Louis LAmour - Law of the Desert Born

Contents

W ORTH F IGHTING F OR

K IM SARTAIN WAS a rider without illusions. Born and bred in the West, he knew to what extent such a man as Jim Targ could and would go. He knew that with tough, gun-handy riders, he would ordinarily be able to hold all the range he wanted, and that high meadow range was good enough to fight for.

Sartain knew he was asking for trouble, yet there was something in him that resented being pushed around. He had breathed the free air of a free country too long and had the average Americans fierce resentment of tyranny. Targs high-handed manner had got his back up, and his decision had not been a passing fancy. He knew just what he was doing, but no matter what the future held, he was determined to move in on this range and hold it and fight for it if need be.

To my loyal readers, who
will know how to read a brand.

Foreword

L AW OF THE DESERT BORN is the latest collection of short stories I have been putting together in a carefully planned series published by Bantam Books to offer my readers the products of my earlier years as a writer. Like the previous collections, WAR PARTY, THE STRONG SHALL LIVE, BUCKSKIN RUN, and BOWDRIE these are frontier stories. As I have been trying to do in recent collections, I have also included special new notes between the stories. In many cases these are historical notes to illustrate the background of the stories and the society from which they derived.

After so many years legends have grown up, and debunkers with no actual knowledge of western history have made statements accepted by some as the truth. We do not have to imagine what happened in the West; we know. It is well documented in newspaper accounts as well as diaries and memoirs of the time by people who were present.

In several instances I have included some of my personal experiences traveling around the kind of country Ive written about, an approach I enjoyed taking for some of the notes in the first collection of some of my non-frontier stories, YONDERING.

My own travels have not only taken me over all kinds of country but down some pretty mean streets as well. Part of those latter experiences prompted me to write some detective stories for the pulp magazines. Those of my readers who have only been exposed to my frontier stories might find this surprising but over the years I have tried to bring to all kinds of fiction the best storytelling Im capable of, and these detective stories have a lot of action and colorful backgrounds in a period style similar to the stories of Hammett and Chandler.

I mention this because I have been putting together my first collection of some of those early detective stories, THE HILLS OF HOMICIDE, at the same time I have been completing LAW OF THE DESERT BORN. It is unusual to publish two collections so close together but I have worked very hard to do so because, as I have announced on the back cover of this book, I have become aware that a publisher I am in no way associated with has announced publication of two completely unauthorized editions bearing these two titles. Those two books are completely unauthorized editions of some of the same stories that I have collected here. I had absolutely nothing to do with the putting together of the unauthorized editions of these two titles; in fact, for the first time in my career I went to court to try to protect the very rights I have struggled to gain over the yearsto have my work published only as I see fit in the way I feel best serves my readers. The court ruled that since the copyrights in some of my stories had not been properly renewed, this other publisher could publish the original magazine versions in unauthorized collections.

Imagine, this other publisher did not even have enough respect for me to tell me which of my stories they were planning to publish!

The authors of the copyright law were attempting to protect a writers property rights to his work, and protected him for twenty-eight years after which he had a year to renew the copyright for another twenty-eight. Unfortunately, when the stories I recently went to court to try to protect were coming due for renewal, it was at a time when every days work was important if I was to earn a living for myself and my family, and some of the copyrights, in a very few of the stories, were not properly renewed.

In determining the meaning of any law one has to ask: What was the intent of the lawmakers? The intent here was obvious: They intended to protect a writers rights to the work he had produced, not to open a gate to any interloper who might choose to rush in and try to profit from the hard work of someone else.

The new copyright law indicates understanding of the problem. A writers work is now automatically protected for his lifetime plus fifty years.

So that my readers will not be deprived of the authorized, proper presentation of my stories, I have worked around the clock to get ready this collection of frontier stories plus THE HILLS OF HOMICIDE collection of detective fiction which contain not only my revised versions of the stories in the unauthorized books but several additional stories, plus the aforementioned notes of interest.

I have a very good and satisfying sense of my readers from the letters I receive and the personal contact I have had with many of them through the years: As far as I am concernedand Im confident, as far as my fans are concernedany unauthorized editions of any of my fiction does not exist. I feel so strongly about this fact that should any of my readers, during one of my upcoming public appearances, bring me a copy of any unauthorized copy of a book with my name on it, I will refuse to sign it under any circumstances.

Louis LAmour
Los Angeles, California
July 1983

LAW OF THE DESERT BORN

S HAD MARONE CRAWLED out of the water swearing and slid into the mesquite. Suddenly, for the first time since the chase began, he was mad. He was mad clear through. The hell with it! He got to his feet, his eyes blazing. Ive run far enough! If they cross Black River, theyre askin for it!

For three days he had been on the dodge, using every stratagem known to men of the desert, but they clung to him like leeches. That was what came of killing a sheriffs brother, and the fact that he killed in self-defense wasnt going to help a bit. Especially when the killer was Shad Marone.

That was what you could expect when you were the last man of the losing side in a cattle war. All his friends were gone now but Madge.

The best people of Puerto de Luna hadnt been the toughest in this scrap, and they had lost. And Shad Marone, who had been one of the toughest, had lost with them. His guns hadnt been enough to outweigh those of the other faction.

Of course, he admitted to himself, those on his side hadnt been angels. Hed branded a few head of calves himself from time to time, and when cash was short, he had often run a few steers over the border. But hadnt they all?

Truman and Dykes had been good men, but Dykes had been killed at the start, and Truman had fought like a gentleman, and that wasnt any way to win in the Black River country.

Since then, there had been few peaceful days for Shad Marone.

After theyd elected Clyde Bowman sheriff, he knew they were out to get him. Bowman hated him, and Bowman had been one of the worst of them in the cattle war.

The trouble was, Shad was a gunfighter, and they all knew it. Bowman was fast with a gun and in a fight could hold his own. Also, he was smart enough to leave Shad Marone strictly alone. So they just waited, watched, and planned.