"The Sackett Brand" by Louis L'Amour

Ladies and gentlemen, I now have a favorite Sackett, and his name is Tell.

I am probably going to have to go back and reread Sackett and Mojave Crossing now because they also star Tell Sackett, and since I now love him, I must go back and appreciate him in those.  Though, truth be told, I will probably wait to do that until I have finished reading all the Sackett books.  Then I will go back and read all of Tell's books again.  Because I have 9 books left to read yet -- he may very well be in more of them!  (Please, if you know he's in more of them, don't list them all off to me.  I want to discover who each book is about on my own.)

Anyway.  Poor Tell Sackett.  Poor, dear Tell Sackett.  He finally marries Ange, the girl he met back during Sackett and fell in love with.  And then someone kills her.  And tries to kill him.  And nearly gets away with both.  So the whole book here is Tell recovering from almost dying and then figuring out who murdered his wife and why.  And getting himself repeatedly almost-killed in the process, until he's pretty well cornered by his wife's murderer's henchmen and going to die any minute...

...and then the cavalry arrives.  Only they aren't the U. S. Cavalry, they're a whole heap of Sacketts from all across the western half of the country.  (This is not really a spoiler, because they start to congregate about halfway through the book.)  Tell's brothers Orrin and Tyrel, their cousin Lando, and some spiffy new Sacketts I hadn't met yet but look forward to meeting -- they find out there's a Sackett in trouble, and they hustle over to help as fast as they can hustle.

This book, y'all.  It hit SO many big sweet spots for me!  Cavalry arrives to save the day?  Check.  Assemble a team of heroes?  Check.  Vow to avenge someone by bringing their killer to justice?  Check.  One dude taking on a huge force and slowly whittling down their numbers through superior skills and intelligence?  Check.  Bad guys turning on each other?  Check.  Surviving by making do with what you can find in the environment around you?  Check.  I mean, it's like this book was written for me.  Wow.

So, yeah.  I loved it.  A lot.  I'm already looking forward to re-reading it.

Particularly Good Bits:

One thing I've learned over the years: never to waste time moaning about what couldn't be helped.  If a body can do something, fine -- he should do it.  If he can't, then there's no use fussing about it until he can do something (p. 23).  (This is basically my entire attitude toward worry.)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-16 for quite a bit of violence and deadly peril, plus an off-page assault of a woman that, if it wasn't rape, was going to be except she died first.  The word 'rape' is never used, but intent is there in the subtext.

This is my third book read off my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Reading Challenge.