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Informationen zum Autor Louis L'Amour Klappentext Louis L'Amour's world is built on those dramatic moments when men and women cast their fears, doubts, and pasts behind them and plunge into the unknown-into split-second decisions with life-and-death consequences. Nowhere is that more evident than in this latest collection of stories set on the American frontier. Here L'Amour takes us across a bold, beautifully rendered landscape where strangers may come to trust-or kill-one another; where old scores haunt new lives and the wrong choice leaves unwitting victims. Even at the best of times, this is a world in which every man and woman must be responsible for their own survival. This keepsake volume features unforgettable moments and timeless characters. From fugitives to visionaries, from fortune seekers and drifters seeking a new life to young women trying to build homes in an all too often lawless world, the characters in these pulse-pounding stories are vintage L'Amour. Together in this vivid, rollicking collection of stories, they bring to life the American spirit and confirm Louis L'Amour's place at the very top of the pantheon of American writers. 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 shi...
