He saw the big body jerk, and he shifted guns and shot again and saw Hoerner falling. Then Utah turned back and he saw Nevers standing there, his right side red with his own blood.
“You’re a murderer, Nevers!” Blaine’s voice was utterly cold. “You started this! You were there with Fuller when they hung Neal! I heard your voice! You were behind it! Good men have died for you!”
Utah Blaine’s gun came up and Nevers screamed. Then Blaine shot him through the heart, and Nevers stood there for an instant, rocking with the shock of another bullet and then fell against the tree. The man with the drooping shoulder was lifting a Winchester and taking a careful sight along it when a rifle roared from the house door.
Amazed, Utah turned his head. Angie stood in the doorway, her father’s Spencer in her hands. Coolly, she fired again, and Blaine looked toward the corral. “Come out, Machuk! Come out with your hands up!”
There was a choking cry, then Machuk’s voice, “Can’t. You—you busted my leg!”
Blaine turned and stared at Angie. One hand clung to a tree trunk. His body sagged. “Angie—you—you—all right?”
Then he heard a thunder of hoofs and he fell, and the ground hit him and he could smell the good fresh dust of the cool shadows. He heard the crinkle of a dried leaf folding under his cheek and the soft…soft…softness of the deep darkness into which he was falling away.
*
HE OPENED HIS eyes into soft darkness. There was a halo of light nearby. The halo was around a dimmed lamp, and it shone softly on the face of the girl in the chair beside his bed. She was sleeping, her face at peace. At his movement, her eyes opened. She put out a quick hand. “Oh, you mustn’t! Lie still!”
He sagged back on the pillow. “What—what happened?”
“You were wounded. Three shots. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“Nevers? Rink?”
“Both dead. Rals Forbes was here, and Padjen stayed here. He’s sleeping in the other room. Rocky White was here, too.”
“White?”
“He’s the new marshal of Red Creek.”
White, a tall rugged young puncher, looked like a good man. So much the better.
“What happened to Ben Otten?”
“Nevers killed him the night before you got here. Ben came here—for what I don’t know—and Nevers shot him. Maybe he thought he was you. Maybe he didn’t care. His body was lying in the stable all night and all the morning before the fight.”
Otten…Nevers…Witter. And then Miller and Lud Fuller, and before them Gid Blake and Joe Neal…and for what?
“Country’s growin’, Angie,” he whispered, “growin’ up. Maybe this was the last big fight. Maybe the only way men can end violence is by violence, but I think there are better ways.”
“They are setting up a city government in Red Creek,” Angie said. “All of them are together.”
“That’s the way. Government. We all need it, Angie.” He was silent. “Government with justice…sometimes the words sound so…so damn’ stuffy, but it’s what men have to live by if they will live in peace.”
“You’d better rest.”
“I will.” He lay quiet, staring up into the darkness. “You know,” he said then, “that 46—it’s a good place. I’d like to see the cattle growin’ fat on that thick grass, see the clear water flowin’ in the ditches, see the light and shadow of the sun through the trees. I’d like that, Angie.”
“It’s yours. Joe Neal would like it too. You held it for him, Utah.”
“For him…and for you. Without you it wouldn’t be much, Angie.”
She looked over at him and smiled a little. “And why should it be without me?” she asked gently. “I’ve always loved the place…and you.”
He eased himself in the bed and the stiffness in his side gave him a twinge. “Then I think I’ll go to sleep, Angie. Wake me early…I want to drink gallons and gallons of coffee…” His voice trailed away and he slept, and the light shone on the face of the woman beside him. And somewhere out in the darkness a lone wolf called to the moon.
About Louis L’Amour
*
“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), Utah Blaine, 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
Th
e 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 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
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: The Quotations of Louis L’Amour, compiled by Angelique L’Amour
POETRY
Smoke from This Altar
UTAH BLAINE
A Bantam Book / November 2004
PUBLISHING HISTORY
This book was originally published under the pseudonym
“Jim Mayo.”
Bantam edition published September 1983
Bantam reissue / April 1995
Bantam reissue / January 2003
Map by William & Alan McKnight
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1954 by Ace Books, Inc.
Copyright © 1982 by Louis & Katherine L’Amour Trust
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except
where permitted by law. For information address:
Bantam Books New York, New York.
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Please visit our website at www.bantamdell.com
eISBN: 978-0-553-90014-9
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