Why I Love Louis L'Amour. Louis Shalako.

He loved the stories.

Louis Shalako

Why I Love Louis L’Amour.

 

I love Louis L’Amour books and stories. I like the highly-romanticized version of the American West, which is only half myth. Some of it might even be real. And a lot of the rest is bullshit—

We’ll talk about that some other time.

I suppose it’s the action, the adventure, the escape into a world where the moral questions are easy enough.

It’s good versus evil, no mistaking that.

One must assume the characters are engaging, the women beautiful, the villains are clearly the villains. The landscapes in the background speak for themselves.

Louis L’Amour is one of the few authors that can regularly bring a tear to my eye. This is when the male character arrives in town, immediately goes for the most beautiful girl in town, and often noting that he’s going to have to buy a cow—for the milk, right, like when they marry, settle down, and have lots and lots of children. That’s pure romance, and even men like a little romance once in a while.

This is the character with a bag of peach pits and cherry pits and apple seeds to plant when he gets his own spread…a hard worker, someone with a dream, a story to tell, and not afraid of a fight.

Coming from an interesting background, not without its hardships, L’Amour had one hell of a resume.

From Wikipedia:

“Louis Dearborn LaMoore was born in Jamestown, North Dakota, on March 22, 1908, the seventh child of Emily Dearborn and veterinarian, local politician, and farm equipment broker Louis Charles LaMoore (who had changed the French spelling of the name L'Amour). His mother had Irish ancestry, while his father was of French-Canadian descent. His father had arrived in Dakota Territory in 1882. Although the area around Jamestown was mostly farm land, cowboys and livestock often traveled through Jamestown on their way to or from ranches in Montana and the markets to the east. Louis played Cowboys and Indians in the family barn, which served as his father's veterinary hospital, and spent much of his free time at the local library, the Alfred E. Dickey Free Library, particularly reading the works of 19th-century British historical boys' author G. A. Henty. L'Amour once said, (Henty's works) enabled me to go into school with a great deal of knowledge that even my teachers didn't have about wars and politics.

After a series of bank failures devastated the economy of the upper Midwest, Dr. LaMoore and Emily took to the road. Removing Louis and his adopted brother John from school, they headed south in the winter of 1923. Over the next seven or eight years, they skinned cattle in west Texas, baled hay in the Pecos Valley of New Mexico, worked in the mines of Arizona, California and Nevada, and in the sawmills and lumber camps of the Pacific Northwest. It was in colorful places like these that Louis met a wide variety of people, upon whom he later modeled the characters in his novels, many of them actual Old West personalities who had survived into the 1920s and 1930s.

Making his way as a mine assessment worker, professional boxer, and merchant seaman, Louis traveled the country and the world, sometimes with his family, sometimes not. He visited all of the western states plus England, Japan, China, Borneo, the Dutch East Indies, Arabia, Egypt, and Panama, finally moving with his parents to Choctaw, Oklahoma in the early 1930s. There, he changed his name to the original French spelling L'Amour and settled down to try to make something of himself as a writer.”

Something has been said about the Social Darwinism of some of his later books. It’s not unlikely he would be a conservative, a Republican. It went with the terrain. These were hardy, independent, self-reliant people who had overcome all odds, (those who didn’t die young), which is a recurrent theme of his stories after all. The fact that they’re not preachy or beat the reader over the head with it, is what helps to make them readable in the first place. I doubt if he had much sympathy for the truly criminal or the irresponsible or the just plain no-accounts.

Louis was not a lazy man and neither am I.

One of his more popular titles is the book and film entitled Shalako.

In a kind of tribute to a writer of what was, essentially, pulp, my name is Louis Shalako. If a name has any power, and I believe that it does, this is a great name and a wonderful homage to Louis L’Amour. Louis is of course French, and the Zuni Shalako is a celebration of the winter solstice, a time of rebirth, renewal, and consequently, great magic.

It is also a tribute to myself.

It’s very symbolic, but in a sense, I have remade myself. I wanted to make a few changes and so I did. All I ever really wanted to do, was to write pulp—genre fiction, ladies and gentlemen. I doubt if L’Amour set out to sell 200 million copies, that’s a ludicrous proposition. What he said, was that he would ‘try to make something of himself as a writer’. You have to admit, the gentleman was very successful. And imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

It’s interesting that his father Anglicized the name but Louis changed it back.

L’Amour means love in French. This is pure deduction, but this is why the man changed it back. Louis loved the world he saw around him, the people, the places, and the times he lived in. He love the land and its history. It was his own form of tribute, far more so than LaMoore, if we think about it.

In that sense, he is a kind of inspiration to us all.

As a very wise man once said, love your customer.

And if you don't love something, you're going to hate everything, and that is no way to be, which is just plain miserable.

***

A bizarre anecdote. My uncle Ed ordered a sign to go out in front of the family business. When the sign arrived, it read E.S. Ambrose, Monuments. Authorized dealer for Rock of Ages. (A brand-name of the time, from a big quarry up in Quebec. He sold tombstones.) The correct spelling was Ambroise. About as French as you can get, right. But Sarnia was an English speaking town in Ontario. Ed being Ed, instead of boxing it up and sending it back, (at his own expense no doubt), he decided to live with it, although he’d probably still have the correct name on his driver’s license and stuff like that.

I'll need three tombstones...

END

 

Louis L'Amour. (Wiki)

A Lesson For Us All. Zach Neal.

The Zuni Shalako.

John Wayne as Reactionary.

Shalako. The film.

Louis Shalako has books and stories on Amazon.

Thank you for reading.

Dead Reckoning, Chapter Thirty. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery #10. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

“How much authorization do we need.”

It was one hell of a question.

Alphonse had finally been located. Roger, as it turned out, was in some big meeting with the Minister and a bunch of other bigwigs, and would be out of touch for quite some time according to his personal secretary.

“Fuck. Is the car gassed up?” Hubert would have liked to have had the opportunity to phone home and let Emanuelle know what was up.

“Both tanks.” Alphonse nodded and Garnier grinned.

“Both tanks—” He and Eugenie had laughed at that one.

Eugenie was still there, unable to tear herself away. She was also aware of Hubert’s marital status, what with her job and all.

“Would you like me to give Emanuelle a call?”

“Yes. Thank you. Thank you, ever so much. Boys, fuck it. Let’s go.”

They could buy a tooth-brush or whatever at a truck stop. Hubert still had a fair whack of cash on hand—he hadn’t actually gotten around to turning it in, due to the fact that LeBeaux was still missing, and rendering accounts would have been complicated by that fact.

It would have left too many loose ends and the accountants absolutely hated that.

So did he—

He sat down and cranked a fresh sheet into the typewriter.

He looked at the Mademoiselle.

“This note’s for Roger, or Levain, okay? Make sure he sees all of this stuff, please. Call down and let your boss know what we’re doing, okay. Tell him to keep it under his hat.” His hands flew over the keys and fuck the typos anyways.

“It’s authorized—” Alphonse. “Authorized by events.”

“Don’t you worry, Alphonse. I’ll make it stick.” And she would, too.

They were already grabbing their hats and bolting for the hall. Hubert scooted back and slammed open a desk drawer.

“My gun.” He held it up to show her and then he remembered one last thing. “Ah—please answer the phone, and make a note of it. Name, phone and incident report number. Someone will be back soon enough…”

Then he was gone.

Hopefully, but Levain, LeBref, Firmin…Margot. Someone would be along.

Looking around, Eugenie picked a chair and settled into it.

She might be in for a wait. She reached for a phone, as Monsieur Piffard would be wondering just exactly where she’d gotten off to.

 

***

 

"...thirteen hours, gentlemen."

Unbelievable—

“Thirteen hours, gentlemen. Sure beats taking the locals all the way—eight hundred and something, ah, sixteen, fucking kilometres. Probably a record run, when you think about it.” Alphonse pulled a little black book from the glovebox, reaching across a bleary-eyed Garnier’s semi-inert form to do it. “Thirteen hours and seven minutes.”

Giving the tip of his pencil a lick, he began noting it all down for posterity under the overhead light.

“Oh, Jesus.” It was well before dawn, a moonless night, and the stars blazed over the mountainside.

Hubert had been cramped up in the back seat for about the last five hours, although they’d rotated through, each of them taking a shift at the wheel, and each of them having some time to stretch the legs at one or two short stops along the way. He’d been trying for some kind of fitful sleep, and not having much luck so far. Time for that had run out.

Putting the book away again, Alphonse reached under the seat and pulled out a holster with a big, black revolver in it. Opening up the door, he stuck out a leg, but had to pause and kind of think about it for a second.

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Oh, Jesus, is right. Fuck, is more like it.” Martin Garnier was stiff and sore, not so much from the bumpy ride, sheer hell along some stretches, but also from bracing, just to hold himself in place in imminent expectations of a deadly crash, and taking up permanent residence as the saying went.

Alphonse in particular, had raced through the night, out on the open road and with traffic light.

“I can’t believe it—have you ever considered Le Mans, or the Grand Prix or anything like that…the Mille Miglia, perhaps?” Garnier.

“No. Not really. Those guys are mostly pussies anyways. But, we did it.” Alphonse. “We have arrived, gentlemen. Make sure she’s locked up.”

Two more car doors opened, as cautiously and as quietly as possible. They were at the gate to the logging road. The engine ticked softly as things cooled down under the hood. They could smell hot oil and dirt, mixed together in about equal proportions. What had once been scrupulously-clean bodywork was now slathered in road dust. There were insects all over the front end and windshield, and bits of asphalt stuck on behind the fenders, down low. This from an unfortunate road-building project. They’d had no choice but to slow down to a ludicrous twenty-five kilometres per hour, and to sit and wait when the flagman said. Just about then, it was like all of them at once had this terrible, sudden urge to shit—sheer tension, but there you have it.

Hubert, with the knapsack slung over one shoulder, had just closed the rear passenger door when Martin went all wobbly and he had to catch him on the way to the ground.

“Whoa, Buddy, hang on there—”

Alphonse hurried around the front of the vehicle to grab on and help hold Martin up.

“Altitude sickness.”

“Sure—and maybe a touch of carbon monoxide poisoning too.” As for Hubert, he was a bit light-headed himself. “Fuck.’

“It’s okay, guys. I just stood up a little too fast, that’s all.” Martin planted his feet and sort of shook them off, as by the looks of him he wasn’t ready yet, and they weren’t quite ready to let go—

He gave them a wacky grin—

“Anyone got a smoke?”

“Come on boy, stand up straight. Put your hand on the roof. Take a couple of long, slow breaths and blow out hard.”

“All right, all right.”

“Right. We go in, dead silent. No talking. Five metres apart, guns drawn, safeties on—got it? Let’s not shoot each other in the ass, okay.” He held up a small pair of binoculars, hanging on a strap about the neck. “Let’s get in as close as we can and maybe get a look at the place.”

Hubert nodded.

“Sure, Alphonse. Whatever you say. Do you want to lead off?”

Without a word, the old veteran slipped under the gate, just a big steel pipe across a couple of posts, all painted yellow, and then headed up the trail, and very dark it was in there too. He slowed up while they could still see him, waiting.

The crickets, which had reigned supreme, had gone dead quiet as this new presence made itself known.

“Come on, buddy.” It was barely a whisper, and with Martin following along, Hubert had better get going or they’d never catch him.

“I’m all right.”

Martin slung his own pack and by this time it was well over five metres. Ducking low, he went under the gate, pistol drawn but not cocked…not just yet.

Just to be sure, he found the safety button.

One little push, and that is all it takes, he thought.

She’s all set to go.

END

Previous.

Chapter One, Scene One.

Chapter One, Scene Two.

Chapter Two.

Chapter Three.

Chapter Four.

Chapter Five.

Chapter Six.

Chapter Seven.

Chapter Eight.

Chapter Nine.

Chapter Ten.

Chapter Eleven.

Chapter Twelve.

Chapter Thirteen.

Chapter Fourteen.

Chapter Fifteen.

Chapter Sixteen.

Chapter Seventeen.

Chapter Eighteen.

Chapter Nineteen.

Chapter Twenty.

Chapter Twenty-One.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

Chapter Twenty-Three.

Chapter Twenty-Four.

Chapter Twenty-Five.

Real change is incremental.

Chapter Twenty-Six.

Chapter Twenty-Seven.

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

Real Change is Incremental.

Louis has books and stories available from Google Play.

 

 

Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dead Reckoning, Chapter Eight. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

The trail wound down, slippery in places, back and forth, left and right, down into the ravine, and finally they came to the river. The underbrush was much reduced, it was much more open between the trees, the result of plenty of feet wandering around. They weren’t all fishermen, some would simply be sightseers. It might be a nice place for a picnic. Some might be birdwatchers, or hunters in season. The sky was there, the trees had opened up above the actual river, and it was clear that people came there often enough, with the gleam of an old wine bottle almost overgrown with long grass making its own point. The smell of the conifers was making itself known, a revelation in itself on some level. That air was very clean.

The rushing water drowned out all but the loudest of other noises, and they found themselves raising their voices to talk.

It would explain why the nephew hadn’t heard anything in particular, as the pair agreed.

“Well, we might as well have a look.” The water was going from left to right, and the land seemed to generally rise to the left.

“Hold on.” Hubert unlimbered the pack, pulling out a camera he had borrowed from the technical boys downstairs.

“Hey. That’s using your head.”

Muttering to himself, mostly, Hubert fiddled with it, and took a couple of shots, upstream and downstream, one across the river, one sort of down into the water…just to get the general impression. One final shot, back up the way they had come in, which was a kind of slot, with tall buttresses of gnarled rock rising up on either side, a few shrubs growing out of cracks in the rock, and that sticky, sloping muddy spot right at the bottom, where it had been LeBeaux’s turn to almost go down.

“Okay.” He put it away. “What’s next.”

LeBeaux picked left, and they began following the trail that way, with rocks and boulders sticking up out of the ground here and there. At that particular spot, the river was perhaps ten metres wide, studded with rocks, swirling currents, and barely a third of a metre deep. While an unconscious person could drown in a couple of centimetres of water, assuming they were face-down, it was difficult to see how a body wouldn’t get caught up, wedging itself between two boulders. There were places where the current was much less, and the water much shallower. There were exposed and sunken gravel beds and submerged logs, tiny water-weeds trailing in the current, with snags sticking up in places. You couldn’t really see down into the Seine, not very far and certainly not in any great detail. This was different, and the clarity of the water, shallow as it was, was astounding.

The water came down in foaming white cataracts, louder now, and the land on both sides of the narrowing channel was a few metres up from the water, forming a slot, picturesque but also daunting. A few metres upstream, a fallen tree, still half rooted, showed the hazard of falling in. It wouldn’t do to get caught under there.

“That would be sheer hell at high water.” How Hubert knew that was perhaps more instinctive than actual knowledge.

He could sort of visualize two or even three times as much water coming through that, and thinking it through, the water levels would rise and fall accordingly, all along its course. In late summer, the thing might drop off to little more than a babbling brook.

At high water, they might be up to their waists at this point.

“Well, we can climb, or we can break out the waders.” LeBeaux was non-committal.

“Let’s try the trail, first. I’d like to find one of these so-called pools. It’s a popular spot.” Hubert kicked at a rusted tin can just for emphasis.

He’d also noted the remains of a fire-pit, with the blackened ends of bits of wood and a ring of pale rocks, a heap of sodden ashes as much as anything. One or two little bits of paper, candy-wrappers most likely, and a few cigarette butts, none of them particularly fresh. The only thing missing so far would be the used condoms, as for that, it was only a matter of time, and perhaps looking a little further into the bushes. Somewhere around here, there would almost have to be a pair of sodden underpants, abandoned for any number of reasons, and those told a kind of story as well.

“Tell you what.” Hubert slid out of his pack and climbing gingerly in the boulders and the undergrowth, hung it on a broken branch sticking out of a tall pine or something like that.

Pulling out the camera, he slung it around his neck and strapped the bag closed again.

“What.”

He leaned the rod in there and now, without so much of a load, the way up looked much easier.

“I’ll tell you what. We’ll go a hundred, two hundred metres, just to get a look. No more.” He looked behind. “We’ll come back here and then work our way downstream a ways.”

Recalling the map, he pulled it out of an inner pocket and had another look.

“Hubert.”

“Yes, my young friend?”

“I think I’m in love.”

Hubert, taken by surprise, threw his head back and laughed, really laughed, for the first time in days. It was a kind of relief, offset by a sudden guilt at the thoughts of enjoying himself in the place where Gilles had died. The moment passed quickly.

He shook his head, tucking the map away.

“Now that, is just plain precious.”

Hopefully, that would shut him up for a while.

***

After thrashing around on the riverbank for a half an hour, forty-five minutes, they had determined that the river just got smaller and smaller as they went along, and with numerous side-creeks, gushing torrents, coming in from right and left, the ground got rougher and rougher in the going. At some point, it seemed to go straight up, and the terrain was near-impassible. Short stretches of trail visible on the other side of the river were just more of the same, and possibly worse. The roar of water was such, there almost had to be a waterfall up there, but they just couldn’t see it. They weren’t there to see waterfalls, and it would seem obvious that Maintenon’s body wouldn’t have gone upstream.

Finally, they had worked their way back down again, picking up Hubert’s pack along the way. Finding their original clearing, there was another man there, with a pole, and a little bag slung over a shoulder.

The fellow looked to be in his mid-thirties, healthy enough, ruddy in the complexion, with blue eyes, and clad in sturdy working-man’s clothing which probably came from the very same store in town. There were lures, flies, tucked into the hatband of a battered fedora hat, which was interesting.

“Are you catching any?” A natural enough question.

“Ah, no. No, not yet.” LeBeaux shrugged. “We were looking for a good spot.”

“Oh. Try a little further down.” The fellow unslung the bag, setting it down on a rock.

He began to unlimber the fishing rod, which was in two pieces…he looked around for a place to sit, but not before a quick nod.

“Good luck to you.”

“Thank you, and the same to you.”

They moseyed on down the river.

“There’s a trail going up the other side.”

Hubert pointed and LeBeaux had a look.

“So there is. Huh.” A little further on, there was another side trail, this time on their side of the river, which was indeed wider and deeper now. “Deer maybe—or people, maybe.”

"...so, are you catching any...?"

LeBeaux nodded.

There was the sound of waterfalls back in the woods up there, perhaps a small one anyways, and the trail probably led up there. People loved waterfalls of any size and shape. There was no such thing as an ugly waterfall. Hubert didn’t mind them himself, in fact the place was sublime. He didn’t mind it at all, and at some point, just for the sake of appearances, they might as well cast a line and try their luck. It would be just their bad luck to catch an actual fish, although they could always put it back—the key thing there was to get the hook out without inflicting too much damage. He knew that much—

The river, far from straight, cut back and forth, left and right…always downhill, always looking for the path of least resistance.

“Well, I’m sort of getting it now.” Another ridge of rock rose up before them, with the narrow trail a zig-zag of bare clay, and yet the river had cut its own cleft. “Maybe this is where we get out the waders…and get into that water.”

The water was curiously flat, with eddies coming up and swirling around, with little currents turning around and going upstream, boulders visible at the surface and shadows deep in the depths. This water was darker, greener down at the bottom.

Hubert shook his head.

“That’s the first really deep pool we’ve seen. Let’s keep going—” There didn’t seem to be any dead bodies in there, but at least they could sort of recognize the possibility—the river was long, and the country was very rough indeed.

There didn’t seem to be too many fish in there either.

Some of the little side creeks and ravines were positively choked with boulders and dead logs, and jams of smaller debris. Something with just a trickle of water coming through the blockage was merely a scale model of something much bigger, on the main river and just around the next corner. He was starting to get it now.

He was no frontiersman, no woodsman, but now that he’d had a look—

They said the cliffs were near-vertical further down, and only a mountain goat could ever get down there.

Poor old Gilles might very well be caught under a logjam further down.

Merde.

 

END

 

Louis has books and stories available from Amazon.

Check out A Stranger In Paris, available in ebook and audiobook form from Google Play.

Chapter One, Scene One.

Chapter One, Scene Two.

Chapter Two.

Chapter Three. 

Chapter Four. 

Chapter Five.

Chapter Six.

Chapter Seven. 

  

Thank you for reading.