Somebody Wanted Me Dead.
A Boot Toe Kicked Me Awake. I Looked Up Into Three Rifle muzzles aimed at my head, and three hard men standing over me, no mercy in their eyes. They had their orders.
Find Tell Sackett.
And when you find him, kill him.
And when you kill him, bury him deep.
Someone wanted me dead. Wanted it bad enough to hire a whole passel of gunmen to do the job.
There was only one thing he didn't know about me---
It takes a heap of killing to finish off a Sackett!
*
Forty gunslingers from the Lazy A have got Tell Sackett cornered under the Mogollon Rim. They're fixing to hang him if they can capture him alive, fill him extra full of lead if they can't. But the Sacketts don't cotton to that kind of treatment. Hunt one Sackett and you hunt 'em all. So they're riding in from all over--mountain Sacketts, outlaws, cattlemen, bankers and the rest.
They'll fight with Tell on this one--.. If they can get there before Tell kills all forty hardcases himself.
*
The Sacketts They are the unforgettable pioneer family created by master storyteller Louis L'Amour to bring to vivid life the spirit and adventure of the American frontier. The Sacketts, men and women who challenged the untamed wilderness with their dreams and their courage. From generation to generation they pushed ever westward with a restless, wandering urge, a kinship with the free, wild places and a fierce independence. The Sacketts always stood tall and, true to their strong family pride, they would unite to take on any and all challenges, no matter how overwhelming the odds. Each Sackett novel is a complete, exciting historical adventure, and read as a group, Louis L'Amour's The Sacketts form an epic story of the building of our mighty nation, a saga cherished by millions of readers around the world for more than a quarter century.
*
THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE SACKETT NOVELS
SACKETT'S LAND circa 1600
TO THE FAR BLUE MOUNTAINS circa 1600-1620
THE WARRIOR'S PATH circa 1620's JUBAL SACKETT circa 1620's RIDE THE RIVER circa 1840's-1850's (bbf Civil War)
THE DAYBREAKERS circa 1870-1872
SACKETT circa 1874-1875
LANDO circa 1873-1875
MOJAVE CROSSING circa 1875-1879
MUSTANG MAN circa 1875-1879
THE LONELY MEN circa 1875-1879
GALLOWAY circa 1875-1879
TREASURE MOUNTAIN circa 1875-1879
LONELY ON THE MOUNTAIN circa 1875-1879
RIDE THE DARK TRAIL circa 1875-1879
THE SACKETT BRAND circa 1875-1879
THE SKY-LINERS circa 1875-1879
Chapter one.
Nobody could rightly say any of us Sacketts were what you'd call superstitious.
Nonetheless, if I had tied a knot in a towel or left a shovel in the fire nothing might have happened.
The trouble was, when I walked out on that point my mind went a-rambling like wild geese down a western sky.
What I looked upon was a sight of lovely country. Right at my feet was the river, a-churning and a-thrashing at least six hundred feet below me, with here and there a deep blue pool. Across the river, and clean to the horizon to the north and east of me, was the finest stand of pine timber this side of the Smokies.
Knobs of craggy rock thrust up, with occasional ridges showing bare spines to the westward where the timber thinned out and the country finally became desert. In front of me, but miles away, a gigantic wall reared up. That wall was at least a thousand feet higher than where I now stood, though this was high ground.
Down around Globe I'd heard talk of that wall. On the maps I'd seen it was written Mogollon, but folks in the country around called it the Muggy-own.
This was the place we had been seeking, and now I was scouting a route for my wagon and stock.
As I stood there on that high point I thought I saw a likely route, and I started to turn away. It was a move I never completed, for something struck me an awful wallop alongside the skull, and next thing I knew I was falling.
Falling? With a six-hundred-foot drop below me? Fear clawed at my throat, and I heard a wild, ugly cry ... my own cry.
Then my shoulder smashed into an outcropping of crumbly rock that went to pieces under the impact, and again I was falling; I struck again, fell again, and struck again, this time feet first, facing a gravelly slope that threw me off into the air once more. This time I landed sliding on a sheer rock face that rounded inward and let me fall again, feet first.
Brush growing out from the side of the mountain caught me for just a moment, but I ripped through it, clawing for a grip; then I fell clear into a deep pool.
Down I went, and when I thought to strike out and swim, something snagged my pants leg and started me kicking wildly to shake loose. Then something gave way down there under water, and I shot to the surface right at the spillway of the pool.
My mouth gasped for air, and a wave hit me full in the mouth and almost strangled me, while the force of the water swept me between the rocks and over a six-foot fall. The current rushed me on, and I went through another spillway before I managed to get my feet under me in shallow water.
Even then, stepping on a slippery rock, I fell once more, and this time the current dropped me to a still lower pool, almost covered by arching trees.
Flailing with arms and legs, I managed to lay hand to a root and tug myself out of the water. There was a dark hole under the roots of a huge old sycamore that leaned over the water, and it was instinct more than good sense that made me crawl into it before I collapsed.
And then for a long time I felt nothing, heard nothing.
It was the cold that woke me. Shivering, shaking, I struggled back to something like consciousness. At first I sensed only the cold ... and then I realized that somebody was talking nearby.
'What's the boss so wrought up about? He was just a driftin' cowpoke.'
'You ain't paid to question the boss, Dancer. He said we were to find him and kill him, and he said we were to hunt for a week if necessary, but he wants the body found and he wants it buried deep. If it ain't dead, we kill it.'
