Showing results by author "B.N. Rundell" in All Categories

Two friends committed to one another and their destiny of exploring the wilderness known as French Louisiana. A land that would soon become the Louisiana Purchase and a part of the growing nation of the United Colonies. But another man, wealthy, influential, and vindictive, is determined to see Gabriel Stonecroft pay the ultimate price for the death of his son, a ne'er-do-well troublemaker who surrendered his life in a duel with Stonecroft. After a perilous journey down the Ohio River aboard a flatboat, the two friends now set out to explore the West.

Their dream and goal had always been to explore and discover land unknown by white men, the land that lay within the territory known as New Spain or Spanish Louisiana, land that had been known as French Louisiana and that had only known the presence of Spanish Conquistadors and a few French voyageurs or coureurs des bois. Now, with their new wives, Gabe and Ezra set out to discover and explore the mountains and wild country to the North, land that was full of mystery and tales of the natives that told of indescribable wonders.

It started as a brother defending the honor of his only sister, but it led to a bloody duel and a young man of a prominent family lying dead in the dirt.... Gabriel Stonecroft, along with his lifelong friend Ezra, the son of the pastor of the African Methodist Episcopal church, at his side, begins the journey to the far wilderness of the West. One man from prominent social standing, the other with a life of practical experience, are soon joined in life-building adventures.

By any measure, they would be considered old-timers in the mountains of the uncharted territory. The two old-timers were young men that had spent the last two years in that uncharted territory and had taken women from the Shoshone people as their brides. But when renegade coureurs des bois of the Hudson’s Bay Company and trappers of the Northwest company decide to abandon the fur companies and seek their fortune by raiding the native villages, the two young friends and their women stand in their way.

The Osage, Kansa, and Otoe were all tribes west of the Mississippi and dwelt directly in the path of the two friends determined to escape the bounty hunters from Philadelphia and to explore the uncharted wilderness of the West. But when they encounter former French Voyageurs turned slave traders who take Pawnee women captive, their purposes take a turn. But slave-traders are nothing compared to the Omaha and Ponca tribes that have the market cornered on all trade from the Missouri and North Platte Rivers.

Louisiana Territory had been the exclusive domain of Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company, seeking to fill their larders with the riches of the uncharted wilderness. But into that territory came two friends, determined to explore and learn about this vast land, land that had seldom if ever had the footprint of a White man. With their journey already taking them through the lands of the Shawnee, Osage, Pawnee, Omaha, and more, they have finally come within sight of the Rocky Mountains, but their way is blocked by the Plains tribes of Arapaho, Ute, Shoshoni, Crow, and others.

The bloody waters at the lake’s edge told of the destruction of the Kutenai village. Dead bodies were strewn about, smoke curled from burning lodges, and the war cries of screaming Blackfoot warriors followed the war party from the scene of death and destruction. It started as a rivalry between two war leaders of the Piikani Blackfoot. Friends since their youth, they both wanted the same woman and were on a quest for honors and loot. Together with his battle-hardened friend, Black Buffalo, these two were determined to become the personification of vengeance.

It was supposed to be a cozy winter in their new cabin, but it started with a cantankerous grizzly wreaking havoc on everything. After a trading foray to visit the Salish, everything seemed to get turned upside down. They found themselves in contested territory with a band of young bucks from the Siksika band that sought to gain scalps and captives from their sworn enemies, the Salish. And that wasn’t enough to upset their peaceful plans, but when Gabe found out the Blackfoot had stolen the mares bred by his stallion and were carrying foals that belonged to him, it became personal.

When the Salish war leader Spotted Eagle appeared in the clearing before their cabin, lifelong friends Gabe and Ezra weren’t sure what to think. This man had shown himself to be their friend, and now he invited them to join him and the village on a buffalo hunt. With winter just around the corner, it seemed the likely thing to do, but had they known what the journey would bring, they might have had second thoughts. Gabe and Ezra’s discovery of the massacre of the Paiute village and the three survivors was just the beginning of the fight against the warring Waiilatpus.

They had rescued a young Nez Percé warrior from the warring Blackfoot and were bound on a journey to take him home to his people. The vast land of the Bitterroot Mountains, and the badlands that lay at their feet, held more obstacles than they expected. It was to prove to be a treacherous journey, fraught with natural disasters and conflicts with familiar foes. But when confronted with evil of another sort, an evil that sought to destroy their very own, it became kill or be killed, and blood would soon paint the mountains and the plains of the wilderness.

What started as a joyous reunion of friends, soon became one of the most challenging periods of their lives. Chosen as scouts for the Kuccuntikka village of the Shoshone for their trek to the grand encampment of the Shoshone, their encounter with the scouts from the Tukkutikka band would set them on a different course altogether.

After spending most of five years in the Rocky Mountains, Gabriel Stonecroft finds it necessary to return to civilization to settle some long-past accounts. He sets out from the headwaters of the Missouri River, with his only companion a wolf, navigating the wild river through the lands of the Blackfoot, Gros Ventre, Assiniboine, and more. But an attack by a renegade French voyageur and his rebel Blackfoot companions is just one of the obstacles in his way.

After a friendly encounter with the Yapudttka Ute, their journey would take them into the middle of a fight between the Mouache Ute and an expedition of gold-hungry Spaniards. The prospectors traveled across the southern tier of the land known as New Spain in search of the Seven Cities of Cibola—the same cities of gold once sought by Coronado—now thought to be in the headwaters of a river in the Sawatch mountains of the Rockies. When the leader of the Spaniards tries to enslave the band of Utes to dig for gold, it starts a bloody battle.

With the civil war over, the president assassinated, and the South in reconstruction, Tyrell Thompsett knew the country would be crying for beef. His long-held dream was to have his own ranch and to follow in the footsteps of his father that started the first ranch in the Medicine Bow range of Wyoming territory. Now, with his new wife, a member of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, and his friend, Grey Wolf and his wife of the Mouache Ute, he set out to make that dream a reality.

Driven by grief over the loss of his beloved wife and child, Tyrell Thompsett left the home of his childhood in the Medicine Bow mountains and started south in a quest for a new life. With his long-time friend Grey Wolf, a warrior of the Yamparika Ute who was on his own quest, the two start the long trek to the Sangre de Cristo mountains and a new beginning.

The Overland stage line had become the target of raids by the Dog Soldiers, a confederacy of Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota, that sought to regain the land stolen from the Indians by the new government of Colorado Territory. A bitter cold winter added to the danger of the continued assaults on wagon trains, stage stations, and stages.

When a marauding band of Cheyenne Dog Soldiers attack a wagon train and take two women and a boy captive, Talon Thompsett is surprised when no one is willing to go after the Indians and try to rescue the captives. But the young man is reminded of his father’s counsel that “Whenever a task falls to you, don’t question the why of it, just get busy with the doin’ of it”. Now he must set aside his new job as Shotgun for the Overland Stage and gear up for the pursuit of a band of warrior renegades.

He had been challenged to carve a ranch out of the wilderness of the West. To partner with the brother of one of the most successful ranchers in Texas, and build the first ranch in the wilds of the territories. Caleb and his wife and friends chose to confront the wilds of what would become Wyoming territory, and establish one of the first ranches in that desolate country. Little did it matter that they knew nothing about ranching or cattle, but the challenge had been given and accepted.

Sometimes in life, the shortest distance between where you are and where you want to be is not necessarily the best route. Life often takes you on a much longer trail before you reach the goal you were destined for, and this circuitous route usually has valuable life lessons. These are the lessons that littered the path of the lives of Clancy and Caleb, as they fled from the sorrow of the mountains and searched for answers in all the wrong places.

The making of a man is a challenging metamorphosis by any standard, but when it's in the wilderness and among the Arapaho people, the standards are raised. Such was the challenge of Caleb, the adopted son of Jeremiah Thompsett and Laughing Waters. With his Pa, a proven warrior and leader for the people, and his Ma becoming the new Shaman for the village, Caleb naturally wonders about his future and the possibility of marrying his sweetheart and spending their lives living in the wilderness with his people, the Northern Arapaho.