Novel 1981 - Comstock Lode (v5.0) (56 page)

So I began thinking about it and I decided to write a story about a family like that, where whenever one of them was in trouble all the others always came to help. And it used to be that way to a great extent. They came from Tennessee. The stories I have written about them have been extremely popular. People like them, and they like best the story of
The Sackett Brand,
where they all did come to help. They came from everywhere. One of them is playing cards in El Paso, Texas, and somebody comes in and is asked what’s going on out West and he says, “Well, they’ve got a fellow named Sackett cornered up in the mountains and they are going to kill him.” And this fellow sitting at the table cashes in his chips and gets up and goes and gets on his horse and takes off across the country and other Sackett brothers and cousins begin to come from everywhere as the word gets out that there is a Sackett in trouble. It’s a nice way to be.

Q: You’ve actually traced the Sacketts all the way back to the fifteenth century in your novels

Yes, I decided to go back to their very beginnings. I began getting a lot of letters asking me how the pioneers got that way and where they came from, so I decided to go back to England in
Sackett’s Land
and show where they actually started from and show how one became a pioneer and what carried them on. It’s been great fun writing about those early Sacketts. I have ten more books with the Sacketts planned and at least five more about the Chantrys and probably an equal number about the Talon family, the two other families I sometimes write about.

Q: The Talons and the Chantrys and the Sacketts do meet up with one another occasionally. Are they similar people?

Yes, there is a relationship. The Talons are builders primarily. They hail from Brittany. They are one way or another concerned with building. Milo Talon not so much, he’s been caught up in other things, but most of the Talons in the stories should be building, bridge construction, ships, that sort of thing. The Chantrys are better educated than the other two and they’re Irish and are involved in statecraft and many other things. The Sacketts are primarily frontiersmen. I’ve got a book planned set during the American Revolution in which I will have a Sackett on the frontier and a Chantry in the seats of the mighty, you might say.

Q Your relationship with your fans is probably unique among writers both in the volume of the mail you get and the many readers you have met over the years. Do you get a special charge out of that?

Yes, I do. I enjoy meeting them and enjoy talking to them about the stories. They’re very knowledgeable, they know the stories very well, and some of them know them better than I do. I always enjoy talking to them, I enjoy getting letters from them, and I read every letter I get. I can’t answer them all anymore, there are just too many. I’d never be able to write again if I tried to do that, but I do read them all and I do answer some of them.

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.”

I
T 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 best-selling 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),
Comstock Lode, 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

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 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

COMSTOCK LODE

A Bantam Book / February 2004

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Published simultaneously in hardcover and trade paperback by Bantam / March 1981

Bantam paperback edition / March 1982

Bantam reissue / September 1998

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 1981 by Louis L’Amour Enterprises,Inc.

Louis L’Amour interview © 1982 by Bantam Books.

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.bantandell.com

eISBN: 978-0-553-89902-3

v3.0