North to the Rails

After reading North to the Rails, I now understand perfectly why Louis L’Amour is so beloved. His portrait of life in the West has such richness, filled with casual, familiar detail about the land---its rivers, stands of timber and scrub, how the cycles of seasons and weather change it. The people populating that land are just as vivid: hard and rough, loyal or treacherous, quick to kindness or cruelty, standing on principles of courage and determination. And the story that takes place in this West has a kind of grandeur. L’Amour doesn’t ignore the dangers, but his hero, Tom Chantry, meets them with spirit, and the obstacles Chantry encounters allow the reader to share his growing understanding of what a frontier, with all its show more attendant lawlessness, requires of a settler. show less

North to the Rails is a good story. It keeps its feeling from the beginning to the end. It is easy to imagine the characters and the scenery. The ending was unexpected but good. There is some gore but not enough to be turned away from wanting to complete the book. Four and one half star recommendation.

In this final book of the Chantry series Tom, the son of Borden Chantry, is heading west in search of cattle to ship back east. Still green and unused to the ways of the frontier, he's an easy target for cattle rustlers or thieves...or is he?

I really liked this story and the characters contained within. It's a better than average L'Amour.

A young man returns west to buy cattle and gets drawn into the Wild West lifestyle he dimly remembered from his childhood, when he was living on a ranch in what is now eastern Colorado. The men who killed his father seem to have some interest in him, maybe, but so do several strangers, and he must quickly abandon his original peaceful, gun-less stance and be the gunfighter his father once was. He is remarkably good at gunfighting and hand combat for a man who supposedly has had little use for violence out East for most of his life, but maybe fighting is in his blood? Still, this was a pretty decent story.

Tom Chantry comes west to buy cattle for his future father-in-law's meat packing plant. When he doesn't except a gun fight challenge, men think he is a coward. He just didn't think getting someone killed over a minor misunderstanding was worth it. Quickly though, men realize that Tom is a tough hombre when he buys a heard of cattle with French Williams, a man he knows he can't trust, and heads it to the rail head for shipment. Along the way, he discovers a brother & sister he does not know are out to kill him and that the town at the rail head holds the men who killed his father, Borden Chantry, many years ago.

This is typical of L'Amour's writing- fast moving with lots of action.

Cowboys and outlaws who think he is a coward challenge Tom Chantry, who has returned to the West on a cattle buying mission

Product Description When Tom Chantry comes west to buy cattle, he quickly runs into trouble. During a drunken scuffle in a bar, Dutch Akin challenges Chantry to a gunfight. Leaving town rather than face Akin, Chantry is quickly branded a coward. Later, when hiring men to take his herd to the railroad, Chantry faces a dilemma: No one wants to make the long, dangerous ride with a leader of questionable courage. So when French Williams, a shrewd and ruthless cattleman, makes Chantry an offer, Tom reluctantly accepts his unusual terms: Tom must remain with the drive from start to finish. If he fails to do so, the entire herd will belong to French. Tom quickly learns that life is not going to be made easy for him. The first man French show more hires is Dutch Akin. From the Inside Flap Tom Chantry wore no gun and wished no man harm. French Williams was a ruthless cattleman more than willing to use his weapon. But Tom needed Williams to help him drive a herd north to Dodge. Setting off together on a trail alive with danger, soft-spoken Chantry and hard-bitten Williams faced storms, treachery, and Indian attacks. Now the man some call a coward and the man many call a killer have no choice but to trust each other with their lives--for both have enemies and both are pursued by a violence from the past. show less