Well, it was all right to sing in the sunshine, but I’d seen too many old men sitting on porches in their shabby clothes to want to be one of them.
Respect those men who were doing things to make a future? You bet I did. Most of them were busy building, opening new country, and making it better for those who would come after. They’d done the hard work, built the roads, opened the mines, dug the wells, guarded the cattle, and built the railroads. I was willing to do my share, but I wanted to be there when the payoff came.
The trail made a turn and there ahead of me was a crossroads settlement, half a dozen buildings, and a stage coming my way that had just stopped. The dust hadn’t even settled, nor the dogs stopped barking.
Folks were starting to get down from the stage when the dun ambled up to the hitchrail and I stepped down from the saddle.
It wasn’t much of a place. The stage stop was also a saloon and a restaurant. There was a corral, a couple of shacks and a second saloon. There was also a place with a sign over the door that said BEDS in big letters.
A square-built man with a square, hard-jawed face was standing on the porch watching the passengers step down. He turned to me as I walked up, brushing the dust from my coat. He was wearing a badge.
“Shell Tucker?”
“Yes.”
“Come inside.”
He went behind the counter, opened the door of a big old iron safe and took out a sack. He put it on the counter in front of me.
“A man came in here, sold his horse, and bought a ticket on the stage. Then he came over to me, bought me a drink, and put this sack on the table.
“He said, ‘In a few hours, or maybe in a couple of days, there’ll be a man named Shell Tucker come riding in here.’ He described you mighty well. ‘When he comes in you tell him to take this and lay off.…Just tell him to lay off.’
“I asked him if he was Bob Heseltine, and he said he was, and then he said, ‘I can’t keep runnin’ all my life. A man’s got to be able to sleep, he’s got to be able to rest. I’ve tried outrunnin’ him, and it didn’t work out. We tried killin’ him, and he won’t be killed. I got to have some sleep, sometime. You just give him this and tell him to lay off.’”
“Thanks,” I said. “I wish he’d done this months ago…a long time ago.”
“Well, he’s done it now. You going to lay off?”
“Why not? I never wanted him. I have to pay this money—or most of it—to some folks down in Texas.”
The man with the badge nodded. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“Looks as if I’m the one should do the buying.”
The bartender brought a bottle to the table. “I want coffee, too,” I said, “and whatever is left to eat.”
“There’s a-plenty,” he said. “The stage wasn’t carryin’ many folks. Just an old man and a girl.”
The door opened for the last of the passengers, and I looked up. And there in the door was Vashti. Vashti and her pa.
“Shell! Oh, Shell!” she said, and she came right into my arms, and it seemed the natural thing to do.
Lander Owen seemed older, more tired. But he looked at me, grinning. “Looks as if you stepped into a loop, boy.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I was hurt in a rockfall, and the doctor told me I should go to a warmer climate. I told him I thought I was heading there, and he said I shouldn’t wait until I died, but to go now. So we’re on our way.”
“Con told us you were in Los Angeles,” Vashti said.
“I’ll turn right around and go back,” I said.
The man with the badge had gone out, and only the stage driver was left. He had walked to the bar for a drink and was talking to the bartender.
“I was coming to look you up,” I said to Vashti and her pa. “I’ve got my money back and I’m through with all that.”
“You’re damned right you are!”
Bob Heseltine was standing just inside the doorway, and he was all squared away to kill me.
“Get out of the way, Vash,” I said quietly.
“I thought you’d gone, Bob,” I said. “I thought you’d quit.”
“Like hell! I figured to, and then I got mad all over again and said I’ll be damned if I do!”
“You’ve still got a chance, Bob,” I said. “The road is out there and you can ride. I don’t want anything from you.”
“You’ve played hell with me,” he said. “Me! Bob Heseltine! I should have killed you the first time I saw you!”
“Your horse is out there, Bob. There’s no need for this now.”
He was staring at me. “Why, damn you! I could pull a gun faster than you when I was six!”
“Reese is going to make it, I think, Bob,” I said, still speaking quietly. “He had a good doctor and he was drinking lots of milk and taking it easy. And I saw Ruby back where you left her. She was cooking for the stage tender.”
“Cooking? Her?”
“That’s right. I—”
He went for his gun and I beat him.
My gun slid into my hand with an easy motion. I had no sense of hurry, no fear. This was the moment for which I had been preparing myself for a long time.
His hand went down, his gun came up, and I shot him in the belly, shooting three times, as fast as I could slip the hammer, a steady roar of sound, with no breaks.
Heseltine got off only one shot—into the floor.
He went to his knees, started to get up, then just rolled over. It was a moment, a long moment, before I could believe he was dead.
Suddenly the man with the badge was in the doorway. “He came back,” I said. “He came back.”
“I thought he would,” he said.
The stage driver stuck his head in the door. “Stage leaving,” he said. “All who’re going, get aboard.”
“Get on,” I told Vashti and her pa. “You get aboard. I’ll ride along after.”
And that was how I returned to California.
1. Thomas Walsh was the father of Evelyn Walsh McLean, owner of the Hope Diamond.
Return to text.
2. David May founded the May Co. stores.
Return to text.
3. Meyer Guggenheim founded the Guggenheim fortune here.
Return to text.
4. The area now called Hollywood; known then as La Nopalera.
Return to text.
5. Now known as Wilshire Blvd.
Return to text.
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 In
dies 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), Tucker, 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
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 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
TUCKER
A Bantam Book / September 2004
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam edition published October 1971
Bantam reissue / April 2000
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1971 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:
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Please visit our website at www.bantamdell.com
eISBN: 978-0-553-90012-5
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