A name is what a man makes it,” I.
A quiet man I was, and not one to provoke a quarrel, but if set upon I would fight back. I do not say this in boasting, for it was as much a part of me as the beating of my heart. It was bred in the blood-line of those from whom I come, and I could not be other than I am.
My folks built blood into the foundations of this country and I don’t aim to see them torn down for no reason whatsoever.
The clouds hung like dark, blowing tapestries in the gaps of the hills.
Since I was a small boy, I had watched that forest for enemies or for game, and I knew its every mood and shading, how the sunlight fell through the leaves and where the shadows gathered. It held no mysteries for me but much of memory. I had played there as a child with Yance, Jubal, and Brian, later with Noelle. We had climbed its trees, picked berries there, and played hide-and-seek under its branches.
Ma’am,” I said, “I’d have liked it, having you for a ma.
He had fought for a principle, and because it was his nature to fight.
It is a poor sort of man who is content to be spoon-fed knowledge that has been filtered through the canon of religious or political belief, and it is a poor sort of man who will permit others to dictate what he may or may not learn.
All that was speculation, and a man can get carried away by a reasonable theory. Often a man finds a theory that explains things and he builds atop that theory, finding all the right answers... only the basic theory is wrong. But that’s the last thing he will want to admit.
What so many of us who abhor violence often forget is that we have peace and civilized lives because there were men and women who went before us who were willing to fight for our freedom to live in peace.
We must not lose touch with what we were, with what we had been, nor must we allow the well of our history to dry up, for a child without tradition is a child crippled before the world. Tradition can also be an anchor of stability and a shield to guard one from irresponsibility and hasty decision.
What we have most to fear, I believe, are those within our own borders who think less of country than of themselves, who are ambitious for money, for power, for land. Some of these men would subvert anything, anything at all, my dear sir, for their own profit. They would even twist the laws of their own country in their desire to acquire wealth or power.
The word was out that Royal Barnes was huntin’ Kilkenny,” somebody commented. “He was kin to the Webers, you know. Half-brother, I think.
Yet Tanneman was a man grown up to danger and trouble, knowing nothing else, and for the first time he was acting with conscious, deliberate purpose.
Where can a man get a bite to eat?” the cowhand asked. “There’s several restaurants, but if you can do with beef an’ eggs, just set down over yonder and we can fix you up. They’re fixin’ breakfast for the boss right now,” the bartender added, “and I’ll just have them put on something extry.” When the bartender saw.
To my way of thinking there was nothing finer than to top out on a lonely ridge and sit in my saddle with the wind bringing the smell of pines up from the valley below and the sun glinting off the snow of distant peaks. There was an urge to drink from all the hidden springs, catch fish in the lonely creeks, and leave my tracks on all that far, beautiful country.
Navarro lifted a deprecating shoulder and one eyebrow. His eyes had never left the big redhead’s carefully moving hands. The Mexican wore buckskin breeches, hand-tooled boots, and one ivory.
It was the kind of a country where if you worked with a man and ate his bread, you bought some of his troubles, too.
He spoke softly to the horse, and its ears twitched. It was funny about a horse – how much they would give for gentleness. There was no animal that responded so readily to good treatment, and no other animal would run itself to death for a man – except, occasionally, a dog.
We Sackett boys never killed anything we didn’t need to eat unless it was coming at us. A mountain man tries to live with the country instead of against it.