Frontier Footprints: A True History of the Rocky Mountains by Amy Kathryn Allen

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…They moved with a restless energy, their gazes sweeping over the rough-hewn buildings, the wary faces of those who watched them pass. Each man carried his past like a shadow, a story etched in the lines around his eyes, his future a gamble played out with loaded chambers and a steady hand. Some wore badges, a thin, often tarnished, veneer of law against the vast, unforgiving wilderness. Others were phantoms, their names whispered in hushed tones, their lives a desperate chase across endless, sun-baked plains. They were the jagged edges of a new world, the embodiment of its untamed spirit and its ever-present, gnawing peril.