Читать книгу Luck's Wild - G. Russell Peterman - Страница 3

In life there are many moments that confront us that looking back do turn out to be turning points. At these times we make choices. Which of these choices we take determines our future. We live our choices. If we had made different choices our lives would not have been the lived as we did. The young seldom view life this way. They just plow ahead taking much too often the easier alternative and are often later unhappy about it. Sometimes, they take the choice friends or parents or grandparents want them to take, not the one they want. If they do this someone else decides their life. In former-friends and family friction cases some even take the opposite choice and live a life of spite. How else can we understand the lives of children that are so different than their friends or family; this difference can be for better or worse?

Often we have heard it said, "Play the cards you're dealt," as if life were a card game, a hand of poker. Consider the cards dealt and choices made by Collin Dymond, all diamonds in the card game of life if you like, a young Missourian off to seek gold, a family man, a drunk, a Civil War soldier promoted from private to Captain for bravery, avenging hunter of a friend’s murderer, and suitor. You can decide if Collin makes good choices or not. We both agree, don’t we, that you will make better choices when your cards are dealt.

In telling Collin Dymond’s story I tried to be faithful to the records of the Second Kansas wherever possible. During research I found Civil War on the Western Border, 1854-1865 by Jay Monaghan especially valuable. Civil War in the east has numerous histories and fictional stories about the conflict. Yet, strangely thin is the number of factual and fictional writings about bloody Kansas and the Civil War west of the Mississippi River. This story tries to cover the achievements of the Second Kansas Calvary in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and one action in Oklahoma

G. Russell Peterman

M.A. American History

Vanderbilt University