Wordcraft Native Circle's winner, and winner of the Spur award. Into a West too unmapped for the explorers, too bad for the bad men, too wild for any white men, came the mountain men. They blazed the trails across the Rocky Mountains, opened the vast country between the Missouri frontier and the Pacific, and they rose into the stuff of legends. Young Sam Morgan has itchy feet and a hungry spirit. In 1822, life in Pennsylvania feels too hemmed in. He nurtures a wild dream of a woodsman’s life, a truly free American life. But where? Perhaps the far West. Since Captains Lewis and Clark came back, people are telling stories about the Shining Mountains. He sets off.