Novel 1962 - High Lonesome (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Read Free Book Online

and rode up into them. Only when he was sure there was no one there did he motion for Lennie to join him.
    He helped her down, thinking of his wife. Then he took the grub bag down. “Ain’t much,” he said, ashamed of how little there was.
    A man with a daughter should have more. He had felt that way with his wife, too, and it had been a long time before he realized that it was him she loved, and she did not care whether he had much or little. The discovery had been a real shock, for he had never thought of himself as a lovable man, and it stirred him so deeply that he was never quite the same afterward. From that day on his devotion to her had been the ruling passion of his life.
    But he had never been at ease with Lennie…maybe it was that school she had gone to. He had never been to school, and he could write only a little, and read scarcely more.
    He had known little about women, and now with a daughter who had suddenly become a woman he found himself lacking the knowledge he needed. Being a serious man with a profound sense of duty, this lack troubled and worried him.
    The idea that a decent woman could actually like being in a man’s arms went against all his upbringing. His wife had…but his wife occupied a place in his consciousness that set her apart from all other women, and he could not even consider her as a sample of womanhood. She was different. She was very special.
    He found a few sticks of dried-out wood fallen from a dead cedar up on the hill, and a few partly burned sticks left by some previous traveler. In a hollow among the rocks, where they could observe all who approached without themselves being seen, he built a very small fire.
    The wood was completely dry and made no smoke, only a faint shimmer of heat in the air. As he worked, his thoughts returned to Considine.
    No gunfighter, sheriff, or outlaw is ever completely unknown to others of his kind. The grapevine of trail herd, stagecoach, and saloon conversation allowed each to know all the others. Thus Dave Spanyer had known of Considine for a long time, had known how he wore his gun, how many men he had killed, what sort of man he was.
    A few gunfighters, such as the Earps, Hickok, Billy the Kid, John Ringo, and Wes Hardin, because of some accident that drew public attention became better known than many others who were their equal or better. Along the cattle trails the names of Johnny Bull, Joe Phy, Luke Short, Longhair Jim Courtright, Jeff Milton, Dallas Stoudenmire, King Fisher, and Ben Thompson were just as well known.
    Bending over his fire, with occasional glances up and down the trail or at the surrounding country, Dave Spanyer considered all that. He knew of Considine in the way he knew of the others, and Considine had a reputation for being a square man, and one who could stand up and trade bullet for bullet. In Spanyer’s hard, tight little world this made him a man.
    Still, there was only one end to such a life. You died gun in hand or went to prison, and Dave Spanyer was determined that no daughter of his would have anything to do with a gunfighter.
    Yet even as he said these things to himself he was thinking that Pete Runyon had been both an outlaw and a gunfighter, and now he was an officer of the law and a respected citizen. Western people were notoriously ready to forgive…they could forgive anything but lies or cowardice.
    A kangaroo rat moved nearer, sniffing inquisitively at the coffee smell. Lennie broke off a corner of a biscuit and tossed it to him. The tiny animal made a prodigious leap, all of seven feet, then stopped and looked back. Seeing there was no pursuit, the inquisitive little creature scuttled back, hopped around, and finally, after inspecting the piece of biscuit, it picked it up in its forepaws and ate daintily.
    The pause was brief. They moved on, and the sun was hot; cicadas hummed in the greasewood. They saw the trail where three peccaries had crossed the road. Once a rattler sounded off from the shade of