As part of the Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures series, this edition contains exclusive bonus materials! In a remote corner of Utah lies the secret outlaw kingdom of Ben Curry. For fifteen years Curry has ruled supreme as his men have pulled jobs from Canada to Mexico. But the king is getting old, and he wants to turn his legacy over to someone younger, tougher. Mike Bastian is Ben’s adopted son, a young man who can handle a knife, a gun, and his fists—but who’s never broken the law. Now, as treachery explodes among Ben’s riders, and two honest lawmen—Tyrel Sackett and Borden Chantry—begin to zero in on the gang, Mike must choose between his loyalty to Ben and his yearning for a different life. Yet when the guns start echoing off the Vermilion Cliffs, the time for choosing is over—and the time for battle has begun. Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures is a project created to release some of the author’s more unconventional manuscripts from the family archives.   In Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures: Volumes 1 and 2, Beau L’Amour takes the reader on a guided tour through many of the finished and unfinished short stories, novels, and treatments that his father was never able to publish during his lifetime. L’Amour’s never-before-seen first novel, No Traveller Returns, faithfully completed for this program, is a voyage into danger and violence on the high seas. Additionally, many beloved classics are being rereleased with an exclusive Lost Treasures postscript featuring previously unpublished material, including outlines, plot notes, and alternate drafts. These postscripts tell the story behind the stories that millions of readers have come to know and cherish. Our foremost storyteller of the American West,  Louis L’Amour  has thrilled a nation by chronicling the adventures of the brave men and woman who settled the frontier. There are more than three hundred million copies of his books in print around the world. Chapter 1 The winter snows were melting in the forests of the Kaibab, and the red-­orange Vermilion Cliffs were streaked with melting frost. Deer were feeding in the forest glades among the stands of ponderosa and fir, and trout were leaping in the sun-­sparkled streams. A shadow moved under the ponderosa, then was gone. Five deer fed on the grass along the bank of a mountain stream back of Finger Butte, their coats mottled with the light and shadow of sunlight through the leaves. It was very still. Water rippled around the roots of a tree where the soil had washed away, and gurgled cheerfully among the rocks. A buck’s tail twitched, twitched again, and the regal head lifted, turning its nostrils to the wind, reading it cautiously, but the reading was betrayal, for the shadow under the pines was downwind of him. A faint breeze sifted through the grass and stirred the leaves, and with the breeze the shadow moved into the sunlight and became a man, standing motionless not twenty feet from the nearest deer. Straight and tall he stood in gray buckskins. He wore no hat, and his hair long. Lean and brown, his black hair loose, he waited until the buck’s head lifted again, looking right at him. A startled snort and the buck sprang away. The others followed. Mike Bastian stood with his hands on his hips, watching them go. Another man came through the trees behind him, a lean, wiry old man with a gray mustache and blue eyes alive with humor. “What do you think of that, Roundy?” Bastian asked. “Could your Apache beat that? Another step and I could have touched him.” Roundy spat into the grass. “No Apache I ever knowed could do better, son. An’ I never seen the day I could do as well. You’re good, Mike, really good. I am surely glad you’re not huntin’ my hair!” He drew his pipe from his pocket and began stoking it. “We’re headin’ back for Toadstool Canyon, Mike. Your pa sent for us.” “No trouble, is there?” “None I know of, although things don’t look good. They don’t look good at all. No, I think your pa figures it’s time you rode out with the bunch.” Mike Bastian squatted on his heels, glancing around the glade. This was what he liked, and he did not want to leave. Nor did he like what he was going back to face. “I believe you’re right, Roundy. Pa said I was to ride out in the spring when the boys went, and it is about time.” He tugged a blade of grass and chewed on it. “I wonder where they will go this time?” “Whatever it is, and wherever it is, it will be well planned. Your pa would have made a fine general, boy. He’s got the head for it. He never forgets a thing.” “You’ve been with him a long time, haven’t you?” “Mighty long. I was with him before he found you. I met him in Mexico during the War, longer ago than I care to remember. I was just a youngster then, myself.” From the grass he took up a fallen pine cone. “Son! Look! ” He tossed the pine cone into the air. Mike Bastian palmed his gun and it belched flame, then again. The second shot spattered the pine cone i