Down the Long Hills (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures)

Excellent fun book for people of all ages. I give it to boys who don think they like to read. It hooks them every time. What is not to like about a very clever little boy and a beautiful horse. I don't understand why it wasn't made into a movie by someone like Disney a long time ago. It would be a great one.

Hardy Collins, a young boy, was travelling with a waggon train to meet his father in Wyoming. When Indians attacked the waggon train, only he, three-year-old Betty Sue Powell, and his father’s big horse escape alive. Hardy grew up on the frontier and the skills he learned from his father serve him well as he uses his wits to survive in the wilderness. Meanwhile, Hardy’s father learns of the attack on the waggon train and is determined to find his son.

This is a different sort of Western. Don't expect cowboys and gunfighters. The main plot is how Hardy and Betty Sue survive and how Hardy’s father works to try to find them in the vast Wyoming wilderness. There are numerous adventures as Hardy and Betty Sue encounter Indians, outlaws, and wild animals on the way to a very satisfying ending to the novel. As expected in a Louis L’amour, the descriptions of the countryside are extremely vivid, transporting the reader to Wyoming in late autumn as winter begins to take hold. This is an excellent book.

Having seen a number of movies and TV shows based on Louis L'Amour's novels, and having listened to a number of his stories on audiotape, I thought I would read some of his stories that won Golden Spur awards. To my surprise Down the Long Hills was the only one I could find. It is an excellent tale and a winner on all accounts.
Down the Long Hills is really a novella. The paperback version is only 150 pages long and a quick read. I almost gave up on it because I thought it was a children's story. While it is written simply enough such that a juvenile reader could enjoy it, it is written for adults. The reader can identify what it is like to be a child in the wilderness, abandoned and without parents. A parent can identify with the fear of losing a child.
The story features a 7-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl who follows him escaping an Indian massacre. The boy, appropriately named Hardy, must try and find his father while being tracked by Indians and 2 crooks. Hardy uses every trick he has learned in his short life to throw the bad guys off his trail yet leave signs for his father. Eventually all parties converge for a rip-snorting climax.
This is a great western, if not politically correct, in this day and age. The only problem that I had with it is that some of the dates don't work. Hardy's father was supposed to be over 15 when the Royal Navy pressed him. Yet the story is set in 1848. Given that the Napoleonic wars ended 33 years before the story and that the Royal Navy had to downsize decommissioning sailors not pressing them, Hardy's father is either a lot older than he seems in the story or L'Amour has an anachronism. However, this is a minor point.
Down the Long Hills is a great story and shows why L'Amour should have received more critical acclaim than he did.

DOWN THE LONG HILLS won famed western writer Louis L'Amour the Golden Spur Award and it is a very special read. Many times misclassified as a book for children it is a book for all ages who enjoy the heroism of the West at its finest.
The main characters are two children and a horse who against all odds make their way though a winter storm because the young boy knows his father will be looking for him. Luck, craftiness, and observation give them the skills to follow their trail.
One of the best books to begin if you have just discovered the storytelling skill of Louis L'Amour.
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A good storyteller will write plots that can be used to investigate interesting subjects, and Louis L'Amour is no different. This particular book, while still a western, is a bit different than most of his others, which tend to feature gunslingers, homesteaders, prospectors or other classic western archetypes of the late 1800's. In this book, which takes place a generation earlier---1848, just as the California Gold Rush brought thousands of families out west in wagon trains---he uses the story to explore what life was like for frontier children; showing how young they were given responsibility, how hard they worked, how early they learned survival skills, and how normal all of this was for them.

Two small kids and a horse are the only survivors of an Indian attack on a wagon train in Wyoming territory. They're forced to go on alone, across the vast and desolate high plains, with winter coming and nothing standing between them and probable death except the survival skills they'd been taught, and the unshakable belief that the boy's father, who is waiting for him at Fort Bridger, will come and find them.

The children face many different kinds of danger and privation, all with the resilient endurance children naturally possess. They survive because the boy uses what he's been taught, and thinks critically about every situation they encounter, even when he's scared witless. The story has some great edge-of-your-seat action scenes, and wonderful moments where the boy uses his head to find creative solutions to their dilemmas.

It's a great story to read to children, or just to enjoy as an adult. Especially if, like me, you were raised in the wilderness, learning the same skills these children had. Louis L'Amour grew up in a similar way, and his portrayal of a 7-year-old survivalist is an accurate account of what a child raised that way knows at such a young age.

When the kids are stranded,after the wagon train massacree,they have limited resources to sustain themselves,but...they do have the magnificent red stallion,who lives for the young boy...trailed by an indian brave plus ruthless outlaws,they make their way accross the vast,seemingly endless prairie...throw in a renegade bear and rapidly approaching cruel,bitter winter conditions,this story comes together in a"hurriedly turning the next page"climax....FIVE STARS+

Down The Long Hills is a story about two children being escorted across the west, one a three year old crossing with her parents, and the other a seven year old boy crossing with that family and many others on the way to where his pa had prepared a place for him out in Fort Bridger. The wagon train gets attacked by Indians and the children have to push on alone across Wyoming in fall with winter setting in against increasingly mounting odds with nothing but a sack of food, a knife and a horse.

It was also a lot of fun to read about this little boy braving Wyoming and crossing the entire state all by himself with a three year old to take care of on top of it. Today you would never have heard of such a thing. A child getting lost out in the desert would be a death knell and even with a huge search party might never be found. This story was about three men traveling together to find the children across a whole state and yet they seemed to have better odds.

That was the not fun thing about the story. It seemed almost too much to be believed. The things they faced got crazier and crazier (Indians, wild animals, outlaws, freezing cold, little food) and yet they still kept right on surviving relatively unscathed. It was more than could be believed. I was willing to follow along for the ride though, because who wants to read about a bunch of kids that go off to die a horrible death?

It's hard to believe the Lamour family has allowed this book to be published. Possibility it was written for his children when they were small and published after his death? Lamour certainly knew the truck size holes in the plotline. No matter how sharp any seven year old was... cold and semi-starvation would preclude the survival of small children. Had the circumstances of temperature, food and transportation been different, the tale might have been less irksome. People not old enough to have known elderly people raised when childhood meant working like a small adult... those born 1860 to 1915 for instance... have little idea of what an intelligent small child can do if well trained. Clearly this was Lamour in his educator mode. However, there is no excusing the fallacy presented regarding the use of a stallion by a small child. Stallions are inherently dangerous. They are not dogs and should not be portrayed as something they are not. This reads like Lamour wrote it for his kids, a fantacy tale he could read to them when they were very small. Perhaps for his grandkids... Never intended for publication is the only logical explanation for this story which is without a doubt the worst thing Louis Lamour ever wrote... That includes everything he ever wrote, in any format or style. Don't waste your time or money.

I started this book yesterday and could not stop reading until it was finished. This is an extremely captivating book.

Some reviewers have pointed out that it may not be a completely accurate representation of history or reality. True, but it is supposed to be fiction. L'Amour's talent lies in telling extremely captivating tales in a easy-to-read, descriptive style. This book surely fits the bill and I plan on reading it many times in the years to come.

I read Down The Long Hills to my two Grandchildren. Both Boys ages 4 and 6 were spell bound by this story of a little boy and girl so near their age who survived in the wilderness after their parents and friends were massacred. The two boys are true out-door country Texans and would stay out all day long every day if their parents would let them so the story really peaked their imaginations.