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Novel 1954 - Utah Blaine (As Jim Mayo) (v5.0)

Page 17

by Louis L'Amour


  He saw the big body jerk, and he shifted guns and shot again and saw Hoerner falling. Then Utah turned back and he saw Nevers standing there, his right side red with his own blood.

  “You’re a murderer, Nevers!” Blaine’s voice was utterly cold. “You started this! You were there with Fuller when they hung Neal! I heard your voice! You were behind it! Good men have died for you!”

  Utah Blaine’s gun came up and Nevers screamed. Then Blaine shot him through the heart, and Nevers stood there for an instant, rocking with the shock of another bullet and then fell against the tree. The man with the drooping shoulder was lifting a Winchester and taking a careful sight along it when a rifle roared from the house door.

  Amazed, Utah turned his head. Angie stood in the doorway, her father’s Spencer in her hands. Coolly, she fired again, and Blaine looked toward the corral. “Come out, Machuk! Come out with your hands up!”

  There was a choking cry, then Machuk’s voice, “Can’t. You—you busted my leg!”

  Blaine turned and stared at Angie. One hand clung to a tree trunk. His body sagged. “Angie—you—you—all right?”

  Then he heard a thunder of hoofs and he fell, and the ground hit him and he could smell the good fresh dust of the cool shadows. He heard the crinkle of a dried leaf folding under his cheek and the soft…soft…softness of the deep darkness into which he was falling away.

  *

  HE OPENED HIS eyes into soft darkness. There was a halo of light nearby. The halo was around a dimmed lamp, and it shone softly on the face of the girl in the chair beside his bed. She was sleeping, her face at peace. At his movement, her eyes opened. She put out a quick hand. “Oh, you mustn’t! Lie still!”

  He sagged back on the pillow. “What—what happened?”

  “You were wounded. Three shots. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  “Nevers? Rink?”

  “Both dead. Rals Forbes was here, and Padjen stayed here. He’s sleeping in the other room. Rocky White was here, too.”

  “White?”

  “He’s the new marshal of Red Creek.”

  White, a tall rugged young puncher, looked like a good man. So much the better.

  “What happened to Ben Otten?”

  “Nevers killed him the night before you got here. Ben came here—for what I don’t know—and Nevers shot him. Maybe he thought he was you. Maybe he didn’t care. His body was lying in the stable all night and all the morning before the fight.”

  Otten…Nevers…Witter. And then Miller and Lud Fuller, and before them Gid Blake and Joe Neal…and for what?

  “Country’s growin’, Angie,” he whispered, “growin’ up. Maybe this was the last big fight. Maybe the only way men can end violence is by violence, but I think there are better ways.”

  “They are setting up a city government in Red Creek,” Angie said. “All of them are together.”

  “That’s the way. Government. We all need it, Angie.” He was silent. “Government with justice…sometimes the words sound so…so damn’ stuffy, but it’s what men have to live by if they will live in peace.”

  “You’d better rest.”

  “I will.” He lay quiet, staring up into the darkness. “You know,” he said then, “that 46—it’s a good place. I’d like to see the cattle growin’ fat on that thick grass, see the clear water flowin’ in the ditches, see the light and shadow of the sun through the trees. I’d like that, Angie.”

  “It’s yours. Joe Neal would like it too. You held it for him, Utah.”

  “For him…and for you. Without you it wouldn’t be much, Angie.”

  She looked over at him and smiled a little. “And why should it be without me?” she asked gently. “I’ve always loved the place…and you.”

  He eased himself in the bed and the stiffness in his side gave him a twinge. “Then I think I’ll go to sleep, Angie. Wake me early…I want to drink gallons and gallons of coffee…” His voice trailed away and he slept, and the light shone on the face of the woman beside him. And somewhere out in the darkness a lone wolf called to the moon.

  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, 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 nearly 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), Utah Blaine, 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

  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

  Th
e 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

  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

  UTAH BLAINE

  A Bantam Book / November 2004

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  This book was originally published under the pseudonym

  “Jim Mayo.”

  Bantam edition published September 1983

  Bantam reissue / April 1995

  Bantam reissue / January 2003

  Map by William & Alan McKnight

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1954 by Ace Books, Inc.

  Copyright © 1982 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 address:

  Bantam Books New York, New York.

  Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Please visit our website at www.bantamdell.com

  eISBN: 978-0-553-90014-9

  v3.0

 

 

 


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