The Proving Trail: A Novel [Paperback]

They tried to tell him that his father had killed himself, but Kearney McRaven knew better. No matter what life had dealt him, his father would go down fighting. And as he delved deeper into the mystery, he learned that just before his father died, the elder McRaven had experienced a remarkable run of luck: he’d won nearly ten thousand dollars and the deed to a cattle ranch.

Not yet eighteen, Kearney was determined enough to track down his father’s murderer and claim what was rightfully his. Now, followed every step of the way by a shadowy figure, Kearney must solve the mystery of his father’s hidden past—a past that concealed a cold-blooded killer who would stop at nothing to keep a chilling secret.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 One


All winter long I held them cattle up on the plateau whilst pa collected my wages down to town. Come first grass I taken them cattle down to Dingleberry’s and I told old Ding what he could do with them, that I had my fill of playin’ nursemaid to a bunch of cows.

He made quite a fuss, sayin’ as how pa had hired me out to him and I’d no choice, bein’ a boy not yet eighteen.

So I told him if he figured I’d no choice, just to watch the tail end of my horse because I was fetchin’ out of there. I knew pa was down to town gamblin’, workin’ with my money as his base, but pa was a no-account gambler, generally speakin’, and couldn’t seem to put a winnin’ hand together.

Nonetheless he might have enough put by to give me a road stake, and I could make do with five dollars, if he had it.

Only when I rode into town pa was dead. He was not only dead, he was bl3+