Somebody had been at the corral. Somebody had drunk here, but why had they not come by the lineshack? In cattle country, even an enemy would be welcomed at mealtime, and many a cattleman in sheep country had eaten at sheep wagons. In a country where meals and food might be many miles apart, enmity often vanished at the side of the table.
(from The Man From the Broken Hills, by Louis L'Amour)
Rusted rims of wagon wheels, the solid oak of a hub, scattered bolts and charred wood. It was not much for a man to leave behind.
Fuentes indicated the bones. "You and me, amigo . . . sometime."
"I'm like the Irishman, Fuentes. If I knew where I was going to die, I'd never go near the place."
"To die is nothing. One is here, one is no longer here. It is only that at the end one must be able to say, 'I was a man.'"
(from The Man From the Broken Hills, by Louis L'Amour)
I was two days out of coffee and one day out of grub, with an empty canteen riding my saddle horn. And I was tired of talking to my horse and getting only a twitch of the ears for answer.
(from The Man From the Broken Hills, by Louis L'Amour)
Who came up with this idea that realism is a necessary and desirable component of entertainment? It seems to me that the reason for entertainment is to gain respite from the ugly realities of life. I realize that it can be carried to extremes, but I don't need to see an actors entrails in order to know that he got shot or to get a verbatim transcription of the profanity someone used in order to know that he cursed.
Ben Cowan looked down at this boot toes. He looked up the street and down the street, and then he looked up at her, and thought nobody had ever lived who was so beautiful. He said, "I'll come back."
He turned quickly toward the restaurant, then stopped and looked around. "And I won't be gone long!"
He led them all inside and seated them and ordered bull beef for them, with frijoles and tortillas and plenty of coffee. He had no appetite himself. He just sat there staring out of the window.
Bijah Catlow looked at him. "Ben, I swear I never saw the like. The most beautiful girl in Sonora, an' you almost muffed it! I'd a notion to slug you!"
"Shut up," Ben said, politely.
(from Catlow, by Louis L'Amour)
Louis L'Amour's novel Catlow mentions elephant trees as being a plant in the desert. I don't recall it being a regular occupant of South Logan County.
The pistol muzzle was a black mouth that watched him. She would be a good shot, he decided; instinct and hatred would point that pistol, and nothing was more deadly.
(from Catlow, by Louis L'Amour)
People who saw Catlow for the first time knew him immediately for a tough, dangerous man. But with Ben, although people might take a second look at him, it was only the old-timers who sized him up as a man to leave alone. It is a fact that really dangerous men often do not look it.
(from Catlow, by Louis L'Amour)
Generally speaking, we use "don't" in place of "do not." However, I suppose it technically could be used in place of "does not," couldn't it? In that case the apostrophe would just be representing more missing letters. So then, when we say "He don't," it would be correct, wouldn't it?
The Cross Timbers country was hell's borderland. It was a stubby forest of blackjack and post-oak mixed with occasional patches of prickly pear. Along the few small streams, most of them intermittent, were redbud, persimmon, and dogwood. Here and there were open meadows, varying in extent. In places the forest was practically impenetrable.
Blackjack, a kind of scrub oak, had a way of sending roots out just under the surface, and at various distances new trees would spring up from these roots. The result was a series of dense thickets, the earth beneath them matted with roots, their stiff branches intermingled.
There were trails made by wid horses and occasional small herds of buffalo or deer, and these usually led from meadow to meadow across the vast stretch of country covered by the Cross Timbers.
This is Louis L'Amour's description of the Cross Timbers area that stretches from near Coffeyville, Kansas down across Oklahoma and into central Texas. It was the setting for "Cross Timbers Trouble," the first story in The Coffeyville Tetralogy, which I wrote in 2022.
Sitting in the shade of a juniper I put together a cross, and on an old wagon tailgate that had been laid beside the road for a long time, I carved out the words: HE PLAYED OUT HIS HAND 1881
It was not much of an end for a man, but Bodie was not much of a man.
(from Silver Canyon, by Louis L'Amour)
She was standing as she had been, staring at me, her eyes astonished, but no longer quite so angry as curious.
"Good afternoon!" I lifted my hat. "I'll call on you later."
It was the time to leave. Had I attempted to push the acquaintance further I'd have gotten exactly nowhere, but now she would be curious, and there is no trait that women possess more fortunate for men.
(from Silver Canyon, by Louis L'Amour)
He backed up, holding the gate open for them. As they passed he looked up at Timm. "I s'pose you know you're ridin' with a couple of wolves?"
Timm chuckled. "Sure do," he said cheerfully, "an' you know, Rice, I feel fifteen years younger! Anyway," he added, "I like the company of wolves better than coyotes."
(from Utah Blaine, by Louis L'Amour)
That seventh man wasn't going to cause anybody any harm. Seems he got drunk one night and on the way home something scared his horse and he got bucked off and with a foot caught in the stirrup there wasn't much he could do. Somewhere along the line he'd lost his pistol and couldn't kill the horse. He was found tangled in some brush, his foot still in the stirrup, and the only way they knew him was by his boots, which were new, and his saddle and horse. A man dragged like that is no pretty sight, and he had been dead for ten to twelve hours.
(from The Daybreakers, by Louis L'Amour)
Sometimes the most imporant things in a man's life are the ones he talks about the least. It was that way with Dru and me. No day passed that I did not think of her much of the time. She was always with me, and even when we were together we didn't talk a lot because so much of the time there was no need for words; it was something that existed between us that we both understood.
The happiest hours of my life were those when I was riding with Dru or sitting across a table from her. And I'll always remember her face by candlelight. It weemed I was always seeing it that way, and soft sounds of the rustle of gowns, the tinkle of silver and glass, and Dru's voice, never raised and always exiting.
(from The Daybreakers, by Louis L'Amour)
"Tyrel - be careful!'
That made me grin. "Why, ma'am," I said, grinning at her, "I'm the most careful man you know. Getting myself killed is the last idea in my mind. I want to come back to you."
She just looked at me. "You know, Dru, we've waited long enough. When I've caught these men I am going to resign and we are going to be married - and I'm not taking no for an answer."
Her eyes laughed at me. "Who said no?"
(from The Daybreakers, by Louis L'Amour)
Right then I felt sorry for Martin Brady, although his kind would outlast my kind because people have a greater tolerance for evil than for violence. If crooked gambling, thieving, and robbingare covered ovrr, folks will tolerate it longer than outright violence, even when the violence may be cleansing.
(from The Daybreakers, by Louis L'Amour)
"Politics ain't much different, Tyrel, than one of these icebergs you hear tell of. Most of what goes on is beneath the surface. It doesn't make any difference how good a man is, or how good his ideas are, or even how honest he is unless he can put across a progrm, and that's politics."
(from The Daybreakers, by Louis L'Amour)
The cook brought me a plate of grub and it smelled so good I didn't even look up until I'd emptied that plate and another, and swallowed three cups of hot black coffee. Up in the hills we like our coffee strong, but this here would make bobwire grow on a man's chst in the place of hair.
(from The Daybreakers, by Louis L'Amour)
