I turned in my saddle and glanced back, but the trail was empty. Yet, far back, I believed I saw dust hanging in the air. I removed the thong from my pistol.
“There are people there whom I know, and there’s a cantina. I’ve heard it is kept by an Anglo, but I couldn’t say for sure.”
“I just want to rest, and I am hungry,” Meghan said. “Besides, I want to get back before Father returns, and his ship is due in almost any day. If I am gone, he will be worried.”
“We can get some fresh horses there and move along faster.” I glanced back again. Yes, that was dust, and it was closer. More than one rider, and probably three or four.
Leading the way, I rode into a small stream, then drew up as our horses needed to drink. “Let them drink,” I said. “They’ve earned it.”
There was dust in front of us, too. “Meghan,” I decided on the instant, “let’s get off the trail. Somebody is coming!”
“But—” she protested.
“There!” A small bypass trail led into the trees. “That way! Quick!”
She spurred her horse and went up the bank and into a small copse, where she drew up. The bypass trail led on through the trees, to rejoin the main trail a hundred yards further on. Evidently it was used when the main was impassable for one reason or another.
“If anything happens, take that trail and ride hard for the cantina. It can’t be more than a mile or two. Don’t worry about me.”
“I have a rifle now.”
“Meghan…please! Don’t argue. If trouble begins, walk your horse a short distance so they will not hear you, and then go!”
“Johannes, I love you!”
“And I love you, but let’s live to enjoy it. Please! If I am worried about protecting you, I cannot protect myself nearly so well.”
Reluctantly she rode along the bypass, and I rode back to where we had forded the stream. If Meghan could reach the cantina…
Riders were coming into view not fifty yards away. Standing back among the trees, they could not immediately see me, but I recognized each of them.
Don Federico, Chato, Rad Huber, and Fletcher…
“I’ll be damned!” I said softly.
To try to turn away now would only reveal my presence. I could only hope they would miss seeing me. Careful to make no whisper of sound, I drew my rifle from its scabbard. My left side was toward them, my rifle across my saddle.
The black stallion stood very still, ears pricked, sensing trouble as a wild horse will.
Fletcher pulled up. “Why not wait here? They’ll have to come this way, and they can’t see us until they’re right atop of us.”
It was Chato who saw me. He was looking all around, and our eyes met and held. We both knew it was to be today. “I am not a boy now, Chato,” I said, and I fired.
It was point-blank with a rifle at less than twenty yards, and I missed.
At the instant I spoke, Chato, the most experienced fighting man of the lot, instinctively jumped his horse, and the bullet intended for him hit Rad Huber and knocked him sidewise in the saddle, almost unseating him. His horse jumped, and Huber, wounded, fought for control.
Chato fired, as did Fletcher and Federico. A bullet burned my hand, and I dropped my rifle just as I got off a second shot.
Palming my six-shooter, I put two bullets into Federico.
Then suddenly the afternoon exploded with roaring guns and charging horses. Flashes stabbed the air, and there was a smell of gunpowder. The black stallion swung away, and I fired into Huber as he turned toward me, blood staining his shirt.
Fletcher was down, but other riders had come in, and all were shooting. Wheeling the stallion, I was in time to see Monte McCalla put a finishing shot into Fletcher as he tried to rise. As quickly as it had begun, it was over.
Besides McCalla I recognized Jacob Finney, Owen Hardin, and Yacub Khan. Two others were strangers; by their style, they were El Monte boys.
Thumbing cartridges into my pistol, I holstered it.
Hardin swung down, picked up my rifle, and handed it to me. “What’s the matter?” he said, smiling. “Can’t you keep out of trouble?”
“Where’d you come from?”
“Miss Nesselrode sent us to round up Meghan Laurel, and we were just tryin’ to catch up when we ran into Khan here. He come down Mills Creek an’ ran right into us.
“We were ridin’ along enjoyin’ the afternoon when we saw your dust up ahead, and when you topped a rise, we recognized you. Just about that time we saw four riders headin’ into the creek bottom, so we used our spurs, an’ all hell busted loose.”
“Where is she?” Jacob looked around. “Where’s the girl?”
“Gone along to the cantina,” I said, and for the first time I looked down at the bodies.
There were but three: Rad Huber, Fletcher, and the don.
Chato? Chato was gone!
“Meghan!” I shouted, and I slapped spurs to that black stallion and took off with a lunge.
That cantina was only a little way ahead, and Chato…!
The others were behind me, running their horses. The clump of trees, the hitching rail, the patio with its tables…
I hit the ground running.
Chato was standing in the shade of a big oak on the edge of the patio. His gun was in his hand.
“Meghan?” I shouted.
“I do not fight women,” he said. “I fight only men.”
“I am a man,” I said. I was fairly certain now that he had not harmed Meghan, so I could concentrate fully on the job I had to do.
Shadows fell on the cruel face, the flat nose, the old scars. “I should have killed you then, in spite of the old man. You were trouble. I could see it in your eyes, and you were but a baby.”
“I am a man now,” I said, and I shot above the stabbing flame from his gun.
He took a slow step back, and I shot again. The gun fell from his hand, and he grabbed for it, falling to his knees. He tried to get up then, and fell headlong, his hat rolling free.
“You should have died in the desert,” he said.
“I am Johannes Verne,” I said, “and I was not afraid.”
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 wi
despread 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 best-selling 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), The Lonesome Gods, 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.
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