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5.5 x 8.5 Paperback cream |
ISBN: 9781432743567 |
$25.95 |
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Ghost Stalker is a story based on a man who might have lived if Jeremiah Johnson, a.k.a.,John Johnston, had produced a child with a particular Pikuni Blackfoot expatriate who claimed to have been his woman. Adventures that occur throughout the book could easily have happened to anyone raised on a reservation, weaned on the Vietnam conflict, and rejected by his own country, culture, and personal relationships. He is a man who cannot seem to find a home in a land that he should be able to call “home”. Jeremiah “Jerry” Johnson-Eagle, a half-breed, runs from the law and his past, and then falls in love in the backdrop of the High Uintah Mountains. Hand-to-hand combat, a manhunt that pits a man’s strengths against another’s past and the action and strategy involved in staying alive through it all permeates this story.
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Ascending slowly onto rocky slopes, the trail faded into dangerous scree. Calder kept a good pace by watching for recently overturned rocks or an accidental slip on scree where rock scrapes rock. Once started, a scree slip can escalate to a terrible fall, a potentially deadly mistake. The trick on scree was to keep moving.
Had Calder known, he would have looked straight down the slope, for that was where the resting Jeremiah Johnson-Eagle sighted the posse for the first time. But it would be a few hours of negotiating the dangerous rock and the descent to timberline before they would find the overnight camp of the experienced mountain man.
Calder checked many side trails, one an obvious small game run, another morning walk for relief from nature's call. A third went further west down the slope, but then so did a fourth, slightly south of it.
Turning to Waterton, Calder said, "I'm not sure yet, but I got a feeling our boy knows we're behind him. I gotta check a couple trails here, so sit tight." Calder turned and disappeared.
Sam spoke after him, "We'll be here." Where else would they go? What else could they do? Without tracking skills, they had to wait for Calder.
Fifteen or twenty minutes later Calder returned, a look of puzzlement on his face. "Now I'm positive he's seen us. Call in a spotter plane, Waterton, 'cause if I can't find his track, we might as well go back. Keep everyone here, too, to prevent them from destroying sign. I'm going to retrace the two trails I found."
Sam had Riggs radio for a plane as Calder walked over to the trail that petered out. The tall Crow, a prime example of a pure Absaroka bloodline, examined tracks with new interest, more scrutiny. He lay his cheek next to the ground, rotating his head to pick up any patterns left on the earth that he could not detect from a normal perspective.
What Calder discovered was that the tracks of the westward trail were deeper than they had been before. He concluded that the mountain man had stepped back exactly in his own tracks, laying a false trail, for there were no other tracks beyond their end. The push-offs, small indicators of direction to a tracker, proved he was right.
The second trail only went about a hundred yards, and it vanished, too. Finding little sideways push-offs, the tracker soon discovered a fresher set of tracks where the fugitive landed nearly five feet away.
Calder tracked to where he could tell the man had looked up to see them up the slope. It, too, faded to nothing. Familiar now with the trick, he found the hidden trail that led down the mountain.
To a craggy cliff.
Downward, Calder thought, shaking his head in despair. He hurried back to the waiting posse.
"Gentlemen," he announced, "follow me."
Obeying, possibly expecting a tidbit of ancient Indian wisdom, they soon were at the bluff. Rappelling down the fifty-foot cliff, Calder yelled, "If I call back up, prepare to do some rappelling." Groans and whines answered him. "Smith, you better call in your dogs. We lost about an hour here and I don't intend to lose anymore if I can help it." Calder's pride not withstanding, he realized this case would challenge all of his abilities. The dogs would give him an edge, then he could even track faster.
Little did he know what the Blackfoot had in store for him. For, if he had known, he would have turned back now.
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About H. R. Shrack
H.R.”Rick” Shrack gained an interest in the fur-trapping era of the 1800’s and studied the history, made buckskins, practiced and gained many of the precious old ways. Living the lifestyle, Rick was able to hone his own abilities at hunting, tracking, throwing his Bowie, foraging for wild edibles, and wandering like a true mountain man. Many of his wanderings were in the magnificent 10,000 foot forests of the High Uintah Mountains of Utah, an area once inhabited by such men. Seeking out men whose skills are second to none today, he learned from them, taking their advice and their skills to heart.
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