The Purgatory River — Frank Roderus

Caught in a flagrant indiscretion with his employer's daughter and pursued by some rather angry family members, likable and vibrant Aaron Bent flees to St. Louis and the frontier beyond. Forced, as a bond servant, to join a wagon convoy traveling what would become the Santa Fe Trail, Aaron encounters Talks-to-Ghosts. At a place once known to Talks-to-Ghosts' people as Horse Camp, Aaron escapes the convoy and falls in with Herman and Elena Montoya, a brother and sister fleeing their own past. As part of a small settlement party sent to expand the territorial claims of Mexico they hoped to shape a new life in the basin of the Purgatory River. But, like so much of our frontier history, emotions and misunderstandings will rule the day. And a climactic conflagration will threaten to destroy all who live in this place once known as Horse Camp.