Book excerpt: The Red Coat Trail of southern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta runs near the route of the North West Mounted Police’s famous 1874 March West. Today, this lonely highway passes through a windswept land of ghostly abandoned towns. Johnnie Bachusky takes readers back to the heyday of these towns, which sprang up as settlers travelled west during the last great land rush. The Roaring Twenties brought bumper harvests, but also bootleggers and bank robbers; fortunes were won and lost in high-stakes poker games. The Great Depression devastated the region as disease, drought, dust storms and grasshoppers took their toll. History comes to life in these exciting true stories, from an account of a 1920s bank robbery in Manyberries to the tales of a boisterous Govenlock rancher who hunted with Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok.