Free Novel 1978 - The Proving Trail (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour

enjoyment. He is denying himself all the richness in life. Just as with food, your taste in all things needs experience of flavor. Education is in part just learning to discriminate between ideas, tastes, flavors, sounds, colors, or whatever you wish to mention. The wider your range of taste experience, the greater your possibilities of pleasure, of enjoyment.
    “If evil and hardship come upon you at least you will be aware of what is happening, and you will have some understanding of why. It is better than falling under the axe like some dumb brute in a slaughterhouse who has no awareness of what is happening to him. A wise man can even experience the approach of death with some awareness. It may be the final experience, but it is experience.”
    There was nothing much I could say to that. Yet it ired me to be taken with such contempt. Pa had read a lot to me, and I’d read a good bit myself, when we could find the books. And there was more to be learned than just from books. There was music in the mountains, and lessons wherever grass grew, and a body who kept his eyes open could learn anywhere.
    “Why did you come west?” I asked him straight out. “You could live the way you want to back wherever you came from.”
    “That I could,” he said dryly, “and I shall soon be back there again, living as I wish. Often to attain one’s goals one has to take a few extra steps.” He looked straight at me with a kind of amused contempt. “I have one minor chore. When that is done I shall return, live the life of a country gentleman and leave the pushing and shoving to the rest of these pigs.”
    I had an idea what that minor chore was, and it made me sore to have him speak of it thataway.
    “I ain’t been east since I was a youngster,” I commented, “although pa used to talk about times when the azaleas were in bloom. He was always a man who loved fine horses, too.”
    “He sounds like a most interesting man. Did he give you that gun?”
    “He was murdered,” I said, “by some coward who was afraid to face him. Shot in the back of the head. Had he seen his murderer he would have killed him first.”
    Yant shrugged. “Then the murderer, as you call him, was wise not to be seen, was he not? Yet it sounds more like an execution than a murder.”
    “Does it? I wonder what gave you that idea? Executions are carried out by what pa used to call ‘duly constituted authority’ and in a legal manner. Anyway, pa never did anything to be executed for.”
    “Did he not? I doubt if you were with him all his life, and most men have done something for which they should be hanged.”
    “Do you speak for yourself?”
    He turned those hard, straight eyes on me. They stared unblinking, and I met his gaze. After a moment he shrugged. “You must learn to guard your tongue, boy. A man must answer for his words when he talks with men.”
    “I’ve talked with men since I was six,” I said coolly, “and am prepared to answer for anything I say or have said. Anyway, you spoke of men generally, and I merely wondered if you spoke for yourself too.”
    He did not like me and he did not like the way I replied to him, so he got up and walked away without speaking or looking back. I watched him go, suddenly conscious that Teresa was at my side. “Be careful of him,” she said. “I’m afraid of him.”
    She sat down across from me, and for a moment we looked at one another. I’d never known many girls, or how to deal with them, but with Teresa it seemed no problem. “What are you going to do?” she asked suddenly. “Are you going to stay here? There isn’t much to do, you know.”
    “I’d be gone,” I said “if it weren’t for you…and him.”
    A few people came and went, and after waiting on them she came back to sit with me. Betweentimes I thought about my father and Felix Yant. Somehow there was a connection, and I meant to know what it was.
    “If I leave suddenly,” I said, “just remember I’ll come