“If you are going,” Kulan said, “you must go now.”
“If these are your people, Kulan, then they are my people also.”
The winding caravan of Norba’s people appeared, heading north toward Tosun Nor. She should have remembered they would come this way.
Dr. Schwarzkopf brought the weapons and the ammunition. “You will not come with us, then?”
“I can’t. This is my son.”
“You will die,” Norba said. His eyes flickered over the three he hated—the wife of Lok-sha, the leader of the Ku-ts’a, and the boy who stood between him and the kingship.
Norba’s rifle started to lift, and Shambe’s started up with it, but Kulan put out a hand to stop the movement, then stepped his horse toward Norba and looked into his eyes.
“I am jyabo,” he said. “I am your king.”
For an instant Norba’s rifle held still, then slowly it lowered. With an oath, Norba whirled his horse and dashed away, followed by his men.
Behind them the motors broke into a roar, and throwing up a vast cloud of dust, the plane rolled off, gathered speed, then soared up and away, toward India, toward home.
“You should have let me kill him,” Shambe said.
“No, Shambe,” Kulan replied, “many go to die, but those who remain will remember that I spoke truth.”
Three abreast, they rode to the crest of the ridge and halted. The caravan of Norba’s followers moved north toward the great lake known as Tosun Nor, moved toward drought and death.
Anna Doone, born in Montana, looked beyond them to a bright fleck that hung in the sky. Sunlight gleamed for an instant on a wing tip…then it winked out and was gone, leaving only a distant mutter of engines that echoed against the mountains.
A Note on the Dedication
* * *
By Beau L’Amour
SINCE LOUIS’S DEATH in 1988 there have been no dedications on any of the new L’Amour books. This is as it should be. Louis’s work was his to dedicate as he chose. In this one particular instance my family and I have felt it was appropriate to step in and change that policy. John Veitch was our family’s great friend and his was one of the closest relationships that Louis, a man who had many acquaintances but few true friendships, ever had. John was the godfather to both my sister and me and was married to my mother’s closest and oldest friend.
Just after he passed away, Mom told me that losing him was so hard that she felt it was like losing my father again.…I wasn’t surprised since she had known him a decade before she met Louis, and John had lived a decade longer.
In 1966 Louis dedicated “The Broken Gun” to the recently deceased Alan Ladd and Bill Bendix, Alan’s partner in many movie adventures. Alan and Susie Ladd were John Veitch’s good friends, almost like adopted parents. He was a member of their household for many years. He married their eldest daughter and in doing so became like a member of our family, too.
John was a production executive and ultimately the production executive at Columbia Studios. He was a movie producer and troubleshooter with no peer. To many of us whose lives have touched briefly on the film business (few more briefly than mine) he was a moral compass in a hall of smoke and mirrors.
John was the master of lengthy holiday toasts, a gentle Irish soul and a brave warrior who had left his war far behind him. We have dedicated this book to John and Louis in order to say: Godspeed old friends, we will not see your like again.
Afterword
* * *
By Beau L’Amour
BEYOND THE GREAT Snow Mountains is the first in a series of four collections that will cover a broad spectrum of my father’s work. “The Gravel Pit” and “The Money Punch” recall the late forties and early fifties when Louis had just moved to Los Angeles. Although written in the same period, “Sideshow Champion” and “Under the Hanging Wall” draw on his earlier experiences as a carnival boxer and miner. “Meeting at Falmouth” was an early experiment in the historical genre, when Dad was first attempting to break away from the label of being an author of westerns.
Both “By the Waters of San Tadeo” and “Beyond the Great Snow Mountains” are stories that either drew from Louis’s mysterious travels in South America and China or sprang from his encyclopedia like knowledge of geography and obscure cultures. “Coast Patrol” may also be included in this last group and raises the added question of the character of Turk Madden. As represented in several of Louis L’Amour’s early adventure stories, Turk is a fictional character. Some of the inspiration for Louis’s writing about this tramp pilot was Jimmy Angel, the bush pilot for whom Venezuela’s Angel Falls are named. But Dad claimed to have known an adventurer named Turk Madden in the Far East, and if this is true, then Turk is one of the few times when Dad gave a fictional character in the name of one of his friends.
Work on the Louis L’Amour biography continues at its maddeningly slow pace. Information drifts in, sometimes proving, sometimes disproving, stories Louis told or ideas that I have had about what happened at certain times.
I want to extend my thanks to all the people who have written in with information for the book, and I want to apologize in advance because I will no longer be able to answer all of the wonderful fan mail that has come to me through the Biography Project’s P.O. box. My staff and I are swamped with research and simply cannot keep up with all the nonbiography fan letters that keep coming in. We have decided that from now on we can respond only to those of you who write in about a subject that directly pertains to the biography itself. I regret this, I appreciate everyone’s interest, but I’m not making enough progress on the story of my father’s life and I must focus on only the things that help me get that into print.
The next book (which will be out in spring of 2000) will be Off the Mangrove Coast. It will contain the same eclectic mixture of stories as this collection. However, there will be a few that are like those stories in the Yondering collection, tales drawn from Louis’s life or the lives of people that he knew. There will still be a few more westerns, more crime, and more sports stories to come.
* * *
BELOW ARE THE names of the people whom I would like to contact. If you find your name on the list, I would be very grateful if you would write to me. Some of these people may have known Louis as “Duke” LaMoore or Michael “Micky” Moore, since Louis occasionally used those names. Many of the people on this list may have died. If you are a family member (or were a very good friend) of anyone on the list who has passed away, I would like to hear from you, too. Some of the names I have marked with an asterisk. If there is anyone out there who knows anything at all about these people, I would like to hear it. The address to write to is:
Louis L’Amour Biography Project
P.O. Box 41183
Pasadena, CA 91114-9183
Because of the many demands on our time, we will no longer be responding to fan mail sent to this address…it is for correspondence regarding biography information only!
Marian Payne Married a guy named Duane. Louis knew her in Oklahoma in the mid-to late 1930s. She moved to New York for a while; she may have lived in Wichita at some point.
Chaplain Phillips Louis first met him at Fort Sill, then again in Paris at the Place de Saint Augustine Officers’ Mess. The first meeting was in 1942, the second in 1945.
Anne Mary Bentley Friend of Louis’s from Oklahoma in the 1930s. Possibly a musician of some sort. Lived in Denver for a time.
Pete Boering* Born in the late 1890s. Came from Amsterdam, Holland. His father may have been a ship’s captain.
Betty Brown Woman Louis corresponded with extensively while in Choctaw, Oklahoma, in the late 1930s. Later she moved to New York.
Jacques Chambrun Louis’s agent from the late 1930s through the late 1950s.
Des His first name. Chambrun’s assistant in the late 1940s or early 1950s.
Joe Friscia Joined Hagenbeck & Wallace circus in Phoenix in the mid-1920s. Rode freights across Texas and spent a couple of nights in the St
ar of Hope mission in Houston. May have been from Boston.
Harry “Shorty” Warren Shipmate of Louis’s in the mid-1920s. Harry may have been an Australian.
Joe Hollinger Louis met him while with Hagenbeck & Wallace circus, where he ran the “privilege car.” A couple of months later he shipped out with Louis. This was in the mid-1920s.
Joe Hildebrand Louis met him on the docks in New Orleans in the mid-1920s, then ran into him later in Indonesia. Joe may have been the first mate and Louis second mate on a schooner operated by Captain Douglas. This would have been in the East Indies in the later 1920s or early 1930s. Joe may have been an aircraft pilot and flown for Pan-Am in the early 1930s.
Turk Madden Louis knew him in Indonesia in the late 1920s or early 1930s. They may have spent some time around the “old” Straits Hotel and the Maypole Bar in Singapore. Later on, in the States, Louis traveled around with him, putting on boxing exhibitions. Madden worked at an airfield near Denver as a mechanic in the early 1930s. Louis eventually used his name for a fictional character.
“Cockney” Joe Hagen Louis knew him in Indonesia in the late 1920s or early 1930s.
Richard LaForte A merchant seaman from the Bay area. Shipped out with Louis in the mid-1920s.
Mason or Milton Don’t know which was his real name. He was a munitions dealer in Shanghai in the late 1920s or 1930s. He was killed while Louis was there. His head was stuck on a pipe in front of his house as a warning not to double-cross a particular warlord.
Singapore Charlie Louis knew him in Singapore and served with him on Captain Douglas’s schooner in the East Indies. Louis was second mate and Charlie was bo’sun. He was a stocky man of indeterminate race, and, if I remember correctly, Dad told me he had quite a few tattoos. In the early 1930s Louis helped get him a job on a ship in San Pedro, California, that was owned by a movie studio.
Renée Semich She was born in Vienna, I think, and was going to a New York art school when Louis met her. This was just before WWII. Her father’s family was from Yugoslavia or Italy, her mother from Austria. They lived in New York; her aunt had an apartment overlooking Central Park. For a while she worked for a company in Waterbury, Connecticut.
Aola Seery Friend of Louis’s from Oklahoma City in the late 1930s. She was a member of the “Writer’s Club” and I think she had both a brother and a sister.
Enoch Lusk Owner of Lusk Publishing Company in 1939, original publisher of Louis’s Smoke from this Altar. Also associated with the National Printing Company, Oklahoma City.
Helen Turner* Louis knew her in late 1920s Los Angeles. Once a showgirl with Jack Fine’s Follies.
James “Jimmy” Eades* Louis knew him in San Pedro in the mid-1920s.
Frank Moran Louis met him in Ventura, California when Louis was a “club second” for fighters in the later 1920s. They also may have known each other in Los Angeles or Kingman, Arizona, in the mid-1920s. Louis ran into him again on Hollywood Boulevard late in 1946.
Jud and Red Rasco* Brothers or cousins, cowboys, Louis met them in Tucumcari, New Mexico. Also saw them in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. This was in the early to mid-1920s.
Olga Santiago Friend of Louis’s from late 1940s Los Angeles. Last saw her at a book signing in Thousand Oaks, California.
Jose Craig Berry* A writer friend of Louis’s from Oklahoma City in the late 1930s. She worked for a paper called the Black Dispatch.
Evelyn Smith Colt She knew him in Kingman at one point, probably the late 1920s. Louis saw her again much later at a Paso Robles book signing.
Kathlyn Beucler Hays Friend from Choctaw, taught school there in the 1930s. Louis saw her much later at a book signing in San Diego.
Floyd Bolton* A man from Hollywood who came out to Oklahoma to talk to Louis about a possible trip to Java to make a movie.
Lisa Cohn Reference librarian in Portland; family owned Cohn Bros. furniture store. Louis knew her in the late 1920s or early 1930s.
Mary Claire Collingsworth Friend and correspondent from Oklahoma in the 1930s.
C.A. Donnell Guy in Oklahoma City in the early 1930s who rented Louis a typewriter.
Captain Douglas* Captain of a ship in Indonesia that Louis served on, a three-masted auxiliary schooner.
Leonard Duks* I think that this was probably a shortened version of the original family name. A first mate in the mid-1920s. I think that he was a U.S. citizen but he was originally a Russian.
Maudee Harris My aunt Chynne’s sister.
Parker LaMoore and Chynne Harris LaMoore* Louis’s eldest brother and his wife. Parker was secretary to the governor of Oklahoma for a while, then he worked for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain. He also worked with Ambassador Pat Hurley. He died in the early 1950s. Chynne outlived him, but I don’t know where she lived after his death.
Mrs. Brown Worked for Parker LaMoore in the 1930s to the 1950s.
Haig* First name unknown. Louis described him as a Scotsman, once an officer in the British-India army. Louis said he was “an officer in one of the Scottish regiments.” Louis knew him in Shanghai in the 1930s, and we don’t know how old he would have been at the time. He may have been involved in some kind of intelligence work. He and Louis shared an apartment for a while, which seems to have been located just off Avenue King Edward VII.
Lola LaCorne Along with her sister and mother, she was a friend of Louis’s in Paris during World War II. She later taught literature at the Sorbonne and had (hopefully still has) a husband named Christopher.
Dean Kirby A pal from Oklahoma City in the late 1930s who seems to have been a copywriter or something of the sort. Might have worked for Lusk Publishing.
Bunny Yeager Girlfriend of Dean Kirby’s from Oklahoma City. Not the famous photographer for Playboy.
Virginia McElroy Girl with whom Louis went to school in Jamestown, North Dakota.
Guardsman Penwill A British boxer in the period between the mid-1920s and the mid-1930s.
Arleen Weston Sherman A friend of Louis’s from Jamestown, when he was thirteen or fourteen. I think her family visited the LaMoores in Choctaw in the 1930s. Her older sister’s name is Mary; parents’ names are Ralph and Lil.
Harry Bigelow Louis knew him in Ventura. He had a picture taken with Louis’s mother, Emily LaMoore, at a place named Berkeley Springs around 1929. Louis may have known him at the Katherine mine, near Kingman, Arizona, or in Oregon.
Tommy Pinto Boxer from Portland; got Louis a job at Portland Manufacturing.
Nancy Carroll An actress as of 1933. She may have been in the chorus of a show at the Winter Garden in New York and a cabaret in New Jersey where she and her sister danced occasionally, probably during the mid-to late 1920s.
Judith Wood Actress. Louis knew her in Hollywood in the late 1920s.
Stanley George The George family relocated from Kingman, Arizona, to Ventura, California, possibly in the late 1920s.
Francis Lederer* Actor whom Louis knew in late 1920s Los Angeles. I’m looking for anyone who knew him in Hollywood between 1926 and 1931.
Lieutenant Rix Served in the 3622 Quartermaster Truck Co. in Europe in 1944–45.
Pablo De Gantes* Ex-soldier of fortune who occasionally wrote magazine articles for Lands of Romance in the 1930s. This man used several names, and I believe he was actually a Belgian. He lived in Mexico at one time.
Lieutenant King Traveled to England with Louis when he was shipped overseas in early 1944.
K. C. Gibson or his two nephews In October 1924, they were crossing New Mexico and Arizona, bound for Brawley, California.
Wilma Anderson A friend of Louis’s from Oklahoma who worked in the Key campaign headquarters in 1938.
Johnny Annette A boxer Louis fought a bout with in Woodward, Oklahoma (or Kansas) in the 1930s.
Harry Bell A boxing promoter Louis worked with in Oklahoma City in the 1930s.
Joe Bickerstaff* An occasional boxing promoter, in Klamath Falls, Oregon, in the late 1920s.
Pat Chaney Friend of Louis’s from Choctaw, Oklahoma, i
n the late 1930s.
Mr. Lettsinger* An older man whom Louis knew in Klamath Falls in the late 1920s. I think he was from the Midwest or the South.
Tommy Danforth* A boxing promoter from Prescott, Arizona, in the mid-1920s. Was using the V.A. hospital at Fort Whipple.
Ned DeWitt* Knew Louis in Oklahoma in the 1930s, also a friend of Jim Thompson.
Austin Fullerton Sold tickets for athletic events in Oklahoma City in the late 1930s.
Martha Nell Hitchcock A friend from Edmond, Oklahoma, in the 1930s.
Tommy Tucker* Boss stoker on a British Blue Funnel ship in the mid-1920s to mid-1930s.
Dynamite Jackson* An African-American fighter Louis helped promote in Oklahoma in the 1930s.
Orry Kelly Designer in Hollywood; Louis knew him in the late 1940s.
Dorothy Kilgallen A newspaper columnist who worked in L.A. in the 1950s.
Henry Li Louis knew him from 1943, when he was at Camp Robinson, Arkansas.
Savoie Lottinville* Of the University of Oklahoma.
Julio Lopez Louis worked for him very briefly in Phoenix in the mid-1920s.
Joe May A rancher Louis boxed with in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, in the 1920s.
Ann Mehaffey A friend of Louis’s from the time he spent at Camp Robinson, Arkansas.
Sam Merwin or Sam Mines* Once worked with Leo Margulies at Standard Magazines/Better Publications.
Jack Natteford Screenwriter who worked with Louis in the 1950s.
Joe Paskvan Once of the Oklahoma Writers Project, who Louis knew in the late 1930s.
Billy Prince Went to sea in the late 1930s on the Wallace E. Pratt, a Standard tanker.
Countess Dulong de Rosney (Toni Morgan)* Louis knew her in France in the mid-1940s.
Dot and Truitt Ross Brother and sister Louis knew in Oklahoma in the 1930s.
Mary Jane Stevenson A friend of Louis’s from L.A. in the late 1940s.
Orchid Tatu Lived in Sparta, Wisconsin, in the mid-1940s.
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