Sacketts 00 - The Sackett Companion (v5.0) by Louis L'Amour

Author:Louis L'Amour [L'Amour, Louis]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Usenet
Amazon: B003TSEKKG
Publisher: Unknown
Published: 1988-11-01T07:00:00+00:00

GALLOWAY

First publication: Bantam Books paperback, July 1970

Narrator: Flagan Sackett

Time Period: c. 1875–1879

Flagan and Galloway Sackett were just looking for a place to start ranching. It was a big, wide, lovely country and lovely country and there seemed to be room enough, unless, of course, one was greedy—and the Dunns were. Flagan and Galloway were brothers from Tennessee, descendants through Kin-Ring Sackett from old Barnabas, the first one of the family in America. They were cousins of Tell, Orrin, and Tyrel Sackett.

First off, Flagan was taken by Apaches, and by the time he escaped he was in pretty rough shape. Just surviving left him in even worse condition and unready for any kind of trouble, and Curly Dunn was determined to make the trouble.

WILD COUNTRY: The La Plata River runs down a canyon of the same name, gathering its waters as it travels away from its beginning up in the Cumberland Basin. Here and there other small streams join it, a couple of them making miniature waterfalls as they tumble down the slopes through the pines.

Nowhere are the wild flowers more beautiful, and there’s good grass for grazing. Deer and elk haunt the forests, and there are beaver in the streams again. It’s high up country, over ten thousand feet when you get to the Basin, and the rim of the Basin is up to over eleven thousand. The La Platas were named for the silver found there, and they were named by the Spanish even before Rivera rode north in 1765.

The true limits of exploration by the Spanish and French are unknown, and we must remember that all history of the time is based upon reports, many of them official, made by those who returned safely. As far as the Spanish are concerned, I am quite sure that in the years to come reports will be discovered in Spanish archives of travels yet unknown. But we also know that much travel was clandestine, carried out by fur traders or prospectors who did not want to share their discoveries. Any gold they found was theoretically the property of the King, and all travels were supposed to be with permission from the governor or someone in official capacity. Men being what they were, many evaded that permission, knowing it was rarely granted. Hence, many rivers and mountains were named before the official discoverers arrived.

French officials were more lenient than the Spanish, and much exploration was carried out by fur traders or trappers who left few if any records behind. Elsewhere I have mentioned the colony of Frenchmen who left Illinois for the Pacific Northwest several years before Lewis and Clark. The only report of them I have so far seen was that by David Thompson, the Canadian explorer who met some of them in the Northwest in 1797.

Flagan’s survival in this instance was not unusual for the time. Of one thing I am sure: if one is determined to survive, no matter what, a human being is almost impossible to destroy. I

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