Volume 1: Unfinished Manuscripts, Mysterious Stories, and Lost Notes from One of the World's Most Popular Novelists

by Louis L'Amour

  Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures: Volume 1 is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by The Louis D. & Katherine E. L’Amour 1983 Trust and Beau L’Amour

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  BANTAM BOOKS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: L’Amour, Louis, 1908–1988, author. | L’Amour, Beau, writer of introduction.

  Title: Lost treasures, unfinished manuscripts, mysterious stories, and lost notes from one of the world’s most popular novelists / Louis L’Amour ; [introduction by Beau L’Amour].

  Description: First edition. | New York : Bantam Books, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016021929 (print) | LCCN 2016041495 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399177545 (alk. paper) | ISBN 9780399177552 (ebook)

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Western stories. | Adventure stories. | Detective and mystery stories. | Historical fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3523.A446 A6 2017 (print) | LCC PS3523.A446 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2016021929

  Ebook ISBN 9780399177552

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Caroline Cunningham, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Scott Biel

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  What Is Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures?

  Introduction by Beau L'Amour

  1. Jeremy Loccard: The First Four Chapters of a Western Horror Novel

  2. Trail of Tears: The First Seven Chapters of a Historical Novel

  3. A Woman Worth Having: A Treatment for an Adventure Story

  4. Johnny Banta: Several Beginnings to a Western Novel

  5. Java Dix: The Beginning of a Crime Story

  6. Investment in Character: A Treatment for a Western Story

  7. The Golden Tapestry: The Beginning of an Adventure Novel, and a Treatment

  8. Louis Riel: The First Three Chapters of a Historical Novel

  9. Llano Estacado: The Beginning of a Western Novel

  10. Shelby Tucker: The Beginning of a Western Novel

  11. Citizen of the Darker Streets: The Beginning of an Adventure Story

  12. Where Flows the Bangkok: A Treatment for an Adventure Story

  13. Vanderdyke: The First Three Chapters of a Historical Novel

  14. Mike Kerleven: Notes for a Crime Story

  15. Stan Brodie: The First Four Chapters of a Western Novel

  16. Jack Cross: The Beginning of an Adventure Story

  17. China King: The Beginning of a Crime Story

  18. Tap Talharan: The Beginning of a Western Story

  19. The Dark Hole: The Beginning of a Crime Story

  20. Samsara Three: Beginnings for an Adventure Novel, and a Treatment

  21. Journey to Aksu: The Beginning of an Adventure Novel

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Bantam Books by Louis L’Amour

  About the Authors

  WHAT IS LOUIS L’AMOUR’S LOST TREASURES?

  * * *

  Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures is a project created to release some of the author’s more unconventional manuscripts from the family archives.

  Currently included in the project are Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures: Volume 1 and Volume 2, which will be published in the fall of 2017 and 2019 respectively. These books contain both finished and unfinished short stories, unfinished novels, literary and motion-picture treatments, notes, and outlines. They are a wide selection of the many works Louis was not able to publish during his lifetime.

  In 2018 we will release No Traveller Returns, L’Amour’s never-before-seen first novel, which was written between 1938 and 1942. In the future, there may be a selection of even more L’Amour titles.

  Additionally, many notes and alternate drafts to Louis’s well-known and previously published novels and short stories will now be included as “bonus feature” postscripts within the books that they relate to. For example, the Lost Treasures postscript to Last of the Breed will contain early notes on the story, the short story that was discovered to be a missing piece of the novel, the history of the novel’s inspiration and creation, and information about unproduced motion-picture and comic book versions.

  An even more complete description of the Lost Treasures project, along with a number of examples of what is in the books, can be found at louislamourslosttreasures.com. The website also contains a good deal of exclusive material, such as even more pieces of unknown stories, personal photos, scans of original documents, and notes.

  All of the works that contain Lost Treasures project materials will display the Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures banner and logo.

  INTRODUCTION

  * * *

  By Beau L’Amour

  This book may drive you crazy.

  What it contains is mysterious and fascinating, frustrating and, more often than not, tragically incomplete. It is a look behind the curtain into a world of what might have been. It is a look under the hood at how the machinery of a writing career that lasted over half a century functioned. It is also a look at the struggle to express an idea, and how difficult it can be to bend the unruly process of creativity to one’s will. This is the story of the debris, the chaff, the waste heat that a writer produces. The stuff that never makes it to the editor’s desk. The stack of pages never graced by a final “The End.”

  It is humbling to think that, with a career that produced ninety-one novels and nearly four hundred short stories, articles, screenplays, and poems, Louis L’Amour also left behind hundreds of unfinished works. It is comforting to know that, regardless of how prolific he was, he was human, that he had failures, weird ideas, and dreams he couldn’t quite fulfill. It is amazing to realize that his imagination stretched well beyond the tremendous variety of work that he eventually published, from Westerns and crime stories, high adventure and historical romance, to stories he planned in science fiction, horror, and what can only be called the genre of mystical or spiritual adventure.

  You may not find a hidden literary masterpiece between these covers, but you will get a sense of the entirety of a prolific writer’s journey, an idea of the scope of all a truly creative person can struggle to wrap his or her mind around.

  Within these pages I have included some of the most interesting material from what is a considerable archive. Many examples are stories that Dad discussed with us around the dinner table; others were completely unknown to me and inspired a good deal of research. I am reluctant, however, to do too much explaining, reluctant to organize this book too carefully. Exploring these manuscripts for the first time gave me a wonderful feeling of surprise and discovery. It is an experience that I do not wish to deny to others.

  But I will try to create some context….

  —

  It is still dark. Early morning. A late 1960s winter and the previous night’s rain is still dripping from the eaves.

/>   The neighborhood is just off the Sunset Strip in a neglected sliver of Los Angeles County sloping down from the Hollywood Hills. It is a community of nightclubs, gas stations, and small offices where, up narrow flights of stairs, the agents of rarely employed actors ply their trade.

  West Hollywood is the dark sibling of Beverly Hills, which lies right next door. Beatnik poets and hungover movie stars frequent the coffee shop on the corner. The Doors, Led Zeppelin, and Buffalo Springfield play at clubs like the Whisky a Go Go, the Roxy, and Gazzarri’s, and crowds clash with police when the neighbors complain about the noise and traffic. The edges of parking lots and the overgrown hillsides, even the sidewalks themselves, are dotted with hippies, camping (for lack of a better word) any place they can find a spot where no one will hassle them. They have come to this part of LA following a dream, or the music, or just one another. The place is a motley riot of counterculture, creativity, and confusion.

  The sound of typewriter keys clacking greets me as I wake. I come downstairs dressed for school. The hallway that leads to the kitchen ends in three doors. Ahead, a bathroom; to the left, my father’s office, a small room choked with books and papers in a small house choked with books and papers. The light is on above his desk, but his chair is empty. To the right is the kitchen, the coffee percolating and my mother delivering eggs and broiled bacon, condensed strips with the fat cooked off (my favorite), to the breakfast table.

  In a few minutes my sister will join us. My mother doesn’t have to dress her anymore; she’s old enough to manage by herself. Then, Dad will put down the newspaper, take up a book, and read to us while we eat. It’s a morning routine that will not end until I start driving myself to school nearly ten years later. The books he read were things he was interested in, Thor Heyerdahl’s The Kon-Tiki Expedition, Adventures in the Apache Country, or something from his youth, like Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar. We were surrounded by stories in every manner imaginable.

  By the time Mom was backing our aging and road-weary Cadillac out of the garage, Dad was back at his desk, typewriter rumbling, keys whacking out an irregular pattern. He’d still be there when I came home from school, after dinner, and sometimes, long past my bedtime.

  I would wake up to that sound the next morning and the next and the next….

  This is how I remember my dad at work.

  Louis’s schedule, to be specific, was to always be the first one in the house out of bed. He took great pride in this, no matter what the circumstances. He wrote before breakfast and then immediately afterward. He worked until lunch, which, unless he had a business meeting, didn’t last long. In the afternoon he would break to exercise, lifting weights in the backyard, whirling a jump rope, or shadowboxing. Before we got home from school he was back at it, and after dinner would often work until the late news came on the TV. He wrote seven days a week. He never took a vacation that wasn’t a research trip…and sometimes, when we did travel, he would pack a tiny portable typewriter that had been “liberated” in Germany, and would write then, too.

  I’m not sure when he took on this type of schedule, but I think it started in Oklahoma in the late 1930s. There was a certain point when he got serious; you can see it in his work. At first he wrote poetry and stories that were both personal and dark. Louis Lamoore (the way he was spelling his name when the Lamoore family arrived in Choctaw) was a bit of a pretender, an “artiste.” He was a young man who, though he had talent, traded a great deal on his personality and good looks. In many ways he seemed to be writing more to augment his social life than to found a career.

  Then something happened. Perhaps it was a sudden sense of vulnerability, of the years passing, of the realization that, though he had roamed the world, he was over thirty, living with his parents, and there were few things he could actually do that would earn him any money. Maybe it was the advice of a mentor or a warning from his father or elder brother. Maybe it was some small success that made him recognize that his future could be realized, rather than simply dreamt about. Whatever it was, it left him a changed and highly motivated man.

  The point of view of his writing shifted. In the early period, the characters were stand-ins for himself, the stories drawn from his life or those he had known. In some ways these stories were actually better written, and certainly more polished, than some that came later…but to succeed professionally, he was going to have to learn to communicate in a manner that was more universal than personal. He would need to entertain the masses rather than members of writers’ groups and readers of minor literary magazines.

  It was just before this moment, through accident or the hand of destiny, that Louis also met an angel. In Education of a Wandering Man he said:

  At one time, trying desperately to write something that would sell, I rented a typewriter. For several months I paid the rent. Then came a time when I could not, so I wrote him a note and explained. I never heard from him again. No bill, nothing. That typewriter meant more to me than anything….

  Being able to write every day opened the creative pathways and kept them open. Becoming good at it wasn’t quick or easy, but eventually Dad had practiced so much that creativity became somewhat automatic. He set himself detailed goals and worked hard to achieve them, crossing projects off of typewritten lists with a proud, red grease pencil. By the late 1940s his goal was to sell a short story a week.

  Not to finish a story a week. Sell.

  Even though he’d had a fair amount of success by then, publishers would not take everything he wrote, so he had to complete quite a few more than fifty-two stories a year in attempts to make his quota. The work didn’t pay much. Even that volume of writing did little more than pay the rent. Speed was essential.

  —

  I have no memory of how we were trained, my sister and I, but we knew how to approach my father if he was working and we wanted his attention. We would enter his office, picking our way through the piles of books and papers. We would stand to one side of him, just within his peripheral vision, and silently wait while he worked. Sometimes he would lift his fingers from the keys and say, “Just a minute.” Then he would go on and complete a thought or get himself to a place in the story that would remind him what he had been intending to say next. Then he was yours…

  …for about ten minutes. Before long, you could see the story or some innate discipline calling him back. We never had to worry about interrupting him because, while he was happy to be briefly distracted, he guarded his work time very carefully, and it never occurred to us that he might behave in a different way. “You run along now, I have to get back to work.” He would lean forward then, hunting and pecking at the keyboard, back in the story and perfectly in tune with where he had left off. It seemed as if he always knew exactly where he was going and no interruption could confuse him or even make him pause for very long.

  —

  The descriptions of Louis L’Amour’s writing process were legendary. According to publicists and popular myth, he did not outline and did not rewrite. He embodied every young writer’s fantasy of what the process would be like. He cranked a page into the typewriter, started typing, and with absolute confidence, didn’t look back until he reached the end of the story. All action, no agonizing.

  Everything he wrote was good enough to immediately sell, or so the story went. The words simply flowed out of him. He did not get writer’s block. He was not temperamental.

  These may have been exaggerations, but they were not utter falsehoods or public-relations hype. He bragged he could sit with his typewriter on his knees and write a novel in the middle of Sunset Boulevard…and when a German magazine asked to shoot some pictures of him doing so, he did it, producing half of his day’s output during the photo shoot. He was already so well-known for that particular boast that a motorist leaned out the window of his car and yelled, “You’ve got to be Louis L’Amour!”

  Mom and Dad in their apartment in West Hollywood.

  —

  Before I was born, Louis mad
e the transition from writing short stories to writing novels. The length of the stories changed, the publishers changed, the way the material was distributed changed, but Dad’s work habits did not. His income grew, but he also had a family to support. We had a very comfortable middle-class lifestyle as long as he could write three or four books a year. If he sold a movie, then maybe my mother could redecorate a room, or we’d buy a new car. Financial considerations aside, Dad still took great pride in having a lot of story ideas and in the speed with which he could produce a page or a chapter or a novel.

  Progress was his byword. Louis claimed he could “simply” put himself and his characters in a situation and the story would take off, virtually telling itself. He loved beginnings…loved them to the point that he occasionally shortchanged the ending of a story because he was so excited about starting the next one. He was powerfully optimistic, focused on productivity, the future, whatever was next. His frame of mind was such a potent force that, occasionally, Dad would announce stories that he had only just thought of as if they were finished….In the reality he made for himself, there was little difference between thinking of something and completing it.

  His presence was big and happy and generous. He made what he did look easy and, for the most part, it was. A great deal of the magic behind his sales was that he wrote so effortlessly that the material read the same way….The energy that any writer puts into their work is the energy a reader will take out of it. And rare among writers, Louis loved the writing process.