Everyone was dead. Indian raiders massacred the entire wagon train. Only seven-year-old Hardy Collins and three-year-old Betty Sue Powell managed to survive. With a knife, a horse, and the survival lessons his father taught him, Hardy must face the challenges of the open prairie. Using ingenuity and common sense, he builds shelters, searches out water, and forages for food. But as he struggles to keep them alive, he realizes that their survival will depend on his ability to go beyond what his father was able to teach him. Hardy bravely presses on, fighting off the temptation to give up, until a howling blizzard and a pack of hungry wolves force him to make decisions that no seven-year-old boy should ever have to make.
Down the Long Hills by Louis L’Amour
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I have always been curious about the stories told by Louis L’Amour. I tried to read one from my dad’s complete, hardback collection as a child and never could get into them. I saw this one at a Free Library a while back and thought, why not give it another try?
I think I’m learning to appreciate them now and I thoroughly loved this one!
It was a good, old-fashioned western, true to itself, definitely not politically correct, but tells a story of its time with deep appreciation for animal and human behavior, nature, and the lifestyle of the wild west.
