The Purgatory River (The Rivers West)

Caught in a flagrant indiscretion with his employer's daughter and pursued by some rather angry family members, likable and vibrant Aaron Bent flees to St. Louis and the frontier beyond. Forced, as a bond servant, to join a wagon convoy traveling what would become the Santa Fe Trail, Aaron encounters Talks-to-Ghosts. At a place once known to Talks-to-Ghosts' people as Horse Camp, Aaron escapes the convoy and falls in with Herman and Elena Montoya, a brother and sister fleeing their own past. As part of a small settlement party sent to expand the territorial claims of Mexico they hoped to shape a new life in the basin of the Purgatory River. But, like so much of our frontier history, emotions and misunderstandings will rule the day. And a climactic conflagration will threaten to destroy all who live in this place once known as Horse Camp.

flagrant indiscretion with his employer's daughter and pursued by some rather angry family members, likable and vibrant Aaron Bent flees to St. Louis and the frontier beyond. Forced, as a bond servant, to join a wagon convoy traveling what would become the Santa Fe Trail, Aaron encounters Talks-to-Ghosts. At a place once known to Talks-to-Ghosts' people as Horse Camp, Aaron escapes the convoy and falls in with Herman and Elena Montoya, a brother and sister fleeing their own past. As part of a small settlement party sent to expand the territorial claims of Mexico they hoped to shape a new life in the basin of the Purgatory River. But, like so much of our frontier history, emotions and misunderstandings will rule the day. And a climactic conflagration will threaten to destroy all who live in this place once known as Horse Camp.