A Buck Johnson Sampler: Two Fantasy-Adventure Space-Western Stories

By Wyatt McLaren

These two Buck Johnson stories (approximately 11,000 words) are chock full of western fun and science fiction/fantasy adventure on the uninviting planet Terul. Come along with Buck, Skeeter, and Snort as they break dragons, round up dragons – and deal with the churlish inhabitants of the unpleasant planet they're currently stuck on.

A wild mix of Fantasy, Action/Adventure, Western, and Science Fiction, “Dragon Wrangler” and "Dragon Roundup" are a new twist on the Space Western and a rollicking ride across the vagaries of a dragon wrangler’s and his sidekicks’ lives on the planet Terul. Think of The Good Old Boys, The Rounders, and a little bit of Lonesome Dove all rolled up together and cast into space.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wyatt McLaren
• Release date: Feb 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301827497

Book preview

A Buck Johnson Sampler

Two Fantasy-Adventure Space-Western Stories

Wyatt McLaren

Smashwords Edition

Spring Lake Books

Copyright 2013

All rights reserved. This book may not be used or reproduced in any manner—by any means or in any medium whatsoever—in part or in whole without written permission of the author (except, of course, small excerpts in reviews). Please respect intellectual-property rights and help authors protect what they've created.

This is a work of fiction. The characters and situations are nothing more than inventions of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, places, or institutions on Earth is purely coincidental.

Dragon Wrangler

Dragon Roundup

Dragon Wrangler

When Buck Johnson finally managed to breathe a little again and knew he wasn’t dead, he propped himself up on one elbow. He spat dirt out of his mouth—pthit, pthit. Worse yet, the dirt was at least half dragon dung.

Commiserating, Skeeter Evans called across the football field-sized round pen, You okay, Buck? He was pretty sure Buck was uninjured—he was the best hand at breaking dragons Skeeter had ever seen—but the claims of friendship drew the question out of him anyway. Buck, is anything broke?

Finally managing to stand, but with hands on knees and head down, Buck worked hard at re-inflating his lungs, getting as much air into them as he could with each gasp. But the sulfur-tainted air of Terul didn’t give him much help in getting his wind back. Eventually, he answered: Yeah, I’m okay. Too far from the heart to kill me. Did you see what that bitch did, Skeet?

Yeah, I seen it. Treacherous, ain’t she? What had happened was this.

Dragon wranglers have to break a dragon twice—once to ride and then, about six to eight months later, once to flight. So a top-notch dragon wrangler has to be not only knowledgeable in all the techniques of dragon breaking, as well as being a top hand at keeping his forked end down, but he also has to be an outstanding judge of a dragon’s age. And that’s where it gets tricky, especially on Terul.

A top hand like Buck will take a young dragon into the big round pen just at the critical age when she’s old enough to learn, strong enough to rough handle, and still unable to fly. Then he ties her up short to the snubbing pillar with a thick rope braided from strips of dragon hide (the only rope strong enough to hold a dragon calf) attached to the dragon halter. Then the dragon wrangler gets the dragon to accept the dragon-hide saddle. And when she finally accepts the saddle, he starts riding the rough off of her and teaching her to mouth rein. Of course, all this has to happen before the dragon’s age of flight.

But Fourth Quadrant dragons, and especially Terullian dragons, are a small breed—seldom, if ever, weighing more than five or six thousand pounds when full grown. This particular dragon was a smallish Red Kraken, not even green broke yet. And Buck had misjudged her age by several months. It turned out that she was capable of short flights after all—not very high and not very far, but flight nevertheless, much like a fat laying hen flying several feet into the low-hanging