"He seems quite knowledgeable about printing."
"Qwilleran said, "During my career, Polly, I've interviewed thousands of persons, and I can detect the difference between (a) those who know what they're talking about and (b) those who have memorized information from a book. I don't think Boswell is an 'a.'"
(from The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts, by Lillian Jackson Braun)
"Who'd you get?" asked Gorman.
"Tom Blazer. Fats McCabe, too."
"I figgered Tom. I told him he shouldn't have shot the kid. That was a low-down trick. But why shoot Fats?"
"He acted like he was reachin' for a gun."
"Huh. Don't take a lot to get man killed, does it?"
(from The Train To Crazy Man, by Louis L'Amour)
He was an honest man, a sincere man. He had a quality to be found in many men of his kind and period - a quality of deep-seated loyalty that was his outstanding trait.
Hard and reckless in demeanor, he rode with dash and acted with a flair. He had at times been called a hard case. Yet no man lived long in a dangerous country if he were reckless. There was a place always for courage, but intelligent courage, not the heedlessness of a harebrained youngster.
(from The Trail To Crazy Man, by Louis L'Amour)
Rafe Caradec turned slowly and walked back to his horse. Without a word he swung into the saddle. He turned the horse and, sitting tall in the saddle, swept the street with a cold, hard eye that seemed to stare at each man there. Then, as if by his own wish, the black horse turned. Walking slowly, his head held proudly, he carried his rider down the street and out of town.
Behind him, coolly and without smiles, Bo Marsh and Tex Brisco followed. Like him, they rode slowly, and like him, they rode proudly. Something in their bearing seemed to say, "We were challenged. We came. You see the result."
(from The Trail to Crazy Man, by Louis L'Amour)
He sat up at last and put on his hat. Then he threw the blankets back and got up, pulling on his pants and shaking out his boots. This morning he had collected nothing but a half-grown tarantula, who reared up menacingly. But Canavan was in no mood for trouble, and the big spider wandered away to come again another night. He hadn't been looking for trouble, anyway, just a warm place to sleep. And that big thing, whatever it was, had no right to shake him out of his bed at such an ungodly hour.
(from Where the Long Grass Blows, by Louis L'Amour)
The west was not so large a place as many seemed to believe. The country was enormous, but the populations was not, and the men who rode the wild country knew each other, at least by hearsay. Among the gun-packing fraternity - those who lived by the gun either on the side of the law or against it - all knew each other by name and reputation. At every camp fire there was discussion of their respective abilities.
(from Where the Long Grass Blows, by Louis L'Amour)
"Rio," he said at last, "maybe this isn't where we light, after all. Maybe this is just one more stop on a long, long trail." The horse twitched his ears, stomped a foot and blew through his nose, all of which might mean anything or nothing.
The trouble was that he did not want any more long, long trails. Not at least without having somewhere to come back to, or someone. There had been too many of those long, lonely trails, too many empty nights, too many places where he did not belong, where he had no one or nothing.
(from Where the Long Grass Blows, by Louis L'Amour)
