Featured

The Great Sioux Trail: A Story of Mountain and Plain — Reading Notes

(0 User reviews) 1041

In Category - Young Readers Enchanted Adventures

Authors: Altsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander), 1862-1919, Wrenn, Charles L. (Charles Lewis), 1880-1952 [Illustrator] Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2009 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Dakota Indians -- Fiction; West (U.S.) -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 95,141

Reading time 414 min

Text sections 11

For The Great Sioux Trail: A Story of Mountain and Plain — Reading Notes, the stored edition analysis reports 95,141 words, 6 hr 54 min estimated reading time, and 11 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 18.6 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Dakota Indians -- Fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #28115

An editorial note on Joseph A. Altsheler's 'The Great Sioux Trail,' focusing on the narrative's shifting pace and the contrast between formal dialogue and colloquial banter among four partners seeking gold in the post-Civil War West.

Editorial Edition Score 4.8/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Calculated from edition completeness, EPUB availability, text structure and catalogue metadata. Not a user rating.

How this score is calculated

Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg28115

Read the Text

Will was troubled, as he was extremely anxious to go on at once, but he reflected that Jim Boyd was one of the greatest of all frontiersmen and he would be almost sure to find a way. Summoning his will, he dismissed anxiety from his mind and lay quite still, seeking sleep.

The camp was now quiet and the fire was sinking rapidly. Sentinels walked on every side, but Will could not see them from where he lay. A light wind blowing down from the mountains moaned through the thin forest. Clouds came up from the west, blotting out the horizon and making the sky a curving dome of blackness. Young William Clarke felt that it was good to have comrades in the immense desolation, and it strengthened his spirit to see the soldiers rolled in their blankets, their feet to the dying coals.

Yet his trouble about the future came back. He and Boyd were in truth and reality prisoners. Captain Kenyon was friendly and kind, but he would not let them go on, because the Sioux and Cheyennes had barred all the trails and the formidable Red Cloud had given a warning that could not be ignored. Making another effort, he dismissed the thought a second time and just as the last coals were fading into the common blackness he fell asleep.

He was awakened late in the night by a hand pushing gently but insistently against his shoulder. He was about to sit up abruptly, but the voice of Boyd whispered in his ear:

"Be very careful! Make no noise! Release yourself from your blanket and then do what I say!"

The hand fell away from his shoulder, and, moving his head a little, Clarke looked carefully over the camp. The coals where the fire had been were cold and dead, and no light shone there. The figures of the sleeping soldiers were dim in the dusk, but evidently they slept soundly, as not one of them stirred. He heard the regular breathing of those nearest to him, and the light step of the sentinel just beyond a clump of dwarf pines.

"Sit up now," whispered Boyd, "and when the sentinel passes a little farther away we'll creep from the camp. Be sure you don't step on a stick or trip over anything. Keep close behind me. The night's as black as pitch, and it's our one chance to escape from friends who are too hospitable."

Will saw the hunter slowly rise to a stooping position, and he did likewise. Then when the sound of the sentinel's step was lost at the far end of his beat, Boyd walked swiftly away from the camp and Will followed on his trail. The lad glanced back once, and saw that the dim figures by the dead fire did not stir. Weary and with the soothing wind blowing over them, they slept heavily. It was evident that the two who would go their own way had nothing to fear from them. There was now no bar to their departure, save the unhappy chance of being seen by the sentinel.

A rod from the camp and Boyd lay flat upon the ground, Will, without the need of instruction, imitating him at once. The sentinel was coming back, but like his commander he was a soldier of the civil war, used to open battlefields, and he did not see the two shadows in the dusk. He reached the end of his beat and turning went back again, disappearing once more beyond the stunted pines.

"Now's our time," whispered Boyd, and rising he walked away swiftly but silently, Will close behind him. Three hundred yards, and they stopped by the trunk of a mountain oak.

"We're clear of the soldiers now," said the hunter, "but we must have our horses. Without 'em and the supplies they carry we'd be lost. I don't mean anything against you, Will. You're a likely lad and you learn as fast as the best of 'em, but it's for me to cut out the horses and bring 'em here. Do you think you can wait patiently at this place till I come with 'em?"

"No, Jim, I can't wait patiently, but I can wait impatiently. I'll make myself keep still."

"That's good enough. On occasion I can be as good a horse thief as the best Sioux or Crow or Cheyenne that ever lived, only it's our own horses that I'm going to steal. They've a guard, of course, but I'll slip past him. Now use all your patience, Will."

Continue Reading →

Altsheler opens with a scene that deliberately slows time: the sunset, the plains, the dim mountains. The prose lingers on the 'singular spell' cast over young Clarke, using words like 'majestic' and 'menace' to establish a mood of watchful anticipation. This measured, descriptive pace dominates the early chapters, where the Sioux warning and narrow escapes unfold with a sense of ritual gravity.

Yet the narrative rhythm shifts markedly when the four partners—Will, Boyd, the Little Giant, and the newcomer Brady—begin their journey. Conversations become brisk, peppered with the Little Giant's comic literalism ('I'll hire a man to read 'em'). The voice of the text alternates between Brady's grammatical precision and the frontiersmen's earthy idioms, creating a layered soundscape that mirrors the tension between civilization and wilderness.

Pace as a Narrative Tool

The book's pacing is not uniform. Early chapters, such as 'The Sioux Warning' and 'The Narrow Escape,' move with a deliberate, almost cinematic slowness. Descriptions of landscape—'the sweep of plains,' 'the dim outline of mountains'—are given room to breathe, and action scenes are brief, punctuated by long stretches of tense stillness. Later chapters, like 'The Buffalo March' and 'The Dreadful Night,' accelerate into a more episodic, adventure-driven rhythm. The snowbound interlude in Chapter VIII provides a notable pause: the men repair clothes, jerk meat, and talk, allowing the reader to catch breath before the next pursuit. This variation in tempo keeps the narrative from becoming monotonous, though it can feel uneven—some readers may prefer the sustained tension of the opening over the hurried escapes that follow.

Voices in Contrast

The four main characters speak in distinctly different registers. Will Clarke uses a formal, almost bookish English, befitting his role as the educated young leader. Boyd's speech is more direct, seasoned with frontier practicality. The Little Giant, by contrast, delivers a steady stream of colloquial humor: 'I ain't much of a hand at readin' 'em,' he says of books, and later declares he will hire a man to read for him. Brady, the fur hunter, surprises with 'grammatical and good English,' explaining his abandoned ambition to become a schoolmaster. These vocal differences do more than characterize; they create a subtle commentary on class and education on the frontier. The narrative voice itself remains consistently formal, even when reporting the Little Giant's slang, which can create a slight dissonance between what is said and how it is reported.

Recurring Details and Their Functions

Certain details recur with enough frequency to become motifs. The 'White Dome' is mentioned repeatedly as a landmark and goal, its name evoking both purity and inaccessibility. The act of hiding—traps, gold, plans—appears in multiple contexts: Brady stores his traps 'in a remote corner of the cavern,' and the partners constantly conceal their intentions from enemies. The weather, too, is a persistent presence: snow, cold, and frozen ground shape the characters' actions and force them into periods of enforced stasis. These repeating elements give the story a structural coherence, even when the plot itself zigzags. They also ground the adventure in tangible, physical realities—the cold is not merely atmospheric but a practical obstacle that dictates when and how the men can move.

Readers attentive to voice will find that Altsheler's greatest strength lies not in plot twists but in the interplay of his characters' speech patterns. The Little Giant's malapropisms and Brady's unexpected erudition offer more than comic relief; they hint at the social fluidity of the frontier. The pacing, too, rewards patience: the slow-burning opening gives way to a headlong rush, and the snowbound chapter provides a rare moment of stillness. Approach this as a novel of atmosphere and conversation, and its longueurs become part of the texture.

Altsheler’s four partners talk past each other in that stilted way, then suddenly banter like old friends—it’s the quiet shift that stays with me. I found myself thinking how humor can soften the roughest trails, much like the pieces collected in The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) — Key Ideas to Explore. Some laughs just carry the day, plain and simple.