During the past week he and Janice had drawn closer together. Nothing had been said, but there seemed to be an understanding between them.
Healy crossed the street and pushed open the door of the saloon. King Mabry was standing at the bar, his hat shoved back on his head, a glass in his hand. He looked bigger and tougher than ever.
Four men played cards nearby. Two men stood at the bar. Healy stepped up to the bar near Mabry.
“A little o’ the Irish,” he said.
Mabry glanced at him as Healy took the bottle and filled his glass. Then Healy shoved the bottle along the bar. “Has the smell o’ the bogs,” he said. “Try it.”
“Thanks.”
Mabry filled his glass. “Luck,” he said, lifting it.
Healy hesitated, then smiled slightly. “Why, yes. Luck to you!”
They drank and Healy put his glass carefully on the bar. “She’s across the street, King. She’ll be coming out any minute.”
Mabry turned toward him. “You love her, don’t you?”
“I’d be a liar if I said no.”
“Then why tell me?”
“You’re a good man, King. A mighty good man. Maybe your luck is better than mine. But a man has to know, doesn’t he, now?”
“He does.”
The door across the street opened and Janice came out, looking up and down the street.
“She’s looking for you, Tom.”
“But maybe she hopes to see you.”
“No,” King Mabry said, “it’s you, Tom. It’s you she’s looking for.”
Tom Healy stood very still and straight, looking at Mabry. Then he held out his hand. “Good-by, King.”
“Adiós.”
They shook hands and Tom Healy went out the door and across the street.
Janice’s hands went out to him. “Tom!” She kissed him lightly. “I was afraid you had run off with some other girl.”
“In this town?” He tucked her hand under his arm. “Wait until we get to San Francisco.”
“Can we get some soup? I’m hungry!”
“Sure.”
Behind them a door closed. Healy heard boot heels on the boardwalk. Then he heard the sound of saddle leather creaking as a stirrup took weight, and a horse turning in the muddy street.
He opened the door of the café and Janice went in ahead of him. Healy glanced back up the street. The big man on the black horse, vaguely outlined in the shadowed street, was watching them. As they stepped inside, Healy thought the horse started forward.
They sat down, Janice’s back to the window. As Tom seated himself, he saw a rider pass the window, walking his horse. For an instant the light caught him, showing only a bit of the saddle, a man’s leg with a gun tied down, and the glistening black flank of a horse. Then he heard the horse break into a trot and he sat holding the menu, his heart beating heavily as he listened to the retreating sound.
He glanced at the grease-stained menu. And then the door opened. Healy felt his stomach go hollow and he looked up.
It was Dodie.
She glanced quickly around the café. “Which of you owns that sorrel outside?”
A cow hand looked up. “I do, ma’am.”
“What’s your price?”
He hesitated, then grinned. “For you, only thirty dollars.”
Swiftly she counted out the money. Then she turned to Healy. She glanced from Janice back to him. “Tom, I—”
“I know,” he said.
She turned quickly and went out the door, and a moment later a second rider passed the window, and the horse broke into a run, a dead run from a standing start.
Light showed on the saddle and a shapely leg, the horse’s flank glistened, and then the sound of pounding hoofs faded gradually away.
“Hey!” The cowpuncher turned a startled face. “She took my saddle!”
“It’s all right,” Healy said. “I’ll buy you a new one.”
Then Tom Healy looked down at the menu. “It’s onion soup,” he said. “They only have one kind.”
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.”
IT 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 bestselling 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), Heller with a Gun, 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 Lonesom
e
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
Mafmhgorda
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
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
HELLER WITH A GUN
A Bantam Book / February 2004
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam edition / March 1984
Bantam reissue / June 1998
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1955 by CBS publications, The Consumer Publishing Division of CBS Inc.
Renwed Copyright © 1983 by Louis and 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:
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eISBN: 978-0-553-89920-7
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