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Informationen zum Autor Our foremost storyteller of the American West, Louis L’Amour has thrilled a nation by chronicling the adventures of the brave men and woman who settled the frontier. There are more than three hundred million copies of his books in print around the world. Klappentext Desperate violence and true courage fill these Western masterpieces! written by one of the foremost storytellers of our time. No Man's Man CHAPTER I He came to a dirty cantina on a fading afternoon. He stood, looking around with a curious eye. And he saw me there in the corner, my back to the wall and a gun on the table, and my left hand pouring tequila into a glass. He crossed the room to my table, a man with a scholar’s face and a quiet eye, but with lines of slender strength. “When I told them I wanted a man big enough and tough enough to tackle a grizzly,” he said, “they sent me to you.” “How much?” I said. “And where’s the grizzly?” “His name is Henry Wetterling, and he’s the boss of Battle Basin. And I’ll give you a thousand dollars.” “What do I do?” “There’s a girl up there, and her name is Nana Maduro. She owns a ranch on Cherry Creek. Wetterling wants the girl, and he wants the ranch. I don’t want him to have either.” “You want him dead?” “I want him out of there. Use your own judgment. When I hire a man for a job, I don’t tell him how to do it.” This man with the scholar’s face was more than a quiet man; he could be a hard man. “All right,” I said. “One thing more”—he smiled a little, quietly, as though enjoying what he was about to say—“Wetterling is top dog and he walks a wide path, but he has two men to back him.” He smiled again. “Their names are Clevenger and Mack.” The bartender brought a lemon and salt, and I drank my tequila. “The answer is still the same,” I told him, then, “but the price is higher. I want five thousand dollars.” His expression did not change, but he reached in his pocket and drew out a wallet and counted green bills on the dirty table. He counted two thousand dollars. “I like a man who puts the proper estimate on a job,” he said. “The rest when you’re finished.” He pushed back his chair and got up, and I looked at the green bills and thought of the long months of punching cows I’d have to put in to earn that much—if anybody, anywhere, would give me a job. “Where do you fit in?” I asked. “Do you want the girl or the ranch or Wetterling’s hide?” “You’re paid,” he said pointedly, “for a job. Not for questions. . . .” THERE WAS SUNLIGHT on the trail, and cloud shadows on the hills, and there was a time of riding, and a time of resting, and an afternoon, hot and still like cyclone weather when I walked my big red horse down the dusty street of the town of Battle Basin. They looked at me, the men along the street, and well they could look. I weighed two hundred and forty pounds, but looked twenty-five pounds lighter. I was three inches over six feet, with black hair curling around my ears under a black flat-brimmed, flat-crowned hat, and the brim was dusty and the crown was torn. The shirt I wore was dark red, under a black horsehide vest, and there was a scar on my left cheek where a knife blade had bit to the bone. The man who had owned that knife left his bones in a pack rat’s nest down Sonora way. My boots were run-down at the heels and my jeans were worn under the chaps stained almost black. And when I swung down, men gathered around to look at my horse. Big Red is seventeen hands high and weighs thirteen hundred pounds—a blood bay with black mane, tail, and forelock. “That’s a lot of horse,” a man in a white apron said. “It takes a man to ride a stallion.” “I ride him,” I said, and walked past them into the bar. The man in the white apron followed me. “I drink tequila,” I said. H...
