Milo Talon
OMPLETELY
D
EAD
M
Y EYES WERE on Wally but they took in the other man, too. “You,” I said, “with the blue shirt? Are you in this? Or do you want to live?”
“I’m looking for a Mexican,” he said, “just what we were sent to do. Come on, Wally. Let’s ride.”
“All right,” Wally said. He started to turn his horse and as he did he drew his pistol. He was medium fast, and completely dead.
He had the pistol clear and his face was shining with triumph. He’d show me!
The jolt of my .44 didn’t knock him out of the saddle but it let air through him from one side to the other. He dropped his six-shooter and grabbed for the horn and hung on tight, staring at me, his face growing whiter.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “All you had to do was ride away.”
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
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour (vols. 1–3)
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
T
HE
S
ACKETT
C
OMPANION:
A Personal Guide to the Sackett Novels
A T
RAIL OF
M
EMORIES:
The Quotations of Louis L’Amour, compiled by Angelique L’Amour
POETRY
Smoke from This Altar
MILO TALON
A Bantam Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam edition published August 1981
Bantam reissue / October 1994
Bantam reissue / May 2002
Bantam reissue / February 2006
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Photograph of Louis L’Amour by John Hamilton—Globe Photos, Inc.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 1981 by Louis & Katherine L’Amour Trust
Excerpt from
Law of the Desert Born
Text copyright © 2013 by Beau L’Amour; Illustrations copyright © 2013 by Louis L’Amour Enterprises, Inc.
Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-553-89948-1
v3.1_r1
To Leo and Cylvia
T
HE OPENING OF the West had many aspects: exploration, the fur trade, wagon trains, buffalo hunting, Indian wars, cattle ranching, mining, town sites, and not the least, railroad construction.
The old maps can still be found as well as brochures full of glowing promise but having little connection with reality. Some of these railroads were actually completed, opening vast areas to development.
This is not a story of railroads but of people momentarily involved, of Milo Talon and his search for a missing girl among people whose sole motivation was greed.
Milo Talon’s mother, Em, was a Sackett and, in fact, an earlier adventure featuring Milo and Em,
The Man from the Broken Hills
, is grouped with the Sackett novels and published by Bantam. But beginning with this novel and continuing on with other stories I have planned, I hope the Talons will begin to stand on their own. You’ll find more background on the Talon family in
Rivers West
also.
The country written about is mostly west and south of Pueblo, Colorado. If you visit a town called Beulah you will be in what was once called Fisher’s Hole. The North Creek road was for some time the only practical route into the Hole. The route used several times in this story was a horseback trail, although western people took wagons wherever they needed them.