Louis LAmour - Ride the River The Sacketts Series, Book 5

LOUIS LAMOUR
THE SACKETTS

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 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, a high point in a truly legendary career.

THE CHRONOLOGY OF LOUIS LAMOURS
SACKETT NOVELS

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

Ride the River 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 1983 by the 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 in 1983.

eISBN: 978-0-553-89963-4

Author photograph by John HamiltonGlobe Photos, Inc.

www.bantamdell.com

v3.1

When daylight crested Silers Bald, I taken up my carpetbag and rifle and followed the Middle Prong toward Tuckalucky Cove.

Echo, Ma said, if you be goin to the Settlements you better lay down that rifle-gun an set up a few nights with a needle.

You take them Godeys Ladys Books the pack-peddler left with us and give them study. City folks dress a sight different than we-uns and you dont want to shame yourself.

There was money coming to us and I was to go fetch it home. Pa had wore hisself out scratchin a livin from a side-hill farm, and a few months back he give up the fight and went west, as the sayin was. We buried him yonder where the big oak stands and marked his place with letterin on a stone.

The boys were trappin beaver in the Shining Mountains far to the westward and there was nobody t home but Regal an me, and Regal was laid up. Hed had a mite of a set-to with a cross bear who didnt recognize him for a Sackett. Thered been a sight of jawin an clawin before Regal stretched him out, Regal usin what he had to hand, a knife and a double-bit ax. Trouble was Regal got himself chawed and clawed in the doin of it and was in no shape for travel.

Me, Id been huntin meat for the table since I was shorter than the rifle I carried and the last few years Id killed so much I was sellin meat to the butcher. No sooner did I get a mite of money moren what was needed than I began dreamin over the fancy fixins in Godeys fashion magazine.

When a girl gets to be sixteen, its time she set her cap for a man but Id yet to see one for whom Id fetch an carry. Like any girl, Id done a sight of dreamin, but not about the boys along Fightin Creek or the Middle Prong. My dreams were of somethin far off an fancy. Part of that was due to Regal.

Regal was my uncle, a brother to Pa, and when he was a boy hed gone off a-yonderin along the mountains to the Settlements. We had kinfolk down to Charleston and he visited there before continuing on his way. He told me of folks he met there, of their clothes, the homes they lived in, the theayters they went to an the fancy food.

Regal had been out among em in his time an I suspect hed cut some fancy didoes wherever he went. Regal was tall, stronger than three bulls, and quick with a smile that made a girl tingle to her toes. Many of them told me that very thing, and although many a girl set her cap for Regal, he was sly to all their ways and wary of traps. Oh, he had a way with him, Regal did!

Dont you be in no hurry, he advised me. Youre cute as a button and youve got a nice shape. Youre enough to start any man a-wonderin where his summer wages went.

You hold your horses. No need to marry up with somebody just because the other girls are doin it. Ive been yonder where folks live different and theres a better way than to spend your years churnin milk an hoeing corn. But one word of caution: dont you be lettin the boys know how good you can shoot. Not many men would like to be bested by a spit of a girl not five feet tall!

Im five-feet-two! I protested.

You mind what I say. When you get down to the Settlements, you mind your Ps an Qs. When a man talks to a girl, hes not as honest as he might be, although at the time he half-believes it all himself. Theres times a man will promise a girl anything an forget his promises before the hours up.

Did you make promises like that, Regal?

No, I never. When a woman sees a man she wants, theres no need to promise or even say very much. A woman will come up with better answers than any poor mountain boy could think up. I was kind of shy there at first, then I found it was workin for me so I just kept on bein shy.

Womenfolks have powerful imaginations when it comes to a man, an she can read things into him he never knew was there, and like as not, they aint!

Turning to look back, I could still see Blanket and Thunderhead Mountains and the end of Davis Ridge. It was clouding up and coming on to rain.

Philadelphia had more folks in it than I reckoned there was in the world. When I stepped down from the stage I made query of the driver as to where I was wishful of goin and he stepped out into the street and pointed the way.

The place I was heading for was a rooming-and-boarding house kept by a woman who had kinfolk in the mountains. It was reckoned a safe place for a young girl to stay. Not that I was much worried. I had me an Arkansas toothpick slung in its scabbard inside my dress and a little slit pocket where I could reach through the folds to fetch it. In my carpetbag I carried a pistol.

Most unmarried folks and others who were married ate in boardinghouses, them days. Restaurants were for folks with money or for an evening on the town. Folks who worked in shops and the like hunted places where there was room an board, although some roomed in one place and boarded elsewhere.