Louis LAmour - The Sackett Brand: The Sacketts Series, Book 12

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.

The Sackett Brand 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.

Copyright 1965 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 1965.

eISBN: 978-0-553-89971-9

Photograph of Louis LAmour by John HamiltonGlobe Photos, Inc.
Map by William & Alan McKnight

www.bantamdell.com

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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

Nobody could rightly say any of us Sacketts were what youd call superstitious. Nonetheless, if I had tied a knot in a towel or left a shovel in the fire nothing might have happened.

The trouble was, when I walked out on that point my mind went a-rambling like wild geese down a western sky.

What I looked upon was a sight of lovely country. Right at my feet was the river, a-churning and a-thrashing at least six hundred feet below me, with here and there a deep blue pool. Across the river, and clean to the horizon to the north and east of me, was the finest stand of pine timber this side of the Smokies.

Knobs of craggy rock thrust up, with occasional ridges showing bare spines to the westward where the timber thinned out and the country finally became desert. In front of me, but miles away, a gigantic wall reared up. That wall was at least a thousand feet higher than where I now stood, though this was high ground.

Down around Globe Id heard talk of that wall. On the maps Id seen it was written Mogollon, but folks in the country around called it the Muggy-own.

This was the place we had been seeking, and now I was scouting a route for my wagon and stock. As I stood there on that high point I thought I saw a likely route, and I started to turn away. It was a move I never completed, for something struck me an awful wallop alongside the skull, and next thing I knew I was falling.

Falling? With a six-hundred-foot drop below me? Fear clawed at my throat, and I heard a wild, ugly cry my own cry.

Then my shoulder smashed into an outcropping of crumbly rock that went to pieces under the impact, and again I was falling; I struck again, fell again, and struck again, this time feet first, facing a gravelly slope that threw me off into the air once more. This time I landed sliding on a sheer rock face that rounded inward and let me fall again, feet first.

Brush growing out from the side of the mountain caught me for just a moment, but I ripped through it, clawing for a grip; then I fell clear into a deep pool.

Down I went, and when I thought to strike out and swim, something snagged my pants leg and started me kicking wildly to shake loose. Then something gave way down there under water, and I shot to the surface right at the spillway of the pool.

My mouth gasped for air, and a wave hit me full in the mouth and almost strangled me, while the force of the water swept me between the rocks and over a six-foot fall. The current rushed me on, and I went through another spillway before I managed to get my feet under me in shallow water.

Even then, stepping on a slippery rock, I fell once more, and this time the current dropped me to a still lower pool, almost covered by arching trees. Flailing with arms and legs, I managed to lay hand to a root and tug myself out of the water. There was a dark hole under the roots of a huge old sycamore that leaned over the water, and it was instinct more than good sense that made me crawl into it before I collapsed.

And then for a long time I felt nothing, heard nothing.

It was the cold that woke me. Shivering, shaking, I struggled back to something like consciousness. At first I sensed only the cold and then I realized that somebody was talking nearby.

Whats the boss so wrought up about? He was just a driftin cowpoke.

You aint paid to question the boss, Dancer. He said we were to find him and kill him, and he said we were to hunt for a week if necessary, but he wants the body found and he wants it buried deep. If it aint dead, we kill it.

You funnin me? Why, that poor benighted heathen fell six hundred feet! And you can just bet he was dead before he even started to fall. Macon couldnt miss a shot at that distance, with his target standing still, like that.

That doesnt matter. We hunt until we find him.

The sound of their walking horses faded out, and I lay still on the wet ground, shaking with chill, knowing Id got to get warm or die. When I tried to move my arm it flopped out like a dead thing, it was that numb.

My fingers laid hold of a rock that was frozen into the ground and I hauled myself deeper into the hole. The earth beneath me was frozen mud, but it was shelter of a kind, so I curled up like a new-born baby and tried to think.

Who was I? Where was I? Who wanted me dead, and why?

My thoughts were all fuzzy, and I couldnt sort out anything that made sense. My skull throbbed with a dull, heavy beat, and I squinted my eyes against the pain. One leg was so stiff it would scarcely move, and when I got a look at my hands I didnt want to look at them again. When Id hit the face of the cliff Id torn nearly all the skin off grabbing for a hold. One fingernail was gone.