The Trail of the Badger: A Story of the Colorado Border Thirty Years Ago

Frank Preston expected a summer away from his books in St. Louis. What he got was a one-way ride to Mosby, Colorado, a mining camp that barely has a name yet. His uncle Tom sweeps him into the Rocky Mountain wilderness at the height of its wildness - no roads, no rules, just men chasing gold and survival. The moment they arrive, Frank is thrust into chaos: a man dying of mountain fever, a town that operates on instinct and nerve. Then he meets Dick Stanley, another boy roughly his age, and everything changes. The two form a bond forged in the only currency that matters in 1870s Colorado - courage, wit, and the willingness to walk into the mountains when every local knows better. They hunt, they explore, they face down a charging bear - and they discover that the real frontier isn't on any map. It's in the choices you make when the trail runs out. Hamp, drawing on his own experiences, renders the Rockies with the kind of detail that only comes from having stood in those same storm-swollen canyons yourself.