Free Kiowa Trail (1964) by Louis L'amour Page A

the Pecos, only the long winds and the Comanche Trail.
    "They were punished, sir," I answered. "At least, two of the three were punished. The other man is still missing."
    For two years I went to school in England, and it was not an easy thing for me, for I had not the habit of study, nor did I know much of books. I did not have the background I needed for this but I struggled, and slowly I learned. Each vacation I spent with the Sothertons, but my thoughts kept straying back to my own wild land.
    Often at night I lay awake, smelling the sage brush again, longing for the feel of the cool night wind off the mountain slopes, from over the broken hills, for the sight of Nine Mile Mesa shouldering against the skyline, for the sunlit flanks of the Chisos, for the purple loom of the Carmens across the river in Mexico.
    Sometimes when I was studying I would put down my books and stare from the window, remembering a time when I rode up Rough Run to Christmas Spring, or another time when I camped in The Solitario.
    At first, I made few friends in the school. There was one, Lawrence Wickes, a boy of my own age but who seemed younger, who had come to the school from India. He was the son of a British army officer stationed on the Northwest Frontier, and when we talked we found we had much in common. He was with me the day I had my fight. Most of the boys had been polite, but distant. Nor had I the words to speak with them, for their interests were not mine, and the things we knew were different The whole world of their conversation concerned topics of which I had no knowledge and with which I had no connection. The people they knew, and the places, these were strange to me, and if occasionally I blundered into some talk of my own past I would find them looking at me with frank disbelief.
    Felicia had told one of the boys that I had been a prisoner of the Apaches, and the story went all over the school. There was one boy - his name was Endicott - who made several slighting remarks about me in my presence.
    He was big, and was much thought of as a soccer player and a boxer, and he outweighed me by at least twenty pounds.
    "You will have to fight him," Wickes said. "They are saying you are afraid."
    "I don't want to, Larry. His father is a friend of Sir Richard's. I might hurt him."
    "Hurt him?"
    "It is a different thing, Larry. He has boxed, and I know nothing of boxing; but I have fought all my life - with Apache boys, with cowhands ... with men."
    "They do not believe anything they have heard of you."
    One day, in the presence of others, Endicott told me that I lied. I started to speak, and suddenly, without warning, he struck me.
    It was a good enough blow, I suppose. No doubt he intended it to finish me, but he had boxed with boys in school, and I had fought with teamsters, cowhands, and plainsmen. In the West, a boy at fourteen or fifteen did a man's work, and walked in a man's tracks; and when he fought, he fought as a man fights.
    Endicott's blow did not stagger me. It caught me on the cheekbone, and when I did not fall, I could see he was shocked. And then we fought.
    He knew more of boxing than I, but not a bit of good did it do him, for I plunged in, all the bitterness and savagery within me aroused by the blow. He struck me again as I came in, but I did not circle and parry; I drove for the kill. My first blow missed, my second caught him in the ribs and I saw his jaw go slack.
    He was soft ... in good enough shape for his time and place, but nothing like the ruggedness a man acquired working on the plains and the desert. There were others at the school who were better, I think, but they were awed by his size and his boxing skill. So I smashed at him with both hands, going under his left lead and whipping both hands to his body; then, stepping back, I smashed him in the face. It broke his nose, but I followed it up with two more blows, and he fell.
    The fight had lasted less than a minute, but if I had expected to win their