Taking a sight upon a tree, I marked the place for memory, but in the morning, when there was light enough, I carved a name on a slab and placed it there. I knew not the day of his birth, but gave that of his death. His name, too, I placed there, although the place a man leaves is in the hearts of those he leaves behind, and in his work, not upon a slab.
(from Sackett's Land, by Louis L'Amour)
I would not sit waiting for some vague tomorrow, nor for something to happen. One could wait a lifetime, and find nothing at the end of the waiting. I would begin here, I would make something happen.
(from Sackett's Land, by Louis L'Amour)
I remembered then that my father had once told of a man who devoted much of his life to wandering about compiling notes for a history of England. He had walked the cart roads and lanes, roamed along the seashore, and explored many ruins left unnoticed before his time. My father had traveled with him a time or two for a few days. His name, I recalled, was John Leland. (from Sackett's Land, by Louis L'Amour)
Anyone who is at all acquainted with the history of Baptists in America knows the name John Leland, whose influence played a large part in the insertion of the Bill of Rights into our constitution. The John Leland (1503-1552) whom L'Amour mentions in this book was a real person, also. He has been described as "the father of English local history and bibliography." He served as the tutor to the son of the 2nd Duke of Norfolk.
In 1533, Leland apparently was granted a commission by the King, which authorized him to examine and use the libraries of all religious houses in England. He spent years compiling lists of important volumes and taking measures to encourage their preservation.
Roads were mere cart tracks or trails, wandering by the easiest routes through the forests and across the land. All were infested with thieves and highwaymen.
These things my father had told me. There were scattered farms, a few great estates. A few old Roman roads were still in use. New roads were often knee-deep in mud.
Waterways would offer the easiest route across country, but any travel was a hardship. Most who travel understood why the word "travel" had once been "travail."
(from Sackett's Land, by Louis L'Amour)
"We will lie quiet and fish for a few days," I told Jublain. "Then off for London."
"London? Are you daft, man? That is where Genester will be, and where he is strongest."
"It is a vast city," I said complacently. "Folk say more than one hundred thousand people live there. How could I be found among so many?"
"You are a child," Jublain said angrily. "It is too small a place in which to hide from hate."
(from Sackett's Land, by Louis L'Amour)
There was a goodly chance none of those who had witnessed my deed had seen me before, or my village. Yet if such there was, once I reached the fens I was lost to them.
For the fens were a vast area of low-lying ground, of shallow lakes and winding waterways, impassable swamps with here and there limestone outcroppings that created small islands, often with clumps of birch or ancient oaks.
(from Sackett's Land, by Louis L'Amour)
"And Chesney hasn't got here yet? Something must have happened to him."
Wilbur's surmise was right. Headed in his car for Shropshire and his thousand dollars, Howard Chesney had won through only as far as Worcestershire. He was lying with a broken leg in the cottage hospital of the village of Wibley-in-the-vale in that county, a salutary object lesson to the inhabitants of the hamlet not to go to sleep at the wheel of a car when on the wrong side of the road with a truck laden with mineral water bottles coming the other way.
(from A Pelican At Blandings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Wilbur's room was the one in which, according to legend, an Emsworth of the fifteenth century had dismembered his wife with a battle axe, as husbands in those days were so apt to do when the strain of married life became too much for them. The unfortunate woman must have experienced a good deal of apprehension when she heard him at the door, but not much more than did Wilbur when Vanessa's knock sounded in the silent night. Not even Lord Emsworth at the top of his table-upsetting form could have produced a deeper impression. After lying awake for several hours he had at last fallen into a doze, and the knock had coincided with the point in his nightmare when a bomb had exploded under his feet.
(from A Pelican At Blandings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"You don't think I'm going to squeal to Connie?"
"Aren't you?"
"Of course I'm not."
"But I'm an imposter."
"And why shouldn't you be? Practically everyone else who comes here is. Man and boy I have seen more imposters at Blandings Castle than you could shake a stick at in a month of Sundays. It would have surprised me greatly if you hadn't been an imposter. You've gone to endless trouble to get here. Do you think I'm going to dash the cup from your lips? Secrecy and silence, my wench, secrecy and silence."
(from A Pelican At Blandings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Her ladyship would like a word with you, Mr. Galahad."
"Then what a pity," said Gally, "that she isn't going to get it."
"Sir?"
"You hunted high and low, you turned stones and explored avenues, but you couldn't find me. You think I must have gone to Market Blandings to buy tobacco. That is your story, Beach, and be careful to tell it without any of the hesitations and stammerings which are so apt to arouse suspicion in the auditor. Above all, remember not to stand on one leg. What you will be aiming at in her ladyship is that willing suspension of disbelief dramatic critics are always talking about. Tell your tale so that it can be swallowed. In this way much unpleasantness will be avoided," said Gally.
He was an intrepid man and was not afraid of his sister Constance. He merely thought it wise not to confer with her until the hot blood had had time to cool. He had pursued the same policy in the past with Honest Jerry Judson and Tim Simms the Safe Man.
(from A Pelican At Blandings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
The supper had been a festive one, to celebrate the victory of a horse on whom as the result of a tip from the stable we had all had our bit, and I suppose they were both somewhat flushed with wine, for this argument started. Dunstable maintained that those claims were perfectly justified, and your father said the church of Abyssinia was talking through its hat, and things got more and more heated, and finally Dunstable took up a bowl of fruit salad and was about to strike your father with it, when your father grabbed this turkey, which was on a side table with the other cold viands, and with one blow laid him out as flat as a crepe suzette.
(from A Pelican At Blandings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Lady Constance looked like a dying duck because a sudden bright light had flashed upon her. The mists had cleared, and she saw what is generally described as all. She was in possession of the facts, and they could have only one interpretation. Like a serpent, although perhaps not altogether like a serpent, for serpents do draw the line somewhere, her brother Galahad had introduced another imposter into the castle.
Blandings Castle in recent years had been particularly rich in impostors. One or two of them had had other sponsors, but as a rule it was Gally who sneaked them in, and the realization that he had done it again filled her, as she had so often been filled before, with a passionate desire to skin him with a blunt knife.
Once, when they were children, Galahed had fallen into the deep pond in the kitchen garden, and just as he was about to sink for the third time one of the gardeners had come along and pulled him out. She was brooding now on the thoughtless folly of that misguided gardener. Half the trouble in the world, she was thinking, was caused by people not letting well alone.
(from A Pelican At Blandings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"He ought to be certified."
Gally stroked his chin thoughtfully. He removed his eyeglass, and gave it a polish.
"I don't think I can go as far as that," he said, "but he certainly ought to see a psychiatrist."
"A what?"
"One of those fellows who ask you questions about your childhood and gradually dig up the reason why you go about shouting 'Fire' in crowded theatres. They find it's because somebody took away your allday sucker when you were six."
"I know the chaps you mean. They dump you on a couch and charge you some unholy fee per half hour. Only I thought they were called head-shrinkers."
"That, I believe, is the medical term."
(from A Pelican At Blandings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
What with the excellence of its beer and the charm of the shady garden running down to the river in which its patrons drink it, haggard faces are rarely seen at the Emsworth Arms, and the haggardness of John's was all the more noticeable. In these idyllic surroundings it could not but attract attention, and Gally was reminded of his old friend Fruity Biffen on the occasion when he had gone into the ring at Hurst Park wearing a long Assyrian beard in order to avoid recognition by the half dozen bookmakers there to whom he owed money, and the beard, insufficiently smeared with fish glue, had come off. The same wan, drawn look.
(from A Pelican At Blandings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Does she remind you of anyone?" the Duke proceeded. It was only inadvertently that he ever allowed anyone to finish a sentence. "I ask because a fellow I know, an American fellow called Trout, says she's the image of his third wife, while Emsworth insists that she has a distinct look of that pig of his."
"I was thinking -"
"Something about the expression in her eyes, he said, and the way she's lying. He said he had seen his pig lying like that a hundred times. It does it after a heavy meal."
"What I was going to say - "
"And oddly enough I notice quite a resemblance to our vicar's wife down in Wiltshire. Only the face, of course, for I never saw her lying in the nude on a mossy bank. I doubt if the vicar would let her."
(from A Pelican At Blandings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
The Duke and Lady Constance were up in the portrait gallery. On the previous day the former's reclining nude had been hung there, and Lady Constance was scrutinizing it without pleasure. She was a woman who, while not knowing much about Art, knew what she liked, and the kind of paintings she liked were those whose subjects were more liberally draped. A girl with nothing on except a quite inadequate wisp of some filmy material, she told the Duke, was out of place in the company of her ancestors, and the Duke in rebuttal replied that her ancestors were such a collection of ugly thugs that it was a charity to give the viewer something to divert his attention from them.
(from A Pelican At Blandings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Bridegrooms are seldom in a frame of mind to take a calm look at their surroundings as the situation starts to develop. How well I remember your father when the parson was putting him through it. White as a sheet and quivering in every limb. I was his best man, and I'm convinced that if I hadn't kept near enough to him to grab him by the coat tails, he'd have run like a rabbit."
"I shan't do that. I shall quiver all right, but I'll stay put."
"I hope so, for nothing so surely introduces a sour note into the wedding ceremony as the abrupt disappearance of the groom in a cloud of dust."
(from A Pelican At Blandings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Thirty years ago it would have been most unusual for Galahad Threepwood to return home at so early an hour as this, for in his bohemian youth it had been his almost nightly custom to attend gatherings at the Pelican Club which seldom broke up till the milkman had begun his rounds - a practice to which he always maintained that he owed the superb health he enjoyed in middle age.
"It really is an extraordinary thing," a niece of his had once said, discussing him with a friend, "that anyone who has had as good a time as Gally has had can be so frightfully fit. Everywhere you look you see men who have led model lives pegging out in their thousands, while good old Gally, who was the mainstay of Haig and Haig for centuries and as far as I can make out never went to bed till he was fifty, is still breezing along as rosy and full of beans as ever.
(from A Pelican At Blandings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
[Haig and Haig is a blended Scotch whisky packaged in a unique three-sided bottle.]
Many people are fond of Dukes and place no obstacle in the way if the latter wish to fraternize with them, but few of those acquainted with Alaric, Duke of Dunstable, sought his society, Lord Emsworth least of all. He was an opinionated, arbitrary, autocratic man with an unpleasantly loud voice, bulging eyes and a walrus moustache which he was always blowing at and causing to leap like a rocketting pheasant, and he had never failed to affect Lord Emsworth unfavourably. Galahad, with his gift for the telling phrase, generally referred to the Duke as "that stinker," and there was no question in Lord Emsworth's mind that he had hit on the right label.
(from A Pelican At Blandings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"That stuff smells good, Beach. What is it?"
"Leg of lamb, m'lord, with boiled potatoes."
Lord Emsworth received the information with a gratified nod. Good plain English fare. How different, he was thinking, from the bad old era when his sister Constance had been the Fuhrer of Blandings Castle. Under her regime dinner would have meant dressing and sitting down, probably with a lot of frightful guests, to a series of ghastly dishes with French names, and fuss beyond belief if one happened to swallow one's front shirt stud and substituted for it a brass paper-fastener.
(from A Pelican At Blandings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
The summer day was drawing to a close and dusk had fallen on Blandings Castle, shrouding from view the ancient battlements, dulling the silver surface of the lake and causing Lord Emsworth's supreme Berkshire sow Empress of Blandings to leave the open air portion of her sty and withdraw into the covered shed where she did her sleeping. A dedicated believer in the maxim of early to bed and early to rise, she always turned in at about this time. Only by getting its regular eight hours can a pig keep up to the mark and preserve that schoolgirl complexion.
(from A Pelican at Blandings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Lin had a broken leg. He was skinned up and bruised not unlike what happened to me, but he had the busted leg to boot. They'd set the bone, put splints on the leg, and bound it up with wet rawhide, which had dried and shrunk tight around the leg.
(from Lonely On the Mountain, by Louis L'Amour)
Orrin turned to the door, and his hand was on the latch when Riel spoke again. "Wait! There is a man, an American like yourself. He is in jail here. I think he is a good man."
"In jail for what?"
"Fighting."
Orrin smiled. "All right. I will talk to him."
"If you hire him, the case will be dismissed." Riel smiled slyly, his eyes twinkling. "Just take him away from here. It needed four of my men to get him locked up."
(from Lonely On the Mountain, by Louis L'Amour)
He saddled swiftly and from long habit drew his rifle from the scabbard. He started to return it, to settle it more securely in place, but something held his hand. What was wrong? He glanced quickly around, but nobody seemed to be watching.
Then he knew. It was his rifle. The weight was wrong.
When a man has lived with guns all his life and with one rifle for a good part of it, he knows the weight and feel of it. Quickly, his horse concealing him from the others, he checked the magazine. It was empty. He worked the lever on his rifle. The barrel was empty, too.
Somebody had deliberately emptied his rifle while he slept!
(from Lonely On the Mountain, by Louis L'Amour)
Gilcrist and the Ox were worrisome men. Tyrel was right when he said Gilcrist fancied himself with a gun, and while I'd never wanted the reputation of gunfighter, a reputation both Tyrel and me had, I kind of wished now Gilcrist knew something about us. Might save trouble.
Many a man thinks large of himself because he doesn't know the company he's in. No matter how good a man can get at anything, there's always a time when somebody comes along who's better.
(from Lonely On the Mountain, by Louis L'Amour)
"The following day, we put sixteen miles behind us." This excerpt is taken from Lonely On the Mountain, by Louis L'Amour.
I do not particularly doubt the estimates of mileage that you find in L'Amour's writings, and others. What I am curious about (genuinely) is how they were able to make estimates of the distance with any degree of accuracy.
Logan and his twin brother Nolan were Clinch Mountain Sacketts, almost a different breed than us. They were rough boys, those Clinch Mountain Sacketts, right down from ol' Yance, who founded the line way back in the 1600s. He settled so far back in the mountains that the country was getting settled up before they even knew he was there.
Some of those Clinch Mountain Sacketts were Blockaders; least that's what they were called. They raised a lot of corn up in the mountains, and the best way they could get it to market was in liquid form. They began selling by the gallon rather than the bushel.
(from Lonely On the Mountain, yb Louis L'Amour)
It is interesting that in his definitive work about the hillbilly culture, Horace Kephart also listed the factor of ease of transportation as one of the main reasons that moonshiners stuck to their whisky trade. It could be that L'Amour got his information from reading after Kephart.
Stock driving had been our way of life since first we settled in the hills. It was old Yance Sackett who began it some two hundred years back, and he started it with turkey drives to market. After that, it was hogs, and, like turkeys, we drive them afoot, for the most part.
If you had turkeys or hogs to sell, you just naturally drove them to market or sold them to a drover.
(from Lonely On the Mountain, by Louis L'Amour)
It had been my father's way to remove obstructions, to repair washouts in old trails, to leave each trail better than he had found it. "Tread lightly on the paths," he had told me. "Others will come when you have gone."
That was how I would remember my father. There was never a place he walked that was not the better for his having passed. For every tree he cut down he planted two.
(from Jubal Sackett, by Louis L'Amour)
We had known this time was coming, so were prepared. Within minutes we were leaving the caves behind, yet not without reluctance. They had been warm shelters, and when does a man leave a place he has lived without some regret? For each time some part of him is left behind. So it was with us.
(from Jubal Sackett, by Louis L'Amour)
On the second morning Keokotah returned from a hunt begun before the snow, and he brought with him a prisoner, an Indian girl, an Apache. The girl was young and quite pretty. Furthermore, she did not seem at all put out by her capture.
"Where'd you find her?"
"She hides."
"From you?"
"No from me. She does not see me. She is Acho Apache, and she is taken from her village in a raid. She makes runaway and hides. I see her. I tell her 'Come!' She is here."
"I see she is." She drew nearer to him. "Does she wish to return to her people?"
Even as I spoke I could see how foolish the idea was. If ever I had seen anyone who was pleased to be right where she was it was this Indian girl.
(from Jubal Sackett, by Louis L'Amour)
Several commented on my scarcely healed wounds, the deep claw marks on my body, and Keokotah told them, with some embellishment I am sure, of my killing the panther with a knife when I had a broken leg. I could grasp enough of what he was saying to know that I lost no stature in the telling and that the panther had suddenly grown larger than I remembered.
Suddenly, and for the first time, Keokotah brought out a necklace of the panther's claws. Evidently he had taken them from the dead cat while I had been sleeping, and he had carefully strung them on a rawhide string. Looked at now, the claws were formidable and longer than I remembered. To tell the truth, I had been rather too busy to notice dimensions.
(from Jubal Sackett, by Louis L'Amour)
In Louis L'Amour's novel, Jubal Sackett, we find him at one point desperate for food, and he picks and eats a plant called saxifrage. There are 473 species in the genus Saxifraga, which is the largest genus in the family Saxifragacaea. In the Latin, saxifraga literally means "stone breaker," which is supposed to denote is use in treating kidney stones. Pictured below is round-leaved saxifrage.
There opened before me a long valley, extending off toward the south as far as I could see. To the north it seemed to end, from where I stood, in a group of low hills. This must be Sequatchie. There were glimpses of a stream running along the bottom. Meadows, trees, it was a fair land.
An hour later I looked down into an elongated bowl, a grassy cove of what must be more than two thousand acres. A quiet, secluded, lovely place!
This was where I would return. This would be my home. I started down a steep game trail and stepped on a fallen log that broke under me. I fell. My leg caught between two deadfalls and I heard a sharp snap. I lay still, trying to catch my breath. I started to move, felt an excruciating stab of pain, and looked down.
I had broken my leg.
(from Jubal Sackett, by Louis L'Amour)
"Murder?" she gasped. "You can't believe I had anything to do with that!"
"You started it all, ma'am. You were the instigator, and as such you're the most guilty of all. The truth of the matter is, ma'am, that nobody would commit a crime if they expected to get caught. Every criminal believes he is going to get away with it."
(from The Iron Marshall, by Louis L'Amour)
From the engineer Shanaghy borrowed a hammer and knocked loose a couple of boards. He lifted the boards and tore loose the sacking inside the boxes.
"All of you . . . have a look."
McBride swung around, angrily. "You don't have to show me!" His voice broke off and he stared, his face slowly turning pale. The boxes were filled with nuts, bolts, and screws.
At his expression the blonde girl turned her head. When she saw the boxes Shanaghy thought for a moment she was going to cry. Then her face took on a hard, ugly look.
"The trouble with being a crook," Shanaghy said mildly, "is that you have to associate with so many dishonest people."
(from The Iron Marshall, by Louis L'Amour)
"Drako's dead, and so are his boys," McBane. "You shoot almighty straight, son."
"I had to. I wasn't going to get any second chance."
(from The Iron Marshall, by Louis L'Amour)
The old man peered at Shanaghy. "Jealous, are you? Jealous of old Coonskin, are you? Well, I don't blame you! Here a few year back I used to cut quite a figure amongst the gals! Nobody could dance the fandango like ol' Coonskin Adams! Them gals - why, they was all just a'pantin' around after me.
"Looks I ain't got, but I do got style! Yes, siree-bob! I got style!"
(from The Iron Marshal, by Louis L'Amour)
The younger girl held out her hand. "I am Jan Pendleton and I want to thank you."
"Me? Wait until I've done something, miss. I am only just marshal."
"You saved Josh Lundy from hanging, and Josh is my very good friend."
"I can't take credit," he said. "They were going to hand me, too, just because I happened to be there. It seemed to me my neck was long enough, without getting it stretched."
(from The Iron Marshall, by Louis L'Amour)
The saloon-post office was a bare room with a short bar and four or five bottles on the back bar. Smith was a fat, unshaven man in his undershirt, who leaned massive forearms on the bar. A cowhand lounged at the end of the bar, nursing a beer. At a table in the corner two men sat drinking beer.
"Quite a town you've got here," Val said.
"Yep! She's a lollapalooza! Biggest town between here and the next place."
(from Reilly's Luck, by Louis L'Amour)
He was obviously a good hater, and she liked that, but he was also a fool, for no man in his right mind could look into those cool green eyes of Will Reilly's and still fancy they could have him whipped. Killed, perhaps, but not whipped. She had known other men of his kind, men you had to shoot to stop, for their pride and their courage was such that they could not be broken.
(from Reilly's Luck, by Louis L'Amour)
"I killed a man I had never seen before, and you know that I never forget a face. I would swear I never ran across him anywhere, let alone gambled with him."
"Mistaken identity."
"No - it was me he wanted. He lived long enough to say that they hadn't told him I could shoot."
"They?"
"That's what he said."
"So it's over?"
"No. Two weeks later they tried again, while I was in a card game. They burned me that time, and they got away."
"They?"
"There were two of them." Will Reilly rubbed a hand over his face. "So I quit. I sold out and drifted west. How can a man gamble when somebody he doesn't know is shooting at him? If you have an enemy you know it, and you know him; and if it is a matter of shooting, you shoot. This is different. Anyone who walks in the door may be the one, and they can't all miss."
(from Reilly's Luck, by Louis L'Amour)
Reilly drank coffee, and then nodded to Val. "Get bundled up, Val. We're pulling out."
"You got a long drive." Sonnenberg studied him warily. "How do we know you ain't just goin' out to meet the sheriff some place?"
"If you knew Daily Benson," Reilly answered, "you wouldn't worry. You couldn't get him three miles from town in this weather for twenty thousand dollars. He's a warm-weather sheriff - and he isn't looking for you boys, anyhow."
(from Reilly's Luck, by Louis L'Amour)
"Yes, sir."
"Sir. Now that's right nice. Who taught you manners, boy?"
"Mr. Van did, sir."
"Well, I reckon he was good for something, after all. But a pleasant man, too, a right pleasant man. I never did talk to anyone who was easier with words - unless it was Will Reilly. You got a friend there, boy. You stick to him. A man never has many friends in this life and he had better hold onto them."
(from Reilly's Luck, by Louis L'Amour)
Will indicated the book Val had taken. "Did you like it?"
"There weren't any pictures."
Will smiled. "I suppose pictures are pretty important in a book."
"Anyway, I liked to hold it."
Will Reilly gave him a thoughtful look. "Now, that's interesting. So do I. I have always liked the feel of a good book. It's like a gun," he added. "When a man opens a book or fires a gun he has no idea what the effect will be, or how far the shot will travel."
(from Reilly's Luck, by Louis L'Amour)
Bowdrie glanced at Bill. "You can unsaddle those horses. There's no need to run away. Before sundown tomorrow, you will be a free man - or married," he added, smiling.
(from "More Brain Than Bullets," by Louis L'Amour)
He frowned suddenly. "Whatever happened to Jake Murray?"
"He went after that deer," Jeanne said, "and he never came back."
"It was him told me where you'd be," Coker said. "I met him down the trail and he spotted me for a Ranger. He said you wouldn't need any help, but I'd find you up here."
"That all he said?"
"He just said, 'Enough is enough, and I've never been to Oregon.'"
(from "A Trail To the West," by Louis L'Amour)
The young man, scarcely more than twenty, had a hard, reckless face and he walked with a bit of swagger. When he was a year or two older, he would drop that. A tough man did not have to make a parade of it.
(from "A Trail To the West, by Louis L'Amour)
Bowdrie had lived long enough to know that killing was rarely a good thing, but in this town and this area, guns were the last court of appeal. He had appeared here in the name of Texas; now he had to make his final arrests.
He knew the manner of men they were, and he also knew that not only his life depended upon his skill with a gun, but also those of Josh and his children. The town was waiting to see which would triumph, Texas law or Tatum's law.
(from "Bowdrie Passes Through," by Louis L'Amour)
He whipped the gunbelt from the man's waist and was just turning when he saw two men charging into the barn. He covered them. "Drop 'em! An' drop 'em fast!"
Gingerly, careful to allow no room for a mistake, they unbuckled their belts.
"Now, back up!"
Tom Pettibone stepped from the house, the Sharps up and ready. "Cover them, Tom. If anyone so much as moves, blow him in two!"
"Hey, mister!" one of the men protested. "That kid might get nervous!"
"Suppose you just stand there an' pray he doesn't," Bowdrie suggested.
(from "Bowdrie Passes Through," by Louis L'Amour)
"Nothin' romantic about bein' an outlaw, son. Just trouble an' more trouble. You can't trust anybody, even the outlaws you ride with. You're always afraid somebody will recognize you, and you don't have any real friends, for fear they might turn you in or rob you themselves. The trouble with bein' an outlaw or any kind of criminal is the company you have to keep."
(from "Bowdrie Passes Through," by Louis L'Amour)
"Hold it right there, mister!"
The voice behind the Sharps was young, but it carried a ring of command, and it does not require ad grown man to pull a trigger. Chick Bowdrie had lived this long because he knew where to stop. He stopped now.
(from "Bowdrie Passes Through," by Louis L'Amour)
Only a moment before, Chick Bowdrie had been dozing in the saddle, weary from the long miles behind; then a sudden tensing of muscles of the hammerheaded roan brought him out of it.
Pulling the black, flat-crowned hat lower over his eyes, he studied the terrain with the eyes of a man who looked that he might live. His legs, sensitive to every reaction of the horse he rode, had warned him. If he needed more, he had only to look at the roan's ears, tipped forward now, and the flaring nostrils. Whatever it was, the roan did not like it.
(from "Bowdrie Rides a Coyote Trail," by Louis L'Amour)
No man can be understood except against the background of his own time. The characters in "Showdown on the Hogback" lived in a time and place when workdays were long, living conditions were harsh, and the work itself was brutally hard. Yet they expected nothing more. At least they had fresh air.
Conditions in eastern cities were worse in many respects. Trade unions either did not exist or were fighting for acceptance, and sweatshop conditions prevailed everywhere. Sanitary conditions were just as primitive as in the West, only with less clean air and sunlight.
The western man grew up fighting to protect the land he claimed and the cattle he drove. There was no policeman to call; he learned not to call for help because there was nobody to listen. He saddled his own broncs, and he fought his own battles
(Above is the Author's Note to Showdown on the Hogback, by Louis L'Amour)
Bodie backed up another step, and his gun slid from his fingers. He tried to speak, and then his knees buckled and he went down. Standing over him, I looked at Red.
"I'm ridin'," Red said huskily. "Just give me a chance." He swung into the saddle and then looked down at Bodie. "He wasn't so tough, was he?"
'Nobody is," I told him. "Nobody's tough with a slug in his belly."
(from Riders of the Dawn, by Louis L'Amour)
As I rode into the yard a man materialized from the shadows. It was Jonathan Benaras, with his long rifle.
When I swung down from the saddle he stared at my face, but said nothing. Knowing he would be curious, I explained simply, "Morgan Park and I had it out. It was quite a fight. He took a licking."
"If he looks worse than you he must be a sight."
(from Riders of the Dawn, by Louis L'Amour)
"Did you think I'd run? Olga, I've been whipped by Morgan Park, shot by Rollie Pinder, and attacked by the others, but Pinder is dead and Park's time is coming. No, I made a promise to a fine old man named Ball, another one to myself, and one to you, and I'll keep them all. In my time I've backed up, I've sidestepped, and occasionally I've run, but always to come back and fight again.
(from Riders of the Dawn, by Louis L'Amour)
"He seems quite knowledgeable about printing."
"Qwilleran said, "During my career, Polly, I've interviewed thousands of persons, and I can detect the difference between (a) those who know what they're talking about and (b) those who have memorized information from a book. I don't think Boswell is an 'a.'"
(from The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts, by Lillian Jackson Braun)
"Who'd you get?" asked Gorman.
"Tom Blazer. Fats McCabe, too."
"I figgered Tom. I told him he shouldn't have shot the kid. That was a low-down trick. But why shoot Fats?"
"He acted like he was reachin' for a gun."
"Huh. Don't take a lot to get man killed, does it?"
(from The Train To Crazy Man, by Louis L'Amour)
He was an honest man, a sincere man. He had a quality to be found in many men of his kind and period - a quality of deep-seated loyalty that was his outstanding trait.
Hard and reckless in demeanor, he rode with dash and acted with a flair. He had at times been called a hard case. Yet no man lived long in a dangerous country if he were reckless. There was a place always for courage, but intelligent courage, not the heedlessness of a harebrained youngster.
(from The Trail To Crazy Man, by Louis L'Amour)
Rafe Caradec turned slowly and walked back to his horse. Without a word he swung into the saddle. He turned the horse and, sitting tall in the saddle, swept the street with a cold, hard eye that seemed to stare at each man there. Then, as if by his own wish, the black horse turned. Walking slowly, his head held proudly, he carried his rider down the street and out of town.
Behind him, coolly and without smiles, Bo Marsh and Tex Brisco followed. Like him, they rode slowly, and like him, they rode proudly. Something in their bearing seemed to say, "We were challenged. We came. You see the result."
(from The Trail to Crazy Man, by Louis L'Amour)
He sat up at last and put on his hat. Then he threw the blankets back and got up, pulling on his pants and shaking out his boots. This morning he had collected nothing but a half-grown tarantula, who reared up menacingly. But Canavan was in no mood for trouble, and the big spider wandered away to come again another night. He hadn't been looking for trouble, anyway, just a warm place to sleep. And that big thing, whatever it was, had no right to shake him out of his bed at such an ungodly hour.
(from Where the Long Grass Blows, by Louis L'Amour)
The west was not so large a place as many seemed to believe. The country was enormous, but the populations was not, and the men who rode the wild country knew each other, at least by hearsay. Among the gun-packing fraternity - those who lived by the gun either on the side of the law or against it - all knew each other by name and reputation. At every camp fire there was discussion of their respective abilities.
(from Where the Long Grass Blows, by Louis L'Amour)
