Passin' Through (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) (Audio book) - A Novel

Informationen zum Autor Our foremost storyteller of the authentic West, LOUIS L'AMOUR has thrilled a nation by chronicling the adventures of the brave men and women who settled the American frontier. There are more than 300 million copies of his books in print around the world. Leseprobe Chapter 1 Behind me a noose hung empty and before me the land was wild. I rode a blue horse to the trail’s divide and tossed a coin to choose my way. The coin fell left and I turned the roan, but doubt rode my shoulders like an evil thing. The rimrock broke and the trail dipped through the crack, and my horse picked a careful way to the bottom, down the earth and rockslide that lay below the notch. Sweat stung my neck where the rope burns were, for the flesh was torn and raw. At the bottom of the slide I turned left again and the roan moved eagerly forward. There would be riders behind me now, eager to hang me again, for they were fierce and bitter men with hatred for me, a stranger. Yet when had I not been a stranger, riding alone? There had been nothing ahead to look to, and nothing behind I wanted to remember, so I’d headed west into new country simply because it was new country. Wild and reckless and hard I was, and quick with a gun to shoot, with a face honed down by sun, wind, and hardship, and eyes, some said, like chunks of blue ice. When I came upon them standing beside the trail I was headed for a far-­off town. An Indian woman with an Indian boy, an old man and a horse dead beside them. They lifted no hand and made no sign, but the look of trouble was harsh upon them. The desert lay wide around them, a desolate land where no water was. Turning my horse, I rode to where they stood, and their lips were parched and cracked. The boy’s eyes went to my canteen but he said nothing. They stood and looked at me and I took the canteen from its lashings and passed it to the woman. She passed it first to the boy and he took it and drank, then returned it to her. From the last of my hoarded biscuits I gave them food, then helped to bury the old man, safe from wolves and buzzards. Then I put them up on my packhorse and carried them to the town, where I gave each a silver dollar. I stabled my horses, stowed my gear in the corner of a dusty, rarely used tack room, and walked to the saloon for a drink. A bad choice in a bad town. There was a tall man at the bar, a man with a mustache and goatee, his black coat drawn back to reveal a pearl-handled gun. A mean man, a cruel man, a man looking for trouble, and here was I, a stranger. When I saw his face I knew his kind and went to the far end of the bar. Heat and weariness had shortened my temper so I wanted space about me and no words with anyone until I had eaten and rested. He stared at me and said, “Afraid of something?” “Of nothing,” I said, and there was impatience in my tone, for I knew what was coming. There was in me the memory of other such towns and other such men. “You are not polite,” he said, “and I like people to be polite when they speak to me. Do you know who I am?” “Leave me alone,” I said. “I shall be gone within the hour.” The bartender poured my drink and there was a warning in his eyes. “Do you know who I am?” he persisted. Tiredness and impatience overruled my judgment. “A damned fool if you persist in this,” I said. “I’m a drifting man who just wants to drift.” “A ‘damned fool’ he calls me, and he’s wearing a gun, too.” He dropped his hand to his gun and I killed him. His gun had not cleared leather when my bullet took him at the base of the throat, and there was a moment when his face was wild with disbelief. He had killed before but he had not expected to die. He looked into my eyes with all the manhood gone from his. He sank to his knees and he tried to speak but blood was choking him, and he went face-­down in the ...

Product details

• Authors: Jason Culp, Louis L'Amour, Dan John Miller, Oliver Wyman
• Publisher: Random Audio PRH US
• Languages: English
• Product format: CD-Audio
• Released: 30.06.2020
• EAN: 9780593293829
• ISBN: 978-0-593-29382-9
• Series: Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature > Historical novels and narratives