Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Magic Quirt
    The Magic Quirt
    The Magic Quirt
    Ebook130 pages1 hour

    The Magic Quirt

    By L. Ron Hubbard

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    When it comes to boiling up a pot of coffee or stirring up a pot of stew, Old Laramie’s about as good a man as you’re going to find. But other than cooking three squares a day for the cowpunchers over at the Lazy G ranch, Laramie’s not good for much. He’s about as heroic as Walter Brennan on a bender.

    But Laramie’s luck—and life—are about to take an amazing turn. Quite by accident, he somehow manages to save a family of Mexicans from bandits, and as a token of their gratitude they give him The Magic Quirt—a horsewhip that he’s told will turn him into a new man.

    The transformation is indeed magical. Suddenly Laramie is performing feats of ingenuity and courage that would make even the Lone Ranger proud. But magic is a funny thing—and as Laramie’s about to discover, sometimes it’s all an illusion.

    L. Ron Hubbard wrote of his childhood: “The weather of Montana is, of course, brutal. The country is immense and swallows up men rather easily, hence they have to live bigger than life to survive. There were still Indians around living in forlorn and isolated tepees. Notable among them was Old Tom, a full-fledged Blackfoot medicine man.” Hubbard and Old Tom became blood brothers, and the medicine man shared with him the kind of lore that make stories like The Magic Quirt as compelling as they are.

    Also includes the Western adventures, “Vengeance Is Mine!”, the story of a young man who sets out to avenge his father’s death only to commit an act beyond redemption, and “Stacked Bullets,” in which a game of chance is fixed, a whole town is cheated, and nothing but a stack of bullets can make things right.

    “Pure entertainment from first page to last with that L. Ron Hubbard touch giving this tale an enduring reading engagement from beginning to end.” —Midwest Book Review

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGalaxy Press
    Release dateOct 21, 2012
    ISBN9781592125845
    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.

    Read more from L. Ron Hubbard

    Related to The Magic Quirt

    Titles in the series (16)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Historical Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Watership Down

      Nov 2, 2022

      IN a passage in his autobiography, The Day Gone By, Richard Adams, discussing the children’s literature he’d read, or which had been read to him, referred to C. S. Lewis’s possibly misattributed maxim: ‘A book that’s not worth reading when you’re 60

      3 min read

    • Article

      Best Of The Year That Was

      Dec 23, 2020

      Best Of The Year That Was
      5 min read

    • Article

      Swansongs And Southern Discomfort

      Oct 27, 2022

      THE BORDERLAND BETWEEN popular fiction and literary fiction is now fertile territory. Once upon a time it was easy to tell them apart. Popular and genre fiction were in small format paper-backs, literary fiction larger: now all have been promoted to

      6 min read

    • Article

      Dune: Science Fiction’s Answer To Lord Of The Rings

      Oct 18, 2021

      If science fiction has an answer to fantasy’s The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien’s epic saga of the battle to defeat the Dark Lord, Sauron – then Frank Herbert’s Dune has to be a strong contender. Published in 1965, it is the story of the desert pla

      7 min read

    • Article

      READER’S DIGEST RECOMMENDED READ: A Novel Idea

      Apr 19, 2022

      In the 1980s, something strange happened to the British literary scene: it became extremely glamorous. Out went the traditional pipe-smoking men of letters, and in came a cool new generation of authors and publishers. Suddenly writers were to be foun

      3 min read

    • Article

      In 'Midwestern Strange,' A Tour Of The Utterly Bizarre And All-Too-Human

      Aug 28, 2019

      B.J. Hollars' book is both a quirky primer on some of the Midwest's oddest stories — and a fresh perspective on small-town culture.

      4 min read

    • Article

      November Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

      Nov 1, 2017

      Here's what we're looking out for this month. The post November Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month) appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      5 Books Making News: Gods, Monsters, and Refugees

      Feb 21, 2017

      The first volume in Philip Pullman’s new “The Book of Dust” trilogy is coming in October. Pullman tells the BBC the books are not a sequel or a prequel but an “equel” to his Dark Materials series. The six books on the International Prize for Arabic F

      8 min read

    • Article

      Oldies Make The Best Holiday Companions

      Jul 28, 2022

      ON THE PENETRATING QUESTION of what fiction to take on holiday, this year The Critic offers a novel approach. Why heft around the Dolomites the bulk of an untested hardback, by a wet-behind-the-ears author who isn’t even dead yet, when you can halve

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Phillip Lopate

      Dec 7, 2023

      My reading is unsystematic and all over the place. The post A Year in Reading: Phillip Lopate appeared first on The Millions.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Dream Catcher

      Sep 4, 2022

      Dream Catcher
      3 min read

    • Article

      History

      Jun 30, 2021

      A NEW HISTORY OF VIKINGS FROM SCANDINAVIA TO THE SILK ROADS CAT JARMAN Wm Collins, 336pp, £25 As a 17-year-old, Financial Times reviewer William Dalrymple was one of ten diggers who made an important archaeological discovery in a vicar’s garden near

      11 min read

    • Article

      Illuminations

      Oct 5, 2022

      Illuminations
      4 min read

    • Article

      BOOKS & MUSIC

      Jan 20, 2020

      David Hilton-Barber is an experienced journalist, researcher and author of several historical books. One of his recent books, Kalahari Dreaming – The Romance of the Desert, begins with a quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “What makes the desert bea

      1 min read

    • Article

      Shelf Life

      Dec 2, 2021

      Shelf Life
      4 min read

    • Article

      5 Great Book Picks for Gift-Giving This Holiday Season

      Dec 7, 2017

      'Inside Animal Hearts and Minds' by Belinda Recio and 'Shahnameh' by A. Ferdowsi are two books that would make ideal gifts this year.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Top Ten Sea Books

      Jun 5, 2020

      SJ AND SMH In the October of 1991, a storm of rare wickedness hit the North Atlantic. Caught up in it was the sword-fishing boat Andrea Gail, which went down with the loss of all hands. At that time, the author was working as a tree surgeon in the bo

      7 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Oct 16, 2023

      What a thing of joy is a new Francis Spufford novel. Golden Hill, his debut, was a transporting piece of historical fiction that captured life in early New York in all its quirk and contingence, and deservedly won a bag of awards. His second, Light P

      3 min read

    • Article

      Read Indie

      Jun 10, 2020

      By Juli Delgado Lopera Feminist Press This “ebullient and assertive” novel follows a Colombian teenager’s coming-of-age and coming out as she plunges headfirst into lust and evangelism (The New York Times). Lit by the hormonal neon glow of Miami and

      3 min read

    • Article

      May Fiction

      Apr 19, 2022

      A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-Hunting by Sophie Irwin (HarperCollins, £14.99) IF YOU DIDN’Tknow that Sophie Irwin once wrote a dissertation on Georgette Heyer—the queen, and possibly inventor, of Regency Romance novels—then it wouldn’t be hard to guess f

      2 min read

    • Article

      Those Who Left Us: Select Literary Obituaries of 2019

      Dec 31, 2019

      Death didn’t discriminate in 2019—it took down the acclaimed, the obscure, and a little bit of everything in between. The post Those Who Left Us: Select Literary Obituaries of 2019 appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Magic Quirt

    4/5

    15 ratings9 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      I read the Magic Quirt, The (Stories from the Golden Age) in exchange for honest review. First thing, I wanted to know was what a quirt was. According to Wikipedia, "a quirt is a forked type of stock whip, which usually has two falls at the end....sometimes called a riding quirt, horse quirt, or a dog quirt." The book is about Old Laramie, who is a cook for Lazy G Ranch. He is in the middle of reading a book on the occult and black magic. He accepts a silver-mounted, magic quirt from a Hispanic family, he saved from bandits. Laramie starts thinking he is powerful, since he has the quirt and goes on a journey to show his new skills and techniques. Old Laramie is not happy with the new management. Lee Jacoby is the ranch's foreman, who treats Laramie like a second-class citizen. Jacoby is also not happy with Laramie's food to the point where he tosses it out at the beginning of the book. Laramie is the last men left from the original management. Laramie is quite a character. I read along with the book, while the audio played. The book was action-packed. Laramie killed two people before page 30 (book).The book does contain adult language.
    • 4/5
      Wow it got here fast, this is an audio book CD.The Magic Quirt (Stories from the Golden Age) by L. Ron HubbardOld Laramie helps a family, that is being attacked and saves them from being robbed. In gratitude he is given a "Magic Quirt" and told it will make him a big man. Quirt in hand he sets of on a series of adventures and maybe misadventures. The Audio CD set also includes two other stories, "Vengeance is Mine" and "Stacked Bullets" also by by L. Ron Hubbard. Originally published in 1948, great story *****
    • 3/5
      The power of positive thinking performs it motivating force with surprising results in the old out west. Is it fate or the very hand of a Divine God which works to impact the lives of old Laramie, a crusty camp cook and the townsfolk.
    • 4/5
      L. Ron Hubbard's stories are well reviewed, the focus I have in the review is on the audio performance and quality of the cd itself. It was enjoyable having a cast of characters for an audiobook. Definitely a change from the standard single person reading. It was mroe akin to the old "movies on tape" of the 90's than to an audiobook. However, that did make some portions of the story a bit jumbled and difficult to follow. Overall, a highly enjoyable experience, but be aware that it take some time to get used to the newer format.
    • 3/5
      My Dad said to me once, "Crazy people write good fiction." Yep. That about sums it up for L. Ron Hubbard. I enjoy his pulp fiction books and enjoy laughing at the philosophical "points" that he tries to make in them. This CD was a good dramatization of some of his Westerns. I quite enjoyed them.
    • 5/5
      The Magic Quirt includes three short stories published by L. Ron Hubbard between 1948 and 1950. The sound effects, musical backgrounds, and variety of voices for the characters made this C.D. the best book on tape I've ever experienced. Hubbard's story "The Magic Quirt" draws the listener in with humor from the first lines of good-old-cowhand western-speak. I will admit to wondering where this adventure was going while listening. I was delighted at the end. This story should appeal to all ages.Sadly, I was unable to complete the other two stories because one of the discs was missing from the package I received. I heard the first couple of chapters of the second story and decided that I would like to finish the book. I'll try a paperback this time.
    • 4/5
      The Magic Quirt by L. Ron Hubbard audio 4STARSThis is my first audio book review. I have listened to kindle books but that was just the text to speach feature.The audio cd has different voices and some sound effects. It got my dog to start barking with it.I like the stories, also like that I can do other things while listening. But if I need to go back and check on something I might have lost is harder that a book to flip back to or kindle text to speach feature.I think these would be great for car trips if you have a cd player.the Magic QuirtOld Laramie a cook is in the right place to save a family and was given a Magic Quirt that would make him be a big man.Old Laramie thinks he now is invisncible and takes risks.also include is two other stories VENGEANCE IS MINE! and STACKED BULLETS on two cds.If my dog would stop barking with cd I would be better to follow along. I was given this audio book to read in exchange of honest review from Librarything.I like L. Ron Hubbard stories and hope to read more of his work.also like the music in the cd.Publisher: Galaxy Press (October 22, 2012) 156 pages
    • 4/5
      I recall that when I was a kid I used to listen to Westerns on the radio while my mother ironed the laundry. “Gunsmoke” and “Have Gun Will Travel” on the radio gave me as much of a thrill as my TV favorites of the time, Hopalong Cassidy and Wild Bill Hickok. I’ve long since lost my interest in Westerns, but the memory of those old radio shows was brought back to me by “The Magic Quirt,” one of a series of L. Ron Hubbard-authored audio books that Galaxy Press has produced. They’re much more like radio presentations than ordinary audio books, with multiple voice actors reading dialogue, sound effects and incidental music. This 2-CD package actually contains three stories from the golden age of pulp magazines, “Vengeance Is Mine!” and “Stacked Bullets” as well as the title story.Hubbard was one of the most prolific writers of all time, spreading his work through many genres, a penny a word, under dozens of pen names. Although no one would argue that his prose was elevated, he knew how to create a vivid, action-packed adventure for his audience. These were stories for the millions of subway riders and office workers who could escape reality for a little while and live the exciting lives they wanted. Whether it was science fiction, mystery, military, jungle adventure, or historical fiction, Hubbard was writing it. His western stories presented here seem to have some authenticity to them, perhaps because he grew up in Montana and knew a bit about ranch life. As you might expect, his stories are populated with virtuous women and dastardly villains, but, interestingly, his protagonists aren’t the white horse and white hat heroes of TV. They all have their flaws, some of them fatal.Hubbard doesn’t stint with his adjectives and adverbs, and in the hands of the competent narrator for these audio books, a vivid backdrop is painted for the action. While the characterizations of the supporting players tend to be a bit hackneyed, that’s in keeping with the fiction – fast, familiar, and with a twist at the end.This isn’t great literature, but I enjoyed listening to these stories while driving. It beats talk radio by miles. And it brought back a lot of wonderful memories of listening to the radio more than fifty years ago.
    • 3/5
      I requested this book because I had heard interesting things about L Ron Hubbard. He is supposed to have some great fantasy books (that apparently his religion is based on, but that’s a whole different topic). The book I ended up with wasn’t quite what I expected. I didn’t realize they were short stories, I also didn’t realize they were westerns (usually not my thing). With all that in mind I was pleasantly surprised by the stories, they were short and pretty easy to listen to. Nothing was amazing, but good for a road trip. Some of them had some strange elements or were a bit out there, but overall I thought it was a decent listen.

    Book preview

    The Magic Quirt - L. Ron Hubbard

    Book cover

    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

    TitlePgArt.jpg

    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 artwork thumbnail on back of book and The Magic Quirt story illustration: © 1948 Better Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Hachette Filipacchi Media. 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 978-1-59212-584-5 ePub version

    ISBN 978-1-59212-771-9 Kindle version

    ISBN 978-1-59212-376-6 print version

    ISBN 978-1-59212-382-7 audiobook version

    Library of Congress Control Number: 2007903540

    Contents

    FOREWORD

    THE MAGIC QUIRT

    VENGEANCE IS MINE!

    CHAPTER ONE

    CHAPTER TWO

    CHAPTER THREE

    CHAPTER FOUR

    STACKED BULLETS

    STORY PREVIEW:

    GUNMAN’S TALLY

    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 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,

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1