He took up the rifle with which he had been armed. “We’re making a stopover of Cherokee Station. It isn’t officially a home station, but the atmosphere is so congenial that our passengers are beginning to insist on it.”
Sitting her saddle, she waited for Mark Stacy to join her. The brief spatter of rain had ended, and the clouds were breaking up.
Stacy rode around the corner of the house, and together they started back along the main trail. The air was clear and fresh, and it was a pleasure to be riding. It was almost like old times.
“You’ve done a fine job, Mrs. Breydon,” Stacy said. “Frankly, I had my doubts. I’d heard of women operating stations in California but never really believed it possible. And you—you’re scarcely the type.”
“What is the type, Mr. Stacy?”
He shrugged. “You’ve got me there. Only—well, you’re a lady.”
“I hope so.” She smiled again. “I have never found it a handicap.”
“This”—he gestured toward the station that was just coming within sight, although still some distance off—“will soon be a thing of the past. They’ll be building a railroad west as soon as the war is over. Stage lines will only be feeder lines for a while.”
“How long, do you think? I mean before they complete a railroad this far?”
“Three years, perhaps four. Ben Holladay is already thinking of it, and so am I. I’ve become involved, in fact. That is where the future is, Mrs. Breydon.”
They rode on in silence. “And you, Mrs. Breydon? What are your plans?”
“For the moment, to operate Cherokee Station as best I can. When the war is over, we may go back to Virginia. I have property there.”
“Some of us would like to keep you here,” Stacy said. “This is a new country. We need people of vision, both men and women. And—well, we need you.”
“Thank you. I am not going to think of that now. I’ve Peg to think of, and Wat. He’s become a member of the family. For a while, I am going to live day by day.” From the crest of a low hill, she could see the sunlight on Peg’s hair as she stood outside the station. “Later, after I’ve become adjusted, I may think of other things.”
“When do you, I hope you will think of me.”
“Of course, Mr. Stacy. How could I help it?”
“Well,” he said irritably, “there’s Temple Boone.”
“Yes, there is, isn’t there? As Matty says, he’s a fine figure of a man!”
Matty was on the step drying her hands on her apron. Temple Boone and Ridge Fenton were walking in from the barn, and Wat was shading his eyes toward them.
They were all there, at Cherokee Station, and it was good to be coming home.
*
SEVERAL HOURS LATER and fifty miles away, Jason Flandrau was heading southeast, avoiding the trails. The money belt around his waist was heavy, as were his saddlebags. He had played out his hand in Colorado, but New Mexico lay to the south, and there was new country to the west of it. It was a wise man who knew when to fold his cards and toss in his hand. Down there or in California, he could deal them his own way, in his own time.
He had been in his office, about to close the window, when he heard them talking in the street. Denver Cross was dead, most of his gang wiped out, but they had some prisoners who, in fear of a hangman’s noose, were telling all they knew.
Thirty minutes later, he was in the saddle and finding his way out of town through the back streets.
Now, miles away and safe, he smiled smugly. So much the better! There had been no need to divide the money he had promised, and he could afford to take his time and look around. What he had almost done in Colorado, he could do elsewhere. He rode around the base of a low hill and down to the small creek among the trees. He would water his horse and take a breather.
The Comanche war party was in an irritable mood. They had ridden more than a hundred miles without taking a scalp.
They were stopped by the stream when they heard the sound of a horse’s hoofs. The rider was approaching at an easy gait.
They were standing in a half circle with arrows in position and bows bent when the rider came through the trees. He drew up sharply.
There were twelve of them, the first Comanche war party he had ever seen and the last he would ever see. He went for his gun, but the bulging money belt impeded his draw. The Comanches had no such problem.
He was still partly alive when a warrior stooped over him with a scalping knife.
Somebody, he thought, had dealt him a black deuce.
Author’s Note
*
THE CHEROKEE TRAIL received its name from a party of Cherokee Indians who went over the route in 1848–1849, bound for the gold fields in California. According to the best reports, their interest lay less in the discovery of gold than in locating a home for their people. Finding the turmoil of the gold rush not to their liking, the Cherokees returned by approximately the same route.
When the Civil War pulled away most of the soldiers guarding the Overland Stage, that part of the route from Laramie to Julesburg was abandoned due to continual Indian attacks, and the stage was routed south to Denver and then over the Cherokee Trail to Laramie.
My story is concerned with that portion of the trail that runs north from Denver through Laporte to Laramie. North of Laporte, this is wide-open country for much of the way, and the old stage station at Virginia Dale is still standing.
Outlaws did have a hideout, used occasionally, in a natural rock fortress in the hills west of Owl Canyon.
The Cherokees found gold in several of the creeks along the way, which was one of the factors that led to the gold rush to Colorado.
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 telev
ision movies.
His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel), The Cherokee Trail, 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 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
THE CHEROKEE TRAIL
A Bantam Book / December 2004
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam edition published August 1982
Bantam reissue / April 1997
Map by William and Alan McKnight
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1982 by Louis & Katherine L’Amour Trust
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eISBN: 978-0-553-89901-6
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