"l'amour, louis - the sackett companion" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Amour Louis)

To write well of the West one must understand not only what happened here, but what caused it to happen.

'^'^'*-'*-'*-'*-'*-'*-'*-'*-'*-'*-'^'*-'*-"*-^'*-'v'^'^

THE SACKETT COMPANION

My own western experience began with stories told by my grandfather, who had fought in the Civil and Indian Wars; my father, who had grown up with a Huron Indian as his only playmate; and an uncle who came to visit at least twice when I was very young. He was an uncle by marriage, a man born with a wanderlust and no desire to own or possess. In his lifetime he covered much of the West from British Columbia to Sonora. He delivered mail, punched cows, managed a large ranch, and did just about everything a man could do in western country.

My father was a veterinarian who worked largely with farm or ranch stock, and doubled as a deputy sheriff for a number of years, off and on. As a veterinarian, one of his jobs was the inspection of cattle shipped through on the Northern Pacific Railroad, and frequently, when I was very young I went with him to the stockyards, listening to his conversations with the cowboys who were riding east with the cattle.

Later, at the age of fifteen, when I started to make my own way in the world, I worked on ranches, in mines, on construction gangs, and in the sawmills and lumber woods. Often I worked beside men who had lived through the younger, wilder days of America's growing years.

As a child I learned to listen and remember, and later, sitting around cow camps and in mining towns, I listened more than I talked. The men and women I met were the survivors. Some survived by skill, some by chance, I learned, as my questions or comments helped revive memories. I had already acquired an interest in everything western.

Although I knew I would be a writer and a teller of tales, I had no idea of writing about the West. It was simply that the stories I heard were exciting, and it was simply that I was interested. The collectors of oral history today would give their eyeteeth for what I was hearing nearly every day, and I'd have given mine for any kind of a recording device, but I had to rely on my memory.

Sometimes today I am not sure just where I learned some-

INTRODUCTION

thing, remembering the information but not the source. Miners I worked with had before my time worked the mines from Butte to Tombstone, from Cripple Creek and Tonopah to Grass Valley. Now they are gone, and the old cattlemen are gone too, taking their memories with them. Four of the old-time gunfighters I knew passed on down the trail in the 1940s, another in '53. As I've said elsewhere, "if you didn't shoot 'em they'd live forever."

If I have written good stories, much is due to those with whom I worked or saw around town, and who contributed their bits of western lore or their memories of the old days and the people who lived them.

Often their opinions varied, and often what they told me in later years was colored by hearsay, but it was what was believed at the time. All this must be weighed in the balance with newspaper accounts, diaries, or other documentation. Somewhere out of it all comes something resembling the truth.

Occasionally there will be an "old-timer" who has told the same story so many times he believes it (and others do, too), telling you "he was there!".

One such story was an anecdote about Wyatt Earp in Dodge City. The only trouble with it was that Wyatt was a gambler in Silverton, Colorado when the so-called event took place and had not been in Dodge for over a year.

Diaries were and are important. They were written at the time events happened and represented the information at least as one man saw it.

Diaries have been a rich source of material for me. Not the events recorded in such journals, but the mental attitude, the moral standards, and the feelings of people at the time. It is all right to imagine, but the imagination must have a takeoff point, it must have a basis in fact.

Newspapers—and nearly every western town had at least one—are valuable sources. Often the reporting was good, and just as often the writing was opinionated, a fact one should

THE SACKETT COMPANION

introduction

easily detect, for people of the time—and that included newspaper reporters—made no secret of their opinions. Many a western editor set his type with a six-shooter on the table beside him, ready to back up his opinions, if need be.

A story can begin anywhere but may be years in germination, the idea lying quietly as the subconscious slowly gathered the materials needed for the telling. Many of my stories have been in my mind for upwards of twenty years before actually being recorded, and in at least two cases, twice that long.

The people who speak so glibly about "cranking them out" have never attempted it. Writing is a matter of temperament and character, and probably no two writers ever wrote alike or approached their writing in the same way. Some are very slow and painstaking, while others write with great speed and facility. Gustave Flaubert was one of the former, William Shakespeare one of the latter.

Flaubert needed seven years to write Madame Bovary, while Shakespeare's entire body of work—thirty-six plays, many sonnets, and several long poems—was produced in sixteen years. Yet even that doesn't begin to tell the story. During those sixteen years Shakespeare was a working actor, an actor-manager, and busy with many details of play production. During much of that time he was appearing in two plays each week, one old play and one new play that still needed some rehearsal.

The event that led to the birth of the Sackett stories began on a hot, dusty morning in New Mexico.