Louis L’Amour’s novel The Ferguson Rifle was published in 1973 and my paperback copy is the fourth reprint (1982). And I’ve just got round to reading it!
It’s early 1800s and is narrated in the first person by Ronan Chantry who is travelling west after the sad demise of his wife and son in a cabin fire. He travels with ‘a good horse, a small pack, an excellent knife, and my Ferguson rifle... my constant companion since my childhood, all that remains of my past, that and a few precious books to stimulate my thoughts...’ (p1). The breech-loading rifle was presented to him by a Major Ferguson in 1780 which he'd made himself. He had no idea where he was headed. ‘As long as one travels toward a promised land, the dream is there, to stop means to face the reality, and it is easier to dream than to realise the dream’ (p15).
Ronan is well-travelled, a professor of law and literature; he’d ‘studied at the Sorbonne and at Heidelberg and had taught history at Cambridge and William and Mary’ (p22). But he accepted that he had plenty to learn in the Old West from frontiersmen he encountered. ‘The mind that is geared to learning, that is endlessly curious, cannot cease from contemplating and comparing’ (p37).
He soon comes to realise that though he was a civilised man he now existed in an uncivilised world.
He joins a group of friendly frontiersmen who appreciate his skill with the rifle, notably in hunting but also in despatching renegade Indians! On their travels they meet up with a strong-willed woman, Lucinda Falvey, who is searching for some 200-year-old lost treasure. ‘... with winter coming on, the aspen had already turned to gold. The earth where we were to sleep was inches deep with the golden leaves... treasure enough for me’ (p118).
Like all his books, L’Amour puts the reader in the scene. ‘... I could see the moon. The sky was impossibly clear, bathing the forest below in misty golden light. Not the mist of cloud or dampness, but of moonlight among the trees. Behind me bulked the vastness of the mountains, below the steep hillside, the shimmering pool of the aspen...’ (p120).
And Lucinda’s treacherous uncle Rafen is on her trail, determined to wrest the treasure from her grasp.
A short, fast-paced book filled with interesting characters, a smattering of history – even the Knights of Malta! – and the usual western lore so familiar to readers of the author.
Recommended.
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