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  LOUIS L'AMOUR

  Grub

  Line

  Rider

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Introduction

  The Black Rock Coffin Makers

  Grub Line Rider

  Desert Death Song

  One Last Gun Notch

  Ride, You Tonto Raiders

  War Party

  Law of the Desert

  About the Editor

  Other Leisure Books By Louis L’Amour

  Copyright

  Introduction

  by Jon Tuska

  Louis Dearborn LaMoore (1908–1988) was born in Jamestown, North Dakota. He left home at fifteen and subsequently held a wide variety of jobs although he worked mostly as a merchant seaman. From his earliest youth, L’Amour had a love of verse. His first published work was a poem, “The Chap Worth While,” appearing when he was eighteen years old in his former hometown’s newspaper, the Jamestown Sun. It is the only poem from his early years that he left out of SMOKE FROM THIS ALTAR, which appeared in 1939 from Lusk Publishers in Oklahoma City, a book which L’Amour published himself; however, this poem is reproduced in THE LOUIS L’AMOUR COMPANION (Andrews and McMeel, 1992) edited by Robert Weinberg. L’Amour wrote poems and articles for a number of small circulation arts magazines all through the early 1930s and, after hundreds of rejection slips, finally had his first story accepted, “Anything for a Pal” in True Gang Life (10/35). He returned in 1938 to live with his family where they had settled in Choctaw, Oklahoma, determined to make writing his career. He wrote a fight story bought by Standard Magazines that year and became acquainted with editor Leo Margulies, who was to play an important role later in L’Amour’s life. “The Town No Guns Could Tame” in New Western (3/40) was his first published Western story.

  During the Second World War L’Amour was drafted and ultimately served with the U.S. Army Transportation Corps in Europe. However, in the two years before he was shipped out, he managed to write a great many adventure stories for Standard Magazines. The first story he published in 1946, the year of his discharge, was a Western, “Law of the Desert Born” in Dime Western (4/46). A call to Leo Margulies resulted in L’Amour’s agreeing to write Western stories for the various Western pulp magazines published by Standard Magazines, a third of which appeared under the byline Jim Mayo, the name of a character in L’Amour’s earlier adventure fiction. The proposal for L’Amour to write new Hopalong Cassidy novels came from Margulies, who wanted to launch Hopalong Cassidy’s Western Magazine to take advantage of the popularity William Boyd’s old films and new television series were enjoying with a new generation. Doubleday & Company agreed to publish the pulp novelettes in hardcover books. L’Amour was paid $500 a story, no royalties, and he was assigned the house name Tex Burns. L’Amour read Clarence E. Mulford’s books about the Bar-20 and based his Hopalong Cassidy on Mulford’s original creation. Only two issues of the magazine appeared before it ceased publication. Doubleday felt that the Hopalong character had to appear exactly as William Boyd did in the films and on television and thus even the first two novels had to be revamped to meet with this requirement prior to publication in book form.

  L’Amour’s first Western novel under his own byline was WESTWARD THE TIDE (World’s Work, 1950). World’s Work paid a flat £75 without royalties for British Empire rights in perpetuity. L’Amour sold his first Western short story to a slick magazine a year later, “The Gift of Cochise” in Collier’s (7/5/52). Robert Fellows and John Wayne purchased screen rights to this story from L’Amour for $4,000 and James Edward Grant, one of Wayne’s favorite screenwriters, developed a script from it, changing L’Amour’s Ches Lane to Hondo Lane. L’Amour retained the right to novelize Grant’s screenplay, which differs substantially from his short story, and he was able to get an endorsement from Wayne to be used as a blurb, stating that HONDO was the finest Western Wayne had ever read. HONDO (Fawcett Gold Medal, 1953) by Louis L’Amour was released on the same day as the film, HONDO (Warner, 1953), with a first printing of 320,000 copies.

  With SHOWDOWN AT YELLOW BUTTE (Ace, 1953) by Jim Mayo, L’Amour began a series of short Western novels for Don Wollheim that could be doubled with other short novels by other authors in Ace Publishing’s paperback twofers. Advances on these were $800 and usually the author never earned any royalties. HELLER WITH A GUN (Fawcett Gold Medal, 1955) was the first of a series of original Westerns L’Amour had agreed to write under his own name following the success for Fawcett of HONDO. L’Amour wanted even this early to have his Western novels published in hardcover editions. He expanded “Guns of the Timberland” by Jim Mayo in West (9/50) for GUNS OF THE TIMBERLANDS (Jason Press, 1955), a hardcover Western for which hewas paid an advance of $250. Another novel for Jason Press followed and then SILVER CAÑON (Avalon Books, 1956) for Thomas Bouregy & Company. These were basically lending library publishers and the books seldom earned much money above the small advances paid.

  The great turn in L’Amour’s fortunes came about because of problems Saul David was having with his original paperback Westerns program at Bantam Books. Fred Glidden had been signed to a contract to produce two original paperback Luke Short Western novels a year for an advance of $15,000 each. It was a long-term contract but, in the first ten years of it, Fred only wrote six novels. Literary agent Marguerite Harper then persuaded Bantam that Fred’s brother, Jon, could help fulfill the contract and Jon was signed for eight Peter Dawson Western novels. When Jon died suddenly before completing even one book for Bantam, Harper managed to engage a ghost writer at the Disney studios to write these eight “Peter Dawson” novels, beginning with THE SAVAGES (Bantam, 1959). They proved inferior to anything Jon had ever written and what sales they had seemed to be due only to the Peter Dawson name.

  Saul David wanted to know from L’Amour if he could deliver two Western novels a year. L’Amour said he could, and he did. In fact, by 1962 this number was increased to three original paperback novels a year. The first L’Amour novel to appear under the Bantam contract was RADIGAN (Bantam, 1958).

  Abasic element to many a range war plot is the villain’s means for crowding out the other ranchers in a district. He brings in a giant herd that requires all the available grass and forces all the smaller ranchers out of business. It was this same strategy Bantam used in marketing L’Amour. All of his Western titles were continuously kept in print. Independent distributors were required to buy titles in lots of 10,000 copies if they wanted access to other Bantam titles at significantly discounted prices. In time L’Amour’s paperbacks forced almost every one else off the racks in the Western sections. L’Amour himself comprised the other half of this successful strategy. He dressed up in cowboy outfits, traveled about the country in a motor home visiting with independent distributors, taking them to dinner and charming them, making them personal friends. He promoted himself at every available opportunity. L’Amour insisted that he was telling the stories of the people who had made America a great nation and he appealed to patriotism as much as to commercialism in his rhetoric.

  Once when we were talking and Louis had showed me his topographical maps and his library of thousands of volumes which he claimed he used for research, he asserted that, if he claimed there was a rock in a road at a certain point in a story, his readers knew that if they went to that spot they would find the rock just as he described it. I told him that might be so but I personally was troubled by the many inconsistencies in his stories. Take LAST STAND AT PAPAGO WELLS (Fawcett Gold Medal, 1957). Five characters are killed during an Indian raid. One of the surviving characters emerges from seclusion after the attack and counts six corp
ses.

  “I’ll have to go back and count them again,” L’Amour said, and smiled. “But, you know, I don’t think the people who read my books would really care.”

  There are some spectacular moments in Louis L’Amour’s Western fiction. I think he was at his best in the shorter forms, especially his magazine stories, and the two best stories he ever wrote appeared in the 1950s, “The Gift of Cochise” early in the decade and “War Party” in The Saturday Evening Post (6/59). The latter was later expanded by L’Amour to serve as the opening chapters for BENDIGO SHAFTER (Dutton, 1979). “War Party,” reprinted here as it first appeared, possesses several of the characteristics in purest form which I suspect, no matter how diluted they ultimately would become, account in largest measure for the loyal following Louis L’Amour won from his read-ers: the young male narrator who is in the process of growing into manhood and who is evaluating other human beings and his own experiences; a resourceful frontier woman who has beauty as well as fortitude; a strong male character who is single and hence marriageable; and the powerful, romantic, strangely compelling vision of the American West which invests L’Amour’s Western fiction and makes it such a delightful escape from the cares of a later time—in this author’s words from this story, that “big country needing big men and women to live in it” and where there was no place for “the frightened or the mean.”

  The Black Rock Coffin Makers

  I

  Jim Gatlin had been up the creek and over the mountains, and more than once had been on both ends of a six-shooter. Lean and tall, with shoulders wide for his height and a face like saddle leather, he was, at the moment, doing a workman-like job of demolishing the last of a thick steak and picking off isolated beans that had escaped his initial attack. He was 1,000 miles from home and knew nobody in the town of Tucker.

  He glanced up as the door opened and saw a short, thick-bodied man. The man gave one startled look at Jim and ducked back out of sight. Gatlin blinked in surprise, then shrugged and filled his coffee cup from the pot standing on the restaurant table.

  Puzzled, he listened to the rapidly receding pound of a horse’s hoofs, then rolled a smoke, sitting back with a contented sigh. Some 250-odd miles to the north was the herd he had drifted northwest from Texas. The money the cattle had brought was in the belt around his waist and his pants pockets. Nothing remained now but to return to Texas, bank the profit, and pick up a new herd.

  The outer door opened again, and a tall girl entered the restaurant. Turning right, she started for the door leading to the hotel. She stopped abruptly as though his presence had only then registered. She turned, and her eyes widened in alarm. Swiftly she crossed the room to him.

  “Are you insane?” she whispered. “Sitting here like that when the town is full of Wing Cary’s hands? They know you’re coming and have been watching for you for days.”

  Gatlin looked up, smiling. “Ma’am, you’ve sure got the wrong man, although if a girl as pretty as you is worried about him, he sure is a lucky fellow. I’m a stranger here. I never saw the place until an hour ago.”

  She stepped back, puzzled, and then the door slammed open once more, and a man stepped into the room. He was as tall as Jim, but thinner, and his dark eyes were angry. “Get away from him, Lisa! I’m killin’ him…right now!”

  The man’s hand flashed for a gun, and Gatlin dived sidewise to the floor, drawing as he fell. Agun roared in the room, then Gatlin fired twice.

  The tall man caught himself, jerking his left arm against his ribs, his face twisted as he gasped for breath. Then he wilted slowly to the floor, his gun sliding from his fingers.

  Gatlin got to his feet, staring at the stranger. He swung his eyes to the girl staring at him. “Who is that hombre?” he snapped. “What’s this all about? Who did he think I was?”

  “You…you’re not…you aren’t Jim Walker?” Her voice was high, amazed.

  “Walker?” He shook his head. “I’m sure as hell not. The name is Gatlin. I’m just driftin’ through.”

  There was a rush of feet in the street outside. She caught his hand. “Come. Come quickly. They won’t listen to you. They’ll kill you. All the Cary outfit are in town.”

  She ran beside him, dodging into the hotel, and then swiftly down a hall. As the front door burst open, they plunged out the back and into the alley behind the building. Unerringly she led him to the left, and then opened the back door of another building and drew him inside. Silently she closed the door and stood closely beside him, panting in the darkness.

  Shouts and curses rang from the building next door. A door banged, and men charged up and down outside. Jim was still holding his gun, but now he withdrew the empty shells and fed two into the cylinder to replace those fired. He slipped a sixth into the usually empty chamber. “What is this place?” he whispered. “Will they come here?”

  “It’s a law office,” she whispered. “I work here part time, and I left the door open myself. They’ll not think of this place.” Stealthily she lifted the bar and dropped it into place. “Better sit down. They’ll be searching the streets for some time.”

  He found the desk and seated himself on the corner, well out of line with the windows. He could see only the vaguest outline of her face. His first impression of moments before was strong enough for him to remember she was pretty. The gray eyes were wide and clear, her figure rounded yet slim. “What is this?” he repeated. “What was he gunnin’ for me for?”

  “It wasn’t you. He thought you were Jim Walker of the XY. If you aren’t actually him, you look enough like him to be a brother, a twin brother.”

  “Where is he? What goes on here? Who was that hombre who tried to gun me down?”

  She paused, and seemed to be thinking, and he had the idea she was still uncertain whether to believe him or not. “The man you killed was Bill Trout. He was the badman of Paradise country and segundo on Wing Cary’s Flying C spread. Jim Walker called him a thief and a murderer in talking to Cary, and Trout threatened to shoot him on sight. Walker hasn’t been seen since, and that was four days ago, so everybody believed Walker had skipped the country. Nobody blamed him much.”

  “What’s it all about?” Gatlin inquired.

  “North of here, up beyond Black Rock, is Alder Creek country, with some rich bottom hay land lying in several corners of the mountains. This is dry country, but that Alder Creek area has springs and some small streams flowing down out of the hills. The streams flow into the desert and die there, so the water is good only for the man who controls the range.”

  “And that was Walker?”

  “No, up until three weeks ago, it was old Dave Butler. Then Dave was thrown from his horse and killed, and, when they read his will, he had left the property to be sold at auction and the money to be paid to his nephew and niece back in New York. However, the joker was, he stipulated that Jim Walker was to get the ranch if he would bid ten thousand cash and forty thousand on his note, payable in six years.”

  “In other words, he wanted Walker to have the property?” Jim asked. “He got first chance at it?”

  “That’s right. And I was to get second chance. If Jim didn’t want to make the bid, I could have it for the same price. If neither of us wanted it, the ranch was to go on public auction, and that means that Cary and Horwick would get it. They have the money, and nobody around here could outbid them.”

  The street outside was growing quieter as the excitement of the chase died down. “I think,” Lisa continued, “that Uncle Dave wanted Jim to have the property because Jim did so much to develop it. Jim was foreman of the XY acting for Dave. Then, Uncle Dave knew my father and liked me, and he knew I loved the ranch, so he wanted me to have second chance, but I don’t have the money, and they all know it. Jim had some of it, and he could get the rest. I think that was the real issue behind his trouble with Trout. I believe Wing deliberately set Trout to kill him, and Jim’s statements about Bill were a result of the pushing around Bill Trout had given him.”

&n
bsp; The pattern was not unfamiliar, and Gatlin could easily appreciate the situation. Water was gold in this country of sparse grass. To a cattleman, such a ranch as Lisa described could be second to none, with plenty of water and grass and good hay meadows. Suddenly she caught his arm. Men were talking outside the door.

  “Looks like he got plumb away, Wing. Old Ben swears there was nobody in the room with him but that Lisa Cochrane, an’ she never threw that gun, but how Jim Walker ever beat Trout is more’n I can see. Why, Bill was the fastest man around here unless it’s you or me.”

  “That wasn’t Walker, Pete. It couldn’t have been.”

  “Ben swears it was, an’ Woody Hammer busted right through the door in front of him. Said it was Jim, all right.”

  Wing Cary’s voice was irritable. “I tell you, it couldn’t have been!” he flared. “Jim Walker never saw the day he dared face Trout with a gun. I’ve seen Walker draw an’ he never was fast.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t,” Pete Chasin agreed dryly, “but Trout’s dead, ain’t he?”

  “Three days left,” Cary said. “Lisa Cochrane hasn’t the money, and it doesn’t look like Walker will even be bidding. Let it ride, Pete. I don’t think we need to worry about anything. Even if that was Walker…an’ I’d take an oath it wasn’t…he’s gone for good now. All we have to do is sit tight.”

  The two moved off, and Jim Gatlin, staring at the girl in the semidarkness, saw her lips were tightly pressed. His eyes had grown accustomed to the dim light, and he could see around the small office. It was a simple room with a desk, chair, and filing cabinets. Well-filled bookcases lined the walls.

  He got to his feet. “I’ve got to get my gear out of that hotel,” he said, “and my horse.”

  “You’re leaving?” she asked.

  Jim glanced at her in surprise. “Why, sure. Why stay here in a fight that’s not my own? I’ve already killed one man, and, if I stay, I’ll have to kill more or be killed myself. There’s nothing here for me.”