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

Previously

…But as he looked out at the vast, scarred landscape, a fleeting shadow crossed his face. The memory of his betrayed partner, a ghost in the rustling pines, seemed to whisper on the wind, a reminder that even in victory, some debts could never be truly repaid. The iron horse had brought progress, but it had also brought a relentless hunger, a hunger that Silas Blackwood had fed, and in doing so, had become a part of the very force that was forever altering the wild heart of the Rocky Mountains. The age of the untamed was drawing to a close, its echoes fading in the growing roar of the iron horse.