Your delightfully chatty letter has been a joy to me. It is interesting to know that you once contemplated writing a series of epic books on our Old West. I hope that, when at last you shall come to that castle in Spain, you may not find the occupant too disappointing. You say I shall have "one real reader" if you last out the decade. I wish I had decades to give, for you would receive several herewith if I had.
As to joining up the various tales, which you mention as a difficulty, they are of a piece, all growing out of a single expedition — that of Ashley and Henry up the Missouri in 1822.
Members of that expedition scattered all over the West from the Missouri to the Pacific and from Canada to Mexico. They were the most notable body of men in the Fur Trade, and their adventures are typical.
I have been invited to lecture on the Western Expos. & read from the two parts of my cycle at the University of California and at Leland Stanford. On my way I will do the same at several Normal Schools and at the Nebraska Wesleyan University and University of Wyoming. Good publicity for the series! But enough about this!
Jno Neihardt
