Peligro stopped suddenly, then deliberately pushed through a thick wall of brush beside the path. After a few minutes, they stood in a small clearing. Under the arching branches was an autogyro, the outline of its rotating wing lost in the shadows.
Ponga Jim looked at the Colombian with respect. "Well, I'm stumped," he said. "You think of everything, don't you?"
Juan Peligro winked. "One does or one dies, my friend."
(from "Wings Over Brazil," by Louis L'Amour)
He was sitting over a glass of wine and a cigar when the door opened and he saw a tall, fine-looking old man come in with a girl - a girl who took his breath away.
The Cactus Kid sat up a little straighter. She was Spanish, and beautiful. Her eyes swept the room and then came to rest on him. They left him, and they returned. The Kid smiled.
Abruptly her glance chilled. One eyebrow lifted slightly and she turned away from him. The Kid hunched his shoulders, feeling frostbitten around the edges of his ego.
(from "The Cactus Kid," by Louis L'Amour)
When we get to Dilbecker's swanky-looking apartment, there are half a dozen gun guys loafing in the living room. Any one of them would have kidnapped and murdered his own nephew for a dime, and they all look me over with a sort of professional stare as though measuring up space in a cornerstone or a foundation.
(from "Fighter's Fiasco," by Louis L'Amour)
I said nothing. Somewhere out there in the night, and I could have put a bullet through the sound, was Jory Benton. The trouble was, he had my horse, and I'd no desire to kill a good horse in trying for a bad man.
(from The Man From the Broken Hills, by Louis L'Amour)
Now I was facing up to a shooting fight when all I wanted to do was work cattle and see the country. I'd heard of men who supposedly looked for adventure, but to me that was a lot of nonsense. Adventure was nothing but a romantic name for trouble, and nobody over eighteen in his right mind looked for it. Most of what people called adventure happened in the ordinary course of the day's work.
(from The Man From the Broken Hills, by Louis L'Amour)
Danny had not returned during the night, and we looked at the empty bunk, but no comment was made. Each of us at one time or another had found such empty bunks in the morning; sometimes a horse returned with a bloody saddle, sometimes nothing.
It was a hard life we lived and a hard land in which we lived it and there was no time for mourning when work had to be done.
There would be one man less to do the work. And one man less at the table, one horse less to be saddled in the morning.
(from The Man From the Broken Hills, by Lois L'Amour)
One of the most famous lines in U. S. military history was said by Admiral George Dewey to Captain Charles Vernon Gridley at the Battle of Manila Bay in 1898: "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley." Gridley fired, but he might have been better served personally to have gone to sick bay. After the battle, Gridley was not in a condition to celebrate, suffering from dysentery and what appears to have been liver cancer. The heat and stress of the conning tower further weakened him. Dewey would have relieved him of command had not Gridley protested.
He got to his feet and mounted up. Then he turned, started to say something, and rode away. He was a hard man, a very hard man, but a lonely one. He was a man who believed the world had built a wall around him, and he was eternally battering at it to make breaches, never understanding that the wall was of his own building.
(from The Man From the Broken Hills, by Louis L'Amour)
"You are working cattle for a neighbor, and from what I hear you are known as a man who is good with a gun. Yet you have the manners of a gentleman."
I smiled at him. "Sir, manners do not care who wears them, no more than clothes. Manners can be acquired, clothes can be bought."
"Yes, yes, of course. But there is a certain style, sir, a certain style. One knows a gentleman, sir."
"I've not noticed that it matters to the cattle, sir, if a man has a good horse and knows how to swing a rope. I don't believe they have any preference as to whether a man is a gentleman or not."
(from The Man From the Broken Hills, by Louis L'Amour)
Fuentes came off the floor with a gun in his hand. Rolf rolled over against the wall, grabbing around in the darkness for his rifle. I lay flat on the floor, my side hurting like the very devil, with a bruised elbow that made me want to swear, but I didn't. This was one time when a single cuss word might get a man killed.
(from The Man From the Broken Hills, by Louis L'Amour)
Nobody lives long low-rating an enemy. You've got to give the other fellow credit for having as much savvy as you have, and maybe a little more.
(from The Man From the Broken Hills, by Louis L'Amour)
It was a cold, miserable night. But there had been many of those, and it was not the first time. I'd slept out with nothing but a slicker and a saddle blanket. . . . Nor would it be the last.
(from The Man From the Broken Hills, by Louis L'Amour)
