The sun was just going down; the sky was bright and the air clear. Somewhere out through the last of the trees, a quail called. And when Pete Shoyer stepped around the corner of the stage station Swante Taggart saw him at once.
They faced each other across a hundred feet and there was no doubt in the mind of either that this was the moment. Swante Taggart had a fleeting thought that it could not have been at a worse time for him, tired as he was, but he knew this was it.
He could hear water falling somewhere, and the horses munching hay in the mangers. A large, drowsy fly buzzed somewhere nearby. These sounds seemed strangely clear. A horse stamped and Miriam turned slowly, her eyes on Taggart. Then she stifled a gasp as she saw Pete Shoyer. Adam Stark appeared on the porch and with him was Consuelo.
Shoyer had taken a step forward. “I’m takin’ you in, Taggart!” he said loudly.
“Why, come and take me then,” Taggart replied, and watched Shoyer come toward him.
Then suddenly Shoyer’s head thrust forward and his right hand dropped, but as it dropped Taggart took a fast step to the right and drew as he moved. He felt the heavy gun swing up, felt the jolt of the shot, and then another jolt as he was spun around.
He started to fall, but stiffened his knees and fired a second time. Shoyer seemed hazy, a difficult target. Another shot struck him and a third kicked up dust at his feet. Taggart ran three light, fast steps to the right and fired again.
Then he fell. He smelled dust and blood and knew he was down. He heard the blast of a gun. Dust was kicked into his face and he rolled over into a sitting position and, lifting his six-shooter, he shot into Shoyer’s body, firing once, then again.
A bullet whiffed past Taggart’s face and he began to thumb shells into his gun, and then he got to his knees and started to rise. His leg buckled under him and he fell again, feeling a bullet pass him as he went down. And then he shot upward from a prone position, rolled over and got up, all the way this time.
There was blood on his face and he could taste blood in his mouth, and he felt a strange weakness in his body. He held his gun ready as he looked around slowly, trying to place Shoyer, but he could not find him. Miriam was grasping his arm and crying, and he was trying to shake her off, sure she would be killed.
Then he saw Pete Shoyer. The gunman was sprawled on the adobe soil near the corner of the stage station. Taggart lifted his gun.
“It’s all right,” Stark was saying. “He’s dead.”
“Who killed him then?” Taggart demanded. “This was my fight. I—”
He felt himself slipping; he tried to lift his gun. But as he fell he heard Adam Stark say, “Why, you killed him, man, and a good job it was, too.”
There was an arm under his head and he heard someone sobbing. He felt his shirt torn open, and someone else was tearing his pants leg. He wished they would go away. Besides, this was the last pair of pants he had.
He heard himself speaking. “Adam,” he said, “I would like to ask the hand of your sister in marriage.”
There was a moment then when he was aware of nothing, and when he opened his eyes later they were all around him and he was on a table in the stage station.
“I asked a question,” he said.
“And I answered,” Miriam said, “I give myself to you.”
“This is between men,” Taggart replied. “It was your brother I asked.”
“Why, yes,” Adam said, “she could go far and not find so much of a man. I’ll give her to you on condition you join us on the ranch we’ll find somewhere near Tucson. We will need a man who knows cows.”
Taggart turned his head stiffly. His skull throbbed heavily and he knew he must have been hit there, too, but he felt very much alive. “All right then,” he said to Miriam, “I accept your acceptance. We will be married then, and if there is any beauty after this that I can bring to you, it shall be yours.”
He was delirious, he decided, but it was not a bad way to be. He was delirious or he was happy, or he was both, and he put his head back on the table.
“Here’s his gun,” somebody said. “I’ve put his horse in the stable.”
His horse and his gun, he thought. It was all he had when he rode up to the canyon of the chapel, and now he still had his horse and his gun, but he also had a woman and a friend.
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, and miner, and was 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 more than 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), 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 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
ASK YOUR BOOKSELLER FOR THE BOOKS YOU HAVE MISSED.
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
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
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 Rustlers of West Fork
The Trail to Seven Pines
The Riders of High Rock
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
TAGGART
A Bantam Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam edition published April 1959
New Bantam edition / April 1971
Bantam reissue / December 2003
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
All rights reserved
Copyright © 1959 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 adddress:
Bantam Books, New York, New York.
Visit our website at www.bantamdell.com
Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN 0-553-90004-8
Published simultaneously in Canada
v1.0
eBook Info
Title:
Taggart
Creator:
Louis L’Amour
Publisher:
Bantam Dell
Format:
OEB
Date:
2003-10-23
Subject:
Fiction
Identifier:
Lamo_0553899848
Language:
US English
Rights:
Copyright 1959
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
About Louis L’Amour
Bantam Books by Louis L’Amour
Copyright Page
Novel 1959 - Taggart (V5.0) Page 14