My bullet spat slivers from the post. I worked the lever, dropped quickly to one knee, and fired again. I saw the dust leap from his jacket, and his bullet threw dust in front of me. I started to lunge to my feet, but went suddenly weak and sprawled in the dust, still frantically working the lever.
Caxton Kelsey was up. Bloody and staggering, he was on his feet, lining his pistol at me as I lay there. Rolling over, I came to one knee and fired into him. His bullet hit the top of my shoulder, and I felt the sharp, angry burn of it. Then I fired again.
He stood an instant, the gun dangling from his fingers, then he sat down abruptly, staring at nothing. And then he simply lay down and rolled over.
Crouching there, I held my rifle ready, watching him. In a moment, using the rifle for a crutch, I pushed myself to my feet and took a step to the edge of the walk, where I sat down hard, gripping the rifle, still watching Kelsey.
People began to appear on the street, and Handy Corbin was suddenly pushing through them. He crossed the street to me.
“You got him! By the Lord Harry, you got him! They were offerin’ ten-to-one odds and no takers that he’d gun you down!”
“What about Prince?” I asked.
Handy Corbin shrugged, and looked away uncomfortably. “You got to understand that, boss,” he said, almost apologetically. “He was one of our own, and it was up to me to do. We’re good folks, mostly, and we aim to do right. LaSalle was no good—right from the start there was something cross-grained about him. He was forever a-tryin’ to lead us boys into trouble. Two, three times as he was growin’ up pa got him out of trouble, but it seemed like he got wilder and meaner.
“Then a neighbor of ours sold some sheep, and LaSalle met him on the road and LaSalle had a bottle. The two of them got to drinkin’, and first thing you know that neighbor woke up with a thick head and his money gone. LaSalle, he began spendin’ down at the corners, and we knew what must have happened. That man braced him with it, and LaSalle shot him. Didn’t kill him, but hurt him bad, and then LaSalle, he taken out.
“Next thing we knew he was off buffalo huntin’, but he spent more time huntin’ buffalo hunters than buffalo. He sold a team of grays in Cherry Creek, Colorado, that had belonged to a couple of brothers working out of Abilene. Somebody recognized the horses, and later the bodies were found. LaSalle, he became an outlaw. He went from that to killin’ for hire, and we figured we’d turned loose a mad wolf on the country, and it was up to us to slow him down. Pa, he saddled up and rode off to have a talk with him.
“LaSalle, he laughed at pa. Said he was a sanctimonious old fool, and told him to go on back home whilst he was able. Pa wasn’t about to take that off no man, and he told LaSalle to take off his guns, because he was sure enough goin’ to whup him. Pa stripped off his guns, and then LaSalle drew one of his and shot pa. He shot him in the knee, and he fell, and when he tried to get up, he shot him in the other. He cussed pa out, then killed him. So I’ve been huntin’ him ever since, and teachin’ myself to be fast enough to beat him.”
Me, I was beginning to get the reaction now, the letdown that comes after. I didn’t want to talk, I wanted to get in somewhere off the street. Corbin helped me down to the Doc’s office, where Bob Tarlton was a-pacing the floor. He’d heard the shooting—in fact, it woke him from a nap he was taking. The Doc was there and wouldn’t let him go out on the street.
It felt good just to stretch out on that table, for I was all in. That was one time I’d not have given a plugged nickel for Otis Tom Chancy’s possibilities, and nobody knew better than me how lucky I’d been.
As it was, I’d caught a slug through the shoulder that missed the bone. I had a deep furrow across the top of the shoulder, and at least two bullet burns I didn’t even recall getting. I’d lost some blood and a whole lot of steam.
But the thing that worried me now was Kit. There was no sign of her, but she might be hunting me right then.
“Handy,” I said, “you go down to the hotel and find Miss Dunvegan. Tell her I’m all right.”
The Doc looked around. “She was around here earlier, Chancy. She had that cowhand of yours, Juniper Cogan. She was hunting the marshal.”
The marshal? Where had he been, anyway? Was he like some of those cowtown marshals who preferred to see trouble shoot itself out? Some of them never lifted a hand, as long as the town’s citizens were left alone.
Well, I started to get up and the Doc pushed me down. “You lie still. You may not be shot up as bad as I expected, but you’ve lost a lot of blood and you’re weaker than a cat.”
Tarlton got up. “I’ll go with him, Otis. You rest easy now.…Who did you say the girl was?”
“Her name is Kitty Dunvegan, and she’s pretty as all get out. Come noontime tomorrow, we’re getting married.”
“We’ll find her then,” Tarlton said. “But I know June Cogan, and if she’s with him she’ll be all right.”
Chapter 15
THEY LEFT ME alone there, with the lamp wick turned low, lying up in bed with a lot of weakness and some pain, and a mighty wish to be up and doing that faded as tiredness set in.
It seemed as if I’d been going at top pace as long as I could recall, and there was nothing for it but to rest now.
It worried me that Kit Dunvegan was in that wild western town, maybe alone and without protection. I should have known they bred them strong in Tennessee, for Kit was a girl with a mind of her own, and ideas of her own.
Finally I put a hand above the lamp chimney and blew out the light. I could smell the smoldering wick for a few minutes, and then I must have slept, for when I opened my eyes again, Kit was sitting there in a chair beside the bed reading a book, and it was clear daylight beyond the curtains.
For several minutes I said nothing, just enjoying the look of her there, sitting so prim and still, turning the leaves of her book. Looking back, I could scarcely recall when last a woman had sat at my bedside, and then it was ma, when I was a sick boy.…
She turned her head and met my eyes, and for a moment we looked at each other, not speaking, and then she jumped up. “The doctor said you were to have some hot broth when you woke up.”
“Where were you? I was worried.”
She ran her hands down her apron, smoothing it. “I went to see Queenie Gates.”
“You what?”
“I really didn’t think she was all that pretty…hard-looking, sort of.”
“You went to see that she-cat? Don’t you realize you could have been hurt?”
“By her?” She looked disdainful. “I could handle her. But I took the marshal along, and Juniper Cogan. I wanted some witnesses.”
“To what?”
“To a deposition. If we were going to bring charges against you for shooting that man back in the Nation, we had to have evidence, didn’t we? Naturally, if he was my uncle I’d want you punished, wouldn’t I?”
“You told her that?”
“Well…I implied it. It wasn’t actually said. But we had to have her sworn account of the gun battle, and she was very anxious to give us all the information she had. How he was armed and all, but you shot him without giving him a chance.”
“That’s not true.”
“Of course, we had her describe the weapon…we wanted that for evidence, you know, because you were in possession of the gun. She described the ivory-handled gun in detail. Swore to her evidence, and June and the marshal witnessed it.”
What could I say to that? While I was busy stalking Andy Miller, she was making her own plans and carrying them out.
“Where were you when the shooting started?” I asked.
“In her room…at the door, in fact. We were just leaving.”
Kit went to the other room and returned with the broth. Then she went on with her story.
“Queenie said, ‘You needn’t have bothered. Chancy won’t live to see prison. Kelsey will kill him.’
“I couldn’t resist telling her then, so I said, ‘Otis Tom won’t die that ea
sy, Mrs. Gates. You’ll see. I’ve known him since I was a little girl.’
“Well, you should have seen her face. She caught up the empty water pitcher and threw it at me, but Mr. Cogan jerked the door shut…just in time. I’m afraid she was very angry.”
Bob Tarlton came in about then. He was up and about, although looking mighty thin. “Juniper Cogan and Handy went out to the herd,” he said. “We’re starting them north in the morning, if that’s all right with you.”
“Sure. I’ll be up—”
“Not you…us. The doctor says I can ride part of the day for a while, if I rest in the wagon. You won’t be up to it for several days yet, and we sort of figured you and Kit might want to honeymoon down to Denver or somewhere.”
Now, who could argue against a setup like that? Not me, at least.
Kit, she wasn’t doing any arguing either.
“I think of myself in the oral tradition—
as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, 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.
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, miner, and an officer in the transportation corps 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 120 books is in print; there are nearly 270 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.
His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel), Chancy, 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 publishing tradition forward.
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
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 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 the 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: Th
e Quotations of Louis L’Amour, compiled by Angelique L’Amour
POETRY
Smoke from This Altar
CHANCY
A Bantam Book / February 2004
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam edition / April 1968
New Bantam edition / October 1971
Bantam reissue / August 1998
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1968 by Louis & Katherine L’Amour Trust
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