Scott Collins

Scott Collins is the secondary protagonist of Louis L'Amour's "Down the Long Hills". He is the father of Hardy Collins and the owner of Big Red. He was friends with Frank Darrow and Bill Squires.

According to stories Scott had told to Hardy about his boyhood, the former had been native of Ireland, where at the age of 10, he had been apprenticed to a millwright. At the age of 15, he had been tall and strong enough to be swept up by a press gang and taken off to sea, but the next year, he'd left his ship in New Orleans and went up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers and then over the mountains to New York, and met who was later Hardy's mother in New Hampshire. After Scott's wife had died, he and Hardy had gone as far as Wisconsin (west), but he was still restless even there. This was because he had wanted a larger place, in more open country, where he could raise horses. One time, when he had gone off to market, he left Hardy for two days and nights to stay and care for the stock, and keep the crows away from the corn. When he came back, he had been accompanied by his friend Andy Powell.

Scott had taught Hardy certain skills, such as making baskets and nails, and certain morals, such as that man's tool is his brain. He also instructed Hardy to try and forsee the worst possible things and prepare for them and to figure out what he would do beforehand. He had read and told stories to him, especially the one of "David and Goliath" when he was four, after which, he had given him his first slingshot.

While Hardy and Betty Sue Powell (the daughter of Scott's deceased friend Andy Powell) and Big Red are gone, Scott keeps faith that he will find them, though during terrible times, like storms, Squires and Darrow have doubts. At the end, he does find them, and he shoots the outlaw Cal Thorpe in the chest and (though aimed at the head) his throat.