Excerpt from Tales of the Trail: Short Stories of Western Life These Tales of the Trail are based upon actual facts which came under the personal ob servation of the author, whose reputation as a writer of the frontier is national. His other works have met with phenomenal success, and these Sketches, which have appeared from time to time in the current literature of the United States, are now compiled, and will form another interesting series of stories of that era of great adventures, when the country west of the Mis souri was unknown except to the trappers, hunters, and army officers. Some of the characters around which are woven the thrilling incidents of these Tales were men of world-wide reputation; they have long since joined the choir invisible, but their names as pioneers in the genesis of great States which then formed the theater of their exploits will live as long as the United States exists as a great nation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.