The Rider of Lost Creek: A Novel [Paperback]

Lance Kilkenny has a debt to pay, and he isn’t about to let the friend who saved his life go down in a range war. But when Kilkenny tries to stop the fighting, he finds there’s more at stake than land or wire. Whoever is stirring up trouble has big ideas for the Live Oak country—and an army of hired guns to back them up. Nita Riordan, the beautiful and fiery owner of the Apple Canyon Saloon, warns Lance that the mysterious man orchestrating the conflict wants him dead. Lance realizes that if he doesn’t watch his step, he’ll pay the debt he owes with his own blood.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


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 o'clock 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 would've believed it," the cowhand said, "but they're stringin' wire on the plains of Texas!"

"Ain't practical," the cattle-buyer said dogmatically. "That there's a free range country and it should stalӟ