Ride the River (1983) (22 page)

"There were two shots. I'll go see if he's been hurt." Dorian hesitated. "You'll be all right."

When he had gone, I just stood there staring after Elmer, who was walking away up the trail. Whatever had come over him? What would he do now? Could he go back to working with James White? Or would he want to go back?

Now I could go home. Now I had money again, and what I could do would brighten all their lives. I picked up the carpetbag, and Felix Horst was standing there. His pistol was in his hand and he indicated a dim trail toward the river.

"Walk that way. If you call out and he comes, he'll never know what hit him."

"He's not alone down there."

"Get along! Don't try any tricks on me. Just move!"

"Mordecai Sackett's with him. He killed Patton Sardust."

"Get along. Right down the path. You walk easy, and maybe you'll be alive tomorrow."

I walked along, carrying the bag. I had left my rifle on the ground where they would find it. Horst had seemed to pay no attention. Maybe if I had tried to pick it up, he would have shot me. Dorian would be coming back. He would find it right there at the path down which Horst was taking me.

It led to the river. There was a clearing there, cut off from the water by a stand of black willow, partly shaded by sycamores. Drawn up in the reeds I could see the bow of a skiff. Had he known it was there?

"You're making a mistake," I said quietly. "Mordecai is here. You will never get out of the hills."

He laughed without humor. "Don't be silly! Just drop that bag and back off."

"Look! Please! My blue dress is in there! Let me have that, at least! It's the only pretty dress I ever had!"

"All right, get it out and be damned. But hurry! I haven't time for any more nonsense!"

I opened the bag and thrust my hand in, pulling out the blue dress and bonnet with my left hand, and the Doune pistol with my right. I was going to shoot right through the dress but couldn't stand the thought of ruining that beautiful gown.

I threw the dress aside, revealing the Doune pistol.

There was a moment of frozen silence; Horst's own pistol was in his hand, but lowered. There was shock in his eyes. He stared at me with awful realization. Then I shot him.

He stood for just an instant, trying to lift his pistol, but the gun slipped from his fingers into the dust and he fell, knees first, buckling slowly, and then sprawled in the dust and leaves. After a moment one of his legs straightened, the toe digging into the earth.

I walked over to a big sycamore and sat down abruptly, leaning my head back against the tree. I was sitting like that when they came down the trail to the river, Mordecai Sackett and Dorian Chantry.

Dorian came to me and helped me to my feet and put his arms around me. "It's all right," he said. "Everything is all right."

"I want to go home."

"All right." He folded the blue dress and bonnet and returned them to the bag. Then he picked it up. Together we started away, but Mordecai stopped us.

"Foolish to walk when that skiffs handy. You might as well float down."

"Thank you, Mordecai, for coming."

"Trulove an' Macon, they come too. They're up yonder cleanin' up what's left. We come when needed, cousin. We come when needed." Mordecai glanced at Dorian Chantry and said, "I found a black man in the woods."

"Was he hurt?"

"He'd been shot. Grazed his skull, knocked him out, I guess. When I saw him, there was a dog lyin' beside him, sort of watchin' over him. He's on his feet now, an' will be comin' along directly."

Mordecai glanced again at Dorian, then at Echo. "You sparkin' him?"

I glanced at Dorian, but he blushed. "You might say that," I said. "You might just say that."

"I hope she is," Dorian said. "I'd hate to go back to Uncle Finian and tell him I lost out."

Regal and Ma were settin' on the porch of an evenin when we came up the trail from the Cove. They were settin' together and Regal stood tall to shake hands and greet Dorian and give me a little squeeze with an arm about my shoulders.

"We missed you, honey. Have a nice trip?"

"Took me longer than expected," I said.

"Come mornin', I'd have been comin' after you. A man stopped by who said he saw you on a steamboat and you seemed to be in some kind of trouble. His name was Ginery Wooster. He said he had passed the word to Mordecai on his way across the mountains."

"We saw Mordecai."

"That's more than I ever did. Come on inside." We paused a moment on the step, looking off toward Cligman's Dome. The clouds were gathering there. A nighthawk swooped by and Dorian and I turned toward the house.

"See? I told you it was a log cabin!"

Author's Note

There should be, within the next few years, at least ten more novels involving members of the Sackett family. These upcoming books will not only close the gap between the novels of the early Sackett generations (Sackett's Land, To The Far Blue Mountains, andThe Warrior's Path ) and the novels of the later generations beginning withThe Daybreakers , but will extend the Sackett's story in several new directions. The present novel,Ride The River , helps to bridge that gap since Echo Sackett is the aunt of the Sackett brothers William Tell, Orrin, and Tyrel whom we first meet inThe Daybreakers andSackett .

The next Sackett novel will beThe Saga Of Jubal Sackett dealing with the area west of the Mississippi, the Great Plains and the Rockies in the years after 1630. At that time this area was the great unknown. Coronado and other Spanish explorers had touched upon it, but their limited explorations were not known to the rest of the world. Even the Indians, who were only beginning to acquire horses, knew little of that vast land in the interior. The distance between streams and known waterholes had restricted their travel until horses were available.

Into this world, teeming with game of every variety, Jubal Sackett travels with one Indian companion seeing it all when it was fresh and new. They hunt buffalo, elk, deer, antelope, bear, and other animals, some of which were believed to have been extinct, all at a time when every step they took was into unknown land.

Later, there will be another story of William Tell Sackett, going back to his earlier years when he first left the Tennessee Mountains to fight in the Civil War. This story will also relate the great romance of his life, or at least the first chapter in it, a romance about which he has told no one, not even his brothers.

About the Author

"I think of myself in the oral tradition - of a troubadour, a village taleteller, 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 recreated 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, assessment miner, and officer on tank destroyers 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 100 books is in print; there are nearly 230 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 includeThe Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel)Jubal Sackett, Last of the Breed , andThe 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 tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam well into the nineties - among them, four Hopalong Cassidy novels:The Rustlers of West Fork, The Trail to Seven Pines, The Riders of High Rock, andTrouble Shooter .