They had been dead a while. Some fellow was trying to save the hides and it was the most miserable job, but I learned a lot" (Larson 4). The young man's boss was a seventy-nine-year-old wrangler raised by Apaches, who had ridden on war parties with Nana and Geronimo. L"Amour left his odorous job, after three months sleeping on the ground and staying downwind from passerby. He had helped skin 965 head of cattle by staking their skulls and tying their hides to the bumper of an early model pickup truck.
His next job was bailing hay in New Mexico's Pecos Valley, across the road from Billy the Kid's grave. He visited the Maxwell home where Billy the Kid had been killed, and talked to the woman who offered the outlaw his last meal.
While wandering about the West, he joined a circus in Phoenix, leaving three weeks later to El Paso. He then hoboed his way to Galveston, Texas, where he hired on as a merchant seaman. His first cruise was to the West Indies, his second to the British Isles. He tired his hand at writing during his travels, but his scribblings didn't include events as familiar as his Western heritage (Hall).
L"Amour's family history is rich in frontier adventure. His maternal great-grandfather was scalped by the Sioux while a member of the Sibley Expedition, following the Little Crow Massacre in Minnesota. Both his grandfathers served in the Union army during the Civil War, and his maternal grandfather taught him military tactics by drawing battle plans on a blackboard.
L"Amour was especially proud of his mother's ancestry, beginning with Godfrey Dearborn, who arrived in this country in 1638, an antecedent of General Henry Dearborn, .
who marched with Arnold to Quebec. He also took part in the second Battle of Saratoga, Monmouth, Sullivan's raid on the Iroquois villages, Bunker Hill, Valley Forge, and the surrender of Cornwallis, among others (Contemporary Literary Criticism, 25).
