

  “We hear about most of the Texas gunfighters here in Arizony,” continued Hawkins. “But I didn’t think you’d get here in time. As it is, you’re too late even now. You couldn’t break him out. There are fifteen men, all of them good, on that damned vigilance committee. I mean good with their guns. And McCloud’s got a reputation up north. He’ll own Pioneer in another month and the fools around here yell their heads off for him. Y’ain’t thinkin’ of standin’ up and blazin’ it out with him, are you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “L
ook, Taylor, I ain’t tryin’ to be nosy. It’s good business for me to give you a hand. I don’t rate in this place now. So many crimes came off while I was in office that it took two clerks to file the reports on them.”

  “And you couldn’t stop them from happening?”

  “Takes more than one old man with a gun to stop a man like McCloud. If you and me teamed up, maybe I could get my job back and remove McCloud’s danger to this town.”

  Having finished the rubdown, Lynn wiped his hands and then extended his right to Hawkins. “Okay, but you got to do things my way. That all right?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Why hesitate?”

  “I’ve heard your reputation, after all.”

  “You never heard of me shootin’ a man in the back, Hawkins.”

  “That’s so.”

  “And if you don’t think I’ll move heaven and earth to keep my kid brother from swingin’, you’re crazy.”

  “What’s your idea?”

  “Is there a stage coming in here tonight?”

  “One due at eleven o’clock.”

  “Will it have anything on it?”

  “Regular dispatch box. Maybe two—three thousand. Say, Taylor, you must be loco! How could that help your kid brother?”

  “Never mind that. The point is, are you willing to help me rob that stage if there’s no shooting?”

  “If . . .”

  “You’re either with me or you’re not. You want your job back and unless I get killed in this bargain, it’s yours. Are you going to help me rob that stage or ain’t you?”

  “All right,” said Hawkins, doubtfully, “but by God, I never thought I’d have to commit robbery to establish law and order.”

  Chapter Two

  AT nine o’clock, Lynn Taylor met Hawkins on the corner by the bank where the shadows were deep. The street was streaked by lights from the saloon windows and the whirr of wheels was commingled with tin-panny pianos and half-drunken arguments.

  Lynn looked at the gallows which had been built in the town square and gave a slight shudder. Against the palely rising moon the indistinct silhouette was easily imagined to already hold its prey. That very afternoon had seen the completion of the thirteenth step.