Fair Blows the Wind (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures)

by Louis L'Amour

  The vessel bumped against a stone wharf, grating there before somebody got a rope fender between the hull and the wharf. Then there was a great shouting back and forth, but the voices I heard were English and a great fear came up within me.

  If they caught me now I should be taken a prisoner and perhaps beheaded. I had no knowledge of what they might do to an Irish lad, but fearful were the stories I’d heard, and I’d seen my own father fall before them…although a good number it took to cut him down.

  Dared I wait until the night? I huddled close to the hatch of the rope-locker, filled with fear and uncertainty, wishing for a chance to be free of the vessel and to lose myself in the town…surely, among all those buildings one small boy could find a place to hide?

  My father dead, my mother gone even longer from this earth…or so I supposed…and our clan scattered into hiding.

  Suddenly I decided I must escape, and I crawled into the rope-locker and crouched near the door to the deck. Footsteps retreated from the deck and for a moment there was stillness. Easing open the door I saw the deck clear before me, beyond was the gangplank to the dock. In an instant I was out and scrambling.

  Seamen were busy about the dock and stern and I made the gangplank unseen. I ran down it, turned to look and my foot missed and I fell. Instantly I knew I was to be crushed between ship and dock, I grabbed out wildly, felt a strong hand grasp my wrist and I was lifted bodily to the wharf.

  “Here, now!” I looked up into the long, hawk like face of a soldier…an officer. My heart sank within me. I was caught, fairly and surely. “You’d best get back aboard and get permission from your father to—”

  Fear and anger robbed me of my senses. “My father is not aboard,” I said, and the touch of the brogue to my tongue would have told him much had I not blurted it out, “my father was cut down by the likes of you!”

  He tightened his grasp upon my wrist. “Irish, are you? And from where?”

  “I am,” and boldly I told him my name, “and I am not running from fear.”

  He glanced quickly to right and left but there was nobody within hearing. He jerked me away from the edge of the wharf to a pile of barrels, and then he held me off and looked me up and down.

  “One thing, my lad, you had better learn. Not to speak until spoken to, nor to answer questions before they are asked. I asked only where you were from, not who and what you were.”

  “That name of yours,” he added, “you’d best forget it now, now and for always. They’ve killed your kind, and the men who do the killing would kill a boy as well. Let them even get a smell that you are alive and they would hunt you down wherever you were.”

  “Your lot have given us trouble, and there’s property besides.” He looked me over again. “I should turn you in, but I’ve faced your men with swords in their hands, and good fighters they were. I am going to let you run, lad, but if you ever say you saw me here or that I freed you I’ll give you the lie.”

  He slacked his grip and I made to run but he held me tight again. “Lad, do you have money? Some coins, perhaps?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Here, then. You’ll be wanting some’at to eat. Now be off with you.”

  He turned his back on me, a tall, fine looking man with square shoulders, handsome in his uniform. That one look, and then I was gone. Walking swiftly up the street, dodging around carts and wagons, with one thing only in mind, to get far, far away from the boat.

  I believe that the version you have just read was discarded because Louis discovered that telling this story in chronological order was destined to be a problem structurally. Starting on the Carolina coast and only then doing flashbacks into Tatton Chantry’s early life allowed Louis to begin in the midst of the action and at a critical phase of the protagonist’s life. More importantly, he was able to immediately tie the narrative to the sort of frontier experience that his audience expected without drawing too much attention to the fact that the hero’s North American adventure is just one of many “acts” in the story.

  There is an entry in Louis’s journal from December 1, 1975, that reads: “Beginning my Chantry novel this morning. Made a false start or two, not far off the beam but not right, so am beginning again.” Whether that was this version or another, Dad did not feel he was ready to complete it. On February 14, 1976, he wrote: “Back to Tatton Chantry now. Will stay with him. Part of it to do with unsettled nature of building…”

  That comment relates to the fact that he and my mom had finally been able to sell our old and long-vacant West Hollywood house and could afford to build Dad a large office attached to our new place in West Los Angeles. On May 21, 1977, he finally finished the last page:

  “Completed last night the Chantry book that will chronologically be the first in the series. I have been writing them rather at random and am trying to bring some organization into my families as of now. This book will go in next week. Kathy is proofing it for me now , and I will take her notes and some of my own and retouch the mss. [manuscript].”

  Shifting backward in time to 1972 or so, I’ll share some elements that Louis created while he was in the initial planning stages. First off, a brief outline and a descriptive paragraph:

  UNKNOWN CHANTRY STORY

  Ireland - Chantry

  England - Street boy, apprentice. His friend a prince.

  Escapes to sea after recognition

  Prisoner in Spain - Armorer

  Soldier in Italy

  Merchant Venturer

  Castaway

  Meets Spanish girl and others.

  Hides treasure

  Moves south - Indians

  To St. Augustine

  Arrested and thrown in prison.

  Escapes through help of girl & Indian & old soldier or other.

  English officer who tries to capture also recognizes him

  TATTON CHANTRY:

  Escapes Ireland after murder of his parents by British soldiers; stows away on a ship he believes bound for France; arrives in England, escapes into town abetted by kindly British officer; is seen by his enemies and hunted by them. Is aided by a man named Sackett, becomes a street kid, Sackett again aids him and he is apprenticed to an armorer with a fencing academy adjoining. After several years of training, education, etc. He is found by his enemies and[,] escaping[,] is swept up by a press gang.

  His ship is captured by the Spanish and he is briefly a prisoner; attracts the attention of an Irishman who procures his release and he works with an armorer in Spain; learns Arabic and reads old manuscripts on make of steel. Escapes Spain. Arrives in Italy and becomes a freelance soldier there.

  As you can see, there was still a great deal to be worked out. I find it interesting that the bit about being “apprenticed to an armorer” ended up being shifted over to become part of the Talon origin story in Lost Treasures: Volume 2’s “The Bastard of Brignogan.” The basic configuration of “the Three Families” was taking shape; the Chantry characters skew toward scholarship, the Talons tend to be artisans or engineers, and the Sacketts are the more blue-or brown-collar, working-class, or laborer-type characters.

  Next we have an experimental time line:

  Born 1570, Munster, Ireland

  Family wiped out 1581

  Escaped Ireland 1583

  An additional detail is that, when Louis first started thinking about the story, the plan was for Tatton’s North American adventure to have gone on a bit longer. Notes indicate that Dad initially had Tatton guiding Don Diego and his party to an outpost in Florida, where he would be imprisoned for a time by the Spanish.

  Here is a sketch of some dialogue intended for a sequel or a version of Fair Blows the Wind that contained a more protracted return to Ireland:

  Tatton…returns to Ireland with girl; buys estate; is recognized by old servitor

  “We will say nothing about that.”

  “A great name, sir.”

  “Yes - a very great name, but now I have another. Who knows? Perhaps in
time - if I have sons—?”

  “Yes, sir. Another great name.”

  “Man lives by accomplishment, Patrick, not upon the past. We can be proud of whence we came, but it is where we are going that matters.”

  “Yes, sir, you will walk this morning, sir?”

  Some of the interlocking aspects of the Three Families stories were as much for my father’s amusement as they were for his audience. The wreckage of the ship which Tatton Chantry glimpses in the beginning of Fair Blows the Wind was also supposed to be the spot where Barnabas Sackett has the fight with the alligator in Sackett’s Land. Indeed, in some future story Louis intended that we would learn how the wreck got there and discover that its presence was related to the original Talon.

  Even if it was only an inside joke, fans caught on to it quickly and wrote to Louis asking if the vessel was supposed to be the vessel from Sackett’s Land. The following note proves them right, no matter how coy my father’s answers may have been:

  Tatton Chantry comes upon a wrecked galleon and a girl of Spanish-Inca ancestry

  Suppose the Galleon was the Talon ship?

  Sackett found it in 1600

  Check dates on Tatton & Talon

  Converting his audience from readers of Westerns into people who would accept anything he wrote was both a subtle and audacious plan. The most ambitious part was that it was destined to take years of work, and Dad was already in his sixties when he started. By the time of his death Louis had definitely succeeded—he was able to turn his efforts in the thriller, historical novel, and science fiction genres into bestsellers. But the path was not always easy or entirely clear.

  Below are two of his replies to fans who complained about how different Fair Blows the Wind was from what they had expected. These letters are notable in that you can see Dad experimenting with how to defend his choices, and how he used the experience, despite fans’ complaints, to plan and promote additional elements in the series:

  October 23, 1978

  Dear XXXXX:

  I regret very much that you did not like FAIR BLOWS THE WIND. Unfortunately, I must do some further stories in that vein, although only a few. When I began the stories of the west I began to receive many letters from people asking who the pioneers were, where they came from, and why not some stories about their ancestors? I had long planned that very thing, for the west was not just a place in Limbo, it was a place from which people came and where they went, and they were of all kinds and walks of life.

  […]

  Most of my stories will be laid in the American west, but some of them will not. Fortunately, I have two [Westerns] coming out in January, one hardcover (in paper toward the end of the year) and the other in paper. The first is BENDIGO SHAFTER, the second THE PROVING TRAIL.

  Many of the seeds of the future are sewn [sown] in the early books. Tatton Chantry will have two grandsons who return to this country, and a great-grandson who will come up through Mexico to hunt buffalo on the plains.

  Our own ancestors, yours and mine, contributed to the kind of people who came west, many brought with them the codes of behavior, the ideas, etc. they had in Europe. The west was not just a place of cowboys and Indians, not just a never-never land. It had reality, and it had a past as well, and a future. The people of my stories try to show you the kind they were.

  Yet I would have thought, coming from Jacksonville, or living there at least, that you would have been interested. FAIR BLOWS takes place along that very coast near where you now live. As for me, I enjoyed writing it, and stepping back into those years, now so long ago when men and women lived in another way, but dreamed the same dreams.

  Sincerely,

  Louis L’Amour

  October 17, 1980

  Dear XXXXX:

  I believe the picture on the cover of FAIR BLOWS THE WIND revealed very much the sort of book it was. In any event, please do not believe that all my books are about the west, for a good many are not. The above book tells how the ancestor of several of my characters arrived in the United States. His descendants appear in THE FERGUSON RIFLE, OVER ON THE DRY SIDE, BORDEN CHANTRY and NORTH TO THE RAILS, to name a few.

  […]

  I have many stories to tell, and shall tell them, wherever they come from, whatever they are. I do not intend to restrict myself and never have. I began writing stories about the Far East, and I shall write some more about the same are [area]. My first movie was about Sumatra and called EAST OF SUMATRA.

  Several of my short stories about China appear in YONDERING.

  Long ago I wrote SITKA, about the purchase of Alaska from Russia, and I have written SACKETT’S LAND and TO THE FAR BLUE MOUNTAINS that begin in England and come to America.

  You say the blurb on the cover was misleading—I do not think so. There is not a single word in the blurb you enclosed that would lead you to believe the story is od [of] the west…Please: continue to read my books but if the non-western displeases you, glance through the book first for some of them will not be western.

  […]

  I have lived many lives and travelled in many places and when the mood is on me, I wish to write of them. I shall always write most of the west for I love it and spend much of my time on its deserts and in its mountains. But we all had pasts, our people came from many lands and had lived before this. What they left behind is a story, too.

  Soon I shall do a book about the first Talon, who won his name the hard way, who was a pirate, and only at the end comes to America to settle in the Gaspe with his ill-gotten gains. A descendant of his marries a Sackett, and long before that, a Chantry.

  […]

  Nowhere did I kneel down and bow my head and swear to write nothing but westerns and when I write it must be what’s in the wind for me, or what I feel in the rain, and sometimes I have old memories of nights at sea as well as nights on the desert, a bucking ship’s wheel in the hands can be as exciting as a bucking horse, and both had a part in building our country.

  My next story is about mining, the discovery of Silver in THE COMSTOCK LODE, and a Cornish miner and a beautiful actress and some unpleasant characters, some of whom are true people. It is more than twice as long as most of my books, but you might like it. It is a book about the west, even if not the usual west.

  Also, I am almost frightened to suggest it, I shall do another story about Tatton Chantry, and what happened after when the beautiful woman reappears to find out what happened to her jewels. And then about Tatton’s grandsons who came from Ireland to America, and what happened after.

  Then on[e] day I shall do a story of the Revolution and how a Sackett, a Chantry and a Talon each took part and how they brushed elbows and parted.

  There will be a story about a girl Sackett—

  Many others, but I do not promise they will all be stories of the west, although many will, and some grand stories, too!!

  All the best,

  Louis L’Amour

  Dad set up a number of threads in Fair Blows the Wind which he intended to pay off with at least one more book featuring Tatton Chantry. That did not necessarily mean he knew the exact story he was going to tell; many times he created situations that were more a challenge to his future self than a solution to any problem. Here is a list of questions that Louis knew he had to answer in the prospective sequel:

  What was mystery woman doing? Who was she? Why must she escape England?

  Who was white-haired man?

  What of Tatton’s mysterious friend?

  Who was original Chantry?

  The “mystery woman” is the lady from the carriage who enlists Tatton’s help to invest her money, then disappears. The “white-haired man” is the mysterious and deadly patron of Rafe Leckenbie. “Tatton’s mysterious friend” is probably Jacob Binns, and the “original Chantry” must be the dying man whose name “our” Tatton Chantry took when he had to hide among the English.

  Digging further into the notes, it becomes clear that Louis wanted also to introduce a co
uple of new characters who would act as protagonists in upcoming stories. The first is one of the Irish mercenaries, or “Wild Geese,” like Hugo O’Connor, the other an illicit “Hedgerow Teacher.” Some histories present these teachers as hunted by the British in order to deny an education, or at least education on certain subjects, to the Irish peasants. These two young men are sometimes referred to as cousins or even the sons or grandsons of Tatton Chantry. The following is from a note about the “Wild Goose” character returning from the wars:

  Warn him on landing of trouble for his cousin, a hedgerow teacher. He rescues him and [there] is some quotation from the classics as they fight. He must see a girl…More amused sarcasm…

  Wild escape—separated so [they] arrive in America separated.

  One to grasp after new found land, imprisoned by fishermen.

  Other comes to aid with crew…

  Because the Chantry name is adopted, a cousin would either be from Tatton’s wife’s family or from Spain or Peru, or would be associated with Tatton’s unnamed line of Irish royalty who escaped the British. Here is another set of notes on the opening of the sequel:

  Chantry II

  Open with typical dinner with wild geese home from the wars, etc.

  A hedgerow teacher escaping from British.

  When all are gone he finds a note summoning him to a meeting - in a feminine hand.

  Meeting at midnight in lonely ruin - a beautiful woman.

  He gives an accounting. She is well pleased.

  White-haired man appears (From Fair Blows?) seeking information. Threatens Tatton…

  Chantry plans for escape.

  Who was original Tatton Chantry?

  What had C. [Chantry] done in taking name?

  He visits London to use what influence he can develop - his wife with him?

  He finds aid in high places.