Prologue

Dan Rivers is my name. I am nineteen years old, not quite six feet tall yet but I am still growing and hope to pass the six foot mark before I stop growing. I am 200 pounds of rock solid muscle from all the time spent on my father's farm doing chores and just being a young boy. When I turned eighteen, after having saved up enough money to buy a trappers outfit and supplies, I asked my father for his blessings to head out west.

My father was a farmer by choice, not by trade. His trade was that of a Military scout, as were his father and grandfather before him. He was constantly teaching me everything he knew, as his father and grandfather had done. I could load and fire a rifle or pistol in the dark fast enough to shoot twice in less than a minute with a rifle and three times in just over a minute with a pistol. I could throw a knife, hatchet or axe; deadly accurate to 20 feet and hit more than miss at 30 feet.