The plains and mountains were full of them. They came from the east coast, Europe, even India to write travel books that they hoped would make them rich and famous and get them contracts for the lecture circuits.
Gold was not yet drawing fortune hunters to the west, but geography was. And so it happened that a company of sixteen left Atacampa Illinois and started out on their great adventure. Each man carried with him a notebook to record his experiences. The fearless leader carried a quarto sized portfolio on his back and wrote copiously in it - often when his companions were of the opinion that he could have been more usefully employed. The company's lofty aim was to dislodge the British, in the form of the Hudson's Bay Company, and claim the Pacific Northwest for the United States. Surely sixteen fearless men with right on their side could oust these interlopers!
Perhaps unfortunately their journey did not go as planned. They ran out of food very quickly. They got in fights and shot each other.
At Bent's Fort the majority of the company expelled their fearless leader. They said he was incompetent and this was true, but everything is relative, and their own incompetence far outshone that of their ousted leader.
The expelled group was made up of three men, one horse and a dog. The mountains loomed.
Ahead was a small trading post manned by outlaws and ruffians. As they approached they heard the sounds of drunken mirth. Someone leaned over the wooden parapet and vomited copiously on them as they rapped on the sagging gate. Then an intoxicated fool within dragged up their cannon and blasted off a load of rubble through the closed gate. The three travelers had not expected such a rude welcome. Although not killed they were much afflicted by splintered wood that pierced their malnourished bodies everywhere.
Loud were the apologies. Indians were about, they said. The revelers poured whiskey on the travelers' wounds and fed them rancid antelope stew.
``We came to buy a horse,'' the leader said.
``Ah!'' said Captain Bill, ``we thought to buy yours.''
``You should have killed us then.''
``Ah.'' The Captain looked around. ``The Indians got ours last night. Near all. Damn me if they did. Left the mules. They wont touch mules except the squaws.''
``We'll take a mule,'' the fearless leader said.
The mule cost them two pairs of woolen drawers and their only razor.
And the mule became the bane of their already blighted lives.
Now there was one on horse back, one on a mule, one on foot and one faithful dog. The mule appeared intent on flinging its riders into any available chasm. So after a day or two they did not ride it but loaded all their possessions on its rebellious back. Then in a crashing thunder storm the mule flung itself over a cliff and took all their belongings with it on a long, vertical journey to oblivion.
The three of them were now little but scarecrows, the last vestiges of humanity leaving them as they covertly evaluated the nutrient potential of each other's shrunken forms.
One ghastly night they killed and ate the dog and found it sadly lacking. They had killed a faithful friend and their hunger was unappeased.
They joined the horse nuzzling at the remnants of dry grass that appeared occasionally between the shrunken grey sagebrush. They gnawed on the sagebrush too, until their stomachs knotted and rebelled.
The horse and the boy died together in a dry creek bed. The fearless leader dragged the boy's body into the shade but he had no strength to bury him. He thought without regret or any other emotion of the boy's trusting, anxious parents back in Illinois, then he turned away.
It was later that same day that they heard the holy song. Devout and Presbyterian. A song that echoed every Sunday in grey stone churches from Aberdeen to Darjeeling. Surely angels come to take them. They found no angels. Just three Indians singing praise before they ate their evening meal. A woman, a man and a child. The woman did not much like the look or smell of them, but she overcame her scruples and cleaned them up and fed them until the fine membrane of civilization had re-grown on them.
They were taken to a Hudson's Bay house on the Boise river where they were made most welcome.
The fearless leader was quite overcome by the efficiency that surrounded him. These people had the right idea! He secretly acknowledged that there was much he could learn from them. Perhaps the time was not quite right to attempt their ouster. The brigades of trappers, the loyal Indians, the people of every background and color, each doing his allotted duty. The clerks, the factors, the blacksmiths and bakers. The Boise river was a distant outpost, just one of many. The Company was everywhere.
When the Fearless Leader at last returned to Illinois he did indeed write a book and agitate for the ouster of the British, but he himself no longer had much taste for it.