to Tame a Land (1955) by L'amour Louis

Author:L'amour, Louis [L'amour, Louis]
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2010-12-12T06:26:05.312000+00:00

"I see."

The glass in my fingers still held whisky. I had neve r cared for it, and suddenly I cared less for it now. Righ t now I had only one idea: I was going back to Maso n Crossing.

Yet it was not Ollie Burdette that I thought of, it wa s Liza. What about Liza? Where would that leave her?

"You like this town?" I asked Mustang.

"I lost nothing here."

"All right. We're riding."

Billy Dixon went out on the walk and watched us ge t in the saddle. "You take care of yourself," he warned.

"That Burdette's a bad man."

Me, I just waved a hand.

Country slid away behind us. Big, open, grassy, wonderful country. Two days out we saw the big herd, blac k sea of shifting buffalo as far as the eye could reach. Neve r saw anything like it. Made my gray plumb skittish, bu t we circled and come sundown we followed a stream be d through the herd and away.

Country began to get rougher, all cut up with ravine s and some high mesas. I was getting so I liked the smel l of buffalo-chip fires, although it brough t back memorie s of Pap and the wagon train.

Someday I wanted to go back and find his grave an d put a stone marker on it. He would have liked that. Bu t I wouldn't move him. He was always one to say. "Let th e chips fall where they may." He had fallen there, and h e would like to lie there, right in the middle of the West.

He could have built himself a good life, Pap could. Sometimes I wondered what would have become of me if h e had lived. Probably I'd never have used a gun. I'd hav e gone to school to be a lawyer or something. A man neve r knows.

Bennett had tried to tell me one night before I lef t Wichita that men like me were needed, that the countr y had to grow up, and it had growing pains, and that al l the guns must not be on the bad side. There had to b e guns for the right, too.

That I knew. Yet it was a hard thing to be sure on e was always on the right, and sometimes there wasn't a chance for figuring out the right and wrong of it whe n guns started smoking.

We rode on, into rougher, wilder country. One tim e we had a brush with Comanches. Nobody killed. Mustan g downed one of their homes a quarter of a mile away wit h his Sharps. They didn't figure to like that sort of shootin' and they went to hellin' across the country.

"Never forget you saved my bacon that time," Mustan g said, shoving a shell into the breech.

"What time?"

"Them Kiowas. They had me, cold turkey. Horse dead , bullet in my leg, and just three rounds of ammunitio n left. Then you come arunnin'. Mighty fine sight yo u made."

"You was late for supper.

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