Louis LAmour - Lando: The Sacketts Series, Book 8

Lando is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

2010 Bantam Books Mass Market Edition

Copyright 1962 by Louis & Katherine LAmour Trust

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B ANTAM B OOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in paperback in the United States by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1962.

eISBN: 978-0-553-89934-4

Map: William and Alan McKnight

www.bantamdell.com

v3.1

Their story is the story of the American frontier, an unforgettable saga of the men and women who tamed a wilderness and built a nation with their dreams and their courage.

Created by master storyteller Louis LAmour, the Sackett saga brings to life the spirit and adventures of generations of pioneers. Fiercely independent and determined to face any and all challenges, they discovered their destiny in settling a great and wild land.

Each Sackett novel is a complete, exciting historical adventure. Read as a group, they tell the thrilling epic tale of a country unlike any the world has ever known. And no one writes more powerfully about the frontier than Louis LAmour, who has walked and ridden down the same trails as the Sackett family he has immortalized. The Sackett novels represent LAmour at his very best and are one of the greatest achievements of a truly legendary career.

SACKETTS LAND circa 1600

TO THE FAR BLUE MOUNTAINS circa 16001620

THE WARRIORS PATH circa 1620s

JUBAL SACKETT circa 1620s

RIDE THE RIVER circa 1840s1850s (before Civil War)

THE DAYBREAKERS circa 18701872

LANDO circa 18731875

SACKETT circa 18741875

MOJAVE CROSSING circa 18751879

THE SACKETT BRAND circa 18751879

THE SKY-LINERS circa 18751879

THE LONELY MEN circa 18751879

MUSTANG MAN circa 18751879

GALLOWAY circa 18751879

TREASURE MOUNTAIN circa 18751879

RIDE THE DARK TRAIL circa 18751879

LONELY ON THE MOUNTAIN circa 18751879

We Sacketts were a mountain folk who ran long on boy children and gun-shooting, but not many of us were traveled men. And that was why I envied the Tinker.

When first I caught sight of him he was so far off I couldnt make him out, so I taken my rifle and hunkered down behind the woodpile, all set to get in the first shot if it proved to be a Higgins.

Soon as I realized who it was, I turned again to tightening my mill, for I was fresh out of meal and feeling hunger.

Everybody in the mountains knew the Tinker. He was a wandering man who tinkered with everything that needed fixing. He could repair a clock, sharpen a saw, make a wagon wheel, or shoe a horse.

Fact was, he could do almost anything a body could think of that needed doing, and he wandered up and down the mountains from Virginia to Georgia just a-fixing and a-doing. Along with it, he was a pack peddler.

He carried a pack would have put a crick in a squaws back, and when he fetched up to my cabin he slung it down and squatted on his heels beside it.

If you reckoned I was a Higgins, he said, you can put it out of mind. Your Cousin Tyrel cut his notch for the last Higgins months ago. You Sacketts done cleaned them out.

Not this Sackett. I never shot ary a Higgins, although thats not to say I wouldnt had they come at me.

Tyrel, him an Orrin, they taken out for the western lands. Looks to me like youre to be the last of the Sacketts of Tennessee.

Maybe I will and maybe I wont, said I, a-working at my mill. Ive given thought to the western lands myself, for a man might work his life away in these mountains, and nothing to show for it in the end.

The Tinker, he just sat there, not saying aye, yes, or no, but I could see he had something on his mind, and given time would have his say.

Youre the one has the good life, I said. Always a-coming and a-going along the mountains and down to the Settlements.

There was a yearning in me to be off the mountain, for Id lived too long in the high-up hills, knowing every twisty creek to its farthest reaches, and every lightning-struck tree for miles.

Other than my cabin, the only places I knew were the meetinghouse down to the Crossing where folks went of a Sunday, and the schoolhouse at Clinchs Creek where we went of a Saturday for the dancing and the fighting.

Tinker, I said, Ive been biding my time until you came along, for come sunup it is in my mind to walk away from the mountains to the western lands.

Filling the mills hopper, I gave the handles a testing turn, then added, If youve a mind to, Id like you to come with me.

Now, the Tinker was a solitary man. A long-jawed man, dark as any Indian, but of a different cast, somehow, and hed an odd look to his yellow eyes. Some said he hailed from foreign lands, but I knew nothing of that, nor ought of the ways of foreign folk, but the Tinker knew things a body could scarcely ken, and held a canny knowledge of uncanny things.

Beside a fire of an evening his fingers worked a magic with rope or yarn, charming queer, decorative things that women took fancy to, but the likes of which none of us had ever seen.

I have given it thought, Lando, he answered me, but I am a lone man with no liking for company.

So it is with me. But now it is in my mind to go to the western lands and there become rich with the things of this earth. You have the knack for the doing of things, and I have a knack for trade, and together we might do much that neither could do alone.

Aye you have a knack for trade, all right. A time or two you even had the better of me.

A time or two he said? Every time. And well he knew it, too, but it was not in me to bring that up.

Except for one thing, I said. You never would trade me a Tinkers knife.

He took out his pipe and settled to smoke, and I knew it was coming, this thing he had on his mind. You have enemies. Is that why you have chosen to leave at this time?

It ired me that he should think so, but I held my peace, and when I spoke at last, my voice was mild.

Will Caffrey and his son? They have reason to fear me, and not I to fear them. It was my fathers mistake to leave me with Will Caffrey to be reared by him, but pa was not himself from the grief that was on him, and in no condition for straight thinking.

Caffrey had a good name then, the Tinker said, although a hard-fisted man and close with money. Only since he became a rich man has he become overbearing.