Novel 1972 - Callaghen (v5.0) (24 page)
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.”
T
HE 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.”
1The old holes are now dry. The spring issues from a pipe at the end of the mountain, flowing into a tank cattlemen built.
Return to text.
About Louis L’Amour
“I think of myself in the oral tradition—
as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man
in the shadows of the campfire. That’s the way
I’d like to be remembered as a storyteller.
A good storyteller.”
I
T IS DOUBTFUL that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L’Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally “walked the land my characters walk.” His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L’Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.
Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L’Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, “always on the frontier.” As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family’s frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.
Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L’Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, miner, and an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. During his “yondering” days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.
Mr. L’Amour “wanted to write almost from the time I could talk.” After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L’Amour published his first full-length novel,
Hondo
, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are nearly 270 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the best-selling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.
His hardcover bestsellers include
The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum
(his twelfth-century historical novel),
Callaghen, Last of the Breed
, and
The Haunted Mesa
. His memoir,
Education of a Wandering Man
, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L’Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio publishing.
The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L’Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life’s work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.
Louis L’Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L’Amour publishing tradition forward.
Bantam Books by Louis L’Amour
NOVELS
Bendigo Shafter
Borden Chantry
Brionne
The Broken Gun
The Burning Hills
The Californios
Callaghen
Catlow
Chancy
The Cherokee Trail
Comstock Lode
Conagher
Crossfire Trail
Dark Canyon
Down the Long Hills
The Empty Land
Fair Blows the Wind
Fallon
The Ferguson Rifle
The First Fast Draw
Flint
Guns of the Timberlands
Hanging Woman Creek
The Haunted Mesa
Heller with a Gun
The High Graders
High Lonesome
Hondo
How the West Was Won
The Iron Marshal
The Key-Lock Man
Kid Rodelo
Kilkenny
Killoe
Kilrone
Kiowa Trail
Last of the Breed
Last Stand at Papago Wells
The Lonesome Gods
The Man Called Noon
The Man from Skibbereen
The Man from the Broken Hills
Matagorda
Milo Talon
The Mountain Valley War
North to the Rails
Over on the Dry Side
Passin’ Through
The Proving Trail
The Quick and the Dead
Radigan
Reilly’s Luck
The Rider of Lost Creek
Rivers West
The Shadow Riders
Shalako
Showdown at Yellow Butte
Silver Canyon
Sitka
Son of a Wanted Man
Taggart
The Tall Stranger
To Tame a Land
Tucker
Under the Sweetwater Rim
Utah Blaine
The Walking Drum
Westward the Tide
Where the Long Grass Blows
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Beyond the Great Snow Mountains
Bowdrie
Bowdrie’s Law
Buckskin Run
Dutchman’s Flat
End of the Drive
From the Listening Hills
The Hills of Homicide
Law of the Desert Born
Long Ride Home
Lonigan
May There Be a Road
Monument Rock
Night over the Solomons
Off the Mangrove Coast
The Outlaws of Mesquite
The Rider of the Ruby Hills
Riding for the Brand
The Strong Shall Live
The Trail to Crazy Man
Valley of the Sun
War Party
West from Singapore
West of Dodge
With These Hands
Yondering
SACKETT TITLES
Sackett’s Land
To the Far Blue Mountains
The Warrior’s Path
Jubal Sackett
Ride the River
The Daybreakers
Sackett
Lando
Mojave Crossing
Mustang Man
The Lonely Men
Galloway
Treasure Mountain
Lonely on the Mountain
Ride the Dark Trail
The Sackett Brand
The Sky-Liners
THE HOPALONG CASSIDY NOVELS
The Riders of the High Rock
The Rustlers of West Fork
The Trail to Seven Pines
Trouble Shooter
NONFICTION
Education of a Wandering Man
Frontier
The Sackett Companion: A Personal Guide to the Sackett Novels
A Trail of Memories: The Quotations of Louis L’Amour, compiled by Angelique L’Amour
POETRY
Smoke from This Altar
CALLAGHEN
A Bantam Book / February 2004
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam edition published February 1972
Bantam reissue / July 1998
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1972 by Louis & Katherine L’Amour Trust
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except
where permitted by law. For information address:
Bantam Books New York, New York.
Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN 0-553-89897-3
Please visit our website at
www.bantandell.com
v1.0
eBook Info
Title:
Callaghen
Creator:
Louis L'Amour
Publisher:
Bantam Books
Format:
OEB
Date:
2003-04-29
Subject:
?
Identifier:
Lamo_0553898973
Language:
en
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