The Butterfield Stageline

Charles Culver's Cherokee mother had raised him to control that wild Indian temper. However, when a rich man's son comes up dead in a fight, he was forced to go on the run. Charles headed West, where he worked as a mule skinner and ended up driving for the Butterfield Stage Line, the first transcontinental stage line. When he is held up, the company's policy forced him and his new wife, Emily, to take a job running the waystation at Apache Pass.

Life was pretty good. The Apache were friendly with the whites until the army started a war with Cochise. Between the Apache and the outbreak of the Civil War, the stage line went broke, and Charles once again found himself looking for work. They worked in San Francisco for a short time before moving North.

After Emily died, he worked odd jobs, always moving and trying to stay ahead of the trouble being an Indian brought. When life finally seemed to settle in domestic peace, trouble reared its ugly head. At the urging of his children, he decided to go East to help a damsel in distress after the war. Now with a tribe of his own, he returned to where it all started.

by James Wheeler

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