Pike's Peak or Bust - Book By Lewis B. Miller Synopsis: Esau Haggerty and Orlando Medford, both plains farm boys, catch the Great Gold Rush fever. In April, 1859, they say good-bye to their Illinois friends and literally push off. They began their 1100 mile trek, one pushing a wheelbarrow branded Pike’s Peak or Bust, the other leading a cow with their dog Frisk trotting ahead. Thus begins their adventure into the great, mysterious unknown, through a wilderness swarming with challenges, both human and beast. Esau is a stocky built, hardy young man and although his partner is lightly built, pale-faced and physically weak, they both start out in high spirits as they leave heir prairie homes. Westward their goal as they travel step-by-step, mile by mile, month after month. After they cross the Mississippi their progress is faster as the manual exercise and the oncoming mountain air improve the health and strength of the weaker one. After much wandering and a few close ones they arrive at the foot of Pikes Peak to begin the adversities of gold digging. Month after month they while away the time by digging attempts and failures. They attempt to follow the end of a rainbow to bring good luck, but not until they climb over a great snowy range, many miles from Pikes Peak, do they reach their ultimate goal. There are many stories of gold mining, but this one has no equal. About the Author: Among the least known but better authors of tales of adventure in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century era was Texan Lewis B. Miller, whose stories appeared in serial form in a weekly farm paper, The National Stockman and Farmer, and a regional edition of the publication, The Pennsylvania Stockman and Farmer. Lewis B. Miller was born at Blocker Creek, Cooke County, Texas, on May 27, 1861. His father’s name was Henry Miller and his mother Lurilla Osburn Miller. He received his early education in frontier schools in Texas. In 1881 he obtained an A.B. degree at Texas Christian University. He moved to Marlin, Texas, in 1931, apparently to live with relatives, and died there on July 26, 1933. He was buried at Hico, Texas, which is about 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth. Lewis B. Miller was an excellent writer with a good education, and his stories were very accurate from a geographical and historical standpoint. He wrote adult, young adult tales of adventure, dealings with frontier life, cattle driving. His base writing is about the southwest frontier pushing civilization into the wild west, French and Spanish territories or into the Indian’s hunting grounds. Besides frontier life, his novels cover a wide field of subjects, such as: homesteading, trapping, hunting, fur trading, logging, rafting, gold-seeking, Indian life and about all that confronted frontier life which most Americans have forgotten and many have never known. Many early American statesmen and patriotic pioneers appear in his stories, who are authentic. The frontier stories involved confrontation with the Indians and the hard life of the pioneers. Due to the fact that Miller’s stories appeared originally only in a farm weekly, they did not receive a wide circulation and thus remained unknown to much of the reading public. This neglect has been partially corrected by a small church foundation press in Pennsylvania. They have published a number of soft cover reprints of his work and more are pending. For those who collect adventure books for the pleasure of reading, there can be no better investment than in Lewis B. Miller tales. By Robert E. Walters