Uncompahgre

by Reid Lance Rosenthal

  Momentous changes continue in Books Six, Seven, and Eight (Blood at Glorietta Pass, The Bond, and Cache Valley), igniting further greed and compassion, courage and treachery, rugged independence, torrid passions, and fierce loyalties. The Civil War erupts, and the fires of deadly tumult sweep west. A Confederate Army mustered in Texas is repulsed by the Denver Militia. The Mormon family contends with the demands of the church while creating a legacy in the Cache and Salt Lake Valleys, the fate of their lineage to be dramatically affected by those they have met long before. A tidal wave of hopeful souls, some displaced by the devastation of the Civil War, add to the torrent of humanity flowing west following the trail of the strong men and women of Uncompahgre. The meeting of the tracks of the Union Pacific Railroad from the east and Central Pacific from the west in 1869, underpin the rise of the robber barons, cattle empires and commerce, drawing hundreds of thousands to the Rockies and beyond.

  The first Threads West generation born in the remote and sparsely settled west, and introduced in Moccasin Tracks, begins to mature and contend with this cauldron of events, their lives unsettled by personal tragedies, triumphs, love and loss. Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and Montana evolve into separate and distinct territories and then achieve statehood. Law and order struggles as outlaws linger on the outer edges and range wars erupt between the landowners and the landless, sheepherders, cattlemen and sodbusters. The clash of cultures, creeds and beliefs, and bitter rivalries over the control of scarce water resources, fuels further violence and cruelty.

  Soon, railroads and telegraphs will pierce even this wild land. The broken treaties with Native Americans spread into bitter and contagious conflict throughout the West. The “resolution” of the “Indian problem” leaves families and hearts broken, a dark stain on the pages of American history, and the foreboding visions of the Sioux in Book Two, Maps of Fate, sadly fulfilled.

  You will recognize the characters who live in these pages. These brave, passion-filled characters face conflicts exacerbated by a country in transition and the accelerating melting pot of diverse cultures that mark this magical moment in American history. They are the ancestors of your neighbors, your family, your co-workers, their lives the woven threads of men and women from different locations, conflicting values, disparate backgrounds, faiths and beliefs. Forged on the anvil of the land, they are bound by the commonality of the American spirit into the tapestry that is our nation.

  These decades of Maps of Fate Era novels of the Threads West, An American Saga series become the crucible of the American Spirit, forever affecting the souls of generations, the building of the heart of the nation, destiny of a people and the relentless energy and beauty of the western landscape.

  The adventure and romance of America,

  her people, her spirt and the West.

  Threads West, An American Saga. This is our story

  www.threadswestseries.com

  THOUGHTS FROM REID

  ABOUT BOOK THREE

  I am often asked why I have “tightened the cinch” on this immense story of America set in the West. True, I love to write, and yes, I am vested in these characters. Their personalities are compilations of people both you and I have met. Each carries a part of me. They are my friends.

  I am infatuated with America’s people—the hands, hearts, feelings, origins, personalities and spirit that built the United States, but my enthusiasm is also fueled by my love of country, and my bond with the land. I have always believed that a nation’s essential elements are its people and its lands. It is the interaction with, and between, each that determines the direction and, eventually, the destination of society—its freedom, values and exceptional qualities. The trail behind leads to the path ahead.

  I am delighted and humbled that this epic saga is being avidly devoured by readers from ages thirteen to ninety-six, with readership almost evenly split between male and female book lovers. I am told this is highly funusual. Perhaps it is due in part to the affinity readers develop for the unique, distinctive personalities of the men and women who live in these pages. Some brave, others cowardly, all independent, the viscious offset by the kind, conflicted yet resolute, laced with fears yet persevering. All are passionate, though the passions of some are infused with bitter thoughts and dark actions.

  Perhaps many of you turn these pages because you feel as I do—the touchstones of the past are the guideposts to the future. Uncompahgre-where water turns rock red, is the continuation of this tale of America, her people and the West—new lineages join the many threads of uncommon cultures, differing origins and competing ambitions that entwine into the American spirit; lives and generations woven on the loom of history, propelled by fate and freedom to form the tapestry that becomes the whole cloth of the nation. It is uniquely American, this meld of the mosaic.

  My life has been spent on the lands of the West. I am fortunate to have felt the ancient energies of sunwarmed canyons. My soul has heard the whispers of Spirit carried on mountain breezes that once caressed the leathery, bronzed skin of ancestors. Logs hewn by hands long before our time have shared their energy of history, hope and courage of years long past. I’m compelled and honored to tell this tale—driven to capture the visual and memorialize the singular passions of our individual paths merging to form the shared trail of our American spirit.

  I am gratified your eyes see these words and your fingers touch and linger on these pages. I hope your American soul is as touched by the reading as mine was by the writing. Feel the spirit. Think of the history. Remember the struggles. Be proud—we are America and this is our story.

  Thank you for reading Uncompahgre, Book Three of the Threads West series.

  Reid Lance Rosenthal

  Author

  Book One, Threads West, An American Saga—

  The Vanguard of Generations:

  MAJOR CHARACTERS

  Inga Bjorne: There are few men who are not arrested by the intensity of Inga Bjorne’s pale blue eyes. Tall, beautiful, curvy and athletic with long blonde hair, her life has been contentious. She suffered the painful loss of her Norwegian parents when she was eleven. That trauma was exacerbated by a lazy, alcoholic uncle who dragged her to New York. When she was thirteen, his final abuse afforded her the courage to escape from his perverse control. For seven years, she has done what she must to survive in the bustling diversity of squalor and luxury that characterized mid-1800s New York City. The timely application of her charm, looks and wit is finally about to land her a comfortable job with the mayor of New York, Ferdinando Wood, on his house staff at Gracie Mansion. Unknown to Inga, that stroke of fortune will tip the next domino in her life and will shake the foundation of her experiences and her caustic view of men.

  Jacob O’Shanahan: Feisty, stocky, cunning and violent, Jacob grew up in the grimy streets of Dublin, Ireland, living hand to mouth, his focus only on the egocentric satisfaction of the day at hand and backroom poker, which is the mainstay of his livelihood. His quick temper and greed are about to thrust him over the precipice of a major life alteration. The coarse fabric of his existence intertwines with the threads of others in a quirk of unknown destiny that neither he nor they can contemplate or prevent.

  Johannes Svenson: Both irreverent and charming, his military service in the Danish Heavy cavalry as a decorated officer instilled in him a quiet but mischievous worldly confidence. Tall, lean, blond, roguish, adventurous, restless, he and his Don Juan life are adrift. Johannes, in his search to find himself, is about to be swept by the mysterious rivers of destiny into the unknown currents of an unanticipated romance and a far distant frontier.

  Rebecca Marx: A dark-haired beauty with ravenous eyes and a figure that turns heads, Rebecca is petulant, clever, demanding, spoiled and reluctant to give up her creature comforts and stature in English high society. Prior to her father’s death, she shrewdly assisted him for years in the family trade. She finds the decline of the business her grandfather founded demeaning. Her last hope is a bequeathed, mysterious asset r
umored to be of great value somewhere in rugged, unsettled land across the Atlantic thousands of miles to the west. She has only a map, her father’s deathbed whispers and his bequeath of a mysterious Spanish land grant as guides. She leaves her mother Elizabeth, frail and elderly, to sail to America and the thread of another life begins to spool toward an unknown future.

  Reuben Frank: Lives and helps operate the family cattle farm with his wise but ailing father, Ludwig, and brothers Erik, Helmon and Isaac. For twenty-one years, he has led a sheltered existence on the outskirts of the little town of Villmar, on the serpentine banks of the Lahn River in eastern Prussia. Though of medium build, his frame is toughened from working cattle and the farm. His agile mind, good business sense and quiet strength have not gone unnoticed by his father, whose health has been in decline since the death of Reuben’s mother several years prior. Though the family has prospered, the expansion and perpetuation of their livestock operation is confined by lack of land and the rigid social structure of 1800s Europe. The heritage of Reuben’s family and the future of their cattle business is about to be placed in his hands. His ability to rise to the enormous responsibly in an untamed land he has never seen is unknown, even to him.

  Sarah Bonney: Youngest daughter of Richard and Nancy, Sarah is a curvy, petite young woman with lustrous blue eyes, flowing red hair and a determined dream. Following the death of her mother the Old World holds little promise. The glowing letters from her Aunt Stella in New York, an ambition and wonder that can be satiated only by exploration and a strange pull that flows from the unknown continent across the sea, is about to collide with the realities of life, and personalities more jaded, far more cunning and infinitely less innocent than hers. Sarah has made her choice, but will it prove to be the right one?

  Zebarriah Taylor: Weathered, wiry and wily in the ways of the wilderness, this tall, thin loner seeks the solitude of quaking aspens, sun-drenched canyons, gurgles of rushing high country creeks and the still waters of beaver ponds that supply him with pelts for trade. Zeb is not much partial to people, intensely dislikes settlements and towns, and distrusts most who share his skin color. He is plagued by a tragic past—orphaned as a teenager by a renegade band led by the notorious vicious killer, Black Feather. Trying desperately to forget, he succumbs to the call of the West living for a time with an Oglala Sioux tribe learning the survival ways of the wild. His few friends are members of the Arapahoe and Shawnee tribes with whom he trades. Unknown to him, his tough and leathery path will inexplicably intersect with the life journeys of others, resulting in generational influences far more broad and long-term than his lone wolf nature can foresee.

  BOOK ONE — SECONDARY CHARACTERS

  Adam: Freed Aborigine slave, now voluntary servant with his wife and daughter to Rebecca and Elizabeth, Adam possesses a strange and powerful ability to sense the future, but how accurate will his predictions be?

  Elizabeth and Aunt Stella: Rebecca’s frail and failing mother, Elizabeth, distraught over the death of her husband, Henry, terrified by and opposed to Rebecca’s journey to America to try to rescue the floundering family finances. Sarah’s Aunt Stella, sister of Sarah’s deceased mother, Nancy, is plump, matronly, fussy and naïve. She has promised Sarah a job in her New York seamstress shop.

  Emily, Nancy and Richard Bonney: Sarah’s sister and beloved, deceased parents. Emily, the co-owner of their seamstress shop in Liverpool, is heartbroken and concerned with Sarah’s departure for America.

  Erik: Youngest of Reuben’s three brothers and Reuben’s closest sibling, he is emotional, a thinker and a student of music and the arts. Soft-spoken, slight of build, scholarly and thickly bespectacled, he is greatly influenced by their father, Ludwig, and his respect and admiration for Reuben.

  Ludwig Frank: Patriarch of the Frank family and Reuben Frank’s father. Deep-set brown eyes, hardworking, wise and devoutly Jewish, he built a highly respected cattle enterprise in eastern Prussia but is convinced America is the future.

  Uncle Hermann: Reuben’s uncle, Hermann left the farm and joined the Prussian army when he was twenty-two. After being wounded, decorated and discharged, he immigrated to America with his wife, corresponding with his brother Ludwig often—eventually hiring a scout to search and map the perfect location for a cattle ranch in the West. With wavy, salt and pepper grey hair, and of medium build, he struggles with a noticeable limp—a lingering badge of his former service. After his wife’s death, he has lived alone outside of New York City with his servant, Mae, a kind, heavyset Negro woman.

  Book Two, Maps of Fate—New Characters Weave Into This Story of Us:

  MAJOR CHARACTERS

  Black Feather: Bitter, aggressive killer with a band of like-minded followers and renegades, with a tall, angular frame, swart features and a thin white scar above his lips, his reddish bronzed features are framed by an explosion of long, dirty brown hair. Originally named Samuel Ray-sun Harrison, Black Feather grew up on the family farm. His father, Jonathan Harrison—white, older and lanky with graying hair—traded with the Osage Indians using milk, eggs and vegetables from his Missouri garden as barter. Black Feather’s mother, Sunray, was a full-blood Osage, statuesque and beautiful. Her athletic body was proportioned perfectly with a thin waist flared to hips made for childbearing. Her perfect white teeth were always displayed in a broad and friendly smile that complimented her wide, acorn-brown eyes. Young Samuel loved her deeply. His parents were brutally killed by white men when he was twelve years old. Set on revenge, he tracked down the killers, taking two black feathers from their dying leader’s hat and adorning his hair with those symbols of revenge from that moment forward. Haunted by a tortured past, he finds himself confused by the empathy he feels for the young, traumatized woman-child he captures.

  Dorothy (Dot): Black Feather’s fifteen-year-old woman-child captive taken from an ambushed wagon train. A thin, blonde girl, Dorothy is traumatized and muted by the stress of her abduction and the unexpected violence that has shattered her life. Whether she emerges from her emotional shell depends on circumstances neither she nor Black Feather can foresee.

  Eagle Talon: A rising young brave, leader of the younger warriors of his small, adopted Oglala Sioux tribe. The only son of war chief, Two Bears of the Northern People, he marries the daughter of the shaman, Tracks on Rock, and moves to her clan’s village as tradition demands. Eagle Talon is an expert hunter and intuitive statesman, but brash. Rigidly athletic, graceful and proud, he wears eight eagle feathers in his long black hair and an ornate shield painted with an eagle feather with a superimposed image of an eagle talon fastened high on one arm, its rounded top slightly higher than his shoulder. Is he wrong to ignore the premonitions permeating his soul?

  Israel and Lucy Thomas: Married for twenty-four years, these elderly slaves have opposite but complimentary personalities. Israel’s curly hair has turned salt and pepper. He wears thick, brass-framed spectacles. Taught to read by Mistress Tara, daughter of an Oklahoma plantation owner, he has studied the Constitution and Declaration of Independence through smuggled newspapers. As he learns of the rapidly evolving dispute over slavery, he harbors the dream of escaping west to freedom via the Underground Railroad but first he must overcome Lucy’s stubborn temerity and resistance to change. Her rounded figure and worn features also speak of advancing age. Her wide-set brown eyes and high cheekbones are framed by brittle, grey curls of hair escaping the edges of a tight wrapped bandana.

  Mac (Macintyre): The short, wide-shouldered Irish wagon master. His full, light red beard and mop of dark red hair correctly foretell a joviality mixed with a quick temper and experienced, iron leadership.

  Walks with Moon: Daughter of Tracks on Rock and wife to Eagle Talon, she and her husband share love and respect. Intuitive, passionate, protective and filled with a strong foreboding about the influx of white men into Sioux lands, she is now pregnant with their first child. One friend, Talks with Shadows, has shared a frightening vision—but will this turn out to be just another sill
y rambling?

  BOOK TWO — SECONDARY CHARACTERS

  Elijah and Saley: Kentucky pioneer family, consisting of husband Elijah, sallow-faced wife, Saley and four children. Their oldest son, thirteen-year-old Abraham is a crack shot and has been responsible for putting food on the table since the age of five. Two mules pull their modified prairie schooner westward. Along with Zebbariah Taylor, Elijah and his son are key hunters for fresh meat for the wagon train.

  Flying Arrow: War chief of the Oglala Sioux village. Elderly, grey haired, still broad-shouldered but having lost the sculptured muscle of youth, he carries a long, thick staff with a heavy wooden burl at its head that has counted many coup.