Stock driving had been our way of life since first we settled in the hills. It was old Yance Sackett who began it some two hundred years back, and he started it with turkey drives to market. After that, it was hogs, and, like turkeys, we drive them afoot, for the most part.
If you had turkeys or hogs to sell, you just naturally drove them to market or sold them to a drover.
(from Lonely On the Mountain, by Louis L'Amour)
It had been my father's way to remove obstructions, to repair washouts in old trails, to leave each trail better than he had found it. "Tread lightly on the paths," he had told me. "Others will come when you have gone."
That was how I would remember my father. There was never a place he walked that was not the better for his having passed. For every tree he cut down he planted two.
(from Jubal Sackett, by Louis L'Amour)
We had known this time was coming, so were prepared. Within minutes we were leaving the caves behind, yet not without reluctance. They had been warm shelters, and when does a man leave a place he has lived without some regret? For each time some part of him is left behind. So it was with us.
(from Jubal Sackett, by Louis L'Amour)
On the second morning Keokotah returned from a hunt begun before the snow, and he brought with him a prisoner, an Indian girl, an Apache. The girl was young and quite pretty. Furthermore, she did not seem at all put out by her capture.
"Where'd you find her?"
"She hides."
"From you?"
"No from me. She does not see me. She is Acho Apache, and she is taken from her village in a raid. She makes runaway and hides. I see her. I tell her 'Come!' She is here."
"I see she is." She drew nearer to him. "Does she wish to return to her people?"
Even as I spoke I could see how foolish the idea was. If ever I had seen anyone who was pleased to be right where she was it was this Indian girl.
(from Jubal Sackett, by Louis L'Amour)
Several commented on my scarcely healed wounds, the deep claw marks on my body, and Keokotah told them, with some embellishment I am sure, of my killing the panther with a knife when I had a broken leg. I could grasp enough of what he was saying to know that I lost no stature in the telling and that the panther had suddenly grown larger than I remembered.
Suddenly, and for the first time, Keokotah brought out a necklace of the panther's claws. Evidently he had taken them from the dead cat while I had been sleeping, and he had carefully strung them on a rawhide string. Looked at now, the claws were formidable and longer than I remembered. To tell the truth, I had been rather too busy to notice dimensions.
(from Jubal Sackett, by Louis L'Amour)
In Louis L'Amour's novel, Jubal Sackett, we find him at one point desperate for food, and he picks and eats a plant called saxifrage. There are 473 species in the genus Saxifraga, which is the largest genus in the family Saxifragacaea. In the Latin, saxifraga literally means "stone breaker," which is supposed to denote is use in treating kidney stones. Pictured below is round-leaved saxifrage.
There opened before me a long valley, extending off toward the south as far as I could see. To the north it seemed to end, from where I stood, in a group of low hills. This must be Sequatchie. There were glimpses of a stream running along the bottom. Meadows, trees, it was a fair land.
An hour later I looked down into an elongated bowl, a grassy cove of what must be more than two thousand acres. A quiet, secluded, lovely place!
This was where I would return. This would be my home. I started down a steep game trail and stepped on a fallen log that broke under me. I fell. My leg caught between two deadfalls and I heard a sharp snap. I lay still, trying to catch my breath. I started to move, felt an excruciating stab of pain, and looked down.
I had broken my leg.
(from Jubal Sackett, by Louis L'Amour)
"Murder?" she gasped. "You can't believe I had anything to do with that!"
"You started it all, ma'am. You were the instigator, and as such you're the most guilty of all. The truth of the matter is, ma'am, that nobody would commit a crime if they expected to get caught. Every criminal believes he is going to get away with it."
(from The Iron Marshall, by Louis L'Amour)
From the engineer Shanaghy borrowed a hammer and knocked loose a couple of boards. He lifted the boards and tore loose the sacking inside the boxes.
"All of you . . . have a look."
McBride swung around, angrily. "You don't have to show me!" His voice broke off and he stared, his face slowly turning pale. The boxes were filled with nuts, bolts, and screws.
At his expression the blonde girl turned her head. When she saw the boxes Shanaghy thought for a moment she was going to cry. Then her face took on a hard, ugly look.
"The trouble with being a crook," Shanaghy said mildly, "is that you have to associate with so many dishonest people."
(from The Iron Marshall, by Louis L'Amour)
"Drako's dead, and so are his boys," McBane. "You shoot almighty straight, son."
"I had to. I wasn't going to get any second chance."
(from The Iron Marshall, by Louis L'Amour)
The old man peered at Shanaghy. "Jealous, are you? Jealous of old Coonskin, are you? Well, I don't blame you! Here a few year back I used to cut quite a figure amongst the gals! Nobody could dance the fandango like ol' Coonskin Adams! Them gals - why, they was all just a'pantin' around after me.
"Looks I ain't got, but I do got style! Yes, siree-bob! I got style!"
(from The Iron Marshal, by Louis L'Amour)
The younger girl held out her hand. "I am Jan Pendleton and I want to thank you."
"Me? Wait until I've done something, miss. I am only just marshal."
"You saved Josh Lundy from hanging, and Josh is my very good friend."
"I can't take credit," he said. "They were going to hand me, too, just because I happened to be there. It seemed to me my neck was long enough, without getting it stretched."
(from The Iron Marshall, by Louis L'Amour)
The saloon-post office was a bare room with a short bar and four or five bottles on the back bar. Smith was a fat, unshaven man in his undershirt, who leaned massive forearms on the bar. A cowhand lounged at the end of the bar, nursing a beer. At a table in the corner two men sat drinking beer.
"Quite a town you've got here," Val said.
"Yep! She's a lollapalooza! Biggest town between here and the next place."
(from Reilly's Luck, by Louis L'Amour)
He was obviously a good hater, and she liked that, but he was also a fool, for no man in his right mind could look into those cool green eyes of Will Reilly's and still fancy they could have him whipped. Killed, perhaps, but not whipped. She had known other men of his kind, men you had to shoot to stop, for their pride and their courage was such that they could not be broken.
(from Reilly's Luck, by Louis L'Amour)
"I killed a man I had never seen before, and you know that I never forget a face. I would swear I never ran across him anywhere, let alone gambled with him."
"Mistaken identity."
"No - it was me he wanted. He lived long enough to say that they hadn't told him I could shoot."
"They?"
"That's what he said."
"So it's over?"
"No. Two weeks later they tried again, while I was in a card game. They burned me that time, and they got away."
"They?"
"There were two of them." Will Reilly rubbed a hand over his face. "So I quit. I sold out and drifted west. How can a man gamble when somebody he doesn't know is shooting at him? If you have an enemy you know it, and you know him; and if it is a matter of shooting, you shoot. This is different. Anyone who walks in the door may be the one, and they can't all miss."
(from Reilly's Luck, by Louis L'Amour)
Reilly drank coffee, and then nodded to Val. "Get bundled up, Val. We're pulling out."
"You got a long drive." Sonnenberg studied him warily. "How do we know you ain't just goin' out to meet the sheriff some place?"
"If you knew Daily Benson," Reilly answered, "you wouldn't worry. You couldn't get him three miles from town in this weather for twenty thousand dollars. He's a warm-weather sheriff - and he isn't looking for you boys, anyhow."
(from Reilly's Luck, by Louis L'Amour)
"Yes, sir."
"Sir. Now that's right nice. Who taught you manners, boy?"
"Mr. Van did, sir."
"Well, I reckon he was good for something, after all. But a pleasant man, too, a right pleasant man. I never did talk to anyone who was easier with words - unless it was Will Reilly. You got a friend there, boy. You stick to him. A man never has many friends in this life and he had better hold onto them."
(from Reilly's Luck, by Louis L'Amour)
Will indicated the book Val had taken. "Did you like it?"
"There weren't any pictures."
Will smiled. "I suppose pictures are pretty important in a book."
"Anyway, I liked to hold it."
Will Reilly gave him a thoughtful look. "Now, that's interesting. So do I. I have always liked the feel of a good book. It's like a gun," he added. "When a man opens a book or fires a gun he has no idea what the effect will be, or how far the shot will travel."
(from Reilly's Luck, by Louis L'Amour)
Bowdrie glanced at Bill. "You can unsaddle those horses. There's no need to run away. Before sundown tomorrow, you will be a free man - or married," he added, smiling.
(from "More Brain Than Bullets," by Louis L'Amour)
He frowned suddenly. "Whatever happened to Jake Murray?"
"He went after that deer," Jeanne said, "and he never came back."
"It was him told me where you'd be," Coker said. "I met him down the trail and he spotted me for a Ranger. He said you wouldn't need any help, but I'd find you up here."
"That all he said?"
"He just said, 'Enough is enough, and I've never been to Oregon.'"
(from "A Trail To the West," by Louis L'Amour)
The young man, scarcely more than twenty, had a hard, reckless face and he walked with a bit of swagger. When he was a year or two older, he would drop that. A tough man did not have to make a parade of it.
(from "A Trail To the West, by Louis L'Amour)
