Frontier Living, 1880’s

Think of a 3-year-old baby girl who survives the freezing cold when her white parents do not. Think of a boy whose parents killed, who runs away, thinking the killers will soon be hunting him. They meet when the girl is ten, and he is 15, him thinking she is Indian like the squaw who raised her.

It’s a time of tepees, ranches, outlaws, farmers and railroads, Indian wars and reservations. Also, think of a time of bank robbers, cheap land, new machines, small towns, and too few women— wives for the men who traveled west in the earlier years.

It was a time of fast guns, rich men, and poor, with their disappointments and entertainments. The people who died and those who survived in the territory soon became a state, as Wyoming did in the 1890s.