The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six (81 page)

“I do,” he said harshly. “I’m going to be the manager!”

Unseen by Schaumberg or Martin, Red Saunders had come down behind them and stood listening. Suddenly, he stepped up. “Who’s captain of this team?”

“I am,” Martin declared flatly. “What about it?”

Red turned abruptly and walked to the edge of the field where he began to talk to Pop. “You get off the field,” Flash told Martin. “Captain or not, you’re finished!”

“Yeah?” Martin sneered. “You’ve had this coming for a long time!”

The punch started, but it was a left hook, and too wide. It came up against the padded side of his helmet and Flash let go with an inside right cross that dropped Martin to his haunches. Ken came up fast, and Flash caught him full in the face with one hand then the other! He felt the nose bone crunch under his fist. Then Schaumberg started a punch that was suddenly picked out of the air by Lew Young, who returned it, and Schaumberg went down.

Pop came out on the field then, and his eyes were blazing. The umpire came up, shouting angrily. There were a few words, and Ken Martin and Schaumberg were rushed off the field.

T
HE TEAMS LINED UP
. Brogan tried to come through the center, but Krakoff had taken a beating by then, and when Young hit him he went back on his heels and Higgins went through after Corbett and they dropped Brogan in his tracks.

Flash saw Chadwick catch up a handful of dust and rub it on his palms. It was a habit the swift-footed runner had before he took the ball. Even as the ball was snapped, Flash saw Butch Hagan dump his man out of the way. Then he drove through the hole like a streak and hit the red-jerseyed Chadwick before he could even tuck the ball away!

He knocked Chadwick a dozen feet, the ball flying from his hands. Lew Young was in there fast and lit on the ball just as the pileup came.

They lined up and it was the Tigers’ ball on the Bear thirty yard line. Flash got away and Saunders shot a pass to him. He took the ball running and saw Brogan cut in toward him. He angled across toward Brogan, deliberately closing up the distance, yet even as the big fullback hurled himself forward in a wicked tackle, Flash cross-stepped and shoved out a stiffarm that flattened Brogan’s nose across his face, and then he was away.

Chadwick was coming, and drove into his pounding knees, clutched wildly, but his fingers slipped and he slid into the dirt on his face as Flash went over for a touchdown!

Simmons kicked the point and they trotted back to midfield. Krakoff took the ball on the kickoff but Higgins started fast and came down on Krakoff like a streak. He hit him high and Butch Hagan hit him low, and when they got up, Krakoff was still lying there. He got up, after a minute, and limped into position.

There was smeared blood on Brogan’s face from his broken nose and the big fullback was mad. Chadwick was talking the game, trying to pull his team together.

They lost the ball on the forty yard line and Higgins recovered for the Tigers. They were rolling now and they knew it. Flash shot a bulletlike pass to Saunders and the redheaded young lawyer made fifteen yards before he was slammed to the ground by Chadwick.

Chadwick was the only man on the team who seemed to have kept his head. Wilson came in for Brogan and when they lined up, Butch Hagan went through that line like a baby tank and threw an angle block into Wilson that nearly broke both his legs! Wilson got up limping, and Butch looked at him. “How d’you like it, quitter?”

W
ILSON’S FACE FLUSHED
, and he walked back into line. On the next play Hagan hit him again with another angle block, and Wilson’s face was pale.

Flash rifled a long pass to Simmons and the former All-American end carried it ten yards before they dropped him. On the next play Higgins went through tackle for the score.

The Bears had gone to pieces now. Wilson was frankly scared. On every play his one urge seemed to be to get away from Butch Hagan. Krakoff and Brogan were out of the game, and the Tigers, playing straight, hard, but wickedly rough football, rolled down the field for their third straight score.

They lined up for the kickoff, and Flash took it on his own thirty-five yard line, angled toward the sidelines and running like a madman hit the twenty yard line before he was downed. They lined up and Saunders went through center for six. On a single wing back Higgins made six more, and then Simmons took a pass from Flash and was finally downed on the five yard line. Then Flash crashed over for the final score, driving through with five men clinging to him.

And the whistle blew as they got up from the ground.

F
LASH WALKED SLOWLY
toward the dressing room, his face mud streaked and ugly. Pop was standing there, waiting for him.

“You saved my bacon, son,” he said quietly. “I can’t thank you enough!”

“Forget it,” Moran said quietly, “it wasn’t me. It was those friends of yours. And give Butch Hagan credit. He lined up six or eight of them himself, to say nothing of what he did on the field.”

He turned to go, and Micky was standing there, her face pale and her eyes large. She lifted her chin and stepped toward him.

“Flash, I’m sorry. Pop never believed, but for a while, I did. He—Ken—made it sound so much like you’d done something crooked.”

“It was him,” Flash said quietly. “I’m sorry for your sake.”

“I’m not,” Micky looked up at him, her eyes wide and soft, “I’m not at all, Flash.”

“But I thought—?”

“You thought I was in love with him? That I was going to marry him? That was all his idea, Flash. He never said anything to me about it, and I wouldn’t have. I went with him because the man I really wanted never asked me.”

“He must be an awful fool,” Flash said grimly. “Why, I’d—!”

“You’d what, Flash? You better say it now, because I’ve been waiting!”

“You mean—?” Flash gulped. Then he moved in, but fast.

Lew Young stuck his head out of the door, then hastily withdrew it. “That Moran,” he said, grinning, “may be slow getting an idea, but when he does—
man, oh man!
”

About Louis L’Amour

“I think of myself in the oral tradition—as 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.”

I
t 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, 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 more than 300 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),
Jubal Sackett, 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 cassettes and CDs from Random House 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 with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam.

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

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. 1–6)

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