Chapters 5 and 6 Summary and Analysis

In Chapter 5, at sixteen, L'Amour was working with an old man in the panhandle of West Texas. Their job was to skin cattle that had been killed by the drought. It was a job that required a strong stomach. An old trapper named Peterson had hired them. Peterson told L'Amour that when he was seven, Apaches raided his family's homestead and were about to kill him until one Apache spoke up and ordered the others to take him. Peterson was raised as an Apache. He was treated better by the Indians than he was by his family. Peterson was just a young boy when a stage coach entered Doubtful Canyon. He watched the fight from behind the rocks. The heat was blistering as the stage coach was stopped in the canyon, surrounded by attacking Indians. The stage coach protected...