"Hulloa! Bridger, what's the matter now?" "Only some feathers in my back." The feathers were a pair of Blackfeet arrows. One came out clean. The other left a three-inch iron point buried in the bone near his spine. One Jim Bridger would carry with him for three years, through three trapping seasons and three rendezvous, because no man in the mountains had the surgical skill to pry it from the bone and dig it out without killing him. Bridger was twenty-eight years old. He'd been in the...

At the end of the last episode, John Colter was standing naked on the bank of the Jefferson River, surrounded by hundreds of Blackfeet warriors, watching what was left of his friend John Potts being hacked to pieces. Then one of the chiefs pointed toward the open prairie and told him to go. Colter walked at first. Then he looked back and saw the young warriors stripping off their blankets and leggings. He understood. He was being given a head start. The third and final episode of the John...

Dolly Parton died today in Nashville, Tennessee, at the age of 80. If you live outside of Tennessee, you're likely going to be puzzled, in the coming days and weeks, by the way her passing is about to dominate your social media feeds. Because you're going to see post after post from people down here, all mourning this woman they've never met. Some of those posts will be maudlin. Corny. Some, God knows, will include folks holding up candles and crying and holding impromptu wakes in a Dollywood...