{"product_id":"the-trail-to-seven-pines-isbn-9780307969361","title":"The Trail to Seven Pines","description":"\u003cp\u003eHopalong rides into a firestorm of violence and betrayal. On the rain-drenched trail to the  lawless town of Seven Pines, Hopalong discovers two men—one dead, the other badly wounded. Returning with medical help, Hopalong finds the wounded man has been shot through the temple. Who would  commit such a murder? To find out, Hopalong hires on at Bob Ronson’s Rocking R Ranch. There he learns that more than a thousand cattle have been run off by men keeping one scheming eye on the ranch and the other on the monthly stagecoach shipments of gold. Hopalong is determined to stop those responsible. But even the best gunfighter needs men he can trust to watch his back, men willing to risk  their lives to do what’s right. With their help, Hopalong fights to save the Rocking R, only to find himself the target of a ruthless gunman in a life-and-death struggle for frontier justice.\u003c\/p\u003eOur foremost storyteller of the American West, \u003cb\u003eLouis L’Amour \u003c\/b\u003ehas 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.\u003ci\u003eChapter One\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The man called Key-Lock was a man alone, and before him lay wilderness.  Behind him were searching men, and each was armed, each carried a rope. Each rope  was noosed for hanging, and each man was intent on the purpose of the chase.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The  solitary rider did not fear his aloneness, for he had the companionship of the mind.  He had strength also, patience beyond that of most men, and some knowledge of the  wild lands into which he rode. If the men who pursued knew nothing of him, he at  least knew their kind, and was stronger because of this.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e They were men shaped and  tempered to the harsh ways of a harsh land, strong in their sense of justice, ruthless  in their demand for punishment, relentless in pursuit. In the desert and the wilderness  they had built their homes, and from the desert and the wilderness they drew their  courage and their code. And the desert knows no mercy, the wilderness shows no kindness.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Before the man called Key-Lock lay a land fragmented and torn, a magnificent land,  gnarled and ancient. It was a land of shattered battlements, broken towers, and the  headless figures of vast and shapeless gods. An empty land, yet crowded with epics  in stone, harried by wind and thunderstorm, ripped by flash floods, blistered by  summer's heat, frozen by winter's cold.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He rode now in Arizona, but beyond the horizon  to the north lay Utah, and between himself and the border, a desert. Between himself  and escape—if he chose to escape—lay an almost waterless waste in which he must trust  to his ingenuity to keep him free.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The border lay ahead, but the border was merely  a line on a map, and did not exist in the minds of the men who pursued him. If they  knew of this border, it would have no place in their thinking, for to them he had  already crossed another border, a border between the law and the lawless, between  the right and the wrong, between what was done and what was not done.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e To kill a  man who faced you with a gun was in their minds no crime, nor was it a crime in the  customs of their period. In the East and in Europe men settled affairs of honor with  pistols, but according to plan and ritual. In the West, in what was a new world,  where men were often strangers to each other, the settling of such an affair was  immediate, and without ritual.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e To shoot a man in the back, however, was a crime,  and this they believed he had done, and for this he must be hung.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But it was not  enough for the man called Key-Lock to understand the philosophy of the hunters; the  important thing for him was to escape them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Though he knew none of the men back  there personally, he knew there must be good men among them, and on a different occasion  he might have been riding as one of them, the pursuer instead of the pursued. For  he had worked beside such men, fought beside them, and he knew that they were hardworking  men, stern but just, according to their code. When such men come to a new land the  law comes with them, for they are builders of homes, builders of towns, layers of  foundations.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e And now he must escape or fight. If he fought, he must be prepared  to kill, and he had no enmity for these men . . . not yet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Where's he bound?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Home, more'n likely. He'll need an outfit if he aims to run far . . . if we don't  get to him first.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Where's he live?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"He was a stranger, and had no trail outfit  with him. Over to the store they said that when he taken out to get away, the one  thing he latched onto was a woman's comb.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"A comb?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Seems daft, but that's what  was told us. One of those fancy combs like Spanish women wear in their hair. He rummaged  through all that grub and truck in the store just for that.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Kimmel's eyes narrowed  against the sun's hard glare. \"He's got him a good horse. Moves right along.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Big  buckskin,\" Chesney said. \"I seen the horse. Wears a Key-Lock brand. A key alongside  a keyhole—never seen it before.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e For a few minutes silence rode among them, except  for the beat of their horses' hoofs and the creak of saddle leather.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"He's covering  ground, all right.\" Neill was the youngest of them, and he felt the need of words.  He was also the latest to arrive in this part of the country—only four years ago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Hardin was the best of them at reading sign, and from the first he had been disturbed  that the rider had not put his horse to the run. He held him to a steady, distance-eating  gait, but showed no inclination to make a sudden dash to get away. Studying those  tracks, and reading what they indicated, Hardin had an uneasy feeling that they had  brought themselves a packet of trouble.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"He's no tenderfoot.\" Chesney expressed  the thought Hardin held. \"He's covering ground, but he knows how to save a horse,  and he knows wild country.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Dust lifted from the hoofs of their horses. The sun  was hot upon their shoulders. The land was parched and baked. Dancing heat waves  promised water that was not there, and the distant blue of mountains a coolness they  would not provide.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The trail lay straight before them. Only at clumps of rock or  thorny brush did it swerve. Like a thrown lance, it seemed to thrust at the distant  heart of the hills. The six men of the posse rode warily, their thoughts uneasy about  what lay in the mind of the man they pursued.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e You can know a man if you follow his  trail, if you follow long enough. By his tracks on the land the ways of a man are  made plain—his kindness or his cruelty, his ignorance or his cunning, his strength  or his weakness. Many a man who could read not a word of print could read character,  story, and plot from a pattern of tracks, and from the building of fires.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In the  hours of riding since leaving the town of Freedom, these men had learned much, but  they had much still to learn.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"What started it?\" one of them asked now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In the  vast hollow of silence the words hung empty and alone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Hardin turned his head in  the manner of a man who rides much in the wind, and let the words drift back. As  he spoke he shifted the rifle from one hand to the other to dry his sweaty palms  upon his shirt front.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Loose talk. He was buyin' grub in the Bon Ton an' took offense  at something Johnny said. Johnny was wearin' a gun, an' the Key-Lock man wasn't,  so Johnny told him to go fill his hand or he'd hunt him down anyway.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Johnny was  in the saloon when he came back an' pushed the door open an' shot Johnny twice in  the back whilst he stood drinkin' at the bar. Third shot busted a bottle of whiskey.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e After a moment's silence, Neill asked slyly, \"We hanging him for killing Johnny,  or for busting the whiskey?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It was a fair question, but the dignity of the riders  and their mission was not to be lightened by humor. They offered no reply, nor any  acknowledgment that he had spoken.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Neill's eyes wandered over the white and copper  land, cut here and there by deep arroyos or ridged by the raw backs of ancient lava  flows. He held no liking for the lynching of any man, and he knew nothing of the  one for whom they hunted, beyond what had been told him. The men he rode with were  his friends and neighbors, the men with whom he shared work and their few pleasures.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Like himself, they had come to this wild land bringing the potential of home, and  homes demanded order and consideration for the rights of others, a recognition of  the necessities of regulations and law. Their womenfolk came with them or followed  after, bringing their own desires, among them the need for church and school, for  human association.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The town of Freedom had only such law as its citizens chose to  provide. If lawlessness was wary of Freedom, it was due to the fact that, as in most  western towns, the butcher, the baker, and the banker were veterans of the War Between  the States and the Indian wars. Every citizen had grown to manhood handling guns,  and all were prepared to use such weapons when need be. The idea of some gunman or  band of outlaws \"treeing\" a western town was known, but here it had never happened.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The James-Younger band tried it at Northfield and they were run out of town, shot  to doll rags and leaving their dead behind; the Daltons tried it at Coffeyville,  and the one man who survived had sixteen buckshot in him. There were a few other  attempts, no more successful—often to the regret of the townspeople, for such attempts  came under the head of entertainment in towns where there was not much of any other  kind.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The gunman stayed to his side of town, like the gambler and the lady of light  company, and was tolerated as long as he offered no trouble to the established citizenry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Freedom was scarcely old enough to have the need to draw such a line, and as yet  there was no law except such as was administered by themselves. However, they had  all known Johnny, and Johnny had been shot in the back.","brand":"Random House Audio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301098508517,"sku":"NP9780307969361","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307969361_ab2325a6-70ed-4b3d-ba14-13b247e94488.jpg?v=1742922976","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-trail-to-seven-pines-isbn-9780307969361","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}