Callaghen (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Read online

  Champion got up more slowly this time. For the first time he was aware that this was a fight he might not win. The soldiers would be reaching the rocks, and although the horse was there, he would need a moment’s start. He had to get this man, and get him quick and good.

  Hands held high to protect his head and face, crouched slightly to offer less of a target, he moved in, and Callaghen feinted. Instantly, Callaghen brought up a whipping right uppercut that snapped Champion’s head back hard. A swing with the left to the exposed head, and Champion staggered, almost going down.

  Callaghen came in fast, feinting again and kicking the shorter man on the kneecap. Champion started to fall and Callaghen hit him again; but suddenly Champion lunged and Callaghen tried to sidestep, but he was not fast enough and Champion’s hard head smashed him in the belly.

  He felt himself falling, glimpsed Champion stooping for a big rock, and as he hit the ground he rolled over and came to his hands and knees. Champion was lifting the rock over his head, but Callaghen picked up a short, thick chunk of dead cedar and threw it at Champion’s face. Unable to duck because of the huge stone he held, he threw it at Callaghen. It fell short, but the flying stick struck him on the arm as Callaghen went in.

  He caught Champion with hands down and threw a hard right to the chin. The trapper backed up, blinking, and Callaghen followed, feinted, and hit him in the solar plexus. Champion bent over and Callaghen slammed a knee into his face. He fell forward on hands and knees—and then there were blue-clad soldiers everywhere.

  Callaghen backed up and sat down on a rock, gasping for breath.

  “Are you all right?”

  Callaghen looked up to see Captain Marriott. He started to rise, but Marriott said, “Sit still. You’ve done a good job. Sergeant.”

  He paused a moment. “I have been ordered to place you under arrest.”

  “Arrest?”

  “Yes, Sergeant. Major Sykes is under the impression you deserted your command to join the ladies in their coach. That you coerced them into leaving the route to Vegas, and that you have, in effect, deserted.”

  “But that’s nonsense, Captain. Lieutenant Sprague will tell you—”

  “Sprague is dead, Sergeant. He died at Marl Springs. The stage driver is dead, and so are most of his command. I doubt if any of the others will know anything about it.”

  Callaghen got up slowly. Dizzy from punches, still panting from the fight, he was trying to understand what exactly had happened.

  “What about MacBrody?”

  “He knows nothing. He understood Sprague had sent you on a scout, from what Sprague had said, and that you located the stage and led it to Marl Springs. He did not actually hear Sprague direct you to accompany the stage as an escort.”

  “The Delaware knows.”

  “Good. Although I doubt if Major Sykes will accept his word for it. Both the Delaware and MacBrody are known to be friends of yours.”

  Captain Marriott put his hand inside his coat. “There is this, of course. It had arrived, and I believe it was to be delivered to you at the earliest possible moment, so I took it upon myself to do so.”

  His face was expressionless. “You have been a good soldier, Sergeant, and I respect that. From all I have heard, if Sprague were here he would add his word to that. I believe you will have no trouble.”

  Callaghen glanced at the paper…his discharge…dated almost three weeks earlier. Allowing for time for it to arrive at Camp Cady…

  “Thank you, Captain,” he said. “Thank you very much.”

  He started to move away slowly, for he was sore in every part of his body, and he was only now beginning to realize what a rough go Champion had given him.

  Champion, guarded by two soldiers, his face battered and scarred, stood still when he saw him. “Hear you’re gettin’ out soon. If you ever need a partner…say to hunt for a lost mine or somethin’, you just call on Champion.”

  “Sorry.” Callaghen shook his head, smiling. “I might have to lick you again, and I’m not sure I could do it.”

  —

  THE DESERT WAS still. They saw no Indians on the long ride back to Camp Cady. The air was hot, but it held no malice. They made stops at Rock Springs, at Marl, Soda Lake, and Cave Canyon.

  Callaghen nodded toward the walls of Cave Canyon. “There are places back yonder where a man can stand and look up three or four hundred feet. You’d think you were in a cathedral.”

  The fluted columns were pink, beige, and gray, with darker shadows where the hollows were filled with mystery.

  Malinda rode beside him. “Mort, what now?” she asked.

  “Why, maybe I’ll find a town where they need a marshal, and while doing that job I might study law. You had a point there.”

  “There’s the desert,” Malinda said.

  “Yes, and I’ll wake up in the night and remember it. As it is now, and as it should always be.”

  “What about the River of Gold?”

  “I’ll think about it from time to time. I am sure it is there, and I think I know where it is, but when I follow a dream for thirty years like some of these desert rats, there’s got to be more at the end than a pot of gold.”

  The mountains stretched their shadows over the desert, a wind played with the sand on a slope, wearied of it, and let it fall. The Mohave River, along which they rode, from time to time made a ripple over rocks, hurrying onward to its destiny in the Sinks far ahead. There it disappeared in the sand, and reappeared in the dark, silent caverns far underground. Here and there on its way it dropped a few flakes of gold.

  “I hope nobody ever finds it,” Malinda said. “It should always be there, just to be looked for.”

  WHAT IS LOUIS L’AMOUR’S LOST TREASURES?

  * * *

  Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures is a project created to release some of the author’s more unconventional manuscripts from the family archives.

  Currently included in the project are Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures: Volume 1 and Volume 2, which will be published in the fall of 2017 and 2019 respectively. These books contain both finished and unfinished short stories, unfinished novels, literary and motion picture treatments, notes, and outlines. They are a wide selection of the many works Louis was not able to publish during his lifetime.

  In 2018 we will release No Traveller Returns, L’Amour’s never-before-seen first novel, which was written between 1938 and 1942. In the future, there may be a selection of even more L’Amour titles.

  Additionally, many notes and alternate drafts to Louis’s well-known and previously published novels and short stories will now be included as “bonus feature” postscripts within the books that they relate to. For example, the Lost Treasures postscript to Last of the Breed will contain early notes on the story, the short story that was discovered to be a missing piece of the novel, the history of the novel’s inspiration and creation, and information about unproduced motion picture and comic book versions.

  An even more complete description of the Lost Treasures project, along with a number of examples of what is in the books, can be found at louislamourslosttreasures.com. The website also contains a good deal of exclusive material, such as even more pieces of unknown stories, personal photos, scans of original documents, and notes.

  All of the works that contain Lost Treasures project materials will display the Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures banner and logo.

  POSTSCRIPT TO CALLAGHEN

  * * *

  By Beau L’Amour

  Dad traveled the length and breadth of the Mojave Desert many times. He hopped freights from Kingman, Arizona, to Los Angeles on several occasions and even walked from a mine in the Owlshead Mountains to Barstow, an excruciating trip without water and one that took him across most of our modern-day Fort Irwin National Training Center, a spot familiar to many who have served in the military. Later in life, Louis also traveled through the Mojave as a paying rail passenger on his way to camping destinations in the Grand Canyon area and then
many times by car with me, my mother, and the rest of the family.

  As he did more and more research about military service on the Desert Road and at the Mojave forts, he became fascinated by the men who had carried out that bleak duty. Thus was born the novel Callaghen. His earliest notes were mostly about a list of characters he was considering, some of whom he did not even use:

  Perhaps two of the forts? Study the Mojave, make no definite plans. Choose characters with care.

  A somber Irishman, from a family with a history of persecution; a man of quality from a family of distinction, a cool, considerate man.

  A half-breed Indian; a Delaware, perhaps. A man who has come west seeking a new home, but who has been a scout for the Army, a wanderer in many parts of the West; his brothers came with him but one by one they have died or been killed.

  A spoiled easterner who joined the Army when in a rage against his new wife, and now wishes to get out; he has never faced a responsibility in his life, and deserts when on guard duty and two of his mates are killed after going to sleep depending on him.

  A renegade who has deserted several times but always returns; who does his duty regardless; a man who bears up best under adversity, but who weakens when times are good. He drinks too much; gets into brawls; has been court-martialed several times and has been in prison.

  An officer in charge who is waiting to get his pension, a lonely man whose family is gone and who never hears from his one son, a son who abandoned him because of his mother.

  A young boy just out from the Midwest, anxious to be a soldier, to be a Western man, but who had not expected anything like the Mojave.

  A stage driver who is a solid citizen, a man with a wife as strong and courageous as he.

  A stage with several passengers, two of them women. The stage is destroyed, the soldiers get the women into a position of defense, perhaps a fort.

  The officer has spotted the Irishman for what he is, a gentleman and an experienced military man. They often talk, along with the stage driver, who is wounded in the fight. There are Indians out there, but not many.

  Three escaping criminals arrive and suspect the women or somebody of having loot. One is a known killer, but he is faced down by the Irishman.

  STRONG SUSPENSE, EMOTION, CHARACTER: HEAT, THIRST, FEAR SO STRONG YOU CAN SMELL IT.

  All that is pretty straightforward, but Dad also laid out some ideas that suggest he might have considered making Callaghen his first foray into a more supernatural Western. This was two years before he eventually did allow a hint of otherworldliness to enter into his writing in The Californios. However, as some of the stories documented in Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures Volumes 1 and 2 suggest, he had actually been toying with that idea for a long time. Here are the notes, in which Louis refers to his protagonist simply as “Irish.”

  Use desert lore

  Compare three [through] Irish, other deserts of the world.

  Draw on all background in this. Make it rich in all elements. Atmosphere, color, myth, magic, mystery.

  Bring in ship of desert story.

  Flying monster killed by cowboys.

  Reincarnation.

  Some Irish background.

  Norman & Irish. Quote from Course of Irish History.

  Use ancient acct. [account] of desert pre-history, underground rivers. Use [illegible] story of ship.

  Open with tense drama. Irish in last stand when cavalry comes. Soon after he receives his discharge papers.

  Perhaps an arrogant officer who does not like him. Concedes his discharge and commission from him.

  Draw on woman’s story of army life. Rd. [Read] Forty Miles a Day

  Perhaps a large amount of gold disappears. All want it. The officer above, plans to keep them all at lonely outpost until somebody breaks.

  He suspects Irish. Actually gold hidden before stage arrives at another point of desert.

  Irish back-tracks and finds treasure.

  Use background of Cahuenga treasure for this story.

  Use Chavez or Vasquez at some point.

  Allow me to decode some of that:

  The “ship of desert story” is a local Southern California legend that goes back at least as far as the 1870s. Supposedly, though at different places and different times, the wreckage of an ancient ship has been spotted in the southern Mojave Desert. Sometimes it is assumed to be Spanish, sometimes that of an English pirate. Always, of course, there are rumors of a treasure. It is not utterly impossible; there are places where, under the right conditions, a small ship might have made it from the Sea of Cortez into one of the inundated areas near the Salton Sea. This is a fair distance south of the area covered in Callaghen.

  The “Flying monster killed by cowboys” refers to a story published in 1890 in The Tombstone Epitaph. It dealt with a dinosaur-like creature of truly gigantic proportions, considerably larger than the thirty-foot Quetzalcoatlus northropi, the largest flying “dinosaur.” In the story, the unfortunate animal crash-landed near Whetstone, Arizona, and some locals shot it and intended to bring it to town. Many years later, some photos surfaced. They are controversial for a number of reasons, and some are obviously faked. The paper never followed up on the story, and neither did anyone else, so I don’t take it too seriously. However, like the stories of the ship in the desert, this story is not the only one of its type. A number of earlier versions appear in reports coming from California.

  The “Cahuenga treasure” is a true story of buried gold and jewels. The stolen cache had originally been headed to San Francisco in 1864 to buy Mexican president Benito Juárez guns and ammunition with which to fight the French. Through a series of misadventures and catastrophically bad luck, it ended up buried somewhere near the Hollywood Bowl—since the 1920s a landmark Los Angeles concert venue. The treasure soon garnered the reputation of being cursed. All accounts agree that almost everyone associated with it, from the moment it was first stolen from its original couriers, quickly met a tragic and nearly immediate end. Part of the treasure was accidentally unearthed by a Basque shepherd some twenty years later. Malignant fate dogged him too, and he fell overboard and drowned on his way back to Spain with his fortune. He never knew about the curse or the fact that he had discovered only one-sixth of the money. The rest remains lost somewhere along the route of the Hollywood Freeway.

  Tiburcio Vasquez and Clodoveo Chavez were infamous California banditos and purported Mexican insurrectionists, active up until the 1870s. The story is that Chavez honorably fessed up to a killing that Vasquez had been accused of. Their hideout, just north of Los Angeles, is now a county park known as Vasquez Rocks. Its iconically jagged terrain has made it the location of hundreds of movie shoots.

  I do not know how Louis intended to include the concept of reincarnation in this story, other than perhaps Callaghen’s slight sense of remembering other times and other places. I have no idea of the source of the “ancient acct. of desert pre-history,” but Dad was aware of a story, alluded to in The Californios, of an impressive city built by an unknown native people that vanished Atlantis-like in an earthquake or some similar cataclysm. As far as I know, no evidence of such a city has been found, but the California desert holds many interesting artifacts including the Blythe Intaglios, enormous ground drawings like the world-famous Nazca Lines. Although Louis seems to have had second thoughts about including much of the supernatural information mentioned in these notes, I think that Callaghen retains a slightly mysterious tone regardless. Dad found Southern California a strange and haunted place, a feeling made even more odd by its subtlety, its lack of obvious evidence for that strangeness.

  —

  Callaghen is a good example of a book for which Louis did a fair amount of research travel just before starting to write. It was common for him to use locations he knew well, often places he had visited or lived near in earlier years. While he liked to get the details right, it was only after he married my mother in 1956 that he could reliably get out and investigate areas he was not
all that familiar with. Dad didn’t drive—in fact, he never had a license—and he’d never really made enough money to buy a car (other than a used-up jalopy he owned for a few months in the 1920s) until around the time my mother came into the picture.

  It wasn’t until the late 1970s, when I was old enough to drive and convinced Mom and Dad to purchase a Toyota Land Cruiser, that we had a capable backcountry vehicle for the really rough spots. Before then Dad had to find a generous person with an off-road vehicle or try to hike in from wherever Mom’s Cadillac ran out of road. As he got older, or when the places he wanted to go were as rugged as the locations in Callaghen, hiking was really not the most practical option.

  So here are some journal entries in which Louis discusses the experience of researching Callaghen, a novel he was just about to begin writing.

  January 27, 1971—Eager to get to the desert to check out some of the old government road area[s] again. I walked out of the desert when I was sixteen, as rough a two days and a night as I’ll ever wish for, and I have visited the sites of the old forts and stations at Rock, Paiute, and Marl Springs as well as Camp Cady, but it has been long ago. I’ve been in or around the Mojave fifty times, I expect. Drove to Granite Wells, Eagle Crags, etc. some fifteen years ago, and have been at Cima, Mitchell Caverns (before they were known) and elsewhere. The first stage station at Mojave was operated by an Elias Dearborn….I slept in a mule barn there once, when hoboing. I found a coffin-like grain box half-filled with oats, so I slept better and warmer than most.

  March 9, 1971—Returned from Mojave trip, exploring country for my novel on the Mojave desert forts. Stopped at Holiday Inn, Barstow. Bob Duffy drove up in the Blazer, with Roberta. Kathy, Beau, Angelique and Editha with us…