Louis LAmour - The Rider of Lost Creek: Kilkenny Series, Book 1

L ANCE WENT AROUND the bend at a dead run, drew up sharply and hit the ground. Winchester in hand, running all out. Flattening himself behind a hummock of sand and sagebrush, he peered through. He moved, trying to see better and a bullet kicked sand into his eyes. He slid back into the wash.

Spotted me, damn him!

He sprang to the saddle and circled farther, then again tried the bank. Now he could see the nest of rock from which the killer had first fired.

Nobody was in sight. Then he caught a flicker of movement higher on the hill.

The killer was stalking him!

Crouching low, Lance watched a gap in the rocks. When he caught a shadow there, only a blob of darkness from where he huddled, he fired.

It was only a snap shot, quick, offhand, and it clipped the boulder, ricocheting off into the fading light, whining wickedly.

Then it began, a deadly game of chess, with each man holding a rifle, each maneuvering for a killing shot.

NOVELS

Bendigo Shafter

Borden Chantry

Brionne

The Broken Gun

The Burning Hills

The Californios

Callaghen

Catlow

Chancy

The Cherokee Trail

Comstock Lode

Conagher

Crossfire Trail

Dark Canyon

Down the Long Hills

The Empty Land

Fair Blows the Wind

Fallon

The Ferguson Rifle

The First Fast Draw

Flint

Guns of the Timberlands

Hanging Woman Creek

The Haunted Mesa

Heller with a Gun

The High Graders

High Lonesome

Hondo

How the West Was Won

The Iron Marshal

The Key-Lock Man

Kid Rodelo

Kilkenny

Killoe

Kilrone

Kiowa Trail

Last of the Breed

Last Stand at Papago Wells

The Lonesome Gods

The Man Called Noon

The Man from the Broken Hills

The Man from Skibbereen

Matagorda

Milo Talon

The Mountain Valley War

North to the Rails

Over on the Dry Side

Passin Through

The Proving Trail

The Quick and the Dead

Radigan

Reillys Luck

The Rider of Lost Creek

Rivers West

The Shadow Riders

Shalako

Showdown at Yellow Butte

Silver Canyon

Son of a Wanted Man

Taggart

The Tall Stranger

To Tame a Land

Tucker

Under the Sweetwater Rim

Utah Blaine

The Walking Drum

Westward the Tide

Where the Long Grass Blows

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

Beyond the Great Snow Mountains

Bowdrie

Bowdries Law

Buckskin Run

The Collected Short Stories of Louis LAmour (vols. 15)

Dutchmans Flat

End of the Drive

From the Listening Hills

The Hills of Homicide

Law of the Desert Born

Long Ride Home

Lonigan

May There Be a Road

Monument Rock

Night over the Solomons

Off the Mangrove Coast

The Outlaws of Mesquite

The Rider of the Ruby Hills

Riding for the Brand

The Strong Shall Live

The Trail to Crazy Man

Valley of the Sun

War Party

West from Singapore

West of Dodge

With These Hands

Yondering

SACKETT TITLES

Sacketts Land

To the Far Blue Mountains

The Warriors Path

Jubal Sackett

Ride the River

The Daybreakers

Sackett

Lando

Mojave Crossing

Mustang Man

The Lonely Men

Galloway

Treasure Mountain

Lonely on the Mountain

Ride the Dark Trail

The Sackett Brand

The Sky-Liners

THE HOPALONG CASSIDY NOVELS

The Riders of the High Rock

The Rustlers of West Fork

The Trail to Seven Pines

Trouble Shooter

NONFICTION

Education of a Wandering Man

Frontier

T HE S ACKETT C OMPANION :

A Personal Guide to the
Sackett Novels

A T RAIL OF M EMORIES:

The Quotations of Louis LAmour,

compiled by Angelique LAmour

POETRY

Smoke from This Altar

THE RIDER OF LOST CREEK
A Bantam Book

PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam edition published August 1976
Bantam reissue / March 1999
Bantam reissue / July 2005
Bantam reissue / March 2008

Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York

This 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.

Photograph of Louis LAmour by John HamiltonGlobe Photos, Inc.

All rights reserved
Copyright 1976 by Louis & Katherine LAmour Trust

Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-553-89964-1

www.bantamdell.com

v3.1

A LONE COWHAND riding a hard-pressed horse stepped down from the saddle and whipped the dust from his hat by a few stiff blows against his chaps. He stood for an instant looking up and down the street, crowded with buckboards, saddle horses and men. It was ten oclock in the morning but Dodge was a twenty-four-hour town with thirty thousand head of cattle held on the grass outside of town, and more coming in every day.

Pushing his way through the bat-wing doors, he crossed the almost empty room to the bar. Rye, he said, and glanced quickly around the room.

Only two men stood at the bar at this hour, a burly cattle-buyer and a drummer, the latter still only half awake and nursing a hangover from the night before.

Several other men played cards at the scattered tables, all within range of his voice.

Never wouldve believed it, the cowhand said, but theyre stringin wire on the plains of Texas!