The Strong Land Read online

  THE

  STRONG LAND

  A Western Sextet

  LOUIS L’AMOUR

  THE

  STRONG LAND

  A Western Sextet

  LOUIS L’AMOUR

  edited by

  JON TUSKA

  “The One for the Mohave Kid” first appeared in Western Short Stories; © 1954 by Stadium Publishing Corporation. “His Brother’s Debt” © 1950 by Best Publications, Inc. “A Strong Land Growing” first appeared in Texas Rangers; © 1955 by Better Publications, Inc. “Lit a Shuck for Texas” first appeared in Thrilling Western; © 1948 by Standard Magazines, Inc. “The Nester and the Paiute” © 1948 by Better Publications, Inc. “Barney Takes a Hand” first appeared in Exciting Western; © 1946 by Standard Magazines, Inc. All stories are part of the collections Man Riding West and West of the Tularosa © 2010 by Golden West Literary Agency.

  Published in 2017 by Blackstone Publishing

  Cover design by Sean Thomas

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Trade ISBN: 978-1-4708-6020-2

  Library ISBN: 978-1-4708-6019-6

  CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress

  Blackstone Publishing

  31 Mistletoe Rd.

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.BlackstonePublishing.com

  Contents

  Foreword

  The One for the Mohave Kid

  His Brother’s Debt

  A Strong Land Growing

  Lit a Shuck for Texas

  The Nester and the Paiute

  Barney Takes a Hand

  Foreword

  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 US 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 talk with 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 the novels in book form had to be revamped to meet with this requirement prior to publication.

  L’Amour’s first Western novel under his own byline was Westward the Tide (World’s Work, 1950). It was rejected by every American publisher to which it was submitted. 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 two-fers. 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 he was paid an advance of $250. Another novel for Jason Press followed and then Silver Cañon (Avalon Books, 1956) for Thomas Bouregy & Company.

  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).

  Yet I feel that some of Louis L’Amour’s finest work is to be found in his early magazine fiction. Several of those stories are collected here, reprinted as they first appeared, and possessing the characteristics in purest form that I suspect account in largest measure for the loyal following Louis L’Amour won from his readers: the young male hero who is in the process of growing into manhood and who is evaluating other huma
n beings and his own experiences; a resourceful frontier woman who has beauty as well as fortitude; and the powerful, romantic, strangely compelling vision of the American West that 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, 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 One for

  the Mohave Kid

  We had finished our antelope steak and beans, and the coffee pot was back on the stove again, brewing strong, black cowpuncher coffee just like you’d make over a creosote and ironwood fire out on the range.

  Red Temple was cleaning his carbine and Doc Lander had tipped back in his chair with a pipe lighted. The stove was cherry-red, the woodbox full, and our beds were warming up for the night. It was early autumn, but the nights were already cool. In a holster, hanging from the end of a bunk, was a worn-handled, single-action .44 pistol—and the holster had seen service as well as the gun.

  “Whenever,” Doc Lander said, “a bad man is born, there is also born a man to take him. For every Billy the Kid there is a Pat Garrett, an’ for every Wes Hardin there’s a John Selman.”

  Red picked up a piece of pine wood, and, flicking open the stove door, he chucked it in. He followed it with another, and we all sat silent, watching the warm red glow of the flames. When the door was shut again, Red looked up from his rifle. “An’ for every John Selman there’s a Scarborough,” he said, “an’ for every Scarborough, a Logan.”

  “Exactly,” Doc Lander agreed, “an’ for every Mohave Kid there’s a …”

  * * * * *

  Some men are born to evil, and such a one was the Mohave Kid. Now I’m not saying that environment doesn’t have its influence, but some men are born with twisted minds, just as some are born with crooked teeth. The Mohave Kid was born with a streak of viciousness and cruelty that no kindness could eradicate. He had begun to show it when a child, and it developed fast until the Kid had killed his first man.

  It was pure, unadulterated murder. No question of fair play, although the Kid was deadly with any kind of a gun. He shot an old Mexican, stole his outfit and three horses that he sold near the border. And the Mohave Kid was fifteen years old when that happened.

  By the time he was twenty-two he was wanted in four states and three territories. He had, the records said, killed eleven men. Around the saloons and livery stables they said he had killed twenty-one. Actually he had killed twenty-nine, for the Kid had killed a few when they didn’t know he was in the country, and they had been listed as murders by Indians or travelers. Of the twenty-nine men he had killed, nine of them had been killed with something like an even break.

  But the Mohave Kid was as elusive as he was treacherous. And his mother had been a Holdstock. There were nine families of Holdstocks scattered through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, and three times that many who were kinfolk. They were a clannish lot, given to protecting their own, even as bad an apple as the Mohave Kid.

  At twenty-two, the Kid was five feet seven inches tall and weighed one hundred and seventy pounds. He had a round, flat face, a bland expression, and heavy-lidded eyes. He did not look alert, but his expression belied the truth, for he was always wary, always keyed for trouble.

  He killed for money, for horses, in quarrels, or for pure cruelty, and several of his killings were as senseless as they were ruthless. This very fact contributed much to the fear with which he was regarded, for there was no guessing where he might strike next. People avoided looking at him, avoided even the appearance of talking about him when he was around. Usually they got out of a place when he came into it, but as unobtrusively as possible.

  Aside from the United States marshals or the Texas Rangers in their respective bailiwicks, there was only local law. Little attention was given to arresting men for crimes committed elsewhere, which served as excuse for officers of the law who preferred to avoid the risks of trying to arrest the Mohave Kid.

  Ab Kale was an exception. Ab was thirty-three when elected marshal of the cow town of Hinkley, and he owned a little spread of his own three miles out of town. He ran a few cows, raised a few horses, and made his living as marshal. For seven years he was a good one. He kept order, never made needless arrests, and was well liked around town. At thirty-four he married Amie Holdstock, a second cousin to the Mohave Kid.

  As the Kid’s reputation grew, Kale let it be known throughout the family that he would make no exception of the Kid, and the Kid was to stay away from Hinkley. Some of the clan agreed this was fair enough, and the Kid received word to avoid the town. Others took exception to Kale’s refusal to abide by clan law where the Kid was concerned, but those few dwindled rapidly as the Kid’s murderous propensities became obvious.

  The Holdstock clan began to realize that in the case of the Mohave Kid they had sheltered a viper in their bosom, a wanton killer as dangerous to their well-being as to others. A few doors of the clan were closed against him, excuses were found for not giving him shelter, and the feeling began to permeate the clan that the idea was a good one.

  The Mohave Kid had seemed to take no exception to the hints that he avoid making trouble for cousin Kale, yet as the months wore on, he became more sullen and morose, and the memory of Ab Kale preyed upon his mind.

  In the meantime, no man is marshal of a Western cow town without having some trouble. Steady and considerate as Kale was, there had been those with whom he could not reason. He had killed three men.

  All were killed in fair, stand-up gunfights, all were shot cleanly and surely, and it was talked around that Kale was some hand with a gun himself. In each case he had allowed an even break and proved faster than the men he killed. All of this the Mohave Kid absorbed, and here and there he heard speculation, never in front of him, that the Mohave Kid was avoiding Hinkley because he wanted no part of Ab Kale.

  Tall, well-built, and prematurely gray, Kale was a fine-appearing man. His home was small but comfortable, and he had two daughters, one his own child, one a stepdaughter of seventeen named Ruth who he loved as his own. He had no son, and this was a matter of regret.

  Ab Kale was forty when he had his showdown with the Mohave Kid. But on the day when Riley McClean dropped off a freight train on the edge of Hinkley, the date of that showdown was still two years away.

  If McClean ever told Kale what had happened to him before he crawled out of that empty boxcar in Hinkley, Ab never repeated it. Riley was nineteen, six feet tall, and lean as a rail. His clothes were in bad shape, and he was unshaven and badly used up, and somebody had given him a beating. What had happened to the other fellow or fellows, nobody ever knew.

  Ab Kale saw McClean leave the train and called out to him. The boy stopped and stood, waiting. As Kale walked toward him, he saw the lines of hunger in the boy’s face, saw the emaciated body, the ragged clothes, the bruises and cuts. He saw a boy who had been roughly used, but there was still courage in his eyes.

  “Where you headed for, son?”

  Riley McClean shrugged. “This is as good a place as any. I’m hunting a job.”

  “What do you do?”

  “’Most anything. It don’t make no difference.”

  Now when a man says that he can do almost anything, it is a safe bet he can do nothing, or at least that he can do nothing well. If a man has a trade, he is proud of it and says so, and usually he will do a passing job of anything else he tackles. Yet Kale reserved his opinion. And it was well that he did.

  “Better come over to my office,” Kale said. “You’ll need to get shaved and washed up.”

  McClean went along, and somehow he stayed. Nothing was ever said about leaving by either of them. McClean cleaned up, ate at the marshal’s expense, and then slept the clock around. When Kale returned to the office and jail the next morning, he found the place swept, mopped, and dusted, and McClean was
sitting on the cot in the open cell where he had slept, repairing a broken reata.

  Obviously new to the West, Riley McClean seemed new to nothing else. He had slim, graceful hands and deft fingers. He cobbled shoes, repaired harness, built a chimney for Chalfant’s new house, and generally kept busy,

  After he had been two weeks in Hinkley, Ab Kale was sitting at his desk one day when Riley McClean entered. Kale opened a drawer and took out a pair of beautifully matched .44 Russians, one of the finest guns Smith & Wesson ever made. They were thrust in new holsters on a new belt studded with cartridges. “If you’re going to live out here, you’d better learn to use those,” Kale said briefly.

  After that the two rode out of town every morning for weeks, and in a narrow cañon on the back of Kale’s little ranch Riley McClean learned how to use a six-shooter.

  “Just stand naturally,” Kale advised him, “and let your hand swing naturally to the gun butt. You’ve probably heard about a so-called gunman’s crouch. There is no such thing among gunfighters who know their business. Stand any way that is easy to you. Crouching may make a smaller target of you, but it also puts a man off balance and cramps his movements. Balance is as important to a gunfighter as to a boxer. Stand easy on your feet, let your hand swing back naturally, and take the hammer spur with the inside of the thumb, cocking the gun as it is grasped, the tip of the trigger finger on the trigger.”

  Kale watched McClean try it. “The most important thing is a good grip. The finger on the trigger helps to align your gun properly, and, after you’ve practiced, you’ll see that your gun will line up perfectly with that grip.”

  He watched McClean keenly and was pleased. The boy had the same ease with a gun he seemed to have with all tools, and his coordination was natural and easy. “You’ll find,” he added, “in shooting from the hip that you can change your point of aim by a slight movement of your left foot. Practice until you find just the right position for your feet, and then go through the motions until it’s second nature.”