Prologue: Bridger’s Dragon
Virginia City, Montana – 1866

Jim Bridger was a fabricator of stories.

That was Nathaniel Langford’s assessment after their chance meeting on Main Street in Virginia City, Montana.

Bridger’s story of water shooting into the sky reminded Langford of something like dragon’s breath spewing from a hole in the earth, and the rumblings underground were what exactly—the dragon’s feet stomping around in caverns? Silly. The story sounded like a manufactured lie. Perhaps Bridger’s brain was pickled in bad whiskey, or maybe he’d spent too much time in the company of dead mountain men. The Yellowstone Lake region was too high for crops; prospectors hadn’t struck the motherlode; and Blackfeet Indians protected it as their hunting grounds. Everywhere in the West, things were blooming. Everywhere that is, except Yellowstone. And yet, Langford found himself curiously drawn to see the place. Maybe Jim Bridger wasn’t completely full of it.

The Expedition Begins
Fort Ellis, Montana Territory – August 22, 1870

On a blustering August day, a motley crew of men set out from Fort Ellis—a military outpost established for the protection of settlers in the Montana Territory—to explore the area around Yellowstone Lake. The expeditioners included two lawyers, two tax collectors, an embezzler, a freight hauler, a senator’s son, a well-dressed jackass, and a military escort from the Army’s 2nd Cavalry. The expedition was not scientific, nor was it of military importance. But it did include the collective brain trust of the Montana Territory, who paid their own expenses to ride into the frontier where the scales of fortune and danger tipped precariously in their hands.

The men spent the first 15 days of their trip contemplating the natural wonders between Tower Falls and Yellowstone Lake. Their journals were loaded with details of sulfuric pools, thundering falls and a lake that seemed to change from a silent mirror to a raging sea and back again with biblical speed. As September befell them, the expedition reached the southerly- most tip of their journey. The event was marked by the entrance into a labyrinth of deadfall so dense it was nearly impossible for a saddle horse to pass between two trees without becoming trapped. By two o’clock in the afternoon, all nineteen members were scattered across the hillside, each seeking their own paths through the maze.

From where Lieutenant Gustavus C. Doane stood, the trees stacked in his vision like one uninterrupted wall of pine bark. Flies buzzed around him. Blasphemous curses erupted from deep in the forest. No one checked their profanity. A dog named Booby trotted out of the woods, winked at the lieutenant, and promptly disappeared. The lieutenant dropped onto a log, reigns in hand. He tuned his ears to count each noise in the woods in an attempt to keep track of where the men were.

“Penny for your thoughts?” a voice asked from behind.

Doane jumped at the intrusion.

Langford somehow snuck up on him without a twig breaking. Nat, a businessman who often dressed accordingly, was down to shirtsleeves. A scrape on his right forearm left blood and sweat caked to his body hair. Just the day before, these two had climbed a mountain to get a better look at Yellowstone Lake. Reaching the snow-covered peak, Langford had sketched the lakeshore on a piece of paper. It wasn’t perfectly scaled, but a dang sight better than the Raynolds Expedition Map of 1860. Langford dropped down on the log next to Doane.

“How’s the pain?” Langford asked, his gaze falling on Doane’s bandaged hand.

Five days earlier, Langford had performed emergency surgery on Doane’s thumb by sticking a knife all the way to the bone to relieve the swelling in his pitiful hand. Doane now walked around with the cleanest dirty shirt they could find as a bandage.

Doane eyed the woods. “Something is telling me we are not alone.” Langford passed Doane a canteen, and his gaze shifted from the hand to Doane’s face. Doane had red, sweaty splotches that circled his eyes like an ugly party mask. Either infection gave him a fever, or something deeper was troubling him.

“A hundred miles from home,” Doane said, “the last thing we need is one of them gone missing, then another and another like some goddamn water drip-drippin’ off a fishing pole. The Blackfeet are hereabouts.” With the reservation newly established and the treaty already rearing its face as a ploy, animosity was building between settlers and the land’s original inhabitants. “They would like nothing better than to pick us off one at a time.”

While the lieutenant and Langford conversed, one other expedition member, Truman Everts, was a quarter mile south at a complete standstill. Everts was a slight man with small, rounded shoulders. His chin came to a point. His eyes pulled close together, giving him a hawkish look. On top of all that, he was the assessor of the Internal Revenue for the Montana Territory. Everts’ forehead was smeared black from sweat and dirt. At 54 years old, his eyesight had degenerated to the point where he saw the world entirely out of focus.

Everts somehow managed to get his reins around the horse’s tail, and the animal rimfired, kicking and pawing to free himself. He was frothy and chewed the bit. Everts tried reasoning with the beast, but his patience was running thin. He wanted to yell for help, but two nights earlier, he had overheard soldiers on guard duty referring to him as “grand-pappy.” Their tone suggested something less than admiration. He needed to figure this out for himself.

Everts gently touched the horse’s muzzle. “Easy now,” he said. “You and I are going to be all in one piece soon enough, I assure you.” And with that, he backed the animal away from the pines. They stood looking at each other, and he chanced an inspection of the horse’s rear shoes. Lifting the left hoof, he discovered the shoe was missing half its nails and hung loose. This wasn’t good and could tear apart the hoof if not remedied quickly. Everts had no hammer and no spare nails. He bit down on his lips so he wouldn’t spook the horse with a frustrated cry. Almost on cue, a torrent of curses rose from the far side of the woods. Everts nodded in complete agreement. Farther out still, a sarcastic voice proclaimed loudly, “There is a pleasure in the pathless woods.” The words were familiar, a line that Everts remembered from a poem. There was silence, then a frustrated snickering grew, increasing in volume until a crazed hysteria spread across the mountain. Everts couldn’t resist. He wiped tears from his eyes and found himself forgetting his problems. The weight fell off him like a man who suddenly found forgiveness in religion.

Everts removed the horseshoe, filled a cupped hand with water, and rubbed it on the horse’s muzzle. Shadows played in his periphery. Tingles ran up his exhausted legs, the kind he felt when alone on a midnight road. His hand brushed the heel of a Colt revolver strapped to his hip. He considered touching it off and crying for rescue. But did he really want that kind of attention? Being lost for a night was better than hearing “grand-pappy” again. His head felt one tick shy of panic when he threw a leg over the horse and touched his heels to its belly. The horse sought the path of least resistance, and that meant wandering left and downhill. An hour later, night engulfed him.

Missing Day 1
Five miles south of the expedition – September 10, 1870

Everts’ shoulder hurt from where he had slept on his side. His breath steamed in the gray, sunless morning. Sitting up, he went through a saddle bag and came up with some hardtack and two strips of salt pork. After a few minutes of guessing which way north was, he mounted up. An hour later, he rode into a burn with a fresh day ahead of him and sunshine on his back. He stopped at the far edge of the burn, slipped down, and unbuttoned his trousers. With hands on hips, he urinated and watched a blue jay land on a limb not more than five feet from his head.

From the shadows, a hawk arrowed through the pines and snatched the unsuspecting jay off the limb without changing its flight path. Everts saw this and said to the horse, “Did you see that, boy? That was an incredible feat of—”

His horse chose that moment to spook.

With ears up, the big bay turned sharply to the left. Hooves furrowed the undergrowth. In the fury that unfolded, deadwood and cannon bone switched places. The horse’s head stretched forward. It aimed straight for a wall of trees on the far side of the burn. Reaching the trees, it hooked left and paralleled the woods. Saddlebags flapped. Reins danced. The horse spun a hard right and plunged deep into the trees.

Gripping his falling trousers, Everts sprinted after the horse. He hurled himself over decomposing logs with the fading adrenaline of a man way past his prime. Knee bones hammered together. His heart swelled, and he was sure it would burst from under his shirt. He reached the forest opening in time to hear limbs snapping somewhere on the next ridge.

The horse was gone.

Everts collapsed. He coughed and wheezed. His hand slipped to his hip—he wanted to fire a warning shot—but found only empty leather. He had put the gun in the saddle bag for safekeeping that morning.

Without protection, conveyance, or companions, death would come for him soon enough.

He took inventory and found two small knives in his pants pocket. Attached to his belt was a pair of opera glasses that he somehow hadn’t dropped during his sprint.

He heard a whisper in the woods and realized it was his own voice, beseeching the almighty for protection and cursing the animal in the same breath.

Missing Day 5
Thumb Geyser, Yellowstone Lake – September 10-15, 1870

Sam Hauser and Langford lit bonfires on mountain tops, the smoke purposely thickened in the hope that Mister Everts would find his way to the rendezvous point by the lake. Riders had patrolled the beaches and retraced their routes, looking for him. No footprints, no dead body. They postponed the search. An early snowstorm had moved in, bringing two feet of fresh powder to the Continental Divide.

The expedition leaders—Washburn, Hedges, Hauser, Gillette, Stickney, and Trumbull—all found places inside the big Army tent where they read books or updated their journals. Smoke hung thick from the ceiling. Men coughed. The packers played cards. The cooks, two young Black boys, Newt and Jonny, kept the fires stoked and pots of coffee full. The place stank of perspiration, smoke, and tobacco.

Langford stood by the flap door and stared blankly at something beyond the timber. Snow piled up on a pyramid of cut wood near the door. A smoldering cigar was tucked in the corner of his mouth, and a tin cup of cold coffee hung off his fingertips. His thoughts circled around the dwindling supply in the larder, their missing companion, and the deepening snow. Damn, if it wasn’t going south in a hurry.

“I know where Mister Everts ran off to,” said Jake Smith, a newly bankrupt hide tanner who had somehow talked his way into the expedition. He wore a black overcoat that showed not a single smudge of dirt, nor tear, nor missing button. He wore a clean white shirt and gray striped trousers with a tight crease down each leg. His boots were polished. His mustache was waxed and symmetrical. Presently, he sat on his bedroll and used his left index finger to twirl a flat-brimmed hat that looked like it came out of the box that very morning. In his right hand, he cupped a silver flask. Tucked in his jawline was a plug of leaf tobacco, and when he spoke, his mouth opened like a deflated circle. Some in the party took to calling him “trout-mouth.”

Mister Reynolds, one of the packers, put down his cards to look at the man. Jake spat on the ground and said, “I reckon he done got lonely and decided to get for himself a momma grizzly to curl up to.” That same packer thought about what he just heard, groaned, and turned back to his cards.

Jake continued, “What with his bad eyes and all, one of them might be alright if ’n you can get her to stand you for long. It might not be all that bad, come to think of it. She might even take to shavin’ that hairy lip off if ’n for the right gentleman caller.” Langford drank down the last of his cold coffee. He hated Smith, hated his smugness and careless words. Old Mister Everts was out there going toe-to-toe with the snow while Smith made him the butt of a joke.

Alive and very much alone, Everts was eleven miles southeast of the expedition. He felt good, considering, and huddled under a pine bow shelter in the middle of a steaming sulfur hot spring. He had lost all sense of the hours with the continuous snowfall. He marked time by cutting a line on a stick for each night that passed. Food for the time being consisted of roots he dug up from thistle bushes.

“Soon as it breaks,” Everts said to the empty space in front of him, “I am heading out.” He was talking to Lieutenant Isaac Strain, USN, a man who had led an expedition into South America and afterward wrote about it. Strain had died in 1857 of malaria. He was a tall man with shoulder-length hair. He wore only pants and suspenders. His skin was pocked with boils and open sores. He sat cross-legged inside Everts’ tiny shelter and listened intently.

“If the company is camped at the lake, I will find them,” Everts said.

“What about Washburn?” Strain asked. “How long will he wait for you?”

Everts’ chin pruned. “I would give him three days, five at the most, before moving on.” He looked at his date stick and saw five notches.

Sulfuric acid had eaten the leather off Everts’ boots and put holes in his trousers. He could no longer feel his toes. The earth, it seemed, was redeeming what it had lent him at birth. His very existence was measured one snowflake at a time.

Missing Day 9
West Thumb Geyser, Yellowstone Lake – September 18, 1870

The soldiers broke camp at 9 a.m. Packers worked to balance the loads on the mules. Breakfast was served standing up, and a general optimism buzzed in camp. They could not wait another day without exhausting their food supplies. Missing man or not, they had to move on. A sign was nailed to a tree that detailed the expedition’s next move and where Everts could find them. The group split up. Warren Gillette, who had experience with Indians, took Private Moore and Private Williamson with him to backtrack their route to Bozeman in search of Everts. Lieutenant Doane and the expedition continued northwest toward the headwaters of the Madison.

Meanwhile, Everts limped his way toward Yellowstone Lake. If he didn’t find the expedition at the lake, he would continue to the Madison River. He had a plan. He held his head a little higher that morning and wondered what day of the week it
was, maybe Saturday or Sunday? He thought about church and walking there in the morning.

An out-of-tune piano launched into the first few bars of a familiar hymn, and Everts joined in.

“Amazing grace … how sweet … the sound … that …”

He sang off-key and ran out of breath. He stopped frequently to ask forgiveness for his sins. On his feet, he wore moccasins made from leather he’d stripped from his defunct riding boots. He had burns on his hip from falling through the crust into boiling water. His linen shirt hung in rags. He had open sores on his buttocks from the sulfur. With a tree branch propped under an arm, he leveraged some of the weight off his toes that had turned black from frostbite.

Missing Day 10
Confluence of the Gibbon and Firehole Rivers – September 19, 1870

A day after leaving Yellowstone Lake, the expedition reached the confluence of the Gibbon River and Firehole River. They camped in the meadow, a known location where civilization was within a day’s ride. Above all other concerns was their lost friend Truman Everts.

Fresh trout was served for supper. Newt and Jonny went upstream in the afternoon and came back with huckleberries, baked them into biscuits for dessert. The men around the fire looked older, their skin stretched tight as rawhide. Langford steered the conversation to what they’d seen in the last month. He went around the group, letting everyone share their insights. This campfire discussion would eventually lead to the area becoming a national park.

Two Miles East of Old Faithful

Everts’ skin was covered in dirt. His fingernails were black and chipped away. With the opera glasses propped on a knee, he could scarcely make out the discolored shapes of cliffs rising on the far side of the valley. In his delusional mind, next to Everts’ sat a cleric dressed in a black wool overcoat with a black silk vest and white linen shirt. On his head, he wore a black felt hat with the brim fashionably scrolled up on all sides. He told Everts, “Go back immediately, as rapidly as your strength will permit. There is no food here, and scaling those rocks is madness.”

Everts’ feed bag of thistle root was long since empty. He had come twenty miles in six days and was tempted to lie down, let nature take its course.

“Your power of endurance will carry you through,” the man said. “I will accompany you. Put your trust in Heaven. Help yourself, and God will help you.”

Everts rolled his eyes at the thought of going back the way he’d come. Freedom was within sight, just beyond the cliffs. But his feet refused to take another step. Everts cried without a shred of dignity. When he pulled himself together, the cleric was gone. On blistered feet, Everts hobbled back in the direction of Yellowstone Lake.

Epilogue

Truman Everts was found on the side of a cliff near the present-day town of Gardiner, Montana, thirty-seven days after he disappeared. He weighed ninety pounds. His last known meal was thistle roots he had gathered weeks before. He survived wild animal encounters, starvation, forest fires, second-degree burns, and specters that held court in his mind. A banquet was held in his honor in Helena some months later.

In January of 1871, Nathaniel Langford spent the month on the lecture circuit promoting the idea of a national park to attendees in Washington D.C. and in New York City. In January and February of 1872, the U.S. Senate and House approved the bill and on March 1, President Grant signed it into law, creating Yellowstone National Park.