Milo Talon
Page 21
“You’re tired, Anne, I can see that. You’re really tired. Now I’m going to fix something for you and your friends, so why don’t you just go in there and lie down. By the time the rain is over I’ll have some food packed and you can go right along.”
“Well, if you don’t mind?”
“Of course not! You go right in there! It isn’t much, just a cot, but it will do just fine. Now you just lie down. I’ll call you when the rain stops.
“There now! All comfy? Now you just take a little nap. No use your getting all worn out.”
Slowly, Anne stretched out. She was tired! So very, very tired! It seemed like she had been going for days, and with so little rest.
Her eyes closed. After a little while they opened. Such a strange room! Gray walls, no windows … probably a storeroom of some kind.
Her eyes closed again, for just a few minutes, for just a little while.…
Such a nice woman … such beautiful blue eyes. The thought faded and she slept, deeply, soundly.…
FAR DOWN THE trail, Ray drew up, looking back. “She ought to be comin’ along, Dude.” He mumbled it through his tightly bandaged jaws.
“If you ask me,” his sister said, “I think she wanted to be rid of us.”
“Well,” Dude said, “I think we’re well rid of her. All we’ve had is promises.”
He glanced back one more time. There was no sign of a rider, no dust … of course there had been a shower, but that had been hours ago. If she had wanted to come she would have been here by now. After all, Dude told himself, they had not traveled very fast.
After the fall of rain the sky was very blue, and there was almost no wind. A few drops fell from the leaves along the trail.
Even a dude could come to love this land, this timeless, this forever land.
About Louis L’Amour
“I think of myself in the oral tradition—as 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 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 more than 300 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 cassettes and CDs from Random House 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 with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam.
Praise for
Law of the Desert Born
“This actually may be the story’s ideal form.… The result is stunning and richly textured.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Yeates’ artwork is incredible.”
—GraphicNovelReporter.com
“Law of the Desert Born is a fantastic example of how relevant the Western can be.”
—Suvudu.com
“The richer plot and characters from L’Amour’s son Beau and collaborator Kathy Nolan add appeal and value in addition to the finely crafted visuals.”
—Library Journal
“The novel’s illustrations add a new dimension to an already gripping tale.”
—American Cowboy
“An amazing level of detail and ambience that breathes new life into Louis L’Amour’s already stunning story.”
—Cowboys & Indians
A Graphic Novel Masterpiece!
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