Titus Bass 02 Buffalo Palace

From Library Journal Taking up where he left off in Dance on the Wind (LJ 7/95) Johnston sends Titus Bass from St. Louis up the Missouri and Platte to the Rockies, where he joins a trio of fur trappers. Their sadistic leader initiates the greenhorn into the frontier equivalent of "might makes right," beating him savagely when Titus confronts him about pilfering his beaver pelts. Too inexperienced to go it alone, Titus remains with them until the others raft their pelts downriver, abandoning him. Surviving brushes with hostile Indians, he links up with other trappers. The story ends abruptly when, set upon by Blackfeet Indians, Titus is saved by friendly Shoshones, portending a further installment. For the most part well researched, this novel falters only when Johnston digresses at length to summarize events in Dance on the Wind. Recommended for public libraries. -?Robert P. Jordan, Univ. of Iowa, Iowa City Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist Titus Bass is 31 years old in 1825 and about to embark on the greatest adventure of his life. After years of trapping the upper Missouri, Titus is alone. His partner has passed away but not before passing along his knowledge of survival in the untamed land west of the Mississippi. Headed for the Great Plains, Titus hooks up with a small band of like-minded adventurers and makes his way northwest from St. Louis. It's an arduous journey, but Titus is determined to reach what is known as the Buffalo Palace. Taking place over an extended period of time in which the protagonist undergoes many changes, Johnston's latest effort again achieves the epic scope familiar from several earlier Bass novels, including Carry the Wind (1982) and Dance on the Wind (1995), which chronicled the character's early life. Readers will look forward to the further adventures of Titus Bass hinted at in the tale's exciting conclusion. Wes Lukowsky In Buffalo Palace , the young Titus Bass sights, and then sets out into, the vast Rocky Mountain country, where he has his initial experiences with trapping beaver, surviving the freezing winter, fighting fierce Indians and even fiercer fellow mountain men, and celebrating at the hard-earned summer rendezvous. Most memorably, we walk with Titus as he first sees the immense herd which originally fueled his wanderlust, and now feeds, clothes and houses the frontier's pioneers, when he reaches the country lovingly called the "Buffalo Palace." The continuing adventures of Titus Bass, a Kentucky farm boy in the early 1800s. After a rest in Saint Louis he moves west, becoming a fur trapper and game hunter. The novel describes the perils of the profession from Indians and nature