Recent Book Releases

Lay the Mountains Low ($24.95 - hardcover) - June, 2000 - paperback February 2001

in the Plainsmen Series

In the second title of this haunting trilogy on the Nez Perce War of 1877, you will witness the escape of the Non-Treaty Bands after their victory at White Bird Canyon, always staying one step ahead of Howard’s army in one embarrassing skirmish after another, until a devastating fight on the Clearwater leaves the tribe impoverished and convinces the chiefs they must flee to the buffalo country east of the Bitterroots. After the warrior bands manage to evade an army barricade while descending the Lolo Trail, and successfully bartering with the civilians in western Montana, Looking Glass and his war chiefs believe they have left the war behind in Idaho...completely unaware there is another army racing up behind them. Col. John Gibbon and his Seventh Infantry catch the sleeping village in the beautiful, tranquil valley of the Big Hole -- where warriors, women, and children are killed at dawn before the enraged warriors regroup to flush the soldiers back up the hillside, holding those surrounded white men in their riflepits for two long days. Now their finest warriors are dead. Not one family that had marched into the Big Hole escaped the Big Hole without burying a loved one. This no longer is this a struggle of soldier against warrior. This has now become a last stand for a way of life, for a proud people, for every old one, woman, and child too. From the moment they suffered these devastating losses at the Big Hole, on through their headlong flight to the buffalo country of the Crow, the Nez Perce will no longer trust the white man while they lick their terrible and deep, deep wounds.

In the final book of this devastating trilogy--which won’t be released until June of 2002--this rage the Nez Perce warriors now feel inflaming their hearts will spur them on a bloody rampage through northern Idaho and on into Yellowstone Park, before they undertake one last, desperate race for the Old Woman’s Country, where they hope once again to live in peace, this time with Sitting Bull’s Lakota. But between them and freedom lie not only the high, snowy plains at the foot of the Bears Paw Mountains . . . but also the battle-hardened Fifth Infantry of Colonel Nelson A. Miles, guided to this desperate last battle by chief of scouts, Seamus Donegan.

Death Rattle paperback - June 2000

(next to the last book in the Titus Bass saga!)

With the end of the beaver trade at hand, free trappers like Titus Bass must somehow make their way on a changing frontier. Drawn by the promise of adventure and wealth, Scratch joins an expedition across the Great Basin to Spanish California, where the ranchos have horses and mules in abundance. Together with old friends Bill Williams and Peg-Leg Smith, their plan is to steal the livestock and drive it back across the Mojave Desert to sell to fur traders at Bents’ big lodge on the Arkansas for top dollar.

But a dogged pursuit by formidable Mexican soldiers and an ambush by the fierce Digger Indians take their toll on Bass and his fellow raiders--slowly whittling away both man and animal alike. Arriving back in his beloved Rocky Mountains, Titus discovers that even his old friend, Jim Bridger, has abandoned his traps, settled down, and built a post squarely on the Oregon Trail where he can trade with emigrants coming west.

Wondering where his own trail will lead him, Bass journeys south for a reunion with a beloved old friend in Taos--Josiah Paddock--only to be swept up in the infamous "Taos Rebellion." In the aftermath of the short, but bloody, revolt, Titus finds himself once again an outsider in a world he no longer recognizes.

A used-to-be man fit only for a used-to-be country . . .