the trees. “I reckon not, Barnabas. I reckon I knew from the moment we straddled
a horse for this ride that we wasn’t goin’ but one way this time.”
“We’ve ridden a good trail together, Tom, a long ride since that night on the
edge of the fens.”
“Aye, an’ the boys are old enough now to git on without us.” He looked up at me,
embarrassed. “Barnabas, I hope you won’t mind, but sometimes I think those boys
are my own.”
“That’s the way I want it, Tom. You’ve been a second father to them, and a fine
example.”
“Example? Me?”
“You’re a man, Tom Watkins, a man to ride down the warpath with … or any path.
You were there when the long guns spoke, and you were beside me when the blades
were drawn … and when they were sheathed … and you never shirked a job that
needed to be done.”
“Lila knew, didn’t she? That why she wouldn’t let Jeremy come?”
“She knew.”
He brought the horses closer to the fire, and I walked out in the night and
listened. Suppose I was wrong? Well, then … we’d meet the boys tomorrow.
I went to the spring and drank deep of the cold, cold water.
When I straightened up, I heard the faintest of sounds. My musket lifted and I
faded deeper into the shadow of a boulder. A quick glance showed me Tom was gone
… the fire flickered alone. Suddenly, off to my left a shadow shifted and I
heard the blast of Tom’s musket. The shadow stopped, then fell forward … and
then they came swiftly, silently, and there were too many.
My musket accounted for one. A warrior loomed up from the shadows almost at my
feet, and I shot him with a pistol, then ran forward, clubbing my musket to
stand over Tom.
An arrow struck me. I felt the blow, then a stab of pain.
They were all around me then. The musket wrenched from my hands. My knife was
out … that knife from India and a gift to my father, and from him to me.
It swung up and in. I heard a gasp and an Indian fell from me. Suddenly, with
all my strength I swung into them, stabbing, slashing. Fire was kicked into the
grass and a great flame went up, crackling and angry.
A huge warrior loomed before me, striking with a club. I went in quickly, under
the blow. I put the knife into his ribs and he fell from me, jerking it from my
grip. He fell and I swung a fist and knocked another sprawling, then stooped to
withdraw the knife and felt a tremendous blow on the skull.
I was bleeding, I was hurt. I went down again, got up again. I grabbed a pistol,
but the hammer clicked. Tom still had one unfired. I lunged for his body,
knocked an Indian sprawling and threw three from me. Coming up with Tom’s
pistol, I fired into the Indians who loomed before me, then clubbed the pistol
and struck another. I was down. An Indian loomed over me with a lance. I struck
it aside and grasped it, pulling myself up. They fell back in a circle, staring
at me, and I stood weaving before them, the lance in my grasp.
They were going to come for me again. I reached down and caught up my powder
horn, pulled off the stopper and threw it into the fire. There was an explosion
and a puff of fire shot out, and the Indians leaped back.
Tom, who had evidently been knocked out, came up then, and for a few minutes we
stood back to back. I retrieved my knife and we fought, working our way back
toward the cave mouth.
“Barn … I’m goin’, I—”
He went down again but I caught up his cutlass. For a minute or more I held them
off with that swirling, thrusting blade, but I was weaker.
I was bleeding … I was hurt.
Suddenly, I was down. There was a thrown lance in my chest. I tried to move,
could not.
I gripped the knife. “Come on, damn you! I can kill another of you!”
They stared at me, and drew slowly back. I was dying and I knew it.
They knew it, too.
Suddenly one of them dropped to his knees and began to sing a death-song.
My death-song. He was singing it for me.
Turning my knife, I handed it to him, hilt forward. “Th … anks,” I said.
Or thought I said.
“Ah—? Abby? I—I wish—” In the dust, my finger moved … stirred.
Kin … Yance … the boys and Noelle. Had they found a path, as I had? Did they
know the way to go?
Who would live to tell the story—our story?
My finger wrote in the dust. I looked, my gaze blurred.
I had written: Give them tomorrow …
Dead I was, yet not quite dead, for I felt the Indian stoop above me, covering
me gently with a blanket.
There was a whisper of moccasins, withdrawing …
The dawn wind stirred the corner of the blanket. One of the horses whinnied …
for a long, long time, there was no other sound.
In the lodges of the Senecas there was silence. And into the darkened lodge of
the old chief the four warriors came and they stood tall before him.
For a long time they stood in silence, arms folded. Then one said, “He is
finished.”
“You have his hair?”
“We were twelve. Four came away. We left his scalp with him … and the other,
also.”
Another spoke. “We covered them with blankets, for they were brave.”
“He was ever brave.” The old man was silent. “You have done well.”
And when they had walked from the lodge the old man took a pinch of tobacco and
threw it into the fire.
Then sadly he said, “Who now is left to test our young men? Who now?”
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.