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With a flip of his hand, ConVallian dropped the gun into its holster, and at
the same moment yelled, "Now,Red!" And with a hand that scarcely stopped
moving, he drew again and fired.
RedHyle , caught by the unexpected action, lost a split second in
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realization. His hand, poised to reach, dropped for the gun-butt and started
to lift when the bullet smashed him in the chest.
The big man scarcely staggered. His ugly smile parted his lips. "I got
you!Dammit to hell,Vallian !I got you !"
The big gun came clear and was lifting as the second bullet smashed his arm,
and a third hit him in the leg as he dropped to one knee to recover his lost
gun.
"I got you,Vallian ! Nobody ever beat RedHyle !"
He straightened his legs and stood tottering, blood soaking the front of his
shirt, dribbling down his sleeve.
He had his gun in his left hand and he swung it up still smiling
whenVallian's fourth and last shot hit him.
The big man staggered like a huge tree starting to fall, but he kept the grip
on his gun.
Suddenly Tom leaped from the door behindVallian ."Con!Here !"
The boy tossed him a six-shooter and Con caught it deftly. Red's gun
bellowed, going off into the dirt at Con's boot-toe, and Con opened fire with
the second gun. Bullet after bullet smashed intoHyle . He wavered, staggered,
started to fall, but lifted the gun and through a mask of blood, aimed it
atVallian .
"Nobody ever ... ever ..." His voice trailed away and he swayed, slowly his
knees buckled and he went to his knees on the ground and slowly straightened
one leg and was dead.
"Vallian?"McKaskelcame from the house. "Are you all right?"
Tom sat on the ground where he had fallen after throwing the gun toVallian ,
staring at him, shocked.
Susanna stood in the door, her apron caught up in her hands, staring at him.
ThrustingMcKaskel's pistol into hisbelt, Con began automatically thumbing
shells into his own gun. Then he spun the cylinder and dropped it into its
holster.
"Con?Look!" Susanna's voice was weak.
He turned sharply.
The Huron was riding up through the clearing, walking his horse. Across the
saddle before him was a quarter of antelope. He walked his horse slowly
forward, and when close by, turned his mount and handed the meat to an
astonishedDuncan .
"It has been a pleasure," he said quietly, and turning his horse rode away
down the clearing toward the river.
About the Author
"I think of myself in the oral tradition of a troubadour, a village
taleteller, the man in the shadows of the campfire. That's the way I'd like to
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be remembered as a storyteller.A good storyteller."
It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world recreated in
his novels as Louis DearbornL'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 inJamestown,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, assessment miner,
and officer on tank destroyers 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 theMojave 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 theUnited States in 1953. Every one of his more than 100
books is in print; there are nearly 230 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
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