I regret to say that the pioneers, who laid the foundation of America, are no more. The Old West and that breed of hardy souls are gone forever. I'd bet my saddle that modern-day pioneers would trade their motor homes for covered wagons just to follow the wagon-tracks of our ancestors, but for only a couple of days I'm sure. Our ancestors were courageously tough The modern-day cowboys, among today's bloated population, would choose no other life in reincarnation, than to bob along on a long-tailed cowpony behind ten thousand head of longhorns moving up the old trails to Abilene and Dodge City, or north to Montana. - I was blessed to be born of that breed, blessed because it took that inherited pioneer spirit to pen this saga. An inheritance of chronicles recorded in my memory. Stories that flowed through the veins of my ancestry for well over a century, anecdotes passed down to me many years ago, mainly from my great father, Edward Irvin. I never dreamed that someday I would write a book, sharing, with the world, the accounts of my great-great grandmother's mother, Carolina Harold Irvin's remarkable and tragic life.