Sackett's Land: A Novel [Paperback]

After discovering six gold Roman coins buried in the mud of the Devil’s Dyke, Barnabas Sackett enthusiastically invests in goods that he will offer for trade in America. But Sackett has a powerful enemy: Rupert Genester, nephew of an earl, wants him dead. A battlefield promise made to Sackett’s father threatens Genester’s inheritance. So on the eve of his departure for America, Sackett is attacked and thrown into the hold of a pirate ship. Genester’s orders are for him to disappear into the waters of the Atlantic. But after managing to escape, Sackett makes his way to the Carolina coast. He sees in the raw, abundant land the promise of a bright future. But before that dream can be realized, he must first return to England and discover the secret of his father’s legacy.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.Chapter 1
 
It was my devil’s own temper that brought me to grief, my temper and a skill with weapons born of my father’s teaching.
 
Yet without that skill I might have emptied my life’s blood upon the cobblestones of Stamford, emptied my body of blood … and for what?”
 
Until that moment in Stamford it would have been said that no steadier lad lived in all the fen-lands than Barnabas Sackett, nor one who brought better from his fields than I, or did better at the eeling in the fens that were my home.
 
Then a wayward glance from a lass, a moment of red, bursting fury from a stranger, a blow given and a blow returned, and all that might have been my life vanished like a fog upon the fens beneath a summer sun.
 
In that year of 1599 a man of my station did not strike a man of noble birth and expect to live—or if l³'