Yondering: Stories

by Louis L'Amour

  “I’VE BEEN READING your work, Mr. Dugan, and like it tremendously! You have such power, such feeling!”

  “Thank you,” he heard himself saying. “I’m glad you liked it.” He glanced toward the door, where several women were arriving. They weren’t young women. He sighed and glanced hopelessly toward the table, where one of those faded dowagers who nibble at the crusts of culture was pouring tea. Now if they only had a steak—

  “Mr. Dugan,” his hostess was saying, “I want you to meet Mrs. Nowlin. She is also a writer.”

  She was so fat she had almost reached the parting of the stays, and she had one of those faces that always reminded him of buttermilk. “How do you do, Mrs. Nowlin?” He smiled in a way he hoped was gracious. “It is always a pleasure to meet someone in the same profession. What do you write?”

  “Oh, I’m not a regular writer, Mr. Dugan, but I do so love to write! Don’t you find it simply fascinating? But I just never have been able to get anything published. Sometimes I doubt the publishers even read my manuscripts! Why, I believe they just couldn’t!”

  “I imagine they are pretty busy, Mrs. Nowlin. They get so many stories, you know.”

  “Why, I sent one of my poems away not long ago. It was a poem about James, you know, and they wouldn’t take it. They didn’t even say anything! Just one of those rejection slips. Why, I read the poem at the club, and they all said it was simply beautiful!”

  “Was—was James your husband?” he asked hopefully, glancing toward the tea table again. Still no steak.

  “James! Oh, goodness no! James is my dog! My little Pom. Don’t you just adore Poms, Mr. Dugan?”

  Then she was gone, fluttering across the room like a blimp escaped from its moorings.

  He sighed again. Every time chance caught him at one of these author’s teas, he would think of Frisco Brady. He could imagine the profane disgust of the big Irish longshoreman if he knew the guy who flattened him in the Harbor Pool Room was guest of honor at a pink tea.

  Dugan felt the red crawling around his ears at the thought, and his eyes sought the tea table again. Someday, he reflected, there is going to be a hostess who will serve real meals to authors and achieve immortality at a single stroke. Writers would burn candles to her memory, or better still, some of those shadowy wafers that were served with the tea and were scarcely more tangible than the tea itself.

  He started out of his dream and tried to look remotely intelligent as he saw his hostess piloting another body through the crowd. He knew at a glance that she had written a book of poetry that wouldn’t scan, privately published, of course. Even worse, it was obvious that in some dim, distant year she had seen some of Garbo’s less worthy pictures and had never recovered. She carried her chin high, and her neck stretched endlessly toward affected shoulders.

  “I have so wanted to meet you! There is something so deep, so spiritual about your work! And your last book! One feels you were on a great height when you wrote it! Ah!…”

  She was gone. But someone else was speaking to him, and he turned attentively.

  “Why do so many of you writers write about such hard things? There is so much that is beautiful in the world! All people aren’t like those people you write about, so why don’t you write about nice people? And that boy you wrote about in the story about hunger, why, you know perfectly well, Mr. Dugan, that a boy like that couldn’t go hungry in this country!”

  His muscles ached with weariness, and he stood on the corner staring down the street, his thoughts blurred by hunger, his face white and strained. Somehow all form had become formless, and things about him took on new attitudes and appearances. He found his mind fastening upon little things with an abnormal concentration born of hunger and exhaustion. Walking a crack in the sidewalk became an obsession, and when he looked up from that, a fat man was crossing the street, and his arms and legs seemed to jerk grotesquely. Everything about him seemed to move in slow motion, and he stopped walking and tried to steady himself, conscious it was a delirium born of hunger.

  He had been standing still for a moment trying to work his foot free from the sock where it was stuck with the dried blood from a broken blister, and when he moved forward suddenly, he almost fell. He pulled up sharply and turned his head to see if anyone noticed. He walked on then with careful attention.

  He was hungry.

  The words stood out in his consciousness, cold and clear, almost without thought or sensation. He looked at them as at a sign that had no meaning.

  He passed a policeman and tried to adopt a careless, confident air but felt the man looking after him. As he passed a bakery, the smell of fresh pastry went through him like a wave, leaving a sensation of emptiness and nausea.

  “You’ve had such an interesting life, Mr. Dugan! There must have been so many adventures. If I had been a man, I would have lived just such a life as you have. It must have been so thrilling and romantic!”

  “Why don’t you tell us some of the real stories? Some of the things that actually happened? I’ll bet there were a lot you haven’t even written.”

  “I’m tellin’ you, Dugan. Lay off that dame, see? If you don’t, I’ll cut your heart out.”

  The music moved through the room, and he felt the lithe, quick movements of the girl as she danced, and through the smoky pall he heard a chair crash, and he looked down and smiled at the girl, and then he spun her to arm’s length and ducked to avoid the first punch. Then he struck with his left, short and hard. He felt his fist thud against a jaw and saw the man’s face as he fell forward, eyes bulging, jaw slack. He brought up his right into the man’s midsection as he fell toward him and then stepped away. Something struck him from behind, and it wasn’t until he got up that the blood started running into his eyes. He knew he’d been hit hard, and heard the music playing “In a little Spanish town ’twas on a night like this, stars were shining down….”

  He was speaking then, and he heard himself saying, “There is only the personal continuity. The man we were yesterday may not be the man we are tomorrow. Names are only trademarks for the individual, and from day to day that individual changes, and his ways and thoughts change, although he is not always himself aware of the change. The man who was yesterday a soldier may be a seller of brushes tomorrow. He has the same name, but the man himself is not the same, although circumstances may cause him to revert to his former personality and character. Even the body changes; the flesh and blood change with the food we eat and the water we drink.

  “To him who drifts about, life consists of moving in and out of environments and changing conditions, and with each change of environment the wanderer changes, also. We move into lives that for the time are very near and dear to us, but suddenly all can be changed, and nothing remains but the memory.

  “Only the innocent speak of adventure, for adventure is only a romantic name for trouble, and when one is having ‘adventures’ one wishes it were all over and he was elsewhere and safe. ‘Adventure’ is not nice. It is more often than not rough and dirty, cruel and harsh….”

  Before they screwed on the copper helmet, Scotty stopped by, his features tight and hard. “Watch yourself, kid, this is bad water and too many sharks. Some say there are more octopi and squids here than anywhere else, but usually they’re no trouble. We’ll try to hold it down up here.” He slapped his waistband as he spoke. Scotty moved, and Singapore Charlie lifted the helmet.

  “Don’t worry, Skipper, I’ll keep your lines clear, and I can handle any trouble.” Then Dugan was sinking through the warm green water, feeling it clasp him close so that only the copper helmet protected him. Down, down, still farther down, and then he was standing on the sandy floor of the ocean, and around him moved the world of the undersea. There was silence, deep, unfathomable silence, except for the soft hiss of air. He moved forward, walking as though in a deep sleep, pushing himself against the water, turning h
imself from side to side like some unbelievable monster that haunted the lower depths.

  Then he found the dark hull of the old ship and moved along the ghostly deck, half shrouded in the weed of a hundred years, moving toward the companionway where feet no longer trod. He hesitated at the door, looking down into darkness, and then he saw it moving toward him, huge, ominous, frightening. He tucked his warm-blooded hands into his armpits to leave only the slippery surface of the canvas and rubber suit. It came toward him, only vaguely curious, and inquiring tentacles slipped over and around him…feeling…feeling…feeling.

  He sipped his tea and avoided the eyes of the woman who had the manuscript she wanted him to comment on, nibbled impotently at those infinitesimal buttons of nourishment, and listened to the ebb and flow of conversation about his ears. Here and there a remark swirled about, attracting his momentary attention. He heard himself speaking, saying how pleasant it had been, and then he was out on the street again, turning up his collar against the first few drops of spattering rain.

  LET ME FORGET….

  Let me forget the dark seas rolling,

  The taste of wind, the lure and lift

  Of far, blue-shrouded shores;

  No longer let the wild wind’s singing

  Build high the waves in this

  My heart’s own storm;

  Now let me quietly work, for I have songs.

  Let not my blood beat answer to the sea….

  The beaches lie alone, so let them lie.

  Let me forget the gray-banked distant hills,

  The echoing emptiness of ancient towns;

  No longer let the brown leaves falling

  Move me to wander….I have songs to sing.

  WHAT IS LOUIS L’AMOUR’S LOST TREASURES?

  Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures is a project created to release some of the author’s more unconventional manuscripts from the family archives.

  Currently included in the series are Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures: Volume 1, published in the fall of 2017, and Volume 2, which will be published in the fall of 2019. These books contain both finished and unfinished short stories, unfinished novels, literary and motion picture treatments, notes, and outlines. They are a wide selection of the many works Louis was never able to publish during his lifetime.

  In 2018 we will release No Traveller Returns, L’Amour’s never-before-seen first novel, which was written between 1938 and 1942. In the future, there may be a selection of even more L’Amour titles.

  Additionally, many notes and alternate drafts to Louis’s well-known and previously published novels and short stories will now be included as “bonus feature” postscripts within the books that they relate to. For example, the Lost Treasures postscript to Last of the Breed will contain early notes on the story, the short story that was discovered to be a missing piece of the novel, the history of the novel’s inspiration and creation, and information about unproduced motion picture and comic book versions.

  An even more complete description of the Lost Treasures project, along with a number of examples of what is in the books, can be found at louislamourslosttreasures.com. The website also contains a good deal of exclusive material, such as even more pieces of unknown stories that were too short or too incomplete to include in the Lost Treasures books, plus personal photos, scans of original documents, and notes.

  All of the works that contain Lost Treasures project materials will display the Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures banner and logo.

  POSTSCRIPT

  By Beau L’Amour

  This collection of short stories, Yondering, has gone through a number of changes over the years. Like a theory based on growing archeological evidence, its contents have shifted and been refined, but now, after finally cataloging and studying all of my father’s manuscripts, I’m convinced that this Lost Treasures edition is its final form.

  Though my father had long planned to publish these stories in one volume, the idea of Yondering finally coalesced only once he began to seriously consider writing an autobiography. In the late 1950s and early ’60s Dad had painfully learned that it was going to be hard for him to expand his writing outside the Western genre. In the ’70s he executed a careful plan to write a number of books, utilizing some of his more popular characters, which stretched back in time to the era of the colonial frontier. His hope was that this would slowly alter the type of writing people expected of him. The plan worked, and in the 1980s he had great success with a previously rejected historical adventure, then a cold war thriller and a work of science fiction. In the same time period Dad was also enacting a similarly cautious approach to writing about himself. In 1981 Louis wrote the following to Candace Klaschus, a doctoral student at the University of New Mexico:

  …once one acquires a reputation, and has proved himself by his sales, nobody wants to interfere. Before that I had people warning me away from the things I do now. Even Bantam was, at first, very wary about me deviating in any way from the straight western. Even YONDERING was at first published largely to humor me and to mark that period of my sales….

  The comment about sales refers to the moment when Bantam figured Louis had sold around a hundred million copies of his many works. Conveniently, Dad used their interest in celebrating that threshold to justify the release of Yondering. He followed up a few years later with the next step in his plan: his ode to the books that shaped his life, Education of a Wandering Man.

  While my father didn’t live long enough to write his own life story, the Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures series is my unconventional first step toward writing a biography. The whole Lost Treasures project, both the new titles and the postscripts added to many classics like Yondering, are my father’s “professional biography.” A more personally focused version of his long and eventful life is yet to come. But, for now, back to Yondering…

  Below is a letter written to Marc Jaffe, the editorial director at Bantam, in which Dad outlines some of his reasons for putting this collection together. It’s also likely that he was practicing, consciously or unconsciously, his responses to anyone who might insist that he just stick to writing Westerns:

  Dear Marc:

  As you know, I have for some time considered publishing some of my earlier stories, partly because many of those who read my books have asked for them, but partly because they are to some extent autobiographical. They are glimpses of what my life was like during the years when I was just wanting to become a writer. They weren’t easy years. Often I was hungry, often out of work, often facing situations such as I have since written about. The stories in this group are either based on experiences of my own or of acquaintances along the way.

  They were rough years. I rode freight trains, worked in lumber and mining camps, went to sea, and generally did whatever I could do to make a buck and do it honestly. It was a time when I met all kinds and varieties of people, moving in and out of their lives as they moved in and out of mine.

  Yet hard as they were they were ripe, rich years in both experiences and learning, and in the fo’c’sles of merchant ships, in bunk-houses on ranches, in mining and lumber camps I heard stories of which I have since written. As every writer must do, I have taken the raw stuff of listening and experience and fashioned it into stories. No story is found as written. Life is a huge block of raw stuff in which the writer sees the idea or the motive he wishes to illustrate. Then he must cut away and discard all the extraneous material and keep only that which is essential. The essence of writing is the ability to perceive the story; all men look, but few men see.

  None of these stories have anything to do with the West, as such. Yet they are stories of people, and stories lived under conditions not too dissimilar from the way they might have been lived on the frontier.

  Where do stories come from? Where does a writer get his ideas? The stories and the ideas come from the stuff of
his own life and the material that is the source of his stories, and these few stories came from a period that demanded much of me but gave much in return.

  Sincerely,

  Louis L’Amour

  Typically, my father was highly disciplined but not all that well organized. He had a plan for what he wanted to accomplish, but in all the tottering pyramids of paper that littered his office floor he was unable to find every one of the stories that fit the Yondering mold. Even I, who got things fairly well organized after his death, missed some material when I published Yondering: The Revised Edition in 1989. On the other hand, as he prepared the original book, Dad was able to drop right back into the Yondering style and write the one story that he felt was missing from the group, “A Friend of the General.” Initially, I’d have sworn he’d created it in the late 1940s, but evidence suggests it was written in just a day or two in the late 1970s.

  Placing all of Louis’s “semiautobiographical short fiction” in one volume is especially important now because of the release of my father’s first novel, No Traveller Returns, which is the final piece of the Yondering series. I will discuss the connections as I comment on the contents of this version of Yondering….

  * * *

  —

  “Somewhere my love lay sleeping,” the opening line of the four-line poem that begins this collection, was once the beginning to a novel. That beginning appears in Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures: Volume 2 in the section labeled “Shanty,” but it was also likely that Dad had originally planned to title that novel Yondering. It was set in the nineteenth century and had no relationship to this collection other than a vague suggestion that my father was considering aspects of his own life as he wrote the first chapter or so. Within a few years that attempt was abandoned, but the title and a new version of the lyrical first line had been recycled to become elements in this book of short stories. The poem is a haunting fragment, looking back on a deep nostalgia for a home and family that its author had yet to find.