Novel 1956 - Silver Canyon (v5.0) Read online

  “You said what you thought, didn’t you?”

  I started to put my foot in the stirrup, but she looked too much like a little girl who had been spanked. “Did you ever start that trousseau?” I asked suddenly.

  “Yes, but—

  I dropped the reins of the horse Benaras had led up for me.”

  “Then we’ll be married without it.”

  Suddenly we were both laughing like fools and I was kissing her there on the street where all of Hattan’s Point could see us. People had come from saloons and stores and they were standing there grinning at us, so I kissed her again.

  Then I let go of her and stepped into the saddle. “Tomorrow noon,” I said, “I’ll be back.”

  And so I rode again from Hattan’s Point.

  Chapter 24

  *

  DID YOU EVER feel so good the world seemed like your big apple? That was how I felt then.

  We had our showdown, and we had peace between the three ranches. We could live together now, and we could make our acres fertile and make our cattle fat.

  There was grass on the range, water in the creeks, and the house I had built would have the woman it needed to make it home. From the smoke of battle I had built a home and won a wife. The world was mine.

  Morgan Park was dead…he had died in violence as he had lived, died from striking the wrong man, heedless of others, believing that his strength would pull him through. Only an Apache had fired from the ground and the bullet had torn through his skull.

  I would go home now. I would make ready the house for the wife I was to have, I would care for my horses in the corral, and I would change my clothes and ride back to town to become a bridegroom.

  The trail to the Two-Bar swung around a mesa and opened out on a wide desert flat, and far beyond I could see the pinnacles of the badlands beyond Dry Mesa.

  A rabbit burst from the bush and sprinted off across the sage, and then the trail dipped down into a hollow, with junipers growing in and around it. And there in the middle of the road was Bodie Miller.

  He was standing with his hands on his hips laughing, and there was a devil in his eyes. Off to one side of the road was Red, holding their horses.

  Miller’s hair was uncut and hung over the collar of his shirt. The hairs at the corners of his upper lip seemed longer and darker. But the two guns tied down to his thighs were nothing to smile about.

  “Too bad to cut down the big man just when he’s ridin’ highest.”

  The horse I rode was skittish and unacquainted with me. I’d no idea how he’d stand for shooting, and I wanted to be on the ground. But there was little time. Bodie was confident, but he did not know but what I might have company further back along the road.

  Suddenly I slapped spurs to the gelding and when he sprang at Bodie, I went off the other side. Hitting the ground, I ran two steps and drew as I saw Bodie’s hands blur.

  His guns came up and I felt mine buck in my fist. Our bullets crossed each other, although mine got off a shade the faster despite that instant of hesitation to make sure my bullet would shoot true.

  His slug ripped a furrow across the top of my shoulder that stung like a million needles, but my own bullet struck him in the chest and he staggered, his eye wide and shocked.

  Suddenly the devil of eagerness was in me. I was mad, mad as I had never been before. Guns up and blasting, I started for him.

  “What’s the matter ? Don’t you like it?”

  I was yelling as I walked, my guns blasting and the lead ripping into and through him.

  “Now you know how the others felt, Bodie. It’s an ugly thing to die because some punk wants to prove he’s tough. And you aren’t tough, Bodie, just a mean, nasty kid.”

  He swayed on his feet, bloody and finished. He was a slighter man than I, the blood staining his shirt crimson, his mouth ripped wider by a bullet. His face was gray and slashed across by the streak left by the bullet.

  He stared at me, but he did not speak. Something kept him upright, but he was gone and I could see it. He stood there in the white hot sunlight and stared into my face, the last face he would ever see.

  “I’m sorry, Bodie. Why didn’t you stick to punching cows?”

  He backed up a slow step and the gun slid from his fingers. He tried once to speak, but his lips were unable to shape the words, and then his knees buckled and he went down.

  Standing over his body I looked at Red. The cowhand seemed unable to believe his eyes. He stared at Bodie Miller’s used-up body, and then he lifted his eyes to me.

  “I’ll ride…just give me a chance.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  He swung into the saddle, then looked back at Bodie. He studied him, as if awakening from a dream.

  “He wasn’t so tough, was he?”

  “Nobody is,” I said, “especially with a slug in his belly.”

  He rode away then and I stood there in the lonely afternoon and saw Bodie Miller dead at my feet.

  It wasn’t in me to leave him there, and I did not want to find him there when I returned. There was a gully off the trail, a little hollow where water had washed before finding a new way. So I rolled him in and shoved the banks in on top of him and then piled on some stones.

  Sitting in the shade of a juniper I put together a cross, and on an old wagon tail-gate that had 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.

  Beside some campfire Red might talk, someday, somewhere. Sooner or later the story might travel, but it would take time, and I wanted no more reputation as a gunfighter. There had been too much of that.

  There was a stinging in my shoulder, but only from cut skin. At the ranch I could care for that. And it was time I was getting on.

  Ahead of me the serrated ridges of the wild lands were stark and lonely against the late afternoon sky. The sun setting behind me was picking out the peak points to touch them with gold. The afternoon was gone and now I was riding home to my own ranch, riding home with the coolness of evening coming on…and tomorrow was my wedding day.

  About Louis L’Amour

  *

  “I think of myself in the oral tradition—

  as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man

  in the shadows of the campfire. That’s the way

  I’d like to be remembered as a storyteller.

  A good storyteller.”

  IT IS DOUBTFUL that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L’Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally “walked the land my characters walk.” His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L’Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

  Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L’Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, “always on the frontier.” As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family’s frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

  Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L’Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, miner, and an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. During his “yondering” days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

  Mr. L’Amour “wanted to write almo
st from the time I could talk.” After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L’Amour published his first full-length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are nearly 270 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

  His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel), Silver Canyon, Last of the Breed, and The Haunted Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L’Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio publishing.

  The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L’Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life’s work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

  Louis L’Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L’Amour publishing tradition forward.

  Bantam Books by Louis L’Amour

  NOVELS

  Bendigo Shafter

  Borden Chantry

  Brionne

  The Broken Gun

  The Burning Hills

  The Californios

  Callaghen

  Catlow

  Chancy

  The Cherokee Trail

  Comstock Lode

  Conagher

  Crossfire Trail

  Dark Canyon

  Down the Long Hills

  The Empty Land

  Fair Blows the Wind

  Fallon

  The Ferguson Rifle

  The First Fast Draw

  Flint

  Guns of the Timberlands

  Hanging Woman Creek

  The Haunted Mesa

  Heller with a Gun

  The High Graders

  High Lonesome

  Hondo

  How the West Was Won

  The Iron Marshal

  The Key-Lock Man

  Kid Rodelo

  Kilkenny

  Killoe

  Kilrone

  Kiowa Trail

  Last of the Breed

  Last Stand at Papago Wells

  The Lonesome Gods

  The Man Called Noon

  The Man from Skibbereen

  The Man from the Broken Hills

  Matagorda

  Milo Talon

  The Mountain Valley War

  North to the Rails

  Over on the Dry Side

  Passin’ Through

  The Proving Trail

  The Quick and the Dead

  Radigan

  Reilly’s Luck

  The Rider of Lost Creek

  Rivers West

  The Shadow Riders

  Shalako

  Showdown at Yellow Butte

  Silver Canyon

  Sitka

  Son of a Wanted Man

  Taggart

  The Tall Stranger

  To Tame a Land

  Tucker

  Under the Sweetwater Rim

  Utah Blaine

  The Walking Drum

  Westward the Tide

  Where the Long Grass Blows

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  Beyond the Great Snow Mountains

  Bowdrie

  Bowdrie’s Law

  Buckskin Run

  Dutchman’s Flat

  End of the Drive

  From the Listening Hills

  The Hills of Homicide

  Law of the Desert Born

  Long Ride Home

  Lonigan

  May There Be a Road

  Monument Rock

  Night over the Solomons

  Off the Mangrove Coast

  The Outlaws of Mesquite

  The Rider of the Ruby Hills

  Riding for the Brand

  The Strong Shall Live

  The Trail to Crazy Man

  Valley of the Sun

  War Party

  West from Singapore

  West of Dodge

  With These Hands

  Yondering

  SACKETT TITLES

  Sackett’s Land

  To the Far Blue Mountains

  The Warrior’s Path

  Jubal Sackett

  Ride the River

  The Daybreakers

  Sackett

  Lando

  Mojave Crossing

  Mustang Man

  The Lonely Men

  Galloway

  Treasure Mountain

  Lonely on the Mountain

  Ride the Dark Trail

  The Sackett Brand

  The Sky-Liners

  THE HOPALONG CASSIDY NOVELS

  The Riders of the High Rock

  The Rustlers of West Fork

  The Trail to Seven Pines

  Trouble Shooter

  NONFICTION

  Education of a Wandering Man

  Frontier

  The Sackett Companion: A Personal Guide to the Sackett Novels

  A Trail of Memories: The Quotations of Louis L’Amour, compiled by Angelique L’Amour

  POETRY

  Smoke from This Altar

  SILVER CANYON

  A Bantam Book / June 2004

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Bantam edition published November 1957

  Bantam reissue / September 1999

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1956, 1957, renewed 1984 by Louis & Katherine L’Amour Trust

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except

  where permitted by law. For information address:

  Bantam Books New York, New York.

  Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Please visit our website at www.bantamdell.com

  eISBN: 978-0-553-90001-9

  v3.0