the Man from Skibbereen (1973) (25 page)

Crispin Mayo, of County Cork and the great plains of the West, stood watching him for several minutes. The man was dead.

Picking up the gun he had been forced to drop, he wiped the dirt away and then walked back into the willows. Murray's dapple gray horse was there, with a freshly filled canteen on the saddle. He led the beast outside, let it water again, and then swung into the saddle and rode down the trail to the railroad.

He was there beside the track when he heard the train whistle, no more than a minute later. He stepped down, removed the canteen, then held the reins until he saw that the train was slowing down for him. He threw the reins over the saddle and slapped the horse on the hip. "You've got a home somewhere. Go!"

When the train stopped and a conductor stepped down, it was Sam Calkins. A dozen soldiers peered from the windows.

"You'd better get aboard," Calkins said sourly, "Colonel McCIean and his daughter are waitin' for you at Medicine Bow."

Crispin Mayo climbed into the car, lifted a hand to the soldiers and dropped into a seat.

"Thought I heard shootin'." Calkins was reluctantly curious. "We were comin' along slow, had no idea where you'd be."

Cris opened his eyes. "Murray was up there at the spring. That was his horse I turned loose."

He closed his eyes again. He had no idea how far it was to Medicine Bow.

Barda would be there--

Cris Mayo slept without dreams.

The train whistle called again, losing itself against the silent hills, calling to the empty ghosts that watched there wide--eyed. The drivers threshed at the rails, and the train started along the track. Again the whistle called, and the sound seemed to hang in the stillness.

The following night, Justin Parley, aware that ten of his men had been taken from the train in Medicine Bow and the rest killed or scattered, rode boldly into Laramie. At the edge of the town Silver Dick suddenly pulled up. "Major," he said, "I cached some coin about a month ago, right back there by the barn. You go ahead. I'll join you at the Belle."

"Of course," Parley said, and rode on alone. Silver Dick Contego paused on the hill. "Good--bye, Justin," he said quietly. "You believe in your star, I believe in a fast horse."

The night was cool, clear, splendid to see. Tonight was the 29th of October, 1868, a date never to be forgotten in Fort Sanders and Laramie. It was the night when the vigilantes cleaned up the town, concentrating their energies on the Belle of the West. Five men were killed, many were wounded, a good deal of lead was thrown; and Justin Parley, who never used his own name in Laramie, was dropped next morning into an unmarked grave.

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."

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 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 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, an additional Hopalong Cassidy novel, Trouble Shooter and the short story collections Valley of the Sun and West of Dodge.

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