Hondo

OK, I gotta admit...
I'm not really crazy about this
first book of Louis'.
Maybe he hadn't reached his stride yet.

Not a lot of killin'
Not a lot of fightin'
You know, all the reasons
you read Louis!

But it wasn't bad...
just not as exciting as some of his others.

It's about a cowboy
(They're all about cowboys in case you've never read him)
named Hondo Lane.
Louis describes him like this:
"He was a big man, wide-shouldered,
with the lean hard-boned face of the desert rider.
There was no softness in him.
His toughness was ingrained and deep,
without cruelty, yet quick, hard and dangerous."
He pretty much describes them all the same
but with different adjectives.

Hondo Lane while escaping Indians and
working for the government (army),
runs into a lady and her son living on their own
in the desert.
Husbands a loser, hasn't been home in months,
she figures he's dead.

Hondo stays in the barn one night,
falls in love with her,
leaves to take care of business...
and then in the end comes back for her.

I could go into more depth...but that's
pretty much the gist of it.

Good lines though:

"Patience at such a time was more than a virtue,
it was the price of survival."

"Women always think every man that comes along,
wants 'em."

"The big dog had been away on some business of his own.
From the tuft of fur at the corner of his jaw,
the business had concerned rabbits."

"Handsome woman like you, walks with her head up,
ought to kiss a man before she dies."
(Yeah...there's a truth)

"Under a quiet sky, a planet turned,
and horses ate, and men slept,
and death waited for morning."
(This is typical Louis...love it)

"Wealth is important only to the small of mind."
(You tell it, Louis!)

"Partly they learn, partly they die."

"I got to float my stick same as you."

And the very last line of this book:

"And beside him a woman held in her arms a sleeping child...
a woman who would be there with him,
in that house, before that hearth."

You can learn other languages, too
Varlebena means forever in Apache.

That'll come in handy if you ever meet an...
...forget it...