Simon’s tale: Slavery’s chains discarded. And with the woman he loves and a continent to cross, a free man begins to find himself.
“Now I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’m black,” Simon said as a smile broke across his face. “So I’ll be asking you to be patient with me. I’ll be doing my best to tell you everything I can, but I’ll have to be starting at what I consider is really the beginning of this story. And I’ll be asking you right off to forgive me if I don’t mince words. I figure to tell it like it is, and people can think what they will.”
“You know something,” Darleen said. “I’ve told you I want to see the mountains out west. But more than that, I’ve had it with Rebels and Yankees and that foolish war. I want to see the native people out west who never experienced the Civil War. I want us to see the animals out there also, and I want our son to grow up in a different world than you and I have known. It’s not just the mountains, I want us to see the trees and the rivers. I just know the world is going to be very different out west. Why I’ll bet that even the air out there will be different. There is talk of gold in the Black Hills also. The President is going to be sending George Armstrong Custer and the seventh Cavalry into the area supposedly to explore and map the land. Word has it he’ll be taking nine hundred men, along with three Gatling guns and some miners with him who will determine if there actually is gold there. The Lakota Sioux are standing by the Treaty of 1868. I doubt they will accept minors and settlers, let alone soldiers, having free run of their land”
