North to the Bitterroot

Between Kansas City and Montana Territory were a thousand ways to die-and a few bold men who would never turn back.

Miners dug for fortunes. Soldiers died on open plains. And a few brave men drove the wooden freight wagons into the wild land. Now, master Western novelist Ralph Compton tells the real story of the touch-as-leather men who carried supplies, guns and gold into the untamed frontier.

Dutch Siringo rose from modest beginnings and proved his skill with a team of horses and a gun. Betrayed by a woman, hunted by a desperate man, Dutch led a group of hard-fighting teamsters where no other shippers would go-through the heart of the Sioux territory, into the teeth of winder along the murderous Bozeman Trail. Now, between Fort Kearny and the mining camps in the Bitterroot Mountains, Dutch and his teamsters faced Montana blizzards, hungry wolves and the kind of enemies you have to bury to outrun.