Judgement and Recommendation

Overall this was a good book, it kept me guessing what would happen next because there was so much action. There was a lot of fighting and shooting and this is what made it so interesting. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading Western books or Louis Lamour's books. If you have read any of Louis Lamour's books and you liked them then you would like reading this book. All of Louis Lamour's books have an adventure and all of his stories are sure to grab you and make you keep reading until the end.

Best and Worst Parts

My favorite of the book would have been at the very end when Callaghen found the bad guys and picked them off one at a time. Other good parts would have to be every time Callaghen fought off the Indians by himself in order to save others from danger. In this book there wasn't really any worst parts, except at the end no one found the gold and I was sure Callaghen would be the one to find the gold because he had the maps but he never went back to look for it.

Conflict and Resolution

The conflict in Callaghen was Callaghen was in the army and their job was fight the Indians that tried to raid wagon trains heading West. In one of the wagons was a girl that he fell in love with when he was younger. Callaghen was sent by the army to scout around the desert and he found that the Indians were trying to attack the wagon. He got the wagon to safety and then he had to leave to help his army that was being attacked by Indians. When he got back he decided to take the wagon and try to get away from the Indians, on their way they were ambushed and the wagon was taken. Callaghen was left for dead but he was able to move on and look for the others. The resolution to the book is Callaghen found the girl and killed the bad guys and then Callaghen and the girl left together to go live in Nevada. Callaghen always seemed to have a way to defeat his enemy enough when the odds were stacked against him and weren't in his favor.

Character Development

Through out the whole book Callaghen, the main character, doesn't change much. During the whole story he is caring for others and is always risking his life in order to save others in danger. In the beginning he is very quiet and he is a follower because he is in the army he has to follow the commanders orders, but by the end he changes to become a leader. Also, Callaghen was kind to the women unlike some of the other men in the army. Overall, Callaghen didn't really change much. Another way he changed was he became a hero and also he learned a lot about living in the west in the desert. He always did what was right and experienced what it was like to try and survive in the West.

The End (pg 151-183)

So Callaghen knows that Webb Bolin has joined up with Champion and Spencer and he knows that they will come after them. So they go all the way through the hole in the mountains and come out the other side. From here they make a run for the nearest mountains because they hear the men coming behind them. During this time Major Sykes was arriving at Marl Springs where he finds that Callaghen, the women and the wagon are gone. He finds out at Marl Springs that Lieutenant Sprague gave Callaghen the command to go with the wagon to protect it. The problem is no one else at Marl Springs knew about this so they figured that Callaghen just abandoned the army to go with Malinda in the wagon. The army led by Sykes is now turned its attention toward finding Callaghen because he deserted the army. Meanwhile, Callaghen, the girls, and Beamis were surrounded by Webb Bolin, Champion, Spencer and other men. Callaghen moves their camp to the top of the hill at night so they have better firing positions. At the top they camp for the night while the bad guys camp at the bottom. In the morning, the bad guys make their move and try to sneak up the hill, while Callaghen and Beamis stay to try to hold off the bad guys the girls try to find a way to get down the other side of the mountain. At this time the army led by Sykes was only a few miles away and they find the empty wagon and the Delaware who was badly injured and he tells them the whole story of what happened. While Callaghen and Beamis were watching the bad guys at the bottom of the hill, one of them managed to slip around the hill and catch the girls. Callaghen tells Beamis to check on the girls and he finds Champion holding the girls at gun point. Beamis is shot by Champion and Callaghen hears the shot and runs to see what happened. On his way over the mountain he gets surrounded by the bad guys and they are about to shoot him when Callaghen convinces Spencer that he isn't a bad guy and Spencer takes sides with Callaghen and them shoot Bolin and his partner Barber. Callaghen runs to find the girls but finds Champion instead and they fight for a long time until the army shows up and arrests Champion. Sykes arrests Callaghen because he believes that he deserted the army but he is later let go when he gets his discharge papers that he was supposed to get three weeks earlier and Sykes was keeping them from him because he knew he needed his help. The story ends with everyone heading back to Camp Cady, and I got the idea that Callaghen and Malinda were going to go somewhere to live together. In the end, no one found the river of gold and I was thinking that Callaghen would get the maps and find the gold but that never happens. Overall this was a pretty good book and would probably give it a 6 out of 10 on my book rating scale.

The Next Fifity Pages(101-150)

The next fifty pages starts with Garrick, one of the soldiers from the missing army patrol, finds his way to Marl Springs to tell Callaghen where the army patrol is and that they are in trouble because they have no water and are surrounded by Indians. So Callaghen leaves the fort at night so the Indians can't see him as easily. He runs into many Indian attack on the way and kills a couple of Indians. He finally reaches where the army is and they are in bad shape, they have a couple wounded soldiers, they have no horses, and no water. Callaghen leads them to water and leads them back to the fort at Marl Springs. When they get there they find out that three of the men guarding the fort, left at night with lots of food, some of the horses and many other needed supplies. These three men that left were Spencer, Wylie and Champion, I later found out that these are bad guys and they are trying to find the same gold everyone else is looking for. Callaghen makes up his mind that he will try to make a run for the next fort and he is going to take Ridge, Malinda and her aunt, and the Delaware and Beamis. They leave at night and get pretty far and think that the Indians aren't following them but are rather watching the fort waiting for the right time to capture it. During this time back at Camp Cady, Major Sykes decides that something is wrong because the wagon never made it to Nevada. So he gets his army ready and they start marching toward Marl Springs. As Callaghen and the wagon were on their way, they enter a narrow canyon and they feel that something is wrong. All of a sudden Callaghen is hit by a bullet in the head and he losses consciousness. He wakes up to find that bullet only grazed his head and he wagon is gone. He finds Ridge dead on the ground not far from where he was and also his horse is gone. He follows the racks of the wagon to a near water hole and there he finds the wagon with everything gone and his horse. He also finds that his map is gone that shows where the gold is. He figures out that Spencer, Wylie and Champion were the ones that did this. He knows he must find those guys before the have time to kill the girls. He starts looking around and before long he sees where someone has a camp a couple of miles away. He sneaks up to the camp and sees that they have the girls and Beamis tied up by their camp. He hears the men's conservation about how there are two maps and they only one of them, both maps are needed to show where the gold is. He hears that Webb Bolin has the other map because he was a stepbrother of Allison and he had already came once before and explored the caves and found the gold and he was coming back today to get all the gold. The men leave the camp to go and look where one of the men say they thought they saw Callaghen. Once they leave Callaghen unties everyone and gets ready for the bad guys to come back. When they come back Callaghen shoots Wylie and then Callaghen and the girls and Beamis run for cover. They find a hole that goes into the mountain and they go into it because now the bad guys are chasing them.

Reason for Callaghen links

I added this links to the right because these links go to websites with plot summaries about the book Callaghen.

Archetypes of the characters, plot and setting of Callaghen

Character Archetypes: Callaghen is the main character of Callaghen and he is a combination of a hero and a seeker in this book. He is the good guy of the book and he also he looking to seek something, which in this cause is the gold. Other characters like Captain Hill, Major Sykes and Lieutenant Sprague would be classified as friends because they are friends of Callaghen. Malinda Colton would be Callaghen's friend and lover. Beamis, Delaware, and Ridge would also be included in Callaghen friends because they are fighting by Callaghen's side during the whole book. The Mohaves, the Indians, would be like the villains in this book because they were always trying to kill Callaghen. Also, the villains would include Champion, Spencer,Wylie, Bolin and Barber because they were trying to kill Callaghen, Beamis and the girls at the end.




Setting: The setting takes place in the desert but it never says where the desert is or what the name of it is. The desert provides a place of isolation from any other civilization because of the vast open space and water is hard to find. Couple of times in the book Callaghen describes the desert as a holy place or a beautiful place because of what it looks like in the mornings. During the day the desert is very hot but at night it is very cold. The archetype for the setting of this book would have to be forest because of everything is wild in the desert and also somewhat of a sea because of how unpredictable was when the characters traveled in the desert.



Events/Actions: This is book is a journey because through out the whole book Callaghen is on a quest to find the gold. Since Callaghen is classified as a seeker the story can be classified as a journey. Also, many other characters in the book are also on a journey to find the gold including Champion, Spencer and Wylie but all of them fail in finding the gold.

The Next Fifty Pages (51-100)

The beginning of the next fifty pages starts off with Malinda, her aunt, Kurt Wylie, and a couple of other men stopping at Camp Cady to stay overnight. Sykes and Callaghen hate each other because now there is a fight over Malinda. Callaghen has a fight with Kurt Wylie, Kurt came west because he heard about the story of a river of gold. The wagon is heading for Nevada and by morning they are already on their way again. In the morning, Callaghen goes with a patrol lead by Lieutenant Sprague to show them around the desert. Sprague is a man that came with Sykes and is a part of Sykes army. The patrol travels most of the day and they don't see any Indians. Then they find tracks of small groups of Indians all heading the same direction, toward the trail that the wagon took. The men suspect that the Indians are planning to raid the wagon so they go that direction too. Callaghen travels ahead to scout and finds a couple of Indians hiding and kills them. Then when it becomes night he can't find the patrol, so he makes camp and waits. During the night, he hears a sound and it is the wagon, and he goes and meets up with them. When the wagon stops a makes camp, another man finds his way to the camp to tell them that the patrol unit was ambushed and he doesn't know where they are or if they are still alive. The wagon knows the Indians will track them so they make a run for Marl Springs, here there is a fort and water. The are able to make it here with no one getting hurt but they get ambushed by Indians many times on the way. When they get to the fort they plan on waiting there where it is safe rather than go out where the Indians are. This is where I stopped reading so stay tuned to hear what happens in the end of the book.

My Reading History

I used to do a lot of reading when I was younger like in elementary and middle school. I enjoyed reading Magic Tree House and Box Car Children books. I also liked to read books written by Gary Paulsen. All of these books were mystery/adventure. I have read many books for school including All Quiet on the Western Front, Old Man and the Sea, Fahrenheit 451, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. All of these books were OK but most of them were very boring. I read books during school only when I have to, like books for school assignments. I read when I have extra time like during a summer break from school. Also, I read usually when my family and I go on road trips. My favorite books would have to be any of Louis L'Amour's books because they are all set in the west and have lots of adventure and it's just hard to stop reading them once you start.

Callaghen (pg.1-50)

The book begins when Callaghen is part of an U.S army patrol and their job is to protect settlers coming West from the Mohaves. The Mohaves are Indians that live a certain region in the desert. The patrol is led by Lieutenant Allison and they are lost in the desert and they are being tracked by a group of Mohaves trying to kill them. Callaghen thinks he knows where they are at and so he starts leading them to Eagle Mountain, where he thinks they can find water. After a few days they are low on water, low on ammo, and very tired. Lieutenant Allison is shot and killed and so Callaghen takes over and leads his men to Eagle Mountain. There they find water and after Callaghen saves them by shooting the Indians, they start to respect him. He eventually leads them back to their camp, where other men are waiting for them. Here the story becomes boring because Callaghen talks about his past, and nothing exciting really happens. When Callaghen tells the captain at the camp what happened, nobody knows why Allison led them to the desert where they weren't supposed to be. There is a legend that there is a gold river underneath the desert. Callaghen and the captain think this is why Allison led the army patrol to the desert, to look for the gold river. The captain looked back in his papers and found that no one enough knew where Allison came from or who he was. Near the end this man shows up that Callaghen used to know by the name of Major Sykes. Major Sykes is bringing his army west to stop Indian raids on wagon trains. Then this lady shows up that both men used to know by the name of Malinda Colton. This sets up a conflict between the two men over the lady.

Callaghen

Our assignment for English is to read any book we want and then we have to post a summary for every 50 pages. The book that I chose was Callaghen. It is written by Louis L'Amour and is published by A Bantam Book in February 1972. This book is 183 pages long.