Devil's Manhunt (Stories from the Golden Age) (12 page)

drag:
the rear of a column of cattle on the trail. It includes the footsore, the weak, the young calves, the weary and the lazy. The drag position is no fun for the hands assigned to ride it—they have to make the sick and the stragglers keep up, chase the breakaways and suffer the dust. Since it is unpleasant, green hands usually get assigned to ride drag.
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fan:
to fire a series of shots (from a single-action revolver) by holding the trigger back and successively striking the hammer to the rear with the free hand.
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Giant:
Giant powder; dynamite manufactured by the Giant Powder Co, the first US dynamite manufacturing plant, in 1870 in San Francisco, California. “Giant powder” was a long time synonym for dynamite in the US.
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gig:
a light carriage, with one pair of wheels, drawn by one horse.
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G-men:
government men; agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
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gumbo:
soil that turns very sticky and muddy when it becomes wet; found throughout the central US.
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half-breed:
a person with parents of different races, usually a white father and Native American mother. The term originated in the East, not the Western frontier.
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hoss:
horse.
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hostler:
a person who takes care of horses, especially at an inn.
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jenny:
a female donkey.
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jimminies, by:
a mild exclamation of surprise, emotion or awe.
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larrup:
to beat, flog or thrash, said of a horse to make it go faster.
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livery stable:
a stable that accommodates and looks after horses for their owners.
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Martini-Henry:
a breech-loaded .45-caliber rifle adopted in 1871 as the standard British service weapon, named after its inventors.
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Mickey Finn:
a drug-laced drink given to someone without their knowledge in order to incapacitate them. Named after a bartender who, before his days as a saloon proprietor, was known as a pickpocket and thief who often preyed on drunken bar patrons.
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mow:
haymow; the upper floor of a barn or stable used for storing hay.
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owl-hoot:
outlaw.
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parley:
to talk or negotiate, especially with an enemy.
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Peacemaker:
nickname for the single-action (that is, cocked by hand for each shot), six-shot Army model revolver first produced in 1873 by the Colt Firearms Company, the armory founded by Samuel Colt (1814–1862). The handgun of the Old West, it became the instrument of both lawmaker and lawbreaker during the last twenty-five years of the nineteenth century. It soon earned various names, such as “hog leg,” “Equalizer,” and “Judge Colt and his jury of six.”
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placer:
a waterborne deposit of gravel or sand containing heavy ore minerals, as gold, which have been eroded from their original bedrock and concentrated as small particles that can be washed out.
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poke:
a small sack or bag, usually a crude leather pouch, in which a miner carried his gold dust and nuggets.
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Prop.:
Proprietor.
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puncher:
a hired hand who tends cattle and performs other duties on horseback.
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quirt:
a riding whip with a short handle and a braided leather lash.
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rannies:
ranahans; cowboys or top ranch hands.
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riffles:
in mining, the strips of metal or wooden slats fixed to the bottom of a rocker box or sluice (a long sloping trough into which water is directed), that run perpendicular to the flow of water. The weight of the gold causes it to sink, where it is captured by these riffles.
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Scheherazade:
the female narrator of
The Arabian Nights,
who during one thousand and one adventurous nights saved her life by entertaining her husband, the king, with stories.
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sidewinder:
rattlesnake.
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sinks:
depressions in the land surface where water has no outlet and simply stands. The word is usually applied to dry lake beds, where the evaporating water has left alkali and other mineral salts.
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slug:
a bullet.
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sluice:
sluice box; a long, narrow wood or metal artificial channel that water passes through when put in a creek or stream to separate the dirt and junk material away from the gold. Gold, a very dense metal, stays in the sluice box because of its heavy weight.
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“Streets of Laredo”:
a song, also known as the “Cowboy’s Lament.” It is a famous cowboy ballad in which a dying cowboy dispenses his advice to another.
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trail herd:
a herd of cattle driven along a trail, especially from their home range to market.
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waddy:
a cowboy, especially one who drifts from ranch to ranch and helps out in busy times. In the spring and fall when some ranches were short-handed, they took on anyone who was able to ride a horse and used him for a week or so; hence the word
waddy
, derived from
wadding—
anything to fill in. Some cowmen used the word to mean a cattle rustler; later it was applied to any cowboy.
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war sack:
a cowboy’s bag for his personal possessions, plunder, cartridges, etc. Often made of canvas but sometimes just a flour or grain sack, it is usually tied behind the saddle.
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Winchester:
an early family of repeating rifles; a single-barreled rifle containing multiple rounds of ammunition. Manufactured by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, it was widely used in the US during the latter half of the nineteenth century. The 1873 model is often called “the gun that won the West” for its immense popularity at that time, as well as its use in fictional Westerns.
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wind devils:
spinning columns of air that move across the landscape and pick up loose dust. They look like miniature tornados, but are not as powerful.
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Yucatán:
a peninsula mostly in southeastern Mexico between the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.
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L. Ron Hubbard in the
Golden Age of
Pulp Fiction

I
n writing an adventure story
a writer has to know that he is adventuring
for a lot of people who cannot.
The writer has to take them here and there
about the globe and show them
excitement and love and realism.
As long as that writer is living the part of an
adventurer when he is hammering
the keys, he is succeeding with his story.

Adventuring is a state of mind.
If you adventure through life, you have a
good chance to be a success on paper.

Adventure doesn’t mean globe-trotting,
exactly, and it doesn’t mean great deeds.
Adventuring is like art.
You have to live it to make it real.

— L. Ron Hubbard

L. Ron Hubbard
and American
Pulp Fiction

B
ORN
March 13, 1911, L. Ron Hubbard lived a life at least as expansive as the stories with which he enthralled a hundred million readers through a fifty-year career.

Originally hailing from Tilden, Nebraska, he spent his formative years in a classically rugged Montana, replete with the cowpunchers, lawmen and desperadoes who would later people his Wild West adventures. And lest anyone imagine those adventures were drawn from vicarious experience, he was not only breaking broncs at a tender age, he was also among the few whites ever admitted into Blackfoot society as a bona fide blood brother. While if only to round out an otherwise rough and tumble youth, his mother was that rarity of her time—a thoroughly educated woman—who introduced her son to the classics of Occidental literature even before his seventh birthday.

But as any dedicated L. Ron Hubbard reader will attest, his world extended far beyond Montana. In point of fact, and as the son of a United States naval officer, by the age of eighteen he had traveled over a quarter of a million miles. Included therein were three Pacific crossings to a then still mysterious Asia, where he ran with the likes of Her British Majesty’s agent-in-place for North China, and the last in the line of Royal Magicians from the court of Kublai Khan. For the record, L. Ron Hubbard was also among the first Westerners to gain admittance to forbidden Tibetan monasteries below Manchuria, and his photographs of China’s Great Wall long graced American geography texts.

Upon his return to the United States and a hasty completion of his interrupted high school education, the young Ron Hubbard entered George Washington University. There, as fans of his aerial adventures may have heard, he earned his wings as a pioneering barnstormer at the dawn of American aviation. He also earned a place in free-flight record books for the longest sustained flight above Chicago. Moreover, as a roving reporter for
Sportsman Pilot
(featuring his first professionally penned articles), he further helped inspire a generation of pilots who would take America to world airpower.