Rivers West

by Louis L'Amour

  I was watching them now.

  “One need not be shrewd to outwit a pack of fools. And those who are not fools are asleep. This land lies ready for the taking.”

  She smiled. “Every crackpot adventurer in the Western Hemisphere has believed that.”

  “Within forty-eight hours, it will be mine,” he said complacently. But I knew her talk was reaching him.

  “No,” she replied, “you are wrong. You cannot win.”

  He got to his feet. “You are very sure of yourself, Tabitha,” he said gently. “All of which makes bringing you to your knees more pleasant.” He turned toward the door, then glanced back. “Tabitha, do you know where Charles is now?”

  She turned sharply toward him, and he laughed.

  “Amusing how tender a woman can feel toward her brother. We’ve decided to use Charles as an example, especially for you. We—”

  Suddenly, he felt the movement in the deck and lunged for the door. At the same instant, there was a yell of alarm from aft, then a shot, followed by the rush of feet and the sound of clashing arms.

  As Macklem reached the cabin door, I stepped into it.

  He reacted instantaneously and struck out hard. I took the punch coming in. It struck with numbing force, but I’d driven hard, and we both staggered back into the cabin.

  His left fist caught me over the eye with a blow like a club, and he threw a high right that I instinctively ducked, hitting him under the heart. Piling in close, I smashed away with both fists at his body, but was shoved off and hit again over my eye. I felt a trickle of blood from a cut, slipped inside his next punch and slammed home two more.

  His body was like iron, and he neatly turned aside, throwing me off balance. Before I could turn, he hit me just below the ear, but I took the punch standing and turned on him. I think he was shocked. He had expected me to fall. Instead, I looked at him and laughed.

  I was hurt. I was badly shaken—had he known how badly, he could have killed me. We came together then, punching with both hands, and every blow he struck shook me to my heels.

  He jerked his knee toward my crotch, but I brought a knee up across my other leg to block it. He shook me with a right to the head and stepped in, his fingers clawing for my eyes. I sank my face against his shoulder and ripped short, brutal punches to his gut.

  He shoved me off, and for an instant we faced each other.

  “You can fight,” he said contemptuously, breathing hard. “You can fight just a little. Now I am going to kill you!”

  He came in fast, and I threw a righthand punch at his face. He went under it and grabbed my left leg, lifting it high as he jammed his palm against my face. As he did so, he slid his leg behind mine, and I went over it backward to the floor. He followed in immediately, but he had not figured on my coming up fast. I had hit the deck hard, but hit it rolling, and was quickly on my feet moving into him.

  He slipped on the rolling deck, and I caught his left arm in a hammerlock, pushing it toward his shoulder. He turned, throwing his right across my two arms, locking them behind his back. Then he threw me over his leg to the deck.

  This time I was slower getting up, and he caught me in the wind with a vicious kick. I felt a stab of pain and gasped for breath, on my knees. He tried to step back to get distance, but I threw myself forward, grabbing his legs.

  They were like iron, and he stood over me, laughing. Then he smashed his knee against the side of my face and knocked me sprawling under a table. He kicked me twice before I could get out, the second kick on the side of the neck and shoulder as I was coming up.

  My right caught him on the chin, a short, wicked hook from close in, and it shook him. He stepped off, measured me with a left, missed a right as I came in close, and he tried to rabbit-punch me behind the neck. Strong as he was, I began to realize I was stronger still, and I bulled him back against the bulkhead, where I hit him twice in the body.

  Suddenly, there was a terrible concussion from above as a gun was fired, then a second and a third. From Bonhomme Island there were wild yells…another shot.

  My face was bloody. There was blood running into my eyes. His own face was smooth and hard as iron, unblemished. Yet, I could see there was no longer the same supreme self-confidence. I had him fighting for his life…as I was.

  He sparred a moment. He jabbed at my face, and I went under it. He had half stepped back and was waiting with his right cocked for me to come in. Instead, I feinted, then smashed him on the chin with a right. His eyes blinked, and I hit him again.

  Now he circled warily. For the first time, I think, he fully realized he might not win. In the narrow confines of the cabin, we moved toward each other.

  Tabitha, who had drawn back into a corner, was watching wide eyed. My pistols lay near her, where they had slipped from my belt as I’d gone to the floor.

  There was the pound of rushing feet on the deck outside. A cannon roared again. By the feel of the boat, we were now well into the current. Suddenly, Macklem half crouched, his hand went to his boot and came up with a knife. “Sorry!” he said. “But I’ve business aloft!”

  He lunged with the blade, not slashing as he should have, but using his knife like a sword.

  Slapping his knife hand with my left to push it away from my body, I grabbed his wrist with my right and, stepping across in front of him, punched him to the deck. Yet a sudden lurch of the vessel threw me, and I fell along side and facing him.

  My two pistols were there. He grabbed for one, I for the other. We both fired.

  I felt a sudden burn as from a red-hot iron across my shoulder, and he was staring at me, his mouth open and his lower jaw gone. I fired again, and he slumped on the deck. I got slowly to my feet and fell back against the bulkhead.

  Somebody loomed in the doorway, and I turned, half blind with blood and sweat.

  “Don’t shoot!” It was Jambe-de-Bois. “It’s all right. It’s all over.”

  I was gasping for breath as though I’d never get enough in my lungs. I tilted my head back against the bulkhead.

  McQuarrie came over and began to wipe the blood from my face. “We found Charlie. Butlin got him loose and brought him to us. Then we opened fire on their camp. We shot into their campfire. It scattered them.”

  “Is anybody hurt?”

  “A few scratches. We’ve been very lucky.”

  “Macklem is dead,” Macaire was saying, and there was a lot of confused talk. LeBrun and Yvette were safe. So were Mrs. Higgs and Edwin Hale.

  Tabitha was standing where she’d stood during the fight. She was still staring at me, only now she was trembling.

  “You’d better sit down,” I suggested, and she crossed over and sat down beside me.

  “Macklem was Torville?” I asked, and she nodded.

  “Where to?” asked Jambe-de-Bois.

  “Pittsburgh,” I said. “I’ve got a boat to build.” I looked around at Tabitha. “Want to come along?”

  “Yes,” she said, “I’ve never built a boat.”

  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 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, “always on the frontier.” As a boy growin
g 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 120 books is in print; there are nearly 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), Rivers West, 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 publishing tradition forward.

  Bantam Books by Louis L’Amour

  NOVELS

  Bendigo Shafter

  Borden Chantry

  Brionne

  The Broken Gun

  The Burning Hills

  The Californios

  Callaghen

  Catlow

  Chancy

  The Cherokee Trail

  Comstock Lode

  Conagher

  Crossfire Trail

  Dark Canyon

  Down the Long Hills

  The Empty Land

  Fair Blows the Wind

  Fallon

  The Ferguson Rifle

  The First Fast Draw

  Flint

  Guns of the Timberlands

  Hanging Woman Creek

  The Haunted Mesa

  Heller with a Gun

  The High Graders

  High Lonesome

  Hondo

  How the West Was Won

  The Iron Marshal

  The Key-Lock Man

  Kid Rodelo

  Kilkenny

  Killoe

  Kilrone

  Kiowa Trail

  Last of the Breed

  Last Stand at Papago Wells

  The Lonesome Gods

  The Man Called Noon

  The Man from Skibbereen

  The Man from the Broken Hills

  Matagorda

  Milo Talon

  The Mountain Valley War

  North to the Rails

  Over on the Dry Side

  Passin’ Through

  The Proving Trail

  The Quick and the Dead

  Radigan

  Reilly’s Luck

  The Rider of Lost Creek

  Rivers West

  The Shadow Riders

  Shalako

  Showdown at Yellow Butte

  Silver Canyon

  Sitka

  Son of a Wanted Man

  Taggart

  The Tall Stranger

  To Tame a Land

  Tucker

  Under the Sweetwater Rim

  Utah Blaine

  The Walking Drum

  Westward the Tide

  Where the Long Grass Blows

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  Beyond the Great Snow Mountains

  Bowdrie

  Bowdrie’s Law

  Buckskin Run

  Dutchman’s Flat

  End of the Drive

  From the Listening Hills

  The Hills of Homicide

  Law of the Desert Born

  Long Ride Home

  Lonigan

  May There Be a Road

  Monument Rock

  Night over the Solomons

  Off the Mangrove Coast

  The Outlaws of Mesquite

  The Rider of the Ruby Hills

  Riding for the Brand

  The Strong Shall Live

  The Trail to Crazy Man

  Valley of the Sun

  War Party

  West from Singapore

  West of Dodge

  With These Hands

  Yondering

  SACKETT TITLES

  Sackett’s Land

  To the Far Blue Mountains

  The Warrior’s Path

  Jubal Sackett

  Ride the River

  The Daybreakers

  Sackett

  Lando

  Mojave Crossing

  Mustang Man

  The Lonely Men

  Galloway

  Treasure Mountain

  Lonely on the Mountain

  Ride the Dark Trail

  The Sackett Brand

  The Sky-Liners

  THE HOPALONG CASSIDY NOVELS

  The Riders of the High Rock

  The Rustlers of West Fork

  The Trail to Seven Pines

  Trouble Shooter

  NONFICTION

  Education of a Wandering Man

  Frontier

  The Sackett Companion: A Personal Guide to the Sackett Novels

  A Trail of Memories: The Quotations of Louis L’Amour, compiled by Angelique L’Amour

  POETRY

  Smoke from This Altar

  RIVERS WEST

  A Bantam Book / June 2004

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Bantam edition published August 1975

  Saturday Review Press edition published March 1979

  Bantam reissue / July 1999

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1975 by Louis & Katherine L’Amour Trust

  Excerpt from Law of the Desert Born Text copyright © 2013 by Beau L’Amour; Illustrations copyright © 2013 by Louis L’Amour Enterprises, Inc.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except

  where permitted by law. For information address:

  Bantam Books New York, New York.

  Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Please visit our website at www.bantamdell.com

  eISBN: 978-0-553-89968-9

  v3.0_r1

  Praise for

  Law of the Desert Born

  “This actually may be the story’s ideal form… . The result is stunning and richly textured.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Yeates’ artwork is incredible.”

  —GraphicNovelReporter.com

  “Law of the Desert Born is a fantastic example of how relevant the Western can be.”

  —Suvudu.com

  “The richer plot and characters from L’Amour’s son Beau and collaborator Kathy Nolan add appeal and value in addition to the finely crafted visuals.”

  —Library Journal

  “The novel’s illustrations
add a new dimension to an already gripping tale.”

  —American Cowboy

  “An amazing level of detail and ambience that breathes new life into Louis L’Amour’s already stunning story.”

  —Cowboys & Indians

  A Graphic Novel Masterpiece!

  Available NOW from your favorite bookstore or online retailer! Find out more at

  LAWOFTHEDESERTBORN.COM