That shot hit right where the ribs spread apart. My second shot was for Arch
Hadden, but it missed. Arch had suddenly whipped his horse around and was
running like all get-out.
Laura’s horse reared up and she toppled from the saddle, and of a sudden the
other gunman was shooting past me. I turned to see the Apaches coming down and
recognized one of them as Kahtenny.
Me, I dove into that hole I’d been digging and had sense enough to grab the
picket ropes of my horses, which I’d had up, loading for the homeward trip.
The Apaches swept by and I saw that third gunman go down. I heard the bark of
Apache guns and saw the dust jump from his vest. He came up shooting, only
another bullet nailed him.
They caught Arch Hadden.
I saw them catch him. It was Kahtenny and two others, and I saw him turn to
fight as they rode up, but a rope sailed out, and then another, and the Apaches
had themselves a prisoner.
Well, I’d told him. He had stolen Kahtenny’s squaw, and he had been warned. With
Apaches, nothing much was doubtful from here on — only how long Hadden had the
guts to stick it out.
This was a hard land, and the rules were written plain in the way we lived. If
you overstepped the rules you had bought yourself trouble, and from now on it
was going to be settled between Hadden and Kahtenny.
Me, I got up and went to my horses. I fed shells into my six-shooters again, and
then I walked over to the man I’d shot to see if he was alive. He wasn’t. Johnny
Wheeler was buzzard meat.
I taken his guns off, and what he had on him for identification. Might be
somebody, somewhere, who’d be wishful to know what happened.
And then Laura Sackett got up off the ground and we just looked at each other. I
never did see such hatred in anybody’s eyes.
“Downright mis’rable, ain’t we?” I said calmly. “You’d think one of us Sacketts
would be considerate enough to die so’s you could get some of that bile out of
your system.”
“I suppose you’re going to kill me?” she said.
“No, I ain’t. It would be a kindness to the world, but I never shot a woman yet,
and don’t figure to now. No, I’m just goin’ to leave you. I’m just goin’ to
mount up and ride right out of here.”
“You’d leave me here?” She was incredulous. “There’s a horse yonder. You get on
that horse and ride.”
Putting my foot in the stirrup, I swung into the saddle, and you can just bet
that before I swung a-straddle of that horse I swung the animal around so I
could keep an eye on her whilst I was doing it.
I taken a turn around the saddlehorn with the lead rope of the pack horse, and
she said, “What if those Indians come back?”
“It’s their tough luck, ma’am,” I said, “but I hope not, for their sakes.
Apaches aren’t bad folks. They have trouble enough without wishin’ you on them.
Only it might work out for the best. A session with some of those Apache squaws
might teach you some manners.” I touched my hat, “I hope I won’t be seein’ you,
ma’am. Good-bye!”
That black of mine went down into the arroyo as if he knew what was behind him,
and when he topped out on the rise beyond we were out of rifle shot. I pulled up
then and looked back.
She had caught one of the horses and was trying to mount. The horse was worried
by her skirt, and was sidling around.
That was the last I saw of her, of Laura, who had been Orrin’s wife.
I rode east, with the sun going down behind me, the feel of a good saddle under
me, and a horse between my legs. The trail dipped into a wide hollow, shadowy
with evening, and somewhere a quail called. Across yonder hills, miles away, was
Pete Kitchen’s. I’d make camp before I got there, because nobody in his right
mind rode up to Pete’s in the nighttime.
He was paying me twenty dollars for the job, and might cut me in for some of the
profits. Anyway, it was a road stake, and maybe before lining out for somewhere
across the country I’d just ride around and call on Dorset.
I liked that little girl. She was pert and she was pretty, and she had nerve.
A star came out, the desert night was soft, and a coolness came over it.
It came on me to sing, but my horse was carrying me along nicely, and I was not
wishful for trouble.
About the Author
“I think of myself in the oral tradition — of a troubadour, a village
taleteller, the man in the shadows of the campfire. That’s the way I’d like to
be remembered — as a storyteller. A good storyteller.”
It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world recreated in his
novels as Louis Dearborn L’Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of
the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally “walked the land my
characters walk.” His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to
historical research combined to give Mr. L’Amour the unique knowledge and
understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that
became the hallmarks of his popularity.
Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L’Amour could trace his own family in North America
back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, “always on
the frontier.” As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all
he could about his family’s frontier heritage, including the story of his
great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.
Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L’Amour
left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including
seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, assessment miner,
and officer on tank destroyers during World War II. During his “yondering” days
he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was
shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won
fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a
journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books.
His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.
Mr. L’Amour “wanted to write almost from the time I could talk.” After
developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories
written for fiction magazines, Mr. L’Amour published his first full-length
novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 100 books
is in print; there are nearly 230 million copies of his books in print
worldwide, making him one of the best-selling authors in modern literary
history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than
forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and
television movies.
His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his
twelfth-century historical novel) Jubal Sackett, Last of the Breed, and The
Haunted Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, was a leading bestseller
in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L’Amour stories are
available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio Publishing.
The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L’Amour became the
first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United
States Congress in honor of his life’s work. In 1984 he was also awarded the
Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.
Louis L’Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children,
Beau and Angelique, carry the L’Amour tradition forward with new books written
by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam well into the
nineties — among them, four Hopalong Cassidy novels: The Rustlers of West Fork,
The Trail to Seven Pines, The Riders of High Rock, and Trouble Shooter.