THE LOVES OF THE TRAIL - By Kenneth Howard Smith

 

**THE LOVES OF THE TRAIL:

A DOCUDRAMA OF CHARLOTTE, CHARLES & YELLOW FEATHER**
America, 1861–1880s: A Journey Across the Bones of a Nation, By Kenneth Howard Smith for SDC PaperDreams Books.

PROLOGUE – THE RIVER

The year was 1861, the air in South Carolina swollen with the thick, humid tension of a nation splitting along its own seams. Word had spread that President Abraham Lincoln had taken office, and along with him came the frenzied whisper that the Civil War had begun its terrible march. In the shadows of this unrest, where hopes were hidden like lanterns behind locked shutters, the Knight Riders—violent enforcers of the Slave Patrols—roamed like specters set loose.

In the midst of that fear-stained world lived Charlotte Hallmark, just twelve years old, slender as a reed but with a heart forged from something sturdier than steel. Her father, Professor James A. Hallmark, ran a small print shop—a shop whose back room served as a quiet artery in the network of the Underground Railroad.

Charlotte had wandered down to the riverbank that afternoon, trying to escape the smell of smoke and gunpowder drifting from the edge of town. The water ran brown and sluggish, swollen by spring rains. That was when she saw it—a tiny bundle bobbing gently in the reeds like a discarded rag doll.

She did not hesitate. Childhood vanished in an instant.

Charlotte kicked off her shoes, splashed in, and wrestled the small body to shore. The child—a baby, a month old at most—was pale, silent. And then, as she lay him on the muddy bank, he sputtered, choked, and began to cry.

And Charlotte, trembling, gathered him up in her arms.

She knew what had happened—everyone in the South knew. Slave patrols sometimes stole infants born of a white father and enslaved mother, dumping them in swamps or rivers to erase the “evidence.” Charlotte wrapped him in her own sweater and looked desperately for someone—anyone—who might have been searching for him.

But the river answered with silence.

She took the baby and ran.

CHAPTER I – THE PRINT SHOP FALLS

The Hallmark print shop, normally bright with the smell of ink and hot lead type, was now a battlefield.

The Knight Riders had arrived ahead of her.

Charlotte froze as she approached, baby pressed to her chest. Men were smashing type cases, burning paper reams, hurling presses to the ground. Her father—usually calm as a church elder—was red-faced, shout­ing, trying to fight them off with nothing more than a metal composing stick.

He saw her. He saw the baby. And he understood everything.

They had no choice. They fled that night, taking only what remained unbroken: a small press, a satchel of type, and the child Charlotte named Charles Alexander Hallmark.

The North took them in cautiously. Even the orphanages refused the baby—too complicated, too mixed, too political. But Charlotte would not let him go.

And so Charles became hers.

CHAPTER II – TEN YEARS OF SNOW

The Hallmarks made their new life somewhere between winter and necessity. For ten years, Professor Hallmark taught his craft in storefronts and barns. Charlotte grew into a young woman admired by Northern officers, courted by men with crisp uniforms and polished boots.

Charles—bright, curious, quiet at times—followed the Professor everywhere. He learned the smell of ink before he learned the rules of baseball. By thirteen, he could set type faster than some grown apprentices.

But Charlotte’s heart tugged her back and forth—love for Charles, love for her suitors, loyalty to the father who had lost so much.

It was Charles, now nearly fourteen, who freed her.

“You go,” he said. “Get married. I’ll take care of him now.”

She kissed him and held him tight, but he stood firm. He had learned endurance early, in the cradle rescued from the river.

Before she left, she whispered, “Don’t ever let anyone say you don’t belong.”

He never forgot those words.

Not once.

CHAPTER III – THE CALL OF THE WEST

1874.

America had stretched itself like a cat, sprawling westward across plains and mountains. Trains belched steam into the young sky. Telegraph wires hummed and sparked. Ranchers, miners, merchants—all moved with the restless beat of Manifest Destiny.

Professor Hallmark, weary of cold winters and longing for clean horizons, decided the West was calling him.

He and Charles packed their small printing world into a Saratoga wagon, hitched with a draft wagon full of presses, plates, ink, and lead type.

Their destination: the Kansas Territory, and from there along the Chisholm Trail into the still-forming Oklahoma Territory.

The Professor wasn’t just a traveler—he was an inventor. He created thin lead sheet stock for printing forms by melting down old bullets. Charles would hunt for old target trees along the trail, carving out slugs of spent lead like a prospector searching for nuggets.

They became indispensable.

Wedding announcements…
Business cards…
Hymnals…
Sale tags…
Contracts…
Even handmade envelopes.

Every settlement, every military outpost, every dusty trail town needed something printed.

Charles invented the “All Occasions Card”—a small, elegant greeting card suitable for anything from condolences to congratulations. It became a trail-side sensation.

The money was steady, the work constant. And the trail gave them a strange kind of freedom.

CHAPTER IV – FORT SUPPLY & THE GIRL WITH THE NAME OF THE WIND

By the time they reached Fort Supply, Oklahoma, Charles was seventeen, tall and strong, carrying a satchel of samples and a head full of stories he’d written during long nights by the campfire.

Fort Supply was a rough, buzzing intersection of tribes, settlers, and Buffalo Soldiers. It smelled of horse sweat, hot coffee, and tanned leather.

And in a small notions shop, he saw her.

Yellow Feather.

Their eyes met in the doorway, and something—something unspoken—settled in place like a puzzle piece that had been waiting for years.

She was educated, confident, fluent in English, fresh from an Eastern school where she had learned clerking, bookkeeping, and the new marvel called the Remington typewriter.

Charles followed her around like a lovestruck puppy.

He made her a small diary—mushroom-leather, her name embossed on the cover.

She laughed at his nervousness.
He adored her bravery.

She told him stories—about drilling wells, about making kerosene and even moonshine with old wildcatters. She had learned the land the way a doctor knows a heartbeat.

She also knew of a hidden valley—a place untouched in the coming Oklahoma Land Rush.

And she had a plan.

CHAPTER V – THE LAND RUSH

When the Professor fell in love with a widowed woman in the region, Charles realized he had a choice: stay, or follow a dream to California.

But Yellow Feather placed her hand on his and said, “Go for the land. I will help you.”

Native Americans could not claim land in the rush. But they could go anywhere without suspicion.

And she did.

Under cover of night, she secured a claim stake—the stake—that marked the valley she had loved since childhood.

The rush was thunder—horses pounding, wagons careening, dust flying. For days afterward, claimants lined up at the government office, stakes in hand.

Charles waited, heart pounding.
His number matched.

Just like that, Charles Alexander Hallmark became a landowner.

And Yellow Feather became his bride-to-be.

But there was more.

She saw additional stakes out in the hills—unclaimed, overlooked. Together they found them, racing against the clock, and Charles reached the government office at 3:45 p.m. Friday, the final day.

He became the last official registrant of the Oklahoma Land Rush.

His footprint etched into American history.

CHAPTER VI – THE WEDDING ON TRIBAL LAND

They were married quietly, beautifully, lovingly—on her tribal reservation. Buffalo Soldiers, settlers, tribal elders—they all knew them by then.

The Professor cried into his new wife’s shoulder.

Charlotte—far away in Nebraska Territory with her officer husband—received the news months later and wept with joy.

Charles had built a life from a river of pain and turned it into a future bright enough to share.

EPILOGUE – THE LOVES THAT BUILT TOMORROW

Charles and Yellow Feather built their life like a quilt—piece by piece, stitched with invention, heart, and the stubborn determination of people who believed in tomorrow.

Together, they created:

• A greeting card business from Charles’ All Occasions Cards

• A distillation operation producing kerosene and spirits

• Experiments with early gasoline for a thing rumored in the East… the automobile

• A printshop that carried their name across the West

They saved.
They dreamed.
They built.

In time, they would make that Overland journey to California. And their name—Hallmark—would come to symbolize stories, memories, and love written down so no one would ever forget.

Because a girl once saved a baby from a river.
Because a boy once saved bullets from old trees.
Because a young woman once saved a valley for the man she loved.
Because endurance, love, invention, and travel are the rivers that shape a people.

This is their story.
A story full of promise for all the tomorrows still unwritten.