Strongheart by Don Bendell

that made her feel guilty.
    Joshua winked and spun the big horse around, then trotted up the stage road. He had left written directions for her to give to whoever came along the road and could get them help. He would also summon help as soon as he ran into anybody who could get messages through. Strongheart had only ridden two miles up the road when he ran into such help. A virtual posse came riding around a sharp corner, and he pulled up.
    The man in front held up his hand and said, “Howdy, Chief. You happened to see the stagecoach along the road?”
    Joshua felt a brief twinge of anger, but he smiled and calmly said, “I am not a chief. The stage was held up, people were killed, and the team of horses was run off. They are waiting two miles behind me. I’m after the men who held us up. I have to go.”
    He kicked his new horse and saw how easily the steed could leave a crowd behind. The posse leader didn’t even have time to ask the first of the many questions that popped into his mind.
    Strongheart was very impressed with this flashy new horse. He was not only beautiful, he was a dream to ride. The seat was so smooth atop his back, and the gelding seemed to love trotting, which would eat up the miles. The gulch slowly climbed, with high, rock-strewn, tree-covered ridges on both sides. Every once in a while, he would pass by a pile of large boulders obviously carried there by the latest flash flood.
    After several more miles, the canyon suddenly opened up and gave way to rolling small hills with piñons and stunted cedars, as well as mountain gamma grasses. Gabriel trotted up over a couple of those hills, and suddenly a high mountain valley opened up, and Strongheart looked at the snowcapped Sangre de Cristo mountain range, which ran from the left to the right, with peak after peak stretching up into the clear blue sky. The more he saw the mountains, ten miles distant, the more fascinated he became with them. These thirteen- and fourteen-thousand-footers were the most majestic Joshua had ever seen, and he had seen plenty already.
    He kept riding, and within another mile, he saw where Road Gulch Road ran off to his right, crossing the high valley for a couple miles, before dropping down into the trees. The road, which kept winding its way toward the big range, fell behind him as he moved across the flat, high mountain valley. This was like prairie now, with no trees except all along the fringes of the valley. To his right, a small tree-covered ridge rose up maybe five hundred feet, a mile away. Off to his left, only a half mile away, another ridge cut halfway across the valley. It stood maybe four hundred feet above the valley floor. Near the base of the ridge to his right was a small herd of pronghorn antelope, and at the base of the ridge to his left Strongheart spotted a small herd of mule deer grazing. After two miles, the Road Gulch Stage Road started dropping down into a tree-sided gulch. This gulch dropped down to Texas Creek for the next six miles, and from there Texas Creek dropped down in a northward direction and poured into the Arkansas River. Strongheart, however, kept heading west and crossed the creek and a surrounding meadow, which held a harem of more than one hundred elk and several large herds of deer. He rode a few more miles, then the stage road veered right and started a faster descent toward a place along the Arkansas River that was called “Cotopaxi” by locals.
    There were a few miners’ cabins in the area and a few other buildings. Joshua decided he would find out if he could get a line on any of the gang. He had watched their tracks and seen two split off, but the rest had headed to this location.
    That is when Joshua ran into a good source of information.
    About five years or so earlier, George Henry Thomas had settled in the area where Strongheart now was, and he nicknamed one of the mountains Cotopaxi for an active volcano he had seen in Equador. George became