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Informationen zum Autor LOUIS L’AMOUR is the only novelist in history to receive both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. He has published eighty-nine novels; twenty-seven short-story collections; two works of nonfiction; a memoir, Education of a Wandering Man; and a volume of poetry, Smoke from This Altar. There are more than 300 million copies of his books in print. Klappentext "If a man won't fight for what is rightly his, then he ain't much account." With this challenge from his dying father, young Shell Tucker rode out after three men who had stolen the twenty thousand dollars his father was carrying. Two of the men he hunted, Doc Sites and Kid Reese, were his friends. Dreaming of adventure, Tucker had wanted to join their gang. But now, with his father gone and the people back home desperately in need of the proceeds from the cattle drive, Shell was determined to uphold his father's reputation and recover their money. He knew the odds were against him. Finding his friends would be difficult. Getting the money back would be nearly impossible. Chapter One WHEN I RODE up to the buffalo wallow pa was lying there with his leg broke and his horse gone. It was mid-afternoon of a mighty hot day and pa had been lying there three, four hours. His canteen was on his horse, so he had nothing to drink in all that time. I got down and fetched him water with my canteen. "Thanks, boy. Looks like I played hob." "Well," I said, "you got you a busted leg, but your jaw's in good shape. You been arguin' at me for months, now, so you just set back an' argue some more whilst I fix up your leg." "You got to saddle and ride, boy." A body could see he was fighting pain. "Everything we own and most of what our neighbors own is in those saddlebags. You just forget about me and hunt down that horse." If I'd been older in years instead of being just man-size I might have thought about the money first, but likely not. There was twenty thousand dollars in those saddlebags, and less than a third of it was ours. It was the sale money for a steer herd we'd driven up the trail from Texas, and folks back home was a-sweating until we got back with that money. "We'll take care of your busted leg first," I said. There was mighty little to do with out there on the prairie, but I broke some mesquite and trimmed it with my knife, shaping some splints for pa's leg. We'd never been much on gettin' along together, pa an' me, and we wrangled most of the time on something or other. Here I was, seventeen and feeling uppity with the growing strength in me and the need to make folks see me as a man. About all I could do, come to think about it, was ride a horse and shoot a gun. Pa objected to the company I kept, and down deep inside I more'n half agreed with him, but stubborn-like, I wasn't going to be told. Pa objected to me spending time out in the gully practicing gun-slinging. He was forever telling me that no gunman he'd ever heard tell of ever had anything but a bad reputation with folks who mattered. "Time of trouble," I objected, "a man who can handle a gun is good to have around, and on your side." "Sure," pa would say, "but when trouble is over folks can't get shut of him fast enough." Well, I'd always told myself I could make as big tracks as any man, but now I was faced up with it and had no idea what to do. One thing I knew. I needed a water hole and some shade for pa. Once he was bedded down I could hightail it after that horse. The quickest way to water might be to trail pa's horse, anyway, so I hoisted him into the saddle with some help from him, and we'd taken after pa's gelding. That fool horse ran straightaway, then slowed to a walk. From...
