He had lost his grip on the knife, but he lunged up from the floor and came at me. I struck straight and hard to his already broken nose. Both of us were bloody, but neither had time to realize whether we were hurt or not. I struck him again, and he grabbed at my throat with both hands.
Stepping aside, I hit him again. He closed with me and got a hand up, clawing for my eyes. Twisting my head, I got my shoulder under his chin and jerked up hard. Again I shook him off. He was weaving now, exhausted as I was, but I gave him no chance. I struck hard with my right, and as he staggered, I knocked him back against the doorjamb.
Lashan was up, his face bloody from where the thrown poker had struck him, but before he could join Bauer against me, Yance loomed in the door. Lashan turned, and Yance, gripping a pistol, shot him. He fell backward, turning as he fell, and Bauer broke off the fight and plunged past Yance through the open door. The gate yawned opposite.
Some of his men lay dead; others were fleeing across the open ground toward the forest. He was running toward the gate, blood flying from his wounds, when Diana tossed my knife. I grasped it by the point and threw.
The knife struck him in the middle of the back, and he took on last leap forward, then sprawled on the ground just outside the gate.
For a long moment I simply stood there, staring at his fallen body, hands hanging empty at my sides. There was no more fighting. Our Catawbas had scattered into the woods, and I knew there would be no stragglers reaching the coast, not even to report what had happened. I could only stand, exhausted and empty, staring at the man who had brought so much trouble to so many. That he was dead I had no doubt, for my knife must have severed his spine, and it had been thrown hard.
A bad man but a damned good fighting man. Almost too good.
"Kin?" It was Diana. "Come, you're hurt. Let me see to you."
Dumbly I let her lead me inside and to a seat. Now, of a sudden, I began to hurt. My bruised leg, oddly enough, hurt the most.
Outside I could hear the mumble of talk as our people cleared up, carried away the bodies of the dead, and once more closed our gates against the world.
Yance came in. He looked at me, worried. "You all right there, big Injun?"
"All right. How about the others?"
"Wounds--mostly scratches. We were lucky. And waiting for them."
Lila came in and watched Diana's skillful fingers. "You're like your pa," she said. "You fight well."
"And Jeremy," I said.
One of the candles had been knocked over during the fighting but had luckily gone out. Lila lighted it again, adding more light to the room. Outside, the lighted bundles of brush that had given light in the yard were slowly burning down. Leaning my head against the back of the chair, I closed my eyes. Diana was putting something cooling on the places where I had been cut and stabbed. She was using some concoction made from herbs that she kept ready for such things, and Lila was beside her. Apparently I had been stabbed at least twice and had several bad scratches, yet at the moment I wanted only to rest.
Yance and Jeremy came in. Then, as they talked, Kane O'Hara joined them. Three men, they said, had been killed from Bauer's party. There might have been more who got away into the shelter of the forest. If so, I did not envy them, for the Catawbas were great hunters, and we had long been their friends. The most hospitable of people to friends, against enemies they were ruthless.
"We will go for your father," I said, "or send someone."
"I know," Diana replied. "Don't think of it now. Just get some rest."
My eyes closed again. Something was cooking at the fireplace, and it smelled good. Warm, friendly smells were all about me.
Tired as I was, I did not want to sleep. I wanted simply to enjoy.
I was home again.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The Shawmut, where Diana takes refuge, was, of course, a part of what is now known as Boston. The Reverend Blaxton (sometimes written Blackstone, but in the one signature I have seen, it is Blaxton) was much as he appears here. The same is true of Samuel Maverick, who was helping to establish a family that has contributed much to our history, to say nothing of having added a word to our western vocabulary.
Contrary to general opinion, slave raids from Africa to the coasts of Europe were not uncommon. The raid on the village of Baltimore, a town in West Cork, Ireland, took place in 1631. More than one hundred people were carried away into slavery.
The Warrior's Path led, with many branches and offshoots, from the far south to the towns of the Iroquois and even farther north. The Iroquois used it to attack the Cherokees, Creeks, and so on, and vice versa. The route was also used by traders and other travelers, as it was undoubtedly the best, following the contours of the land through areas in which there were water, fuel, and game.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
"I think of myself in the oral tradition -- of 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 recreated 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, assessment miner, and officer on tank destroyers 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 100 books is in print; there are nearly 230 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) 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 tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam well into the nineties -- among them, four Hopalong Cassidy novels: The Rustlers of West Fork, The Trail to Seven Pines, The Riders of High Rock, and Trouble Shooter.
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The Warrior's Path (1980) s-3 Page 21