Big Medicine: Visions of Early Montana

By Charlie Nicks

Big Medicine is an intellectually rich and engaging historical epic detailing the early development of the West from 1850 to 1893. This enthralling historical novel is set on the present day Flathead Indian Reservation in Western Montanas magnificent Mission Valley.

This is the story of trappers, traders, tribes, cattle barons, copper kings and timber czars and the political, military and personal struggles that eventually settled the fabled land, Montana.

They came from far and wide, into a wild and untamed wilderness, risking all they had in hope of finding a better life, each of them hoping to fulfill their own personal vision. Some did, most did not, but all of their stories dress the captivating pages of Big Medicine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 10, 2005
• ISBN: 9781469115238

Book preview

BIG MEDICINE

Visions of Early Montana

CHARLIE NICKS

©Copyright 2006 Charlie Nicks. All Rights Reserved.

Except for appropriate use in critical review, or works of scholarship, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, now known nor hereafter invented, without prior written permission from both the author and publisher.

The works contained in this book, including the names, characters, places, and events, other than those persons considered legally in the public domain, are purely fictional and a product of the author’s imagination, any resemblance to actual persons, whether living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Unauthorized Duplication is a violation of Applicable Laws 088 112056.2

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

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Contents

CHAPTER ONE

MARCH 23, 1850

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS / U.S. CANADIAN BORDER

CHAPTER TWO

ST. JOSEPH, MISSOURI

CHAPTER THREE

SPOKANE FALLS

CHAPTER FOUR

THE VILLAGE OF SPOKANE

CHAPTER FIVE

NEAR LAKE COEUR D’ ALENE—NORTH IDAHO

CHAPTER SIX

EASTERN WYOMING TERRITORY

CHAPTER SEVEN

100 MILES NORTH OF FORT LARAMIE—WYOMING TERRITORY

CHAPTER EIGHT

MISSION VALLEY, MONTANA TERRITORY

CHAPTER NINE

THE VILLAGE OF SPOKANE—WASHINGTON TERRITORY

CHAPTER TEN

SPOKANE VILLAGE—WASHINGTON TERRITORY

CHAPTER ELEVEN

OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON TERRITORY

CHAPTER TWELVE

LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ST. IGNATIUS—MONTANA TERRITORY

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

FEBRUARY 10, 1864

SHEFFIELD, ENGLAND

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

HELENA VALLEY—

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

NORTH CENTRAL COLORADO

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE 5 VALLEY MERCANTILE

MISSOULA VALLEY

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

HELENA—MONTANA TERRITORY

CHAPTER NINETEEN

YAROSLAVL—WESTERN RUSSIA

CHAPTER TWENTY

BARRETT BROTHERS CATTLE COMPANY

BIG BEND—MONTANA TERRITORY

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

HELENA—MONTANA TERRITORY

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

THE PATRIOT HOUSE RESTAURANT

HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT—JUNE 20, 1872

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

MISSION VALLEY FARMS

ST. IGNATIUS—MONTANA TERRITORY

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

FORT BENTON—MONTANA TERRITORY

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

60 MILES SOUTHWEST MILES CITY

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

THE LITTLE BIGHORN RIVER

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

BUTTE—MONTANA TERRITORY

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

BARRETT BROTHERS CATTLE COMPANY

BIG BEN, MONTANA

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

MILES CITY—MONTANA TERRITORY

CHAPTER THIRTY

FORT BELKNAP RESERVATION—MONTANA TERRITORY

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

JUNE 8, 1884

FORT BENTON—MONTANA TERRITORY

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

MOISE, MONTANA

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

110 MILES NORTH OF MILES CITY—

MONTANA TERRITORY

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

RONAN—MONTANA TERRITORY

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

THE BITTERROOT VALLEY—MONTANA TERRITORY

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

RONAN—MONTANA TERRITORY

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

THE CHICAGO WORLD FAIR

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

DECEMBER 21, 1893

THE MISSION MOUNTAINS—RONAN, MONTANA

PROLOGUE

MOISE, MONTANA

Dedication

For my Dad, who sat on many a fine horse

and worked his share of cattle

in the shadow of the sheep.

And for all my family,

those blood and those bonded,

I love you all—each and every one.

THIS IS A NOVEL

Its characters and scenes are imaginary. There was no Royal Halicord Ranch, no Devilstown, no Robert’s Massacre, nor a Barrett Brothers Cattle Company. None of the families depicted here are, or were, real, nor were they founded on real precedents. There was no Boyd Stark, no Pierre Bosteau, no Johnny Bates, nor Mars and Sally McCurtry.

On the other hand, certain background incidents and characters within the text are real.

There was a great convocation of tribes in 1851 at Fort Laramie. There was a Union formed in Butte in 1878. There is a Jesuit Mission located at St. Ignatius. Charles Allard and Michael Pablo did run a private herd of buffalo, and Martha Jane Canary did frequent the towns of south central Montana.

Finally, Peter and Mollie Ronan did exist, and the agriculturally based community in western Montana, centered in the magnificent Mission Valley, called Ronan, does exist, and was named for Peter Ronan.

It is also the place where the author was born.

Acknowledgments

This novel deals with a variety of subjects that have been important to me all my life, though not until writing it had I recognized how much. Writing it has been simultaneously one of the most difficult and happy experiences of my life. Among the people I’m deeply indebted to for its existence are the following:

JERRY HAMEL: A career cattle rancher from Dixon, Montana. His sensitivity to the animals in his care is exceeded only by his commitment to produce beef of the highest quality, a commitment he’s maintained now for nearly 50 years. I thank him for the many months he spent teaching me the fundamentals of the art and science of running a cattle ranch, and especially for his patience with me as I learned to be a cowboy’s helper. And, I also thank him for many things that do not need to be said here.

BEVERLY HAMEL: My mother, an expert on many subjects, but none more so than the history of the Mission Valley and the Flathead Indian Reservation. She provided me with bundles of her personal research material, as well as many invaluable tidbits of little known historical information that some might have considered insignificant. In the end, that very information proved instead to greatly enrich this novel. Of course, my debt to her far exceeds the assistance she provided me in complying this work.

MY CATTLEMEN FRIENDS: Fred Tapia, Ross Middlemist, Brett Johnson, Gene Erb, Brent Powell, and Carl Moss: All men who I have worked with side-by-side at one time or another in pastures, fields, corrals, arenas, and chutes. Some of the very best times of my life I spent hauling hay, trailing cattle, swimming rivers, working cows, and bouncing down dusty roads in pick-ups with these Montana men. Each taught me a little something different from the other, and between them, I am proud to say, I learned a great deal about horses, cattle, irrigation, calving, grass, weeds, and ranching. They each also taught me a little bit about life, particularly Fred Tapia, a very wise man, in own his unique way, and a one of a kind Montanan.

TERRI NICKS: A Wyoming girl, who, month after month, read and re-read the emerging manuscript and kept it on track, never once uttering so much as a single negative word, when often, to do so, would have been entirely appropriate.

RITA HAMMER: A finicky, but nonetheless superb Colorado copy-editor and personal friend. She spent many hours cleaning the text, hopefully disguising the fact that I have yet to darken the doors of any institute of higher learning.

SUSAN B. LOVELY: As solid a Montanan as was ever born, and close friend of many years. Sue encouraged me to write this novel during a very low point in my life, and got me humbly through the first few chapters. She also, among many other things, taught me the correct spelling of the word separate.

PAUL FUGELBERG: A Montana newspaper icon who I consider the quintessential living authority on matters happening in Lake County, Montana. For three decades he has documented the local history from his desk at the Lake County Leader, (formerly known as the Flathead Courier), an outstanding weekly publication. I am particularly indebted to him for his unsurpassed research on Flathead Lake. He is a man whose brilliance is fully unrecognized within his own community, but not unappreciated.

SEARS, HEWLETT PACKARD & JUAN VALDEZ: If there is one thing I’ve learned since proclaiming myself a writer in 1995, it’s that writing is a zero nonsense profession. You either get it done, or you don’t. Its struggles and frustrations are incomprehensible to those who’ve never done it. Hardly the glamorous job it’s often depicted. In my mind, it would be comically deficient to leave unmentioned the contributions to this novel made by Sears, whose reliable alarm clock reminded me it was time to write, hundreds of mornings, precisely at 4:30 am—and write I would—each day on a trustworthy computer built by the fine people at Hewlett Packard. And, I can assure you, that had it not been for the formidable mountain coffee growing gifts of Juan Valdez and his caffeine colleagues, this novel would not exist.

SHARON PIEDALUE: A fine Montanan, and the first human being to ever walk into a store and write a check to purchase any of my work. An act to this very day I immensely appreciate.

BIG MEDICINE

TRIBAL PHONETIC LEGEND

One of the more perplexing challenges writing this novel surfaced early. Specifically, how to most appropriately approach the names and spellings of the various tribes who appear throughout the text. Many tribes had more than one name, and very often, several spellings for each.

In the end, I chose to use the most current name and common spelling, that rendition likely familiar to the majority of readers. Western scholars and historians universally concede that a tremendous number of discrepancies exist in virtually ever aspect of the early West, particularly those matters pertaining to the tribes, and their histories. I hope not to have offended those historically inclined folks in making this choice, it was certainly not my intention. If anyone respects your knowledge, I do. However, after much consideration I opted to use those names that would most readily be familiar to readers, which, I contend, is the larger purpose.

I have provided the following as a generalized phonetic legend of those tribal names appearing in this novel that may be otherwise difficult to read or pronounce. Those tribal names more readily enunciable have been omitted from this legend. Thank you.

* Denotes Sioux Tribal Affiliation

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Author’s Note

DECEMBER 31, 1999

4:35 PM—BILLINGS, MONTANA

I am sitting alone at a table in the bar of the Northern Hotel in downtown Billings. It’s nearly 5:00 in the afternoon, Mountain Time, December 31st, 1999. Less than eight hours from now a millennium will end.

It is an especially good day to think and today I’ve thought a lot about Montana. It’s changing you know and you don’t have to go far to see it.

An hour ago I was across the street having the first of several New Year’s drinks at the Crystal. If you know where the Northern Hotel is, you know where to find the Crystal.

The bartender working at the Crystal Bar in downtown Billings, Montana right now is an attractive brunette named Sharon. She doesn’t have a name tag, she actually told me her name when she reached over the bar with a middle-aged hand to introduce herself. Sharon is wearing a teal green polyester knit pants suit which is 10 pounds too tight. She’s left two or three buttons undone, intentionally I suspect. Cleavage, moderately wrinkled or otherwise, continues to attract tips even in this high-tech world.

The first thing I noticed about Sharon however, was not her cleavage, it was the fact that she seemed to know the name of everyone in the place, and now she knows mine. She volunteered that she was actually from Roundup but had moved to Billings to find a better paying job after her divorce was final a couple years back.

The house bought my third drink but Sharon took the credit, here, I’ll buy you one, she said, maybe suggesting something, maybe not.

The juke box seemed a little too loud, but can any George Strait song ever really be too loud? Free chili-dogs… while they last, it being a holiday and all.

Sharon’s clientele reminded me of a good pen of bucking horses, sort of shaggy and rough and scratched-up, but spirited, with a lot of heart. Most of them weren’t engaged in heady recollections of the events and people that had shaped the last two hundred years of Montana history. Most were just getting drunk and keeping an eye on the tray of disappearing chili-dogs. Regretfully, I had to leave my new friend Sharon, my free drink, and George Strait to make my way across the street to the Northern Hotel to meet some people for a holiday toast.

The big corporations who operate hotel chains all over the world still haven’t figured out that, in Montana anyway, it’s sort of a tradition for the house to at least occasionally buy a drink. I guess nobody mentioned that to the big corporation who bought the Northern Hotel a number of years back. A corporate name apparently so familiar that it does not need to rely on the goodwill word-of-mouth advertising generated by the friendly gesture of buying a round. Their choice.

When the new owners took over the Northern, one of their first moves was to refurbish the bar, and I must admit, it does look nice. In fact, if it were not for the obnoxious flashing pink neon sign belonging to the Crystal across the street, looking out the enormous new windows I would probably think I was sitting in Boston, Atlanta or even the sophisticated San Francisco.

The bartender, employed by the corporation, after several minutes, managed to come out from behind the bar long enough to personally take my order. She did not offer her name and I couldn’t make it out on her name-tag because the corporation’s logo was so large it dwarfed the tiny green plastic strip on which her name was indicated in raised white letters.

She is pretty. Prettier than Sharon I thought after a close look. Somehow though, I doubted that she’d ever been to Roundup, or studied a pen of bucking horses, or turned up the volume on a George Strait tune.

I watched her make my drink from a liquor gun. I got just what I had coming, no more, no less, and the Northern’s accounting department could verify it if need be. My drink, now a matter of record, was delivered and placed before me on a white paper napkin that had the corporation’s logo handsomely imprinted on it.

I smiled. The nameless bartender smiled. Then she took too much money for too little alcohol, pointed to a tray of waning celery sticks, once curly carrots, and aging ranch dressing on a nearby table and returned to her soap opera.

Three men are sitting at the bar. The two wearing suits are discussing an office building in Minneapolis on which they will apparently soon foreclose. The third man, maybe 60, is wearing a pair of relaxed-fit Wrangler jeans, a white cotton shirt, and a white felt cowboy hat. Resistol my guess.

On the walls are a number of large western paintings, most, if not all, left over from the days when the Northern Hotel’s name was not preceded by the name of a big corporation. I cannot name the artist but the work is spectacular. His images are of horses, cowboys, tipis, buffalo, and cattle. Montana. These days such images exist mostly on the canvas of an artist or in the memory of an Elder or somewhere in the mind of a storyteller. They are indeed the images of Montana and they rightfully belong to people like Sharon.

As I drink my perfectly measured drink I sense that in just a few hours not only will my calendar change but so will my state. I also sense that Montana’s people will become divided. Some, most perhaps, will go forward into a new time and a new Montana. Others will make a choice to stay behind.

As for me? I think I’ll go back to the Crystal.

CHAPTER ONE

MARCH 23, 1850

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS / U.S. CANADIAN BORDER

The sightless kits were curled comfortably at their mother’s underside. She was uncharacteristically still asleep, perhaps drained of energy from the little ones. They were a new experience for her and she felt overwhelmed with responsibility, still, she was enjoying her motherhood. He was now awake and facing her. They laid nose to nose and he opened his eyes to look at her. He watched the rhythmic expansion and release of her breathing. He liked her and felt he had made a good choice.

Now awake, instinctively his thoughts turned to chores to be done outside the lodge. He felt the familiar need to be busy. Slipping quietly into the cold water he was off to work, leaving his young family to their sleep. Drawing his two front paws beneath his chin, he launched his sleek body with a thrust of his powerful tail, and propelled himself further with his two webbed hind feet, through a remarkably intricate maze of tunnels toward the surface of his private pond.

The water’s surface in sight, he slowed his ascension, cautiously scanning the interior banks of the pond for unwelcome visitors. None visible, he moved forward, still slowly, allowing only the crown of his head to penetrate the surface. Guardedly, he would maintain this profile a moment longer, checking in all four directions for danger.

His reliably sharp eyes moved slowly, observing the entire perimeter of the pond. His keen sense of smell confirmed what his eyes reported and he determined it safe to fully surface. Noiselessly, he slithered from the stream, up the bank, looking both ways, he turned and waddled north along the water’s edge.

The snow was still deep but no more so than he’d known it each of his three short years. He could work around it and he would have to if he intended to save the lodge. Soon, he knew, the thaw would come, and though he’d built the lodge as high up the stream as he could, the water would rise and the pushing and tearing of spring run-off would begin. It was an ongoing sacrament for the beaver, building, then defending his home from the mountain.

Cheerfully, he scampered up and down the banks of the stream taking a quick inventory of available construction material. He would need twigs, and lots of them. They were not in abundance just yet, but he knew that as the snows receded plenty of twigs would appear. But, there were enough to get started.

Satisfied that it was a work day, he plopped back into the pond, swished his tail, and darted back to the lodge. He did not like to work alone and decided to wake his lazy mate. Arriving home he found her still asleep. He nudged her gently. Again. She protested with a burst of chatter and turned her head away. The kits readjusted themselves without waking. Fine. He would work alone. Back into the water he zipped, less certain he had made such a good choice.

As he swam, he slowed enough to make a careful assessment of the repair and reinforcement work he needed to do. In his opinion there was much to do and he would have to get busy. After almost six minutes underwater, he concluded his inspection and edged again toward the sunlight on the surface. Slowing, checking, looking, smelling, and finally shooting himself brightly on the bank. He shook the water from his fine winter coat with a quick shutter. Warm from the sunlight for the first time since December, he took a moment to preen.

But a male beaver never takes just a moment to preen, and an hour later he was still stripping his body oils with his sharp front claws and redistributing them over his entire coat of fur. Suddenly, he remembered, he had work to do and again felt the need to get busy.

For two hours he worked feverishly. He chewed and tugged and pulled. In and out of the stream dozens of times, he hauled twigs into the tunnels, fastening and securing each with precision craftsmanship.

By noon his mate was awake. They almost crashed into each other when he dove back into the stream with a twig. Still upset with her, he greeted her with a volley of recusant chatter and again dove beneath the surface to continue what he had started. She felt no need to apologize and scurried along the stream bank. Looking up she froze.

She was only two winters wise but she knew every creature living in these mountains by sight, except for this one. He stood upright on two legs, like the bear scratching at the trees. But unlike the bear, he did not return again to the ground, he stayed upright. He even walked upright.

He was large but had no antlers, and although she couldn’t see from the direction he was standing, he had no tail. He made a lot of noise. His skin was the color of the elk but was not covered with hair. On his head rested a bright red object that she hadn’t seen before. From under it, long hair extended, like the buffalo’s beard. A colored stripe encircled his middle, covered by a thousand tiny rocks reflecting many colors in the sunlight. Hanging from the colored stripe were strands of metal contraptions of some kind. He carried a large black stick that was very straight. It did not look good to eat.

He showed no aggression. She was curious but not afraid, still, she kept out of sight. She felt she should inform her mate of this discovery. Together, they quietly returned finding the peculiar creature still there, they watched him in silence from beneath the cover of hanging limbs.

He bent to the stream and placed one of the contraptions in the water. Confused and a little concerned, the two decided to return to the safety of their lodge until the critter was gone.

At dusk the male decided he’d check on the character that had interrupted his day. Back through the tunnels he swam, up, up, toward the surface, checking, looking, smelling. He stayed in the stream swimming effortlessly higher. In the growing darkness, it was difficult to see so he focused on his powerful sense of smell. To his delight he caught the scent of castoreum a few hundred feet further upstream. He paddled his hind legs and moved closer to the seductive smell.

The heavy scent was impossible to resist, he moved quickly to its source. It was coming from a twig hanging over the water. He moved still closer, raising his nose to the scent. Higher and closer he moved, his nose just inches from the twig, the sweet smell intoxicating. He raised higher to smell and when he did the steel jaws of the trap crashed together on his legs. Pain rifled through his body, an unceasing pain, a bite with no forgiveness.

He felt himself sinking, being tugged from beneath the surface, pulled downward by an enemy he could not see. His legs were broken nearly in two. He thrust himself wildly with his tail, trying desperately to break free from the grasp of this terrible predator. The heavy chain wouldn’t budge. The more he twisted and fought, the more entangled in it he became.

In eight short minutes he would drown, not one hundred yards from the safety of his lodge. Soon the trap and the chain had their influence, the body of the industrious young family man, fell limp.

Her concern heightened, she left the kits alone in the lodge and swam above to check on her mate. Beaver mate for life. Once together, they rarely spend more than a few hours out of each other’s sight. Surfacing, she immediately caught the scent of the castoreum. She too moved upstream toward its smell, her sense of smell being even more acute than her partner’s.

As she neared the twig she felt the slick limp body of her mate beneath. She dove below. He floated loosely in the stream, unmistakably dead, wrapped in the chain, his legs broken. She nudged him. She pulled at him with her sharp teeth. She could not understand. Eventually she needed oxygen.

Quietly, she laid on the bank looking back into the black water. She remembered the stranger but could not make the connection. She slipped back into the water, touched her mate a final time and returned to the kits.

Kentucky born Boyd Stark, stooped uncomfortably, in the darkness of his rapidly deteriorating sod hut. The heavy moisture of late spring snow had the roof already sagging. Stark knew the hut could succumb at any moment, crushing him under a good 20, maybe 30, feet of heavy snow. He was neither worried nor feeling sorry for himself. He was a trapper. A mountain man, as they were called in those days, and, fear, much less self-pity, never entered his mind. He was just lonesome.

Stark thought it curious his feeling this pang of loneliness, hell, he’d go months on end without feeling any sort of feeling at all, much less a useless emotion like loneliness. Like most of his solitary colleagues Boyd Stark was a hard man. Mountain men, trappers, were ardently tough, fervently tough, and Kentuckian Boyd Stark, a life long trapper, even at his advancing age, was still as tough as the toughest.

In late summer, bored with the vices of the cities where he sold his pelts, he would walk, if need be, hundreds of miles through complete wilderness, provisioned with no more than a knife and a gun. Eventually faced with winter, he’d climb up into the belly of some remote mountain range and find a way to survive a winter in 40 feet of snow.

And that’s a pretty fair explanation of his presence here tonight, except that he’d arrived by the relative comfort of a birch bark canoe rather than by foot.

Last year, he’d packed two bales of pelts out of the mountains near Lake Louise, selling them to a trader he knew in Vancouver. After spending six drunken weeks among the flatlanders, he’d gotten the old itch and left to go back up. He and his stealthy canoe meandered their way through a cobweb of rivers and subsequent streams arriving in early October in this area, a place the Blackfoot call Many Glacier.

Stark had buried his canoe beneath a stand of aspen, hopeful his presence would go undetected by the local Indians. From there, he had made his climb into these spectacular mountains and hastily built the tiny hut which sat threatened by Mother Nature tonight. This had been his thirty-first year up top, his first in 1819 with the young Pierre Bosteau. They were both just 18 years old.

The persuasive French-Canadian Bosteau had convinced the estranged Kentucky boy that the place they needed to be was in the Northwest Territory, where the beaver were as plentiful as the buffalo, and almost as big! The youthful Stark felt confident Bosteau knew what he was talking about, Bosteau being Canadian, was able to speak French, a fact that in Stark’s mind, afforded him almost unquestionable credibility. Anyone who could speak French, was obviously more intelligent than one who could only poorly speak English, even Kentucky English.

As winter began to close in on their camp about 370 miles northwest of Sudbury, Ontario, the two teenagers realized that they didn’t possess the knowledge to build a reliable shelter for the coming winter. By the time they finally grasped the concept of using sod to construct a hut, the ground had froze. They had no choice but to hike further north and west to Yellowknife, where they begged a band of Bloods to take them in for the winter.

Knowing the Indians would likely take violent exception to their trapping intentions, the two had the presence of mind to bury their traps in the snow before entering the village.

Bosteau’s skillful tongue convinced the suspicious Indians that they were not in this country to infringe on the burgeoning beaver population, instead he concocted an unverifiable lie that they had simply gotten lost.

The Indians kept the two young liars alive through March and when the snows showed signs of spring sent the boys packing. The Bloods, still suspect of Bosteau and Stark, sent a mounted escort along for the first three miles, foiling the boy’s hopes of retrieving their buried traps. They decided that when the snow melted, their traps would be discovered, and they would not again be welcome in Yellowknife, which they also decided, would be fine with them.

In the winter of 1828, they ate an Indian. There is nothing much really to say about the extraordinary incident. It was mid-February, Stark and Bosteau were trapped in terrible snows in the southern Canadian Rockies. They had been without food for nearly five weeks and there was no sign of game. They tracked a Cree brave, probably a scout, or perhaps a tribal member exiled for some crime. They killed him, butchered him, cooked him, and ate him. That was that. They survived. He didn’t.

Not a year later, less than a mile from where they had killed the Cree, a grizzly bear nearly killed Pierre, and likely would have had it not been for the shear courage and timely intervention of Boyd Stark. Bosteau had climbed up the snow tunnel covering their hut to fetch firewood. Generally when exiting the hut Bosteau would sing, if you could call it that, some half-witted rendition of what was supposed to be a popular French song, in an effort to frighten away any potentially present wolves. Pierre Bosteau, although he would never admit it, was deathly afraid of wolves. He suffered reoccurring nightmares, visualizing himself coming out of the snow tunnel to be greeted by a huge wolf, who would grab him by the throat and extract him from the hole, like a coyote might a prairie dog. Maybe the singing helped as so far it hadn’t happened.

The immediate area being wolf free for the moment, Bosteau tumbled over to the wood pile. As he stacked pieces of firewood into his left arm, to his astonishment, up raised the huge snarling head of a grizzly bear who should have been long gone to hibernation. So stunned was the Frenchman he couldn’t move. He fell to the snow and drew himself into a ball, determining himself not to move. The bear was not fooled by the maneuver and at once pounced on the trapper, straddled him and began ripping his five inch claws into Bosteau’s back.

Stark appeared on the scene returning from a morning of unsuccessful hunting. The bear was startled and momentarily stopped his assault. Rising on his haunches, seven, perhaps eight feet into the air, the bear snarled wildly. Stark, impervious to the roar, stepped to the wood pile, ignoring his most obvious weapon, his gun.

Angered that the bear had dared trespass their camp, Stark picked up piece after piece of firewood, hurling the chunks at the surprised bear, landing enough blows to the bear’s face that his appetite for the Frenchman waned. The bear scampered and Stark dragged the bleeding Bosteau back into the snow tunnel to safety.

It took many days to nurse Pierre back to health but eventually he recovered from the attack. Later, Bosteau would confess to Stark that he’d fretted that had his wounds not healed quickly, Stark might have killed and eaten him, like they had the Cree. Bosteau ran the spring traps that year with his friend Stark but felt the deep need to take a break from the mountains. The episodes of the past two years, the Indian and the bear, had left him uncertain about his mental stability, insanity, following hernias, the most treacherous adversary of the mountain man.

In July, Stark and Bosteau were in Calgary to peddle their beaver pelts to Luc Paclede, a buyer from the Hudson Bay Company. Pierre spoke openly to Luc of his interests in staying down a few winters. Paclede offered Bosteau the western Canadian Territory representing the prestigious Hudson Bay Company as a trader. Pierre asked Paclede for a few days to consider things. They agreed to meet again in a week.

Bosteau wasn’t sure how to best approach Stark with this matter but he knew the first step would be to find him, which could be a considerable task in Calgary. Experience pointed Bosteau in the direction of Saloon Alley, a section of town that more or less dedicated itself to relieving mountain men, scoundrels, and thieves of their gains, ill-gotten or otherwise.

As was their custom, Pierre kept most of the money from the sale of the pelts, affording Boyd enough to indulge himself in whatever superfluities he deemed necessary to satisfy his annual cravings.

Saloon Alley offered a variety of temptations to men with more money than time. The alley consisted of a two block area of concentrated sin in its many attractive packages. From the street came the sounds of laughter, yelling, fighting, occasional gunfire, and the ever present plinking of piano music in the background. The men milled in and out of the saloons always on the lookout for a better or more promising establishment. Everyone in the general vicinity who was not incorrigibly intoxicated was there for the sole purpose of taking as much money as possible from the drunken lot. This included the bartenders, barmaids, dance hall girls, whores, card dealers, and even the street preacher, Jake, who set up shop nightly on one of the busiest street corners.

Bosteau was never comfortable in the after-dark bedlam of Saloon Alley, probably because he carried the money. Sobriety being his only advantage, he hurried through the streets to find Stark. Happily surprised he located Stark, not in the midst of the alley, but sitting quietly in the window of a cafe two blocks away. A freshly laundered Boyd Stark announced to his trapping partner that he had a date! Not no whore either, he said. Since she would be arriving momentarily, Stark asked his partner to remove himself from the cafe, before the female arrived.

Bosteau was astounded by this unlikely event. He shook his head, laughed, and left, wishing Stark all the best. By midnight, she had not arrived.

Boyd glanced to the kitchen door, sympathetic to the restaurant man’s mounting impatience. He stood, placed an apologetic tip openly on the table and walked dejectedly toward the door, begrudgingly concluding the obvious, she wasn’t coming.

There are not words to adequately describe the humiliation this event weighted on Boyd Stark. He had not spoken more than a mouthful of words to a woman since growing up in his Aunt Polly’s Kentucky home. What courage it had taken to stop her outright on the street as he had. What daring chance he’d taken asking the beautiful woman to meet him for dinner. And what tiny morsel of confidence he might have gained in the social victory when she’d accepted, was now obliterated in her vanishing.

He hadn’t even known her last name. Now, the remainder of his days, she would be known only as Charlotte. Charlotte from Calgary.

At the Blind Horse Saloon, Boyd Stark stood alone at the bar and with pen and paper did his best to make the words. Not waiting for morning, he made his way through town, locating the boarding house where Pierre stayed, and quietly slipped the note beneath the door. He turned west, and in the night, set out, on foot, for the Rockies.

By sunrise, Calgary was no longer in sight and Starks legs were already weary from the all night walk. It was at times like these, Boyd Stark most often reviewed in his mind his three objections to a mountain man owning a horse speech. Over the years he had memorized the speech, quoting it time and again, to lesser trappers.

The first reason to avoid owning a horse, if you’re a mountain man, is that you have to feed him. And no man ever got no work out of a horse equal to the food he has to poke in a horse, besides, trying to feed a horse in the mountains is like trying to feed a fish in the desert, the two just ain’t made for each other. The second reason not to own a horse is that the Indians’ll try to steal the damn thing, and if they don’t, the goddamn thing will sure as hell freeze to death before spring, he would conclude.

The logic of the speech notwithstanding, it would have been nice to have a horse this morning and Stark would have been the first one in the saddle. The Canadian flats were already growing hot and the day was still young. Drudging along, the trapper could see the familiar blue and purple mountain tops across the horizon. He was far too seasoned a trapper to be deceived into believing he could reach them anytime soon.

The Rockies, American, Mexican, or Canadian vintage, had long had the effect of a mirage on western travelers crossing the plains. Appearing as sort of a mountain oasis from places as far away as Saskatchewan, or the eastern Colorado plains, they were effectually nothing more than an optical illusion, teasing anxious travelers into thinking they were near. This natural phenomenon, it had been decided among mountain men, was the result of the thin air that enveloped the fabulous range. His guess was he had a good two, maybe three, week trip ahead of him.

In Calgary, a seamstress named Charlotte was bleary-eyed and fighting off sleep trying her best to finish. It wasn’t the first time she’d made emergency alterations for a horrified bride who’d been shattered to discover her mail-order wedding dress had arrived from Chicago two or three sizes too large. The young girl was due anytime for a final fitting. Charlotte would have it ready, just as she’d promised. She was a responsible woman, a practical woman, one who put business before pleasure. She was sorry, but the mountain man, whatever his name, would have to understand.

Pierre Bosteau was just pouring a mid-morning cup of tea when the owner of the boarding house walked in the sunny dining room and said, here Pierre, this must be for you. Bosteau looked at the curious scribbling and took a seat at the table.

July 6, 1830

Deare Pierrere-

Mi friende. Shee didnnot comme. Gone too Spire’s campp, Banfff. You comme in fall. Donnt bring no horses.

Boydson Andrew Stark-trapper

Pierre Bosteau did not make it to Spires Camp that autumn, or ever again. In August, he took a job with the Hudson Bay Company and began learning the complex business of fur trading. His new boss, Luc Paclede, was confident Bosteau would become a skilled trader and a valuable employee of the company.

Before moving to Vancouver, Pierre opened a bank account at the Calgary branch of the Royal Banque of Canada and deposited $812.00 in the name of Boyd A. Stark, trapper. He left the bank book along with a letter in the hands of Rankin Squire, the proprietor of the Blind Horse Saloon. He chose Squire not because he particularly trusted the man, but because he knew Boyd would hit the Blind Horse immediately on his next arrival in Calgary. He also knew that Rankin Squire was too much of a coward to steal from a mountain man of Boyd Stark’s reputation.

October 2, 1830

Dear Boyd,

You should not have left me alone here, fell into steady employment, have taken a position with the Hudson Bay Company trading for Luc, probably ruined for life.

Expect it will be different without you, will not miss the bears or Indian suppers, but will miss you. Rankin Squire has a bank book with your part of the pelt money. We’re square. Moving to Vancouver with my new wife, a seamstress. See you soon somewhere.

Pierre

Boyd stirred the dwindling coals with his knife, staring deep into their hypnotic remains, he groaned. He was so full of feelings. He was painfully lonely. He hadn’t seen or heard from Pierre in 20 winters. Discouraged, he let his eyes crawl around the shadowy hut. What did he have for his 32 years trapping? He thought, I live in a cave like an animal, I sleep in a buffalo hide on a dirt floor, I haven’t had a bath since October and that was in a lake, I haven’t heard a human voice in seven months, I kill to eat, and I cut my hair once a year.

He looked around, taking inventory. A buffalo robe. A Hawkins rifle Pierre had given him for Christmas in 1819. The knife he’d taken off the Cree. A change of clothes, two wool caps. A fry pan. A coffee pot. A pair of snowshoes that would soon wear out. And the book. The little brown book that Rankin Squire had so earnestly handed over to him 18 years before. The book that his one friend, Pierre Bosteau, had gone to the trouble to arrange for him with the Royal Banque of Canada. He opened the book. It had many numbers in it now. Pierre, he thought, would be proud.

He was reluctant to face it but the truth was Boyd Stark wasn’t so much the free man he fancied himself, he was just a man avoiding the world. At 49, Stark was finding little left to life that excited him, even a good year with the traps left him unstirred.

He thought of Pierre’s wife. A wife would be nice to have. Maybe a wife like Charlotte from Calgary. But no woman, he considered, would accept Boyd Stark, the animal Boyd Stark, the man who lived in a cave and bathed in a lake and ate Indians. He rolled up in the buffalo robe and laid on his side in the dirt and looked to his fire for it’s ancient wisdom. Sleep overcame him before the flames would answer.

Suddenly he awoke. The hut shifted. The ceiling in the northeast corner, which had been sagging, was now nearly touching the dirt floor. He couldn’t have been asleep long, embers still burned plainly red. It was very cold in the hut. As much as he hated to, he had to get up, and get wood.

Following hernias and insanity, wind, was the mountain mans most feared opponent. To be sure, the Rockies, from the extremes of northern Canada, to the barren chaparral deserts of Chihauhau, are a mountain range afflicted by wind. Wind, millions of years ago played a large part in the eventual destruction of the Rockies’ predecessors, the Ancestral Rockies. Wind, combined with the other two natural enemies of mountains, time and water, were responsible for the total erosion of the ancient range.

And one day wind, water, and time will again bring death to the Rockies, like they have the Arbuckles, and are now doing to the great Appalachians.

When viewed comparatively, the Appalachians today seem rather tame to the Rockies, and the Arbuckles are so worn down they are hardly recognizable as the mighty mountain range they were eons ago. Wind, water, and time have changed these mountains, changed their height, landscape, minerals, command, and their influence. A process that will one day quiet the vibrant and majestic Rockies.

Boyd Stark’s Rocky Mountains were further impacted by ice structures, called glaciers. Scientists know that about a million years before Boyd Stark began showing signs of insanity, during the Pleistiocene Ice Age, large sheets of ice formed over the entire Arctic region, the result of temporary global cooling that brought declining temperatures. The Great Western Glacier fell short of reaching the place where Boyd Stark’s sod hut lay buried beneath the snow tonight, but many lesser glaciers formed in these mountains and still exist today.

Some of these less significant ice structures remained aloft, some melted, forming huge lakes, and some slid from their mountain perches into the valley bottoms, stripping the terrain and clearing the land as they slid.

Glacial run off was not only responsible for unprecedented flooding, it redirected thousands of rivers and streams. The floods also brought an enormous amount of minerals off the mountains and deposited them in the valleys below. For a hundred miles east and west of the Rocky Mountains, the valley soils are rich with extraordinary mineral content, the result of both natural and glacial erosion.

The Rockies own soil is so high in moisture and minerals that its verdant environment supports the handsome evergreens, symbolic trees of the northern region. The blue spruce, a rich indigo color, provides the dominant pallor for the Rockies most of the year. But in the predawn hours of this late March morning, the dominant color of Boyd Stark’s mountain was white.

There were spots in the mountains where the wind could be curtailed but there was no place where the wind could be entirely avoided. Boyd had an uncanny knack for finding pockets where the wind would find encroachment difficult, it was rare when his camp would catch the brunt of a storm. But this was a savage storm that threatened every inhabitant of the mountain. In all his winters up top, Stark had encountered only a handful of storms this forceful.

Wind. The killer wind. It blinded and drifted and covered and ripped and buried. It’s mighty power destroyed trees, scattered nests, crushed dens, and dumped a thousand new difficulties on all those who called these mountains their home, inhabitants who were often still staggering to their feet having struggled through winter. It was as if Mother Nature was saying, so that didn’t kill you, maybe this will!

Stark would not know the impact until day break, but his trained ear and gut instinct told him this storm was a killer.

Many inhabitants had moved down the mountain months ago, the elk, deer, moose, and wood bison. They wintered low in elevations where food was at least possible to reach. The bear, wolves, fox, badgers, and mountain cats were mostly holed up in caves and dens. Even Boyd Stark knew not where the birds of the mountains hid themselves from the atrocities of a violent event like this, but somewhere the turkey, the grouse, the eagle, the osprey, and the hawk worried in the darkness.

Stark, too warm from his fire, fell back asleep and didn’t wake again until around noon. He got up stiffly and slid a little kindling into the coals, blowing gently, the flames commenced burning. He decided to get more wood. On top, shivering, he checked the chimney, making certain it was unobstructed from the storm’s deposits. He fetched an armload of wood, and hurried back into the hole.

Not only were Boyd Stark’s quarters warmer than his neighbors, he was better provisioned. His meals throughout the duration of this storm would be restricted to the monotony that repetitive servings of dried elk and weak coffee would produce, but he wouldn’t go hungry. Nothing in the mountains perished for lack of water, even when the lakes, streams, and creeks were frozen, the snow provided hydration enough to survive. But starvation was not uncommon, and no creature was exempt from that possibility.

Stark again thought about his life. He felt a wave of pride come over himself thinking of the day’s events. Here he sat in the midst of a freight train of a spring storm and he had not a shred of doubt he would survive it masterfully. To a mountain man, that was a great accomplishment. He knew there were animals in these mountains, equipped at birth with survival instincts far superior to his own, who would not be resourceful enough to survive this killer storm.

He had learned much, a storm of this magnitude would have certainly killed he and Pierre back in 1819, they would have never made it to Yellowknife.

The blowing assault lasted four days. It increased its intensity, recoiled, then slammed again and again into the mountain. Finally, it tired of its victim and slipped east one afternoon, surely to inflict more havoc on