The Bayou Salade Trilogy: Collected Works

In 1846 the Earl, Lord Edwin of Drumcliffe, brings his son Percival to the American frontier. His purposes are two; to have a spectacular hunt and to make a man of his teenage son. Ray Dobbs, a retired trapper and mountain man, is engaged as guide. The hunting ground is to be a large basin deep in the Rocky Mountains known as Bayou Salade, present day South Park, Colorado, then a province of the Ute nation. As the Earl travels to the Bayou via Mexico City, Ray traverses the prairie bringing horses and supplies. The prairie entrusts Ray with care of an abused runaway teen, an autistic savant, a small Cheyenne girl and a white boy raised by the Cheyenne. At Santa Fe Ouray, a Ute teen, is engaged to guide the Earl’s entourage to the Bayou. Young Tom is Percival’s manservant, the seventh of the youngsters through whose voices this amazing story is told. Horses, dogs and wild animals abound. Other characters include many Indians, another mountain man, Irishmen, Mexicans, a naturalist, soldiers, and an Indian Agent, to name a few. Romance kindles as the teen boys pine over the beautiful Consuela. And danger is ever present.

Ralph Neighbor, like many Kansas natives, was lured from the summer heat of the plains to cool colorful Colorado. Lots of times. Many family vacations were spent or travelled through Colorado. Other exposures to Colorado include month long summer camp sessions in Estes Park from age eight to fifteen, visits to family friends in Colorado Springs, a honey moon at the BroAdmoor, numerous ski trips to a variety of destinations, dude ranch vacations, narrow gauge railroad excursions, fly fishing trips all have lured returns. All of the various geologic features and ecosystems of Colorado have been personally experienced at one time or another. Ralph attended college at Kansas State University and medical school at Kansas University. He further trained in obstetrics and gynecology at the hospital where he was born. His practice spanned forty years, began in Kansas, and ended in Washington State where he currently lives with his life-long partner Pam. Ralph and Pam have four children and seven grandchildren. Other published works include a series of mystery adventures based on the life of Ralph McConnell, Ralph's uncle, who died at age ten in 1937. In addition to writing Ralph has passion for history, music, fly fishing and the West. Colorado remains his first love in the West.