“I doubt if anybody would know more about that than you, Mr. Fallon, but time
was passing and you were very ill … and of course, every wife has a right—”
“Every what?”
“Every wife. Of course, I am not your wife yet, but I told them all how you
proposed to me under the hotel that time, and the things you said to me, and how
we planned to be married, so Mr. Pollock and I drew up the papers for the Red
Horse Mining & Development Company.”
“I threw in my claim,” Pollock said cheerfully, “the one you sold me.”
“And we contributed ours,” Ginia said, and the light in her eyes was no longer
quite so malicious, “and the money you got from Mr. Pollock. You are president
of the company, Mr. Pollock is vice president and superintendent of development,
and I’m the treasurer.”
“And we had an election,” Blane interrupted, “and you were elected mayor. I
voted against you,” he added.
“You’re the only sane one in the crowd,” Fallon said irritably. “This has turned
into a madhouse.”
“And this,” Ginia said, indicating a man standing near her, “is the Reverend Mr.
Tattersall.”
The door opened just then and Joshua Teel’s wife came in with a cake, followed
by Ruth Damon, in her prettiest dress.
“What’s that for?” Fallon asked.
“That’s the wedding cake, Mr. Fallon,” Ginia replied, “and Ruth is my
bridesmaid.”
“This has gone far enough!” Fallon protested. “A joke is a joke. I never
proposed to you—never!”
“Not in so many words,” Ginia agreed.
“How many do?” Mrs. Teel asked. “In so many words? Josh didn’t.”
“Neither did pa,” Mrs. Blane said, “not in so many words.”
The Reverend Mr. Tattersall came up beside the bed. He cleared his throat.
“We wouldn’t like to have it said,” Riordan commented, “that one of our girls
was slighted. Why, I’ve seen men hung for less.”
The Reverend Mr. Tattersall cleared his throat again, more emphatically. “We are
gathered here …”
Macon Fallon was no stranger to the town of Red Horse, and the fact that he was
a man with a fast horse wasn’t going to do him a damned bit of good.
About the Author
Louis L’Amour, born Louis Dearborn L’Amour, is of French-Irish descent. Although
Mr. L’Amour claims his writing began as a “spur-of-the-moment thing” prompted by
friends who relished his verbal tales of the West, he comes by his talent
honestly. A frontiersman by heritage (his grandfather was scalped by the Sioux),
and a universal man by experience, Louis L’Amour lives the life of his fictional
heroes. Since leaving his native Jamestown, North Dakota, at the age of fifteen,
he’s been a longshoreman, lumberjack, elephant handler, hay shocker, flume
builder, fruit picker, and an officer on tank destroyers during World War II.
And he’s written four hundred short stories and over fifty books (including a
volume of poetry).
Mr. L’Amour has lectured widely, traveled the West thoroughly, studied
archaeology, compiled biographies of over one thousand Western gunfighters, and
read prodigiously (his library holds more than two thousand volumes). And he’s
watched thirty-one of his westerns as movies. He’s circled the world on a
freighter, mined in the West, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, been shipwrecked in
the West Indies, stranded in the Mojave Desert. He’s won fifty-one of fifty-nine
fights as a professional boxer and pinchhit for Dorothy Kilgallen when she was
on vacation from her column. Since 1816, thirty-three members of his family have
been writers. And, he says, “I could sit in the middle of Sunset Boulevard and
write with my typewriter on my knees; temperamental I am not.”
Mr. L’Amour is re-creating an 1865 Western town, christened Shalako, where the
borders of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado meet. Historically authentic
from whistle to well, it will be a live, operating town, as well as a movie
location and tourist attraction.
Mr. L’Amour now lives in Los Angeles with his wife Kathy, who helps with the
enormous amount of research he does for his books. Soon, Mr. L’Amour hopes, the
children (Beau and Angelique) will be helping too.