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This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
The author has been a freelance writer for 29 years, and in that period of time his stories have appeared,in such monthly journals as Outdoor Life, Field & Stream, Sports Afield, Safari, Saltwater Fisherman, Wing & Shot, Hunting Classics, Daily Republic newspapers, historical societies, western Outdoors, Deer and Deer Hunting, Western Angler, Rifle, Harris Publications, American Hunter, Petersen's Hunting Bugle, Bottles and Relics, and Western Treasures, to name but a few. He has had over 170 features published by these and other magazines and newspapers.
He is 62 years old and now retired after a 36 year career as a construction carpenter, foreman, and supervisor. He is the father of three grown sons, Mark, Troy, and Craig, and has been married to his wife, Ruth Delores for 42 years. He is also the grandfather of four young children, two boys and two girls.
His freelance writing has been a serious and important part of his life as well as a substantial part of his earnings over the years. His early retirement at age 59, has allowed him to concentrate even more time on writing, and he has produced five book length manuscripts over the last three years. Two were hunting related and titled "Mountains, Myths and Mule Deer," about hunting our great Westerner, and "Outdoor Reflections of the 1940's" a biograpahical boyhood novel about growing up in California's Coast Range mountains with rod and reel from ages 8 thru 16. The last three books are all fictional westerns, "The Plainsman," "The Search for the Golden Bucket Mine," and "The Americano's" which he has just completed.
Because of his great interest in western history and other outdoor subjects are long, deep, and varied, he expects to continue writing at the same pace in the years ahead.
Burton Childers is wagon master to a ten wagon outfit heading for the golden valleys and promised land in early day California just as it was being forced from Mexico's grip. Childers scout and close friend Gene Coltrane leads the little party across the vast, western deserts that would someday become the state of Nevada, and along this last third of their epic adventure they experience the birth of new life, death, and even the kidnapping of a little girl child, Melissa Bains, at the hands of renegade Utes.
The bedraggled train finally camps at the portals of High Rock canyon, just one week short of their passage over the high Sierra and into the northern valley they've struggled so long to reach, when that evening playing alongside the tiny trickle of water, several youngsters gather a bucket full of pretty desert rocks which are carried on to their destination without further thought.
After arriving and staking out new homesteads, it is discovered that several of the pretty rocks are actually heavily laced with gold, and the men of the party must now battle their own strong religious conscience about whether they should succumb to the lure of possible riches, or stay on their new lands and let the devil deal with the savage Paiutes Indians that inhabit those fierce, scorching hot desert mountains they've just battled their way through. In the end, five men decide to go back and try to find the fabulously wealthy vein that spawned the golden pebbles, even if they must risk everything to do so.
The party does go back, does eventually find the golden ledge high up on the canyon wall, and begins to work it in earnest to extract as much of the rich diggings as possible before the Paiute learn of their presence there, but luck runs out and the Indians trap and kill of them save Burton Childers who is away hunting when the ambush takes place, and must now try to struggle across 150 miles of savage wasteland to reach the safety of the Sierra's, and do so only on foot.
As the mounted Paiutes finally track him down days later and close in for the kill, Gene Coltrane who has traveled east to find and help the party, inadvertently stumbles on Childers and saves his life in a running gun battle with the Indians. It is then that Coltrane tells his friend that he may be on the track of the Utes that captured Melissa Bains, and that when they arrive back at the homesteads, he plans to ride all the way back to Utah Territory to run down the evidence he's gathered by both word of mouth, a tattered piece of blue dress, and a letter from a U. S. Cavalry officer stationed in southern Utah.
Now, once home, Burton Childers must face the women and children and tell them about the death of their husbands and fathers, a task that nearly crumbles him mentally and physically and severely tests his strong religious background to the breaking point. He even takes several of the widowed women in, back as his ranch, while Coltrane rides the long trail back to Utah Territory to see if he can find the child that might be the little Bains girl taken from the Utes in a gun battle that killed almost all of them in a shoot out with the U.S. Cavalry.
In the final chapters of the story Coltrane and a friend, Shorty Cliff eventually return with a girl child and finally ride the last yards toward the waiting band of settlers including the Bains father, mother, and brothers, who search the growing image of riders to see if they have, in fact, brought their sister back home from the dead. Melissa's mother hasn't uttered more than mumbling words since her daughter was taken, and now she is confronted with facing this child to see if she can recognize her and restore her own sanity in the process.
This is a western epic, possibly best described as a historical western, for these things actually did happen to many westward bound wagon trains. I've camped along these very same trails, and ridden along the still visible ruts across the western wastelands. That, I believe, is what makes this story so viable, so real. It's steeped in hard facts, and because of it, the reading is that much more realistic and plausible.
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