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Ride The River by Louis L'Amourrelease info
Ride The River
by
Louis L'Amour





To Norman Millen

1
When daylight crested Siler's Bald, I taken up my carpetbag and rifle and
followed the Middle Prong toward Tuckalucky Cove.
"Echo," Ma said, "if you be goin' to the Settlements you better lay down that
rifle-gun an' set up a few nights with a needle.
"You take them Godey's Lady's Books the pack-peddler left with us and give them
study. City folks dress a sight different than we-uns and you don't want to
shame yourself."
There was money coming to us and I was to go fetch it home. Pa had wore hisself
out scratchin' a livin' from a side-hill farm, and a few months back he give up
the fight and "went west," as the sayin' was. We buried him yonder where the big
oak stands and marked his place with letterin' on a stone.
The boys were trappin' beaver in the Shining Mountains far to the westward and
there was nobody t' home but Regal an' me, and Regal was laid up. He'd had a
mite of a set-to with a cross bear who didn't recognize him for a Sackett.
There'd been a sight of jawin' an' clawin' before Regal stretched him out, Regal
usin' what he had to hand, a knife and a double-bit ax. Trouble was Regal got
himself chawed and clawed in the doin' of it and was in no shape for travel.
Me, I'd been huntin' meat for the table since I was shorter than the rifle I
carried and the last few years I'd killed so much I was sellin' meat to the
butcher. No sooner did I get a mite of money more'n what was needed than I began
dreamin' over the fancy fixin's in Godey's fashion magazine.
When a girl gets to be sixteen, it's time she set her cap for a man but I'd yet
to see one for whom I'd fetch an' carry. Like any girl, I'd done a sight of
dreamin', but not about the boys along Fightin' Creek or the Middle Prong. My
dreams were of somethin' far off an' fancy. Part of that was due to Regal.

Regal was my uncle, a brother to Pa, and when he was a boy he'd gone off
a-yonderin' along the mountains to the Settlements. We had kinfolk down to
Charleston and he visited there before continuing on his way. He told me of
folks he met there, of their clothes, the homes they lived in, the theayters
they went to an' the fancy food.
Regal had been out among 'em in his time an' I suspect he'd cut some fancy
didoes wherever he went. Regal was tall, stronger than three bulls, and quick
with a smile that made a girl tingle to her toes. Many of them told me that very
thing, and although many a girl set her cap for Regal, he was sly to all their
ways and wary of traps. Oh, he had a way with him, Regal did!
"Don't you be in no hurry," he advised me. "You're cute as a button and you've
got a nice shape. You're enough to start any man a-wonderin' where his summer