“You can see for yourself that it’s a big bay.” The tension between them was back: they were watching each other out of the corners of their eyes again.
Isager stood in his stirrups and looked south. Land stretched away until it ended in a point. There was a hint of sea in that direction but he was not sure. “All right,” he said, “but I don’t see any boats.”
The plain sloping down to the bay was white with soda and salt. Long sand spits extended into the milky blue water. Here and there patches showed above the surface. “Looks mighty shallow,” Rodelo said doubtfully. “Don’t seem likely a boat would come in here.”
Isager hefted his canteen, feeling its lightness with fear. “We’d better hunt for water.”
South of them, the rocky bluff shouldered against the sky, dark and rugged. North the beach lay flat and empty…frightening in its emptiness. The horses stood, heads down and unmoving. The rocky bluff looked promising, but the salt on his lips frightened Isager. Behind them they heard a deep, gasping sigh and they turned. The paint packhorse was down.
It had sunk to the sand and now it lay stretched out, the hide on its flanks hanging like loose cloth in the hollows of its ribs.
Isager removed the gold from the horse, and with the gold off, it struggled to rise. Isager glanced at Rodelo, hesitant to use both hands to help the horse. “Go ahead,” Rodelo said, “help him.”
Together they got the horse up, and then they turned south. The salty crust crunched and broke beneath their feet. Sometimes they sank to their ankles; the horses broke through at every step. They often stopped to rest and Isager glanced at Rodelo. “We better have a truce,” he said, his eyes shifting away, then back. “You couldn’t make it without me.”
Rodelo’s lips thinned over his white teeth. “Don’t need you. You knew the desert. I know the sea.”
“The desert’s still with us,” Isager said. Suddenly the water in Rodelo’s canteen was more precious than gold. He was waiting for a chance to go for his gun.
The white glare around them forced their eyes to thin slits, while soda dust settled over them in a thin cloak. They stared at each other, as wild and thin as the gaunt, skeletonlike horses, white and shadowy things that seemed to waver with unreality in the heat. The milky water, undrinkable, and taunting them, whispered secret obscenities along the blue-white beach. “There’ll be a fishing boat,” Isager said. “No reason to kill each other. Maybe there’s water beyond that bluff.”
“There’ll be no boat.” Rodelo stated it flatly. “This is the wrong bay.”
Isager stared, blinking slowly. “Wrong bay?” he said stupidly.
“Look!” Rodelo shouted harshly. “It’s too shallow! We’ve come to the wrong place!”
Isager’s dry tongue fought for his lips. There was no hope then.
“Give me your gun,” Rodelo said, “and I’ll take you there.”
“So you can kill me?” Isager drew back, his eyes cold and calculating.
“I know where the bay is,” Rodelo said. “Give me your gun.”
Isager stared. Was it a trick? How could he actually know?
Suddenly, Rodelo shrugged. “Come on, then! I’ll take my chances on you!” He pointed toward the dark bluff. “Look! That’s a water sky. There’s water beyond that point. Another bay!”
He took a step and a bullet kicked dust at his feet. He grabbed for his gun and whirled on Isager, but the gunfighter had already faced the hillside. Four Indians were coming down the hill, riding hard. As Rodelo turned, Isager stepped his feet apart and fired. An Indian’s horse stumbled and went down, throwing the rider head over heels.
Rodelo dropped to one knee and shot under the belly of his horse. He saw an Indian drop and he fired again and missed. A bullet hit Isager and turned him half around. He staggered, and the half-dead horse lunged clumsily away. A hoof went through the crust and the horse fell heavily and lay panting, one white sliver of bone showing through the hide of the broken leg.
Isager fell, pulled off balance by the fall of the horse, and Rodelo fired again and again. His gun muzzle wavered and the shots kicked up dust. Isager rolled over behind the downed horse. He knew from harsh experience that accuracy was more essential than speed. He steadied his gun barrel. The Indian who had been thrown was rushing him. The brown body loomed large and he could see sweat streaks on the man’s chest. He squeezed off his shot and saw the Indian stumble in midstride and then pitch over on his face.
Isager pushed himself to his knees, then got up. The beach weaved slowly, sickeningly beneath him. He turned his head stiffly and looked toward Rodelo. The fallen man looked like a bundle of old clothes, but as Isager looked, the bundle moved. Rodelo uncoiled himself and got up. Blood covered his face from a cut on his cheek. He stared at his empty gun, then clumsily began feeding shells into the chambers.
Across the wavering sand the two men stared at each other, then Rodelo laughed hoarsely. “You look like hell!” he said, grinning from his heat-blasted face.
Isager’s brain seemed to spin queerly and he blinked. What was the matter with him? A pain bit suddenly at his side, and he clasped the pain with his hand. His fingers felt damp and he drew them away, staring stupidly at the blood dripping from his fingers.
“You copped one,” Rodelo said. “You’re hit.”
Isager swayed. Suddenly he knew this was it, right here on this dead-white beach washed by an ugly weedy sea. It was no way for a cowhand to cash in his chips. “Beat it,” he said hoarsely. “There’s more coming.”
“How do you know that?”
“That’s why they rushed. To get us an’ claim the reward. If they’d been alone they would have taken their time.” His knees felt buttery and queer. “There’s one good horse. Take the gold an’ beat it. I’m done in, so I’ll hold them off.”
He went to his knees. “Only…” His voice trailed off and he waited, his eyes begging Rodelo to wait a minute longer, then he managed the words, “…get some of that money to Tom Hopkins’s wife. He…he was that marshal. Funny thing, funny…Never meant to kill him. He came at me an’ it was just reflex…jus’…just drew an’ shot.”
“All right,” Rodelo said, and he meant it. He turned and disappeared into the blinding light.
Isager lay down behind the fallen horse. He slid the rifle from its scabbard and waited.
Sheriff Bill Garden and two Apache trackers found Isager a few hours later. Gunfire from the advance party of six Yaquis had led them to this desolate beach. The convict was curled up behind a dying horse, surrounded by bright brass shells ejected from his rifle. Two of the Apache horses were gone and only one of the horses ridden by the convicts was alive. He was standing head down on the hillside not far away.
Horse tracks trailed away from the body of Isager, a faint trail toward the bluff to the south. Bill Garden glanced after them. The remaining scouts were still after the last man. He turned and looked down at Isager. “Lord a-mighty,” he said. “What a place to die!”
Far off across the water there was a flash of white, a jib shaken out to catch the wind…a boat had left the fishing beds at Rocky Bay and was beating its way southward toward Guaymas.
An important element in the transitional era of my father’s career, the time in which working in Hollywood eased his shift from writing short stories to writing novels, was his professional relationship with screenwriter Jack Natteford. Natteford was a Hollywood veteran with a career that dated back to silent movies in the teens and twenties. As far as I know Louis and Jack were not close personally, but they shared the same agent, Mauri Grashin, and they cooperated on three projects: East of Sumatra, Kilkenny (released under the horrific title Black Jack Ketchum, Desperado), and Kid Rodelo.
East of Sumatra was their first effort, but with the production of Hondo and Louis’s finally settling into a career writing paperback originals
, it was a couple of years before they followed up with anything else. Probably at the behest of Mauri, Dad dug out his copy of “Desperate Men,” then created some sort of outline suggesting a few improvements for the screen and handed the project over to Jack so that he could write the script.
I think it’s important to note, especially given the sort of celebrity culture that surrounds us today, that these guys were just working stiffs. My father’s life was far from glamorous. He and Jack were both selling what they could to television, which was considered a very secondary market in those days, and striving to occasionally place a project in the lower echelons of the feature-film world. Dad was building a solid career writing fiction, but he would never again have a movie made that was as high-profile as Hondo.
Natteford’s work on “Desperate Men” started in 1954, and in September of 1955 they had accepted an option from the William B. White Agency. The deal the agent was putting together likely sounded promising, because Louis and Jack optioned the story/screenplay package for a token fee. But it did not pan out, and after a six-month extension, for which a reasonable amount of money was paid, the option lapsed.
Late in 1957, the project was optioned again, this time by producers George Sherman (well known as a director of early John Wayne and Gene Autry pictures) and Jack Lamont. This deal seems to have been some kind of foreign production, because a dispute erupted over a new writer Natteford suspected had been hired in order to access foreign capital. This new screenwriter was a mysterious character named Manning O’Brine, an Irishman known for his screenplays and spy novels, who may have been a secret agent of one sort or another before, during, and after World War Two. Though this minor dustup regarding credit eventually blew over, the rights seem to have lapsed, and again the project was shelved.
Five years later, in 1963, Sherman reignited some interest in doing the story as a foreign coproduction. Although Sherman personally ended up working on another project, Kid Rodelo was eventually filmed by his company in Almería, Spain, in 1965, very closely crossing paths with Sergio Leone’s For a Few Dollars More.
As soon as the film finally became a reality, my father settled in to take advantage of its release by writing the story into novel form. Although this was, in effect, a “novelization” of the movie, as mentioned above it was not the typical deal where a movie studio commissioned the book. It was Louis who arranged for it to be published as a tie-in.
For better or for worse, he chose to depart from the more grimly realistic tone of the short story, and to include elements like the character played by Janet Leigh in the movie; some of these changes may have even been included in the notes he provided to Jack Natteford when they first started the project. Although Dad hated the title Kid Rodelo, and had no idea what the finished project would look like other than being generally aware of Natteford’s early screenplay drafts, sticking with many of the details of the movie was his idea, carefully calculated to gain him whatever publicity was available from the film.
This was still five years before Bantam started to promote Louis’s work, and only ten or twelve years after the period he’d been afraid he’d soon be living on the street. Dad knew the value of publicity and was used to rustling it up himself. He had promoted boxers, both black and white, on the mean streets of Oklahoma City in the 1930s and had managed his own career as a writer. He was well aware that the push Warner Brothers had put behind Hondo had helped him considerably, and that his publishers were always thrilled to take advantage of a movie company’s marketing campaign if they could.
In this case, the effect was negligible. The film didn’t bomb, but it was hardly anything to brag about. By that time, however, Dad had other books being prepared for publication and several more in the works—he was nothing but pragmatic about the situation.
Beau L’Amour
July 2018
Bantam Books by Louis L’Amour
NOVELS
Bendigo Shafter
Borden Chantry
Brionne
The Broken Gun
The Burning Hills
The Californios
Callaghen
Catlow
Chancy
The Cherokee Trail
Comstock Lode
Conagher
Crossfire Trail
Dark Canyon
Down the Long Hills
The Empty Land
Fair Blows the Wind
Fallon
The Ferguson Rifle
The First Fast Draw
Flint
Guns of the Timberlands
Hanging Woman Creek
The Haunted Mesa
Heller with a Gun
The High Graders
High Lonesome
Hondo
How the West Was Won
The Iron Marshal
The Key-Lock Man
Kid Rodelo
Kilkenny
Killoe
Kilrone
Kiowa Trail
Last of the Breed
Last Stand at Papago Wells
The Lonesome Gods
The Man Called Noon
The Man from Skibbereen
The Man from the Broken Hills
Matagorda
Milo Talon
The Mountain Valley War
North to the Rails
Over on the Dry Side
Passin’ Through
The Proving Trail
The Quick and the Dead
Radigan
Reilly’s Luck
The Rider of Lost Creek
Rivers West
The Shadow Riders
Shalako
Showdown at Yellow Butte
Silver Canyon
Sitka
Son of a Wanted Man
Taggart
The Tall Stranger
To Tame a Land
Tucker
Under the Sweetwater Rim
Utah Blaine
The Walking Drum
Westward the Tide
Where the Long Grass Blows
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Beyond the Great Snow Mountains
Bowdrie
Bowdrie’s Law
Buckskin Run
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour (vols. 1–7)
Dutchman’s Flat
End of the Drive
From the Listening Hills
The Hills of Homicide
Law of the Desert Born
Long Ride Home
Lonigan
May There Be a Road
Monument Rock
Night Over the Solomons
Off the Mangrove Coast
The Outlaws of Mesquite
The Rider of the Ruby Hills
Riding for the Brand
The Strong Shall Live
The Trail to Crazy Man
Valley of the Sun
War Party
West from Singapore
West of Dodge
With These Hands
Yondering
SACKETT TITLES
Sackett’s Land
To the Far Blue Mountains
The Warrior’s Path
Jubal Sackett
Ride the River
The Daybreakers
Sackett
Lando
Mojave Crossing
Mustang Man
The Lonely Men
Galloway
Treasure Mountain
Lonely on the Mountain
Ride the Dark Trail
The Sackett Brand
The Sky-Liners
THE HOPALONG CASSIDY NOVELS
The
Riders of High Rock
The Rustlers of West Fork
The Trail to Seven Pines
Trouble Shooter
NONFICTION
Education of a Wandering Man
Frontier
The Sackett Companion: A Personal Guide to the Sackett Novels
A Trail of Memories: The Quotations of Louis L’Amour, compiled by Angelique L’Amour
POETRY
Smoke from This Altar
LOST TREASURES
Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures: Volume 1
ABOUT LOUIS L’AMOUR
“I think of myself in the oral tradition—as 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 re-created 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.
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, miner, and an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. He was a voracious reader and collector of 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 120 books is in print; there are more than 300 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the bestselling 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.