Businessman Logan Stuart is torn between his love of two very different women in 1850's Oregon and his loyalty to a compulsive gambler friend who goes over the line.
In 1856, backwoods businessman Logan Stuart escorts Lucy Overmire, his friend's fiancée, back home to remote Jacksonville, Oregon; in the course of the hard journey, Lucy is attracted to Logan, whose heart seems to belong to another. Once arrived in Jacksonville, a welter of subplots involve villains, fair ladies, romantic triangles, gambling fever, murder, a cabin-raising, and vigilantism...culminating with an Indian uprising that threatens all the settlers. No canyon in sight.—Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu>
1856. In the frontier town of Jacksonville in the Oregon Territory, friends Logan Stuart and George Camrose are each courting a farm girl from the surrounding rural area, Caroline Marsh and Lucy Overmire, respectively. The two men are both considered ambitious and restless, albeit in different ways. The owner/operator of the largest store in town, Logan is always devising ways to expand his empire, often needing credit, but always being able to repay his investors in spades. The town banker, George envies Logan or anyone who has the ability to live a comfortable life from their wealth. Unable to acquire that wealth in handling other people's gold, the local currency, George continually "borrows" the gold in the bank with which to gamble, he now in debt, although he has yet to be caught in able to move the bank's gold around whenever anyone has requested a withdrawal of their gold. As such, George truly would like to leave Jacksonville for good for life in a bigger city where he believes opportunities for someone like him would be greater. Although an attraction forms between Logan and Lucy, Logan does not want to betray the trust he has with Caroline, while George too has wandering eyes for Marta Lestrade, the wife of Jack Lestrade, to who he is in those gambling debts. Beyond these issues, Logan also has to contend with brutish Honey Bragg, who has it in for him, and marauding natives, who believe settlers are taking land which is rightfully theirs, natives who killed Caroline's parents for such an act.—Huggo