End Of The Drive Is Comprised Of Seven Unforgettable, Never-Before-Published Tales, Together With One Complete Novella An epic collection you will treasure forever.
End of the Drive captures all the grit, grandeur, and glory of the men and women who wielded pistol and plow, Bible and branding iron to tame a wild country. Here a boy of seventeen, yearning to prove he's a man, squares up against an outlaw ... and discovers that what counts is not how fast you can draw a gun but how much faith you have in yourself. A veteran trail driver, who's faced lightning and hail, raiding Comanche and thundering stampedes, finds that there's nothing quite so dangerous as the courting of a beautiful woman.
Here, too, in stories told with L'Amour's patented poignancy and power, a homesteader fighting for his rights is brutally beaten and crawls off to die ... only to stumble upon an ancient talisman that restores his faith and will to live. A preacher from a distant land rides into a small frontier town with a voice full of fire and a saddlebag full of miracles ... to deliver a promise and a warning that lead the local folk to a most surprising revelation. And in the full-length novella Rustler Roundup, the hardworking citizens of a law-abiding town are pushed to the edge to defend all they hold dear. As suspicion spreads and evidence mounts, the rumors of rustlers in their midst threaten to explode into a full-blown range war.
Each of these stories bears the master's touch comic twists, stark realism, crackling suspense all the elements that have made Louis L'Amour a frontier legend in his own right. In End of the Drive, L'Amour brilliantly illuminates the dramatic struggles and enduring truths, the self-reliance and self-determination that have long beat at the heart of America's greatness.
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Contents:
Caprock Rancher.
Elisha Comes to Red Horse.
Desperate Men.
The Courting of Griselda.
End of the Drive.
The Lonesome Gods.
Rustler Roundup.
The Skull and the Arrow.
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CAPROCK RANCHER
When I rode up to the buffalo wallow, Pa was lying there with his leg broke and his horse gone. Out there on the prairie there wasn't much to make splints with, and Pa was bad hurt. It had seemed to me the most important things for a man to know was how to ride a horse and use a gun, but now neither one was going to do much good.
Earlier in the day Pa and me had had a mean argument, and it wasn't the first. Here I was, man-grown and seventeen, and Pa still after me about the company I kept. He was forever harping on Doc Sites and Kid Reese and their like ... said they were no-goods. As if he was one to talk, a man who'd never had money nor schooling, nor any better than a worn-out coat on his back. Anyway, Doc and Kid Reese weren't about to be farmers or starving on a short-grass cow ranch.
Pa, he'd been at me again because I'd be dogged if I was going to waste my life away on what little we could make, and told him so ... then I rode off to be an outlaw. For the first two miles I was good and mad, and for the third mile I was growling some, but I'd made most of ten miles before my good sense got the better of me and I started back to help Pa. He had a far piece to go, and he was a lone man packing twenty thousand dollars through some mighty rough country.
It was midafternoon of a mighty hot day when I came up to that buffalo wallow, and Pa had been lying there four, five hours. His canteen had been on his saddle and the horse had taken off, so I got down and gave him a swallow or two from mine.
All that argument was forgotten. Times like that a man is best off doing one thing at a time and not worrying around too much.
'Thanks, boy.' Pa returned the canteen to me. 'Looks like I played hob.'
'That gray never did have a lick of sense,' I said, and then I told it to him. 'You got a busted leg, but your jaw's in good shape. So you set back an' argue with me whilst I set that bone.'
'You just forget about me. All that money is in those saddlebags, and less than a third of it ours. You forget me and hunt down that horse.'
That twenty thousand dollars was from a steer herd we'd taken to Kansas and sold, and folks back home were a-sweating until we got back with the money. Cash money was hard to come by those times, and most of this would go to mighty poor folks who hadn't seen a hard dollar since who flung the chunk.
'You got a broke leg. We'll take care of that first.'
Nothing was growing around but short grass and some knee-high mesquite, but I got Pa's leg set and cut mesquite with my bowie and splinted up best I knew how. All that time he set there a-looking at me with pain in his eyes and never let out a whimper, but the sweat stood out on both our faces, you can bet.
If you were ever seventeen years old and standing in a buffalo wallow one hundred and fifty miles from home, and your pa with a broke leg, you know how I felt. And only one horse between us.
With my help he got straddle of that horse and we started off with two things in mind. To get to a creek where there was water, and to find that fool horse.
Judging by the tracks, that gray had taken off like wolves was after him, but after half a mile he began to slow up and look back expecting to be chased. Then on, he got the smell of water and just sort of ambled, taking a bite of grass or mesquite beans now and again. Pa, he sat up in the leather and never said I, yes, or no. This time it was up to me and both us knew it.
The sun was beyond the hill and color was in the evening sky when we saw those other tracks. They came in from the southeast and they were the tracks of three shod horses ... and they caught Pa's horse.
This was just across the border from Indian Territory and while honest men crossed it, but aside from the Indians, few honest men lived there. To be a Deputy U. S. Marshal in Indian Territory was like standing yourself up in the business end of a shooting gallery. Every outlaw in the country spent time there, and we knew if those had been good men who caught up Pa's horse, or even a decent kind of outlaw, they'd backtrack to find the rider. In those years folks were helpful to one another, and to be afoot in a country like that was about the worst that could happen. It left a man with mighty few possibilities.
These men had caught up Pa's horse and checked the saddlebags, and they didn't come looking for Pa.
'Son,' Pa could read those tracks as well as me 'don't you get any notions. You ain't about to go up against three men, not with me in this condition.'
'Ain't nothing to worry about. Those boys are friends of mine. One of them is Kid Reese and another is Doc Sites. Why, I'd know those horse tracks if I saw them in Gilead. This time of night they won't go far and we'll have your horse and money in no time.'
Pa, he just sat up there on my horse and he said nothing at all for a while, and then he said, 'Ed, you reckon those boys would give back twenty thousand dollars?' It gave me an uneasy feeling, him saying that. Pa set no store by either of them, but they were good boys. Free and easy, that's sure, but they were friends of mine. When Pa and me moved into that Texas country they'd let me take up with them. We-all were usually up to no good, but that was what you'd expect from three youngsters caught somewheres between being boys and being men. It's true we were always talking of standing up a stagecoach or robbing a bank, but that was mostly talk. Taking money from a friend ... well, they weren't that kind.
It was not much of a creek. Stars were in the sky when we fetched up to it, and it wasn't more than two, three feet wide and maybe four, five inches deep, but it was wet water, lined with willows and cottonwoods and
