The story is a very involved one, with many political ramifications and many characters. I have turned up a manuscript written by one of the major participants, and some letters, that have been permitted to my view in confidence by a Canadian reader. It has made it necessary for me to backtrack and revise some of what I have written, and make it essential for me to rewrite several portions of what I have done. There is no doubt as to their historical accuracy and they permit a greater understanding of the material.
However, that is beside the case. This is a book that in many ways resembles a jigsaw puzzle with bits and pieces that need to be fitted with care. It is not a simple, straight-line story, and cannot be written as such. It is utterly fascinating material and the characters are remarkable, and of course, the events led at least to the formation of the province of Manitoba, and to other wider effects.
If I am wanted at all it is because I approach my work with a feeling for history and a sense of its overall meaning. I would be contemptuous of my readers and of the history of Canada if I were to hurry this through.
I insist on returning the complete $5,000 myself. I want no strings attached.
By “the complete $5,000” he means that he did not expect his agent, Mauri Grashin, to return his 10 percent of the fee. Louis would pay it all back himself.
Some unknown element, however, seems to have kept this deal puttering along, because these comments start showing up in Louis’s journal two months later:
October 11 1973—I am working on LOUIS RIEL, and occasionally the first Sackett, to take place in Shakespeare’s time. The Riel book is an irritation. I want very much to do it, but Kathy [Kathy L’Amour, Louis’s wife and my mother] is right and I should never take on such jobs. I agreed to do this, and I prefer to write on what excites me at the moment. This does not…at the moment.
November 7 1973—Working on the Riel book; I want to write it, but not now and because of the commitment, I must. I like to write what takes my mind at the moment, and to write swiftly upon what excites me.
On the third of December he finally returned the option money, writing:
I want to write the book but to be free of deadlines. Kathy happy, and I also.
Louis eventually did end up using Riel in a more limited way in his novel Lonely on the Mountain.
Here are a few more notes:
Open with action.
RIEL - suffered from the handicap of being a fair man. His loyalty to the Queen and to his people did not waver. He wished to do the best for the latter without in any way failing in loyalty to the Queen.
Had he been a fanatic he would have had no decision to make. Rebellion would have been his course; he could have been more dynamic, he could have given unlimited scope to his speaking, he could have and would have resisted the Canadian Army, and might have stopped their advance.
His fault lay, if fault it is, in being a reasonable man. He hesitated at points where a fanatic would not. Yet, considering the situation, his end was inevitable.
His vision of lost opportunities brought him back to seek a victory when the time was past.
* * *
LLANO ESTACADO
* * *
The Beginning of a Western Novel
CHAPTER I
As they say in that song, my hat was throwed back and my spurs was a jinglin’. I was sittin’ up in the middle of that old paint pony of mine and headin’ for the same horizon I’d been riding for these past two weeks, with nothing changed.
That country was so flat out yonder I seen a prairie dog come out of his hole against the horizon and he looked so big I thought he was a bear. It seemed like an awful lot of nowhere and I was fresh out of grub and down to my last couple of swallows of water.
Supposedly, somewheres up ahead there was a buffalo wallow where after rains the water gathered, and that was supposed to tide me and my horse over until we could find us a water hole.
Nevertheless I was young enough so’s trouble didn’t seem like nothing more than sweat off my neck, and I was riding free and lonesome with the world all to myself. Or so I thought.
Next thing I knew something hit me spang, and I heard a shot. I went off my horse a rolling into the dust and somehow I’d had the good sense to grab for my Winchester when I left the saddle. Maybe it wasn’t no good sense a-tall. It was pure-dee luck or some kind of instinct. Anyway I hit the dirt and by the time I quit rollin’ I seen some dude come from behind a little throwed-up dirt and leggin’ it for my horse.
Well, I wasn’t about to see somebody ride off on my horse and leave me out here. A man caught afoot where I was would be a sure-enough dead man, so I rolled over again, come up on my elbows, and got off a shot just as that gent hit leather on my saddle.
My shot missed him but burned the pony’s neck and he went buckin’ off across the prairie with this man not down in the saddle yet, and believe me, that paint could buck! He done a good job and throwed that hombre sky-high and when he came down he was settin’ and the horse was gone a-flyin’ off across-country and there we was, both afoot and miles from anywhere.
My hand just naturally worked the lever on my rifle and she spat an empty shell and taken another one in the chamber. I looked at him settin’ there cussin’ and I held that rifle on him and said, “I never shot no man cold turkey afore, but I’m about to.”
“You fly at it,” he yelled. “We ain’t got nothin’ but a little time, anyways. You damn fool. Had you left me alone on that horse one of us could of had it, anyway. Now we’re both dead!”
“That was my horse,” I said. “I was alive and headin’ for more days of living. You was afoot out here and as good as dead.”
He got up off the ground and I seen he didn’t even have him a six-gun. His holster was as empty as my belly. Right then I should have started using what good sense I had, allowing as how I had any a-tall, but I never paid it no mind. I was sore, and I was fixing to shoot that man.
“You say that was your horse,” he said. “How do you figure?”
“I ketched him myself right out of the wild bunch and broke him to carry,” I said. “That makes him my horse.”
“Well, I say you just had him prisoner. He was his own horse. You had no more right to him than me. He was runnin’ wild when you caught him, and he was runnin’ wild when I jumped him. I say he was my horse.”
Such a boneheaded reasoning just throwed me there for a bit and then he said, “You goin’ to shoot or just stand there? I’m gettin’ tired of waitin’ for it.”
“Oh, shut up!” I said, disgusted. “You talk too much!”
“If you ain’t goin’ to shoot me,” he said, “we’d better start pickin’ ’em up an’ puttin’ ’em down. I mean, we ain’t gettin’ no closer to grub or water just standing here while you run off at the head. Let’s walk.”
“What the hell?” I said, disgusted. I fell in alongside him and started to walk. He kept looking at my rifle. I also had a six-shooter.
“Rifle gettin’ heavy? Want I should carry it for you?”
“Are you crazy? I’ll carry my own piece.”
“It’s goin’ to get mighty heavy, give you a mile or two,” he said cheerfully. “You’ll be glad to let me tote it afore sundown.”
Well, we hung up our jaws and took to walking, which no cowboy ever likes very much. By the time we’d gone a couple of miles that rifle was getting heavy but I wasn’t about to let him have it. If ever I saw a man who was a coyote this was him, right here alongside me.
We walked maybe six miles before we stopped to look around. I don’t know what for. That West Texas Panhandle country they call the Llano Estacado or the Staked Plain was just about the flattest country on earth, and there was an awful lot of it.
I was commencing to spit cotton and he was already past that, but he was so mean and contrary that I didn’t seem to make him no mind. He just didn’t care. All he wanted was me dead and my rifle and gun-belt, and I was dedicated to the proposition that he would get neither.
Finally, the sun went down. Darkness comes almighty soon in that country but there were stars coming out and unless I was much mistook there would be a moon somewheres further along, so we just kept puttin’ one foot ahead of the other right on into the night.
The stars faded and the moon did come up and out yonder where it was good and black the coyotes began to howl the moon, talking it up across that flat country. A time or two this gent kind of eased over toward me like he had it in mind to jump me, but I laid it down to him.
“You ain’t much comp’ny and without you, I’d have been puttin’ my feet under a table right down with a pot of coffee to drink, so you just step back an’ keep your distance or I’ll be walkin’ alone.”
“You scared!” he sneered. “You’re as big as me. What do you say we fight, winner take the guns?”
“I got the guns. You want to fight you just take off into the night and wrastle with evil or your conscience,” I said, “admittin’ you have one, which I doubt.”
“I was Christian-raised,” he protested. “I was a gospel-shoutin’ Methodist from the south. Methodists going to rule the world someday. They believe!”
“You sayin’ Baptists don’t? I’ll have you know, I am a Baptist, least I was raised one, an’ proud of it.”
“Don’t take much to make some folks proud,” he said, and I lifted a hand at him, but he stood his ground. “You Baptists ain’t got a chance out here,” he sneered. “You say to get baptized you got to go down into the water.” He waved a hand. “Where’s the water you can get into? You ain’t got a chance to baptize nobody so there’s not going to be any Baptists in West Texas or anywhere this side of the Pecos.”
“What d’you know about the Pecos?” I demanded, trying to get away from a losing battle. I surely didn’t know how the Baptists figured to work it and didn’t feel up to speaking for my church, not having enough know-how. Truth was I hadn’t been to a church but once in three, four years since I left home and that time was because I seen a yellow-haired girl goin’ up the steps. Turned out she was meetin’ some gent in a store-bought suit with his hair slicked down and no chance for a dusty cowpoke like me.
“I know it ain’t but two or three times a year you’ll get water enough to baptize anybody, even there,” he sneers, and I can’t argue with him because I never seen no Pecos. All I know is it’s there, somewheres yonder across the horizon.
“I seen the Pecos,” he said, “and the time I seen it last I was fetchin’ for it and up ahead I seen a cloud of dust. I figured it for Indians, maybe, or a herd of cows, but when I came up to the river I seen it wasn’t.”
“What was it?”
“Fish,” he said, “swimmin’ upriver, huntin’ for water.”
After that we didn’t talk much and it came to be mighty tirin’ out there. He kept falling back and I kept urging him on as he seemed to be gettin’ weaker and weaker by the minute. Finally I was so dry I couldn’t talk and I left off yellin’ at him. I just kept slogging along and next time I looked back he was nowhere in sight, but it was still moonlight and I could see a little way. I stopped and tried to yell but couldn’t make a sound above a whisper. I walked on, into the night, more than half-asleep, right on my feet. I stumbled a time or two, but it was the need for sleep more than anything else, and I was fairly walking in my sleep when suddenly there was a whisper of something behind me and I made to turn. Something crashed down on my skull and the last thing I recalled was dust in my throat, which was already dry enough.
—
It was the sun brought me out of it. The hot sun on my back.
I rolled over; the sun hit me in the eyes and it hurt. I struggled up, my skull throbbing, and slowly it all came back to me.
My rifle was gone. My gun-belt and holster were gone. Even the few coins in my pocket were gone and a letter I had offering me a job on a ranch near Wagon Mound, that was gone.
Worst of all, he’d taken my boots.
Those boots didn’t come up to much. They were old and about wore out, but they were all I had, and he knowed it, and a man without boots wasn’t going to get far.
Only I was.
Right about then I was mad enough to spit had I anything to spit with. I seen his tracks plain enough, and started after him. What I figured to do, him having the rifle and six-gun, I didn’t know.
Suddenly I seen something. I seen a man on a horse. At first I thought I was dreaming, for a body could stand in one place and look off across the country for three days and still see nothing, but there he was, maybe two miles off, setting easy in the saddle. I yelled, whooped, and hollered, and nothing come of it.
Anyway, all my whooping was in my mind because I couldn’t raise a sound above a whisper.
He disappeared and then maybe ten minutes after, I heard a shot. It was afar off, but I knowed what it was. That skunk who knocked me in the head now had him a horse.
I fell down, I got up, then fell again. Somewhere along there I got kind of light-headed but I kept walking. Something sobered me whilst I was lying on the ground one time and when I got up I seen some tracks.
They were buffalo tracks…old ones, leading off to the southwest.
For a moment I studied them, then walked on. Few minutes later I come on some other tracks, looked like wild horse tracks, three or four of them, and they too led southwest.
Now in that country one direction is as good as another unless there’s water. I turned around halfway and started off. I walked on, following those tracks, and then they turned west again and all of a sudden the earth split wide open in front of me and there was a canyon the like of which I’d never seen, and in the bottom of it was green grass, even a few cottonwoods and willows. Trouble was, the side was sheer for maybe thirty feet and there looked to be nowhere to get down. Now that didn’t make sense, because those buffaloes and wild horses couldn’t fly. I scouted for their tracks, found them, and found a break in the cliff.
A half hour later I was sprawled on my belly, drinking water.
CHAPTER II
Altogether that canyon was hundreds of feet deep, just the first thirty was sheer rimrock, and after that a steep talus slope, partly grass-covered, to the bottom.
When I had drunk a little water I splashed more on my face and chest and sat up and looked around. From where I sat there was a little mesquite and a few willows, further along some cottonwoods.
Getting up, I started following the creek bed, only I ran out of water within about thirty yards, so I stopped and walked back. This here canyon was a hidden place, although how far it ran, I had no idea. There were horse droppings around, and plenty of buffalo tracks. The horses were mostly unshod, although there were two or three wearing shoes; all of them, and I could tell by their tracks, were running loose now.
If a horse is ridden, or even with a herd, they keep to a direction, but these were just wandering, grazing, taking a bit here and there.
From where I stood I could see maybe a quarter of a mile of the canyon, up and down. I had taken another drink and then walked on down the canyon. Knowing where the water was, I could always come back.
Rounding a bend helped none at all. From that point I could see almost a half-mile further, but there was nothing in sight. What I needed most was a weapon, something more than my belt-knife, which was all I had. Luckily, that had been fastened to my pants-belt, not the gun-belt. That polecat had not taken the time to undo two buckles.
First off, I was right glad to have come upon water, but I was sorry to lose my horse and my arms. Somehow or other I was going to have to rig something to carry water in, because this place I’d come upon seemed to be plumb lost and alone and maybe nobody even knew of it but me and some Indians.
Suddenly, I seen movement!
In one step I was out of sight in the brush, but watching. What I saw was horses, three or four mustangs that came out of the willows, where they’d probably had a drink at some pool. One was a kind of dusty-gray, fine-looking horse, maybe three or
four years old. Although it was some distance off it seemed to have a brand on it, so it might have been saddle-broke sometime. Now if I could just get my hands on that horse…
Two or three more showed up. Likely it was safe enough for them down here, and certainly there was plenty of water and grass, both scarce items up on the cap-rock at this time of year.
Kind of easing myself out from cover, I just stood there and let them see me. One of those mustangs pulled up sharp when she spotted me and she blew through her nostrils and just stared, ears pricked. Me, I stood rock-still, letting them get used to me.
The wind was gentle, from me toward them, so they’d caught a whiff of me too. I thought that branded horse stood a little longer than the others, and seemed interested. “Hiya, boy!” I called, and I walked out a few steps. The others had started drifting off, not spooked, but being careful, yet the one still lingered.
“I think somebody treated you pretty good sometime or other,” I said aloud, “somebody you’re missing, maybe. Well, I’m friendly.”
Moving a couple of more steps, I just stood there, and that horse actually walked toward me a little, stretching its nose in my direction. Putting out a hand, I walked toward it, although I was still a good hundred yards off. It turned and walked, then trotted away.
“Given time,” I said, “we could get together.”
The trouble was, there wasn’t going to be time. Water I had, but I’d no food, and if I didn’t starve to death then some Indian would come along and take my hair.
Among the willows and close to a cluster of big old cottonwoods I found a place to bed down. It was smooth grass, there was water close by, and plenty of firewood around. Gathering sticks for a fire I startled a rabbit, but it was gone and away in an instant. I also saw some deer tracks. Somehow I’d have to rig some snares, or starve to death.
Volume 1: Unfinished Manuscripts, Mysterious Stories, and Lost Notes from One of the World's Most Popular Novelists Page 24