Into the Unknown

Postscript

According to his journal, Robert Parker spent three more weeks in King Valley. He named the yellow-crowned kinglet in honor of his hosts.

Nate King took him back to Bent’s Fort. There, Parker solved the mystery of the horse covered with blood.

Augustus Trevor had been concerned for the naturalist’s welfare, and followed him, intending to keep an eye on him without Parker being aware. What Trevor did not know was that the Hook brothers and Cutter were also shadowing Parker and Zach. To keep Trevor from interfering, one of them shot him in the back. They saw him fall, but when they reached the spot, they could not find his body. From the amount of blood they assumed he would die, and they rode on. But frontiersmen were a hardy breed, and Augustus Trevor was one of the hardiest. Emaciated almost to the point of starvation, he made it to Bent’s Fort. The rest of Parker’s party immediately set out after him. Since no one, not even St. Vrain, knew how to find King Valley, they had no recourse but to return to the trading post and await his return.

By the time Parker showed up, Trevor had recovered sufficiently to lead them on a nine week “species tour of the Rockies,” as Parker referred to it. His observations, sketches and paintings were lauded in the press and in academic circles. All told, he documented over a thousand new varieties of plant and animal life.

Parker went on to became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He eventually headed their Ornithology Department. He was a prominent member of the American Philosophical Society and a fellow of the Linnaean Society, where he rose to the position of vice president.

Robert Parker never married. He led a quiet, scholarly life. For thirty years he lived in a small house near the university. His most prized possession, according to friends and acquaintances, was a painting he hung in his bedroom.

It was not a painting of the birds he loved so much or any of the animals or plants he discovered. It was a painting of a woman, and all who saw it praised it as the best painting he ever did. He was offered large sums of money for it, but he refused to sell. No one ever learned the woman’s name. All Parker would tell them was that she was a Flathead.