The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 1
Page 57
“You will come. You taught me to have faith; you, too, must have it.”
Day followed day, and night followed night. Each night the boy lined up his star with a peak, a tree, or a rock. On three of the days they had no food, and two days were without water. They broke the spines from cactus and sucked on the pulp from the thick leaves.
Small Sister’s feet were swollen and the flesh broken. “It is enough,” his mother said. “We can go no farther.”
They had come to a place where cottonwoods grew. He dug a hole in the streambed and found a little water. They soaked cottonwood leaves and bound them to Small Sister’s feet. “In the morning,” he said, “we will go on.”
“I cannot,” Small Sister said.
With dead branches from the cottonwoods he built a fire. They broiled the flesh of a terrapin found on the desert. Little though there was, they shared it.
The boy walked out in the darkness alone. He looked up and the star was there. “All right,” he said.
When the light came, he shouldered his pack, and they looked at him. He turned to go, and one by one they followed. The Old One was the last to rise.
Now the land was broken by canyons. There was more cedar, occasionally a piñon. It snowed in the night, and the ground was covered, so they found only those seeds that still hung in their dry pods. They were very few.
Often they waited for the Old One. The walking was harder now, and the boy’s heart grew small within him. At last they stopped to rest, and his mother looked at him: “It is no use. I cannot go on.”
Small Sister said nothing and the Old One took a long time coming to where they waited.
“Do you stay then?” the boy said. “I will go on.”
“If you do not come back?”
“Then you are better without me,” he said. “If I can, I will come.”
Out of their sight he sat down and put his head in his hands. He had failed them. The Old One’s medicine had failed. Yet he knew he must try. Small though he was, he was the man. He walked on, his thoughts no longer clear. Once he fell, and again he caught himself on a rock before falling. He straightened, blinking to clear his vision.
On the sand before him was a track, the track of a deer. He walked on and saw other tracks, those of a raccoon, and the raccoon liked water. Not in two months had he seen the track of an animal. They led away down the canyon.
He went out on the rocks and caught himself abruptly, almost falling over the rim. It was a limestone sink, and it was filled with water. He took up a stone and dropped it, and it hit the pool and sank with a deep, rich, satisfying sound. The well was deep and wide, with a stream running from one side.
He went around the rim and lay down flat to drink of the stream. Something stirred near him, and he looked up quickly.
They were there: his mother, Small Sister, and the Old One. He stood up, very straight, and he said, “This is our place; we will stop here.”
The boy killed a deer, and they ate. He wiped his fingers on his buckskin leggings and said, “Those who sat upon the beasts? What did they find, following their star?”
“A cave that smelled of animals where a baby lay on dry grass. The baby’s father and mother were there, and some other men wearing skins, who stood by with bowed heads.”
“And the shining ones who sat upon the beasts?”
“They knelt before the baby and offered it gifts.”
“It is a strange story,” the boy said, “and at another time I will listen to it again. Now we must think of planting.”
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 the Broken Hills
The Man from Skibbereen
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
From the Listening Hills
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
With These Hands
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 Riders of the High Rock
The Rustlers of West Fork
The Trail to Seven Pines
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
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 storyte
ller. 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.
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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