Somewhere along the line…Riley Brennan acquired The Luck. How they came to be together was a story often told yet never by either Brennan or The Luck, hence all was supposition.
The fact of the matter was that Riley had seen the boy lying among the wreckage after a riverboat explosion. He had taken him aboard the boat on which he was and had paid the doctor bills despite his own bad luck. Yet from that day on had begun the rise of Riley Brennan.
Later, discovering the boy’s latent talent for music, Riley hired the best instructors in New Orleans, a city that fancied the arts. The Luck was eleven when he became the protégé of the fast-rising Brennan, and seven years later he was a part of the legend that was Riley Brennan.
Riley Brennan was cool, immaculate and poised. The Luck accompanied him as servant and protégé. He kept Brennan[’s] boots polished and his clothes in press, he brought breakfast to his cabin and listened to his dissertations on wine, women, card[s] and men.
If there was, in the make-up of Riley Brennan, any affection for The Luck, it was not evident. If The Luck had feelings or desires they remained unexpressed. Brennan was considerate without being kind, friendly without permitting liberties. The Luck, who might have starved or become a beggar, was well-dressed, well-fed, and permitted to read the books of Riley Brennan.
Evening after evening, [in] riverboat and in hotel, Riley Brennan gambled. He played with ease and polish, and when he lost he lost small pots and lost with a shrug. [When] he won he won larger pots without expression. When he was not playing one might be sure he was engaged with a lady.
The term is not used lightly, for there was in the life of Riley Brennan no place for casual females of the cafes and riverboats. He knew them, he acknowledged their presence, he treated them with the same distinction and politeness with [which] he treated others…yet he remained studiously aloof.
Yet there were the daughters and widows of wealthy planters and merchants, lovely always, beautifully dressed always, and always, it seemed, unable and unwilling to resist the graceful tongue and easy manner of Riley Brennan. And Riley Brennan went from conquest to conquest, leaving brighter eyes and broken hearts behind him…and some memories better treasured than repeated.
The success of Riley Brennan attracted thieves and connivers. The thieves tried force and suffered broken skulls or arms, two were found floating on the river after attempts at the wealth Riley was known to carry, and Riley was politely innocent. Confidence schemes brought only a smile to his lips, ladies with plantations that needed the mortgage lifted found themselves kissed and left waiting, and Riley went on, banking his money and living quietly, always cool, always aloof, always attracting attention.
Twenty times adepts with cards conspired to take him at poker…twenty times they failed.
No matter what the method used, Riley Brennan won, and in these games when he won, he smiled….
The above feels something like the version of Reilly’s Luck that I was told as a child. Initially, I believe that Dad had intended to write a short story, a simple tale of a gambler and a crippled boy who played the violin. The interesting part, and the part that these notes seem about to reveal, was that the kid would play while Riley was at the poker table and would communicate through his music to Riley about the cards that his opponents held.
Eventually, the two have a falling-out over Riley’s treatment of a certain woman, and the boy betrays Riley by playing the wrong music.
This next set of notes is much more like the version I remember….
Gambler picks up crippled boy and carries him along as a servant, buys boy violin and has him taught. He plays beautifully. During the years he comes to almost worship the gambler, who instructs him in literature, riverboat life, provides him with a good living and with books. The boy’s music warns him of cheating gamblers, often tips him to cards they hold. Nobody catches on until one woman does—she is the daughter of a Balkan baron and she makes love to the boy, wins him over, and gets him to betray Riley.
This means killing—and The Luck knows it. Yet in a final scene he reminds Riley of all the women he has had, that a crippled man can never expect real love, and that he had known all the time he was being deceived, but a counterfeit love was better than none. Riley is understanding, and they go on together.
Riley has taught The Luck to face life, not to shrink from it. He has also taught him that on the river the penalty for being caught cheating is death.
Here is a last fragment that obviously belongs to the same story. It ends with a typical Louis L’Amour affirmation…reminding himself to always do his best.
Begin the story when they board the boat, have the Baron and the girl see him come aboard.
Then a flashback and tell the story as simply as possible of how it all began.
This is a story of four people; of Riley, The Luck, the girl, and the Baron.
Have some comment by Riley on his crippled condition. To the effect that those who care for him do not notice. Also, a comment by a gambler who had a scar removed from his chin….Might end the story with Riley asking the name of the doctor.
Make this a beautiful, strong, gutty story. Write every line with extreme care.
Reilly’s Luck went on to become one of my father’s most intriguing novels. I have always enjoyed it, but my appreciation peaked in the early 2000s when I spent some time breaking it down to turn it into a miniseries for television. The project was never sold, but during the process I began to see that certain extremely personal and no doubt unconscious aspects of Dad’s experience were mirrored in the character of Will Reilly.
Chief among them was the realization in Reilly that he had wasted a good deal of his life. Up until World War II, Dad lived the life of a young and somewhat pretentious poet, putting a great deal of effort toward trying to charm his way into the literary scene in Oklahoma and other places. He was a man much like Will Reilly who put on a good show and, though nearly penniless, and with only the vaguest beginnings of a writing career, nearly married a modestly wealthy French countess while serving in France during WWII. After the war, Louis settled in to become more like Val Darrant, a practical laborer laying the foundations for a serious career, finally finding a woman who could help him succeed in a life that was built from the ground up on his own terms.
In my opinion Reilly’s Luck is also the deepest exploration of the relationships between men and women that exists in my father’s work. The novel opens with Myra, Val’s mother, a prostitute who is willing to kill her son in order to live a more unencumbered life. In fact, it seems that she only gave birth to Val as a way of trapping the miner, Darrant, who was wise enough to escape at the last moment.
We then meet Will Reilly, a man who seems to have been deeply hurt by something in his past. There is no hint of what wounded him, but it leads him to live a carefully isolated existence…until young Val enters the picture.
Once the process of raising a child opens Will up emotionally, he is able to connect with Louise, the Russian aristocrat. But, though a woman of means, she is a bit like a powerless version of Myra; she seems to accept that her purpose in life is to be sold off to further the fortunes of her cousin, Prince Pavel. She has the chance to run away with Reilly and, later in life, although she has the opportunity to spurn her cousin, she passively remains in the role that either she, or fate, has chosen.
Then we have Boston Bucklin and her sister. These young women, who were raised around their father and brothers, healthy examples of masculinity, are free and kind and forceful. They can ride and shoot and brand cattle, yet they are also the most powerfully feminine women in the story. They inhabit themselves completely. Typically, a rags-to-riches story shows its young hero eventually living up to his mentor’s expectations and then exceeding them. Val Darrant does this in many ways, yet none so clearly as his choice of, and willingness to commit
to, the right woman.
Along the way we also meet a number of contrasting characters: Hank Sonnenberg, who is so brutally masculine that even Myra is a bit scared of him. Pavel, an example of a conniving and narcissistic, and therefore weak, man. And Van Clevern, who is genteel and caring and yet who has attached himself in some disturbing way to Myra.
There is really no other Louis L’Amour novel that examines the landscape of sexual dynamics and roles to this extent, but the magic of my father’s writing is such that Reilly’s Luck can be explored either at that level or as simply a grand adventure. The choice is very much up to the reader. For a complete set of notes outlining the elements that would have to be taken into consideration in a Reilly’s Luck miniseries and some further commentary, visit louislamourslosttreasures.com.
Beau L’Amour
August 2019
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
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
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
No Traveller Returns
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 a 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 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 the many frontier and adventure stories he wrote 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.
His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel), Jubal Sackett, 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 from Random House Audio.
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 Free
dom by President Reagan.
Louis L’Amour died on June 10, 1988.
What’s next on
your reading list?
Discover your next
great read!
Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.
Sign up now.