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Amy's Gold by Robert O. Burgess a narrative
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| The blacksmith at the Black Horse Livery told him to turn his mules into the pasture and take whatever stock and tack he needed. "I heard about the holdup. Everyone in town knows about it by now," said the blacksmith. "Killed old Pervins. Drove stages all his life. I hope they don't hurt that little lady. She kind of gave a lift to this town while she was here." He bent over and picked up a piece of chain from the floor and laid it over the anvil and then turned to Jedediah. "Is Mr. Prescott all right?" | ||||||||||||||
"Comes A Pale Horse"
A novel by Robert O. Burgess
The quintessential work of the American West.
540 pages of dynamite western history exploding off the pages of the TREATY OF FORT LARAMIE WITH SIOUX, ETC., 1851
"Crazy Horse spent most of his life in Wyoming. At the age of eight he moved with his family from the Black Hills east of Powder River to the Platte River near Fort Laramie to attend the 1851 Treaty."
"Caspar Collins grew up in Hillsboro, Highland County, Ohio. Near his home, at the age of eight in 1851, he fished the Muskingum River with his father. He lived three years on the river Platte . . . 1862-1865."
"The men are dressed in buckskins and wear big hats. They're eager to fight the Indians . . I think they'll be disappointed."
Caspar Collins, Letter to his mother
Fall 1864, Sweetwater Station
From Comes A Pale Horse
a novel by Robert O. Burgess
Illustrated by Brenda Helm
"Powder River. . . some say it gave birth to the buffalo, its banks spawned the dinosaur, its waters the rain . . . and on a still night the spirits sing to the night birds while they plunge and dive to its shining surface . . . and see it there, in the starlight . . . it snakes across the landscape when the moon's just right . . . nomads roamed its banks for centuries, stopping here and there to chip an axe, a point, a scraper, an awl . . . some say those hills are sacred and the medicine wheel's a hallowed place . . . "
From Comes A Pale Horse
Red Desert
During the Early Middle Eocene, fifty million years ago, Lake Gosiute was drying up. Its eastern border, located a few miles to the west of the Red Desert on the western slope of the Continental Divide was home to numerous crocodiles, turtles, flamingos and small dog-sized horses such as Hyracotherium with four toes on its front feet and three toes on its back feet. The most numerous fish in Lake Gosiute was Knightia, a small herring-like fish. Rushes and reeds were lake-shore plants and palm trees grew in her sandy soil. Cypress, fig, willow and laurel adorned the lower reaches of the lake while oak, maple and beech grew nearby. On the higher slopes fir, spruce and pine grew then as they do today.
Using the lost wax method I cast this arrowhead in sterling silver. I took an impression of a Wyoming-found point chipped between 800-1,200 years ago. Hyracotherium had disappeared many millions of years earlier, and the Indian's horse on the high desert was still several hundred years away. I inlaid this point in a knife I made of file steel.
"Hombre!"
Charles froze in his tracks.
"Looking for the gold?"
from Amy's Gold
During May of 1868 the Union Pacific Railroad found its End of Track stalled on the Laramie River where Fort John Buford, now named Fort Sanders, greeted Jack Casement and his crew. Grenville Dodge, Major General serving under General William Tecumseh Sherman during the Civil War, took one year to construct the sixty miles of track from Cheyenne City to Laramie City over Dale Creek Bridge, an engineering marvel. Six-hundred and fifty feet long and three hundred-fifty feet in the air, it was magnificent. Michigan forests provided the timbers trained to End of Track.
In another thirty days the train crews found another challenge on the east bank of the North Platte River. Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, from Fort Sanders, took one company of cavalry and one company of infantry with him to provide an escort. His orders were to lay out the site for Fort Steele, across the river.
Across the river lay the Great Divide Basin formed by the Continental Divide where in its northwesterly course it splits into an eastern ridge of just under seven thousand feet and a western rim of the same altitude. The divide meanders to enclose a great basin almost circular in shape that is once more joined in a singular spine seven miles southwest of South Pass. The distance is one hundred miles east to west and one hundred miles north to south.
The waters on the west side of the divide flow into the Pacific and on the east into the Atlantic. The waters inside this Great Divide Basin have no way out and flow into the sand and disappear.
To the south is Bridger's Pass on the Overland Trail; the north, the Sweetwater River on the Oregon Trail; to the southwest, Bitter Creek, home to Fort LaClede; ahead the Red Desert.
This AWARD was conferred to the author, Robert O. Burgess by ReadTheWest.com found at:
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