The Warlock Takes Washington — Robert M. Johnson

“Well, sure as hell, the two of them jumped to their feet and started flailing away at one another, knife and tomahawk. The Indian was obviously what, back in Washington, we would have called a street fighter. He snarled and growled and looked as mean as an old wild mountain cat. But Jeremiah kept right on at him, giving no quarter in the fight. In a matter of minutes both men were covered with blood, their own blood and that of their adversary. You see that scar on Jeremiah's jaw on the left side there, damn, it healed up nice Jeremiah! That one came from the knife of Broken Arrow, saw it with my own eyes.” John Charles Fremont loved telling a good story. The western expansion, Manifest Destiny as it was called by politicians of the time, is at the heart of this fascinating tale of the Mountain Man. The two men who were going to take it all the way to California had come to Washington City to meet with President James Polk. This could only mean that a war was brewing. The Mountain Man series presents the fictional narrative of this exciting period between 1803 in 1843 as the territories to the West were explored for settlement. The main protagonist of this series, a fictional character name Jeremiah Warner, is inspired from the lives of real men who took up the challenge of the wilderness and of the Rocky Mountains. These were men who dealt with the hardships of the trail and the struggles with Native Americans, wild animals, and the fierce climate of the high mountains. They were real-life men like Jim Bridger, Joe Walker, Kit Carson, and Jeremiah Johnston. In the previous two volumes, western expansion has been front and center with the mapping of the Oregon Trail. This northern route duplicated what had already been done to the south along what came to be known as the Santa Fe Trail. But something much more grandiose was going on in the Nation's Capital, where political forces were gaining ground to complete this outreach and annex the far western territories, mainly California. Volume twelve of the Jeremiah Warner saga reaches into the heart of this campaign as President James Polk enlists the help of the Mountain Man in taking the southwestern territories and California from the Mexicans. This page in the history of the west comes alive in the salons and mansions of Washington City in this twelfth volume of the series. It takes inspiration from the real life trip of Kit Carson to the Capital in 1844, and his first encounter with fame as the hero of the dime store novels that were being written about him.