Louis LAmour - Mojave Crossing: The Sackett Series, Book 11

Contents

THE SACKETTS

T HEIR STORY IS the story of the American frontier, an unforgettable chronicle 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.

to Parker

T HE S ACKETTS

Sacketts Land

To the Far Blue Mountains

The Warriors Path

Mojave Crossing

Ride the River

The Daybreakers

The Courting of Griselda
(from the collection End of the Drive)

Lando

Sackett

Booty for a Badman
(from the collection War Party)

Mojave Crossing

The Sackett Brand

The Sky-Liners

The Lonely Men

Mustang Man

Galloway

Treasure Mountain

Ride the Dark Trail

Lonely on the Mountain

Chapter 1

W HEN I SAW that black-eyed woman a-looking at me I wished I had a Bible.

There I was, a big raw-boned mountain boy, rougher than a cob and standing six feet three inches in my socks, with hands and shoulders fit to wrassle mustang broncs or ornery steers, but no hand with womenfolks.

Nobody ever claimed that I was anything but a homely man, but it was me she was looking at in that special way she had.

Where we Sacketts come from in the high-up mountains of Tennessee, it is a known thing that if you sleep with a Bible under your pillow it will keep you safe from witches. Before they can do aught to harm you they must count every word in the Bible, and they just naturally cant finish that before daybreak, when they lose their power to hurt.

Yet when I taken a second look at that black-eyed, black-haired woman I thought maybe it was me should do the counting. She was medium tall, with a way about her that set a man to thinking thoughts best kept to himself. She had the clearest, creamiest skin you ever did see, and a mouth that fairly prickled the hair on the back of your neck.

Most of my years Id spent shying around in the mountains or out on the prairie lands, with no chance to deal myself any high cards in society, but believe me, theres more snares in a womans long lashes than in all the creek bottoms of Tennessee. Every time I taken my eyes from that black-haired witch woman it was in me to look back.

My right boot-toe was nudging the saddlebags at my feet, warning me Id no call to take up with any woman, for there were thirty pounds of gold in those bags, not all of it mine.

The worst of it was, I figured things were already shaping for trouble. Three days hard-running Id seen dust hanging over my back trail like maybe there was somebody back there who wanted to keep close to me without actually catching up. And that could only mean that trouble lay ahead.

Now, Im no man whos a stranger to difficulty. No boy who walked out of Tennessee to fight for the Union was likely to be, to say nothing of all that had happened since. Seemed like trouble dogged my tracks wherever I put a foot down, and here was I, heading into strange country, running into a black-eyed woman.

She sat alone and ate alone, so obviously a lady that nobody made a move to approach her. This was a rough place in rough times, but a body would have thought she was setting up to table in Delmonicos or one of those fancy eastern places, her paying no mind to anything or anybody. Except, occasionally, me.

She wasnt all frills and fuss like a fancy woman, for she was dressed simple, but her clothes were made from rich goods. Everything about her warned me Id best tuck in my tail and skedaddle out of there whilst I was able, for trouble doesnt abide only with fancy women. Even a good woman, with her ways and notions, can cause a man more trouble than he can shoot his way out of, and Id an idea this here was no good woman.

Trouble was, there just was no place to run to.

Hardyville was little else but a saloon, a supply store, and a hotel at the crossing of the Colorado. Most of the year it was the head of navigation on the river, but there had been a time or two when steamboats had gone on up to the mines in Eldorado Canyon, or even to Callville.

Come daybreak, I figured to cross the river on the first ferry and take out for the Bradshaw Road and Los Angeles, near the western ocean. It was talked among the Arizona towns that speculators out there would pay eighteen, maybe twenty dollars an ounce for gold, whilst in the mining camps a body could get but sixteen.

It was in my mind to sell my gold in Los Angeles, buy goods and mules, pack across the Mojave Desert and the Colorado, and sell my goods in the mining towns. With luck Id show profit on my gold, and on my goods as well.

Nobody ever claimed I was any kind of a businessman, least of all me, but if a body can buy cheap and sell high he just naturally aint liable to starve. Of course, in all things there was a reason, and in this case it was the difficulty of getting either gold or goods through a country full up with outlaws and Indians. Whilst no businessman, I was pretty fair at getting from here to yonder, so I just bowed my neck and plunged in, figuring wherever a body could go a Smoky Mountain Sackett could go.

Speaking rightly, there were three kinds of Sacketts in Tennessee. The Smoky Mountain Sacketts, the Cumberland Gap Sacketts, and the Clinch Mountain Sacketts. These here last ones, they were a mean outfit and we had no truck with them unless at feuding time, when we were always pleased to have them on our side, for they were mean men in any kind of a shindig. But most of the time we held off from those Clinch Mountain boys.

There were some lowland Sacketts, too, living in the Cumberland Valley, but they were rich Sacketts and we paid them no mind. Pa, he always said we shouldnt hold it against them if they had money; chances were they couldnt hep it, no ways.

All the Sacketts, even those no-account Sacketts from Clinch Mountain, run to boy-children. They had a saying over yonder that if you flung a stone into the brush youd hit a Sackett boy, and likely, although it wasnt said, a Trelawney girl. I dont know what we Sackett boys would have done without the Trelawney girls.

But the only thing I was thinking of now was getting my old saddlebags across the Mojave and to Los Angeles, selling as well as I could, buying as cheap as possible, and getting back to the mines.

Now, when a beautiful woman or a handsome man receives attention it is taken as a matter of course; but I was a plain man, so when this black-eyed woman started paying me mind, I checked my hole card.

Not that Id lacked for attention where women were concernednot, at least, after they came to know me. Nor could it be said that I was downright distrustful of folks. Theres a-plenty of just people in the world, but the flesh is weak and man is prone to sinespecially if a woman is involved.