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    Gunman's Tally
    Gunman's Tally
    Gunman's Tally
    Ebook131 pages1 hour

    Gunman's Tally

    By L. Ron Hubbard

    2.5/5

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    Some men look to keep the peace. Others look to make trouble. But sometimes even the most law-abiding of men are compelled to cross the line….

    Easy Bill Gates is just such a man—as quick with a smile and as slow to anger as Gary Cooper in High Noon. He’s a model of restraint…until he’s forced to strap on a holster and kill the outlaw who murdered his brother. But more than his honor is at stake. A ruthless land baron is out to grab Bill’s ranch and he’s hired a gang of gunslingers to get Bill out of the way.

    Between the rancher who wants to take his land, and the young guns who want to take his life, Easy Bill will have to make some hard choices—and fast draws—to avoid becoming just another notch in the Gunman’s Tally.

    Hailing from the western states of Nebraska, Oklahoma and Montana, Hubbard grew up surrounded by grizzled frontiersmen and leather-tough cowboys, counting a Native American medicine man as one of his closest friends. When he chose to write stories of the Old West, Hubbard didn’t have to go far to do his research, drawing on his own memories of a youth steeped in the life and legends of the American frontier.

    Also includes the Western adventure, Ruin at Rio Piedras, the story of a young cowboy kicked off a ranch for falling in love with the owner’s daughter…only to devise a whip-smart plan to win the day—and the girl.

    “Outstanding.” —Midwest Book Review

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGalaxy Press
    Release dateMar 21, 2013
    ISBN9781592125685
    Author

    L. Ron Hubbard

    With 19 New York Times bestsellers and more than 350 million copies of his works in circulation, L. Ron Hubbard is among the most enduring and widely read authors of our time. As a leading light of American Pulp Fiction through the 1930s and '40s, he is further among the most influential authors of the modern age. Indeed, from Ray Bradbury to Stephen King, there is scarcely a master of imaginative tales who has not paid tribute to L. Ron Hubbard. Then too, of course, there is all L. Ron Hubbard represents as the Founder of Dianetics and Scientology and thus the only major religion born in the 20th century.

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    Reviews for Gunman's Tally

    2.5/5

    15 ratings8 reviews

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    • 1/5
      Having never encountered any of Hubbard's work, I judged this book by its cover and expected a pulp western with little substance, but perhaps a mildly entertaining story. If this story was simply flat I would not be surprised, but this narrative, if one could call it that, abounds in plot holes and ill conceived characters, not to mention some criminally offensive writing. His similes fall flatter than a three legged horse on a racetrack. His metaphors are not much better. Keep in mind he only resorts to those when he runs out of adjectives. Also, nothing tragic happens in this story. All the good guys turn out as spotless as a hog in buttermilk. As for the bad guys, well, what do you think? Not even blindness can stop the quickest draw in the West, or wherever the hell this story takes place. Hubbard's not too clear on that, either. In short, this drivel makes Bonanza look like the Royal Shakespeare Company.
    • 3/5
      Received via Early Reviewers Program.Of the three Hubbard pulp stories I have listened to so far on audiobook, Gunman's Tally is the best of the lot in my opinion. That may be due to setting as I prefer Westerns over World War II stories.I'm still not entirely "sold" on the pulp genre as a whole (or L. Ron Hubbard specifically), but the story wasn't half bad and a good example of the genre and the time period it was written in.
    • 5/5
      I received a set of L. Ron Hubbard audiobooks to review. This was one of them. The audiobook portion was very well-done and was more like a radio drama of old and less like a traditional audiobook. I did not care for the actual book though.
    • 1/5
      This review contains spoilers near the end. From the description, one knows what to expect regarding the events in this book. Hubbard has written a geographically confusing western with relatively flat characters which fails on almost every level to remain engaging and entertaining. The music and voice actors often cloud the story with overacting and terrible stage accents and it makes it harder to identify or care about any of them. I agree with another review which said it made them laugh because I was laughing quite often while listening, but it was by no means from enjoyment. There are quite a few racist elements to this story which, while to be expected from most pulp novels, really seem placed oddly throughout the book. For example, referring to Mexicans as "Mex" and "Mexs" ad nauseum during one chapter and referring to "Ching the Chinaman" in extremely stereotypical, racist ways. This doesn't add anything to the novel and in context to the story, it seems often forced by the author. The plot is straightforward until the end and never ceases to be overwhelmingly purple. Hubbard definitely takes his time getting to the point or the action and he often overwrites situations and repeats himself. On more than one occasion, he describes a character as doing the same exact thing in the same way within a single scene, such as having a character get up angrily, walk across the room angrily, reach for something angrily, etc... He also repeats the entire character's name rather than using pronouns or shortening anything (Easy Bill is always Easy Bill, Smiling Jimmy is always Smiling Jimmy, etc...) and it gets rather tedious. The ending is the most frustrating part of this book because Smiling Jimmy rides into town and is murdered by Greaser, yet after the climax, reveals himself to be alive. However, Greaser himself and Barton, the main villain, discuss how Jimmy was murdered. When Jimmy shows up to greet Bill at the end, no explanation is given. The only thing readers are told is that Easy Bill can discern what has happened for himself. As a reader, I'm left frustrated with disbelief. Hubbard seems to have copped out at the end to give everyone a happy ending.
    • 1/5
      I should preface this by saying that I’m not really a fan of audiobooks in general-- I personally find them more effective for non-fiction works than for fiction, where I feel the portrayals limit my imagination and thus my enjoyment of the book. That being said, I could see the effort put into releasing this audiobook, but I didn’t find it particularly well done or enjoyable to listen to.Actually, my favorite part of this audiobook was probably the packaging. It contained several essays on the author and his pulp fiction works in particular. They're biased but nonetheless provide an interesting context. Perhaps the most fascinating tidbit from the biographical essay discusses L. Ron Hubbard’s short-lived Argosy column and reality tv prodromus “Hell Job,” which described his experiences in a series of “dangerous professions.” A quick Google search reveals that some of his assignments included “Mine Inspector” and “Flying Trapeze,” and also, weirdly, “Ethnologist.” I imagine that these engagements shaped Hubbard’s preference for the pulp genre, in which he was extremely prolific.I think that anyone who is a fan of pulp westerns will find this to be a standard offering. The story, admittedly a light one that doesn't really go anywhere quickly, involves cattle ranching and gunfire, and the writing revels in the hardscrabble portrait of the American West that is so appealing to adventure seekers. However, some issues become magnified when the novel is converted to an audiobook format. Descriptions that probably seem standard on the page start to take on a disconcerting tone. I would venture to guess that when Hubbard wrote this story, he did not expect it to get such a treatment. In fact, this revival project raises the question of whether he expected any of these works, which were admittedly printed on cheap, easily decaying paper (hence the name “pulp fiction”) to be preserved for posterity.The prose here may be a matter of taste (I personally find it jarring to read that a man’s brain has “congealed around one thought.”) I also found some of the descriptive writing distracting-- at one point Hubbard writes that a man is an absurdly specific “6 feet 4 and only 130 pounds.” At other points the dialogue seems forced. But these are minor quibbles, and probably apply to the pulp genre as a whole-- the overall problem being that the text is dated in some obvious ways (it’s pretty distracting to hear a story told about a cowboy type named “Bill Gates,” for one.) You have to wonder whether the group of people working on this adaptation in 2012 were aware of that awkwardness, and whether that contributed to how often they veer into caricature.My personal feeling is that inflection can’t replace tone when it comes to convincing voice acting, particularly when the characters portrayed are meant to represent excesses of human experience. “Doc Spriggs”, for instance, boasts accented, slightly gravelly speech, but still sounds like a clean, city-living person, as do most of the actors used here. In a story that depends so much on the extremity of its characters, one would hope for a more committed performance. Most problematic is the fact that the portrayals here are sometimes racist in nature, something that is not rectified by the voice acting: Hubbard refers to a Chinese person as “The Chinese,” “The Little Yellow Man,” etc., while the actor speaks in a stereotypical accent. I think it’s great that the production attempted to adhere to the tone of the source material, but this is one case where they rose to the occasion a little too well.
    • 5/5
      A very entertaining audio production from the opening music to the good over evil ending that you know is coming. I enjoyed the sound effects and multiple cast production. I burst out laughing myself when Barton did his wheezing laugh.
    • 1/5
      I don't recommend this book, because philosophy is always woven into a writers works, and this author's philosophy is strange. This is good production for an audio book, but it is the content that I dislike from a philosophical perspective.
    • 3/5
      Reviewed for LibraryThing as an early reviewer.Story synopsis: Gunman’s Tally: Easy Bill Gates rides into town to avenge the death of his brother at the hands of a merciless gunfighter. The aftermath leaves his ranch, his friends and Bill in mortal peril.Ruin at Rio Piedras: Banished to Rio Piedras because of his incompetence and generally unruly behavior, Tumbleweed must deal with an obstreperous ranch owner, rustlers, traitors and the girl he loves.Review: Gunman’s Tally: This is definitely a PG rated story due to language and the treatment of animals. The setting is somewhere in the western US in an area difficult to raise cattle due to the lack of water. Perhaps in the 1930s this wasn’t a stereotypical view of ranching and ranchers. The story is saved by the rather late focus on friendship and support through difficult circumstances.Ruin at Rio Piedras: Although the actors ‘chew the scenery’, this short tale has the redeeming qualities of humor and the success of the ‘good guys’.

    Book preview

    Gunman's Tally - L. Ron Hubbard

    Book Cover for Gunman's Tally

    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

    Title page art

    Published by

    Galaxy Press, LLC

    7051 Hollywood Boulevard, Suite 200

    Hollywood, CA 90028

    Copyright © 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.

    Horsemen illustration, Glossary illustration and Ruin at Rio Piedras story 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. Story Preview cover art: © 1949 Standard Magazines, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Hachette Filipacchi Media.

    ISBN 978-1-59212-568-5 ePub version

    ISBN 978-1-59212-275-2 print version

    ISBN 978-1-59212-378-0 audiobook version

    Library of Congress Control Number: 2007903606

    Contents

    FOREWORD

    GUNMAN’S TALLY

    CHAPTER ONE

    CHAPTER TWO

    CHAPTER THREE

    CHAPTER FOUR

    CHAPTER FIVE

    CHAPTER SIX

    CHAPTER SEVEN

    CHAPTER EIGHT

    CHAPTER NINE

    RUIN AT RIO PIEDRAS

    CHAPTER ONE

    CHAPTER TWO

    CHAPTER THREE

    STORY PREVIEW:

    GUN BOSS OF TUMBLEWEED

    L. RON HUBBARD

    IN THE GOLDEN AGE

    OF PULP FICTION

    THE STORIES FROM THE

    GOLDEN AGE

    GLOSSARY

    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 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 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

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