Over On the Dry Side (1975)
Page 17
“Frank’s a good man, Jake. One of the best.”
Jake Strawn mounted his bay, then turned in the saddle. “How’d it go, Owen? With Freka, I mean.”
“He won’t kill anymore,” said Chantry.
“He was the one killed Clive,” said Strawn.
“That’s what I guessed,” said Chantry.
“But much obliged. I’m happy to know for sure.”
Strawn started to ride away.
“Jake?”
He pulled up. “If you ever want to sell that horse—?”
“Not a chance!” Jake replied, and rode away.
Chantry looked slowly around. Kernohan, looking pale and weak but on his own feet, came in from the aspens. Doby was with him, and the old man —looking even grayer now and leaning on his Buffalo gun as he walked.
“Is it over, Owen?”
“I think so, Doby.” Chantry smiled. It felt like his first smile in months. “Except for burying the dead and finding the treasure. How’d you like to find the treasure?”
“Now?” Doby asked.
“Now,” said Chantry. And slowly he led the way to the boulder, followed by Marny, Kernohan, and Doby.
The foot of the boulder where the hidden trail went steeply down offered a splendid view.
Chantry paused there for a moment, drinking in the magnificence of it.
Clive had sighted well. Close up, the bit of mica was hard to find. Chantry stepped back and looked thoughtfully at the rock, then studied to the right and left of it. Finally, he stepped into the cleft and began a close examination of the rock.
Once he found it, the hiding place seemed obvious and scarcely could be termed anything of the kind. More than likely, Clive’s only thought had been to put it away from the danger of fire, always something to be reckoned with in cabins with open hearths.
It was just a little hole in the boulder, the opening blocked off by a rock. After displacing the rock, Chantry removed a rusted metal box. He broke it open. Inside was a roll of parchment covering a sheaf of papers. The parchment was wrapped in oilskin.
Doby leaned over and peered into the hole, then at the now empty box. “Is that treasure?” he asked.
Carefully, without answering, Owen Chantry removed the oilskin cover and gently unrolled the parchment. It was a deep tan in color and written upon with firm and elegant handwriting:
“This manuscript to be delivered to my friend Jean Jacques Tremoulin, Paris, France.
The Legends of the Otomi as Collected by Clive Chantry.”
Chantry read the words aloud. They stared at the manuscript in wonder, as Chantry turned the oilskin inside out. When he did so, a tiny gold nugget slipped free and fell to the ground.
Doby was struck with awe. He’d never seen real gold before, but he knew what it was.
Treasure … gold … and value …
It was a whole lot to understand at once, Chantry knew, especially for a poor country boy.
“Anyway,” said Chantry, “we’re going to be neighbors now. The war is over.” He reached for Marny’s hand.
For war it had been.
“I’m mighty glad,” said Kernohan. “Us down there and you up here. You’re a mighty generous man, Chantry.” He was weak on his feet, but he could walk.
“And you must visit us often, Doby,” said Marny, “being as close by as you are.”
Doby grinned. She was a little too old for him anyway. One of these days, he’d just take him a trip to El Paso.
In the stillness of a mountain grove high above, the old man looked down at the people, dead and alive.
He’d helped. He’d taken his shots, and made them when they counted, where they counted.
Enclosed by the silence around him, broken only by a bird call, the old man bent down, drank from a small stream, and wiped his mouth.
“The trouble with people is,” he said, aloud to himself, “they make too damn much noise!”
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.”
It 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 1600’s 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 100 books is in print; there are more than 270 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 CD’S 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 tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam.