The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 5: Frontier Stories [Paperback]

The stories of Louis L’Amour are built around the dramatic moments when men and women cast their fears, doubts, and pasts behind them and plunge into the unknown—into split-second decisions with life-and-death consequences. Nowhere is that more evident than in this quintessential collection of stories set on the American frontier. Here L’Amour takes us across a bold, beautifully rendered landscape where old scores haunt new lives, the wrong choice leaves unwitting victims, and strangers may come to trust—or kill—one another.
 
Fugitives, visionaries, fortune seekers, drifters, and young women trying to build homes on a lawless frontier, the characters in these pulse-pounding stories are vintage L’Amour. Together in this vivid, rollicking collection, they bring to life the spirit of adventure and confirm Louis L’Amour’s place in the pantheon of American writers.Our foremost storyteller of the American West,Louis L’Amourhas thrilled a nation by chronicling the adventures of the brave men and woman who settled the frontier. There are more than three hundred million copies of his books in print around the world.No Man's Man

CHAPTER I


He came to a dirty cantina on a fading afternoon. He stood, looking around with a curious eye. And he saw me there in the corner, my back to the wall and a gun on the table, and my left hand pouring tequila into a glass.

He crossed the room to my table, a man with a scholar’s face and a quiet eye, but with lines of slender strength.

“When I told them I wanted a man big enough and tough enough to tackle a grizzly,” he said, “they sent me to you.”

“How much?” I said. “And where’s the grizzly?”

“His name is Henry Wetterling, and he’s the boss of Battle Basin. And I’ll give you a thousand dollars.”

“What do I do?”