This river, called the Seeds-kee-dee by the Indians had a beautiful green hue and was full of beaver and trout. It was a deep, powerful stream that had taken the lives of many emigrants who tried to ford it. The Pony Express had used this same crossing for eighteen months until the Transcontinental Telegraph was completed in 1861. As soon as the telegraph lived, the Pony Express died. 

  Save this Sweetwater site to your Favorite Bookmarks folder and follow this trail to the best writing in the West. Meanwhile, I'll meet you on the Seeds-kee-dee in the springtime, where the beaver frolic and a faint noise tinkles along the surface of the river and it . . . sounds like riders coming in . . .

  For a look at the latest progress on Tom's Wild West book series from Random House, his new fiction and non-fiction projects and publications, and his eclectic book reviews and outrageous opinions on everything from literature to Texas chili, visit:

"Welcome to the Wild West Show!" at:

http://www.members.aol.com/thomask2/wildwestshow/wws1.html

One of the Internet's foremost websites, visit Jim Janke's Old West station and learn that Jim earned his doctorate in Organic Chemistry from the University of Minnesota and that Dell and Avalon are some of his publishers. In 1995 he wrote the, "Last Stage from Laramie."

Reach the OLD WEST at: http://www.dsu.edu/~jankej/oldwest.html

From Comes A Pale Horse

A novel by Robert O. Burgess

Illustrated by Brenda Helm

Author's Note

  This work is fiction, the history fact. The documents read by this raconteur were written by the victors, a notable exception being the letters of George Bent.

  I traveled down Powder River through Wyoming to Broadus, Montana to see again that meandering stream where the Little Powder joins without a flourish. Colonel Nelson Cole struck the river twenty miles below. He marched out of Omaha, Nebraska Territory, with fourteen-hundred men and two-thousand horses and mules. Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Walker joined him near the Little Missouri River and swelled the column to two-thousand men and three-thousand horses and mules. On a one-thousand mile forced march, under orders from the the War Department, Cole was to rendezvous with General Connor on Wyoming's Tongue River. Cole lost over two-thousand horses and mules to the cold - the Sioux, the Arapahoes and Cheyennes.

  I am indebted to many people in Broadus Montana; Casper, Wyoming, the site of Platte Bridge; the Kansas State Historical Society; the State Historical Society of Missouri; the Nebraska State Historical Society; the Colorado State Historical Society; the Montana State Historical Society; the Albany County Public Library, Laramie, Wyoming the Denver Public Library; the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming and Colorado State University's library at Fort Collins where I studied the floor plans of twelve stage stations drawn on silk panels in ink and water colors by Lieutenant Caspar Collins.

  I have reviewed a large number of documents, letters, dairies, journals, maps, micro-films, treaties, pictures, papers and books in the preparation of this work. Because of its historical nature I have included footnotes and an index.

  Some say a History of the West is here.

   From Comes A Pale Horse

A novel by Robert O. Burgess