WESTERN NOVELS—CUSTER

WESTERN NOVELS

CUSTER

In episode 38 of the Six-Gun Justice Podcast, we discussed numerous novels relating to Custer and to the Battle of Little Big Horn as well as reviewing several other books relating to different events. A number of them are listed below...

 

YELLOW HAIR 

CLAY FISHER (WILL HENRY)

In 1868 George A. Custer was the most ambitious young commander of the 7th Cavalry at Fort Dodge. Indians knew him as Yellow Hair—a man who enjoyed war and broke treaties. Hated by the Indians, feared by his own men, George Custer would stop at nothing in his quest for personal glory. Josh Kelso, his first scout and only friend, knew it would take all his courage and cunning to keep the General from leading the Seventh Cavalry into a massacre of certain death in the Arkansas Valley.

 

Henry Wilson Heck Allen (aka: Clay Fisher / Will Henry) gives us the first of two historical novels involving Custer. Yellow Hair is the prequel to Custer (under his Will Henry pseudonym) tells the story of the Washita massacre, which was in many ways the turning point toward Custer’s ultimate destruction along with that of the Seventh Cavalry.

 

While aging Cheyenne chief Black Kettle seeks an honorable peace, Custer will accept nothing less than death for the Cheyennes. Meanwhile, the younger Mad Wolf grows een more hostile. When Joshua Kelso, Custer’s best scout, falls in love with the beautiful Monaseetah, Mad Wolf schemes to use him to trap Custer. But Josh makes his way back to the army, and must rescues the captive Monaseetah before the coming massacre. Relentless and resolute.

 

CUSTER’S LAST STAND 

WILL HENRY (CLAY FISHER)

The Story of the Battle of The Little Big Horn...On June 25,1876, the greatest cavalry and Indian battle of frontier history was fought on the banks of a lonely Montana stream which the Sioux called the Greasy Grass. The sun was two hours past high noon when the opening shots were heard. An hour later the final burst of rifle fire died away among the brown hills. In that short time, General George Armstrong Custer and 225 officers and enlisted men of the elite Seventh Cavalry Regiment disappeared forever....

 

This is the story of the Native American chiefs who set their differences aside to band together to carry out violent revenge of that afternoon long ago. Here ride Black Kettle, Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, Chief Gall, Hump, Hard Rope, Rain-in-the-face, Iron Cedar, Double Wolf, Dull knife, Curley, Sitting Bull and the others who followed the fatal warpath toward the Little Big Horn.

 

THE RED SABBATH

LEWIS B. PATTEN

The column of dust was like the smoke from a monstrous prairie fire, boiling, yellow. Beneath it was a savage horde, yelling, barbaric in their feathers and brilliant paint, firing into the air out of sheer exuberance, coming in hungry for the vengeance due to them for fifty years of broken promises, for half a hundred savage massacres.

 

Sioux, Cheyenne and Kiowa, they longed to wipe out the detested Yellow Hair. But not only the Indians loathed General Custer; many of the men who rode with him towards the valley of the Little Big Horn also hated Custer, and with good reason. He was ruthless and vain and ambitious—and he needed a victory. So he led two hundred and twenty-five men of the 7th Cavalry into one of the bloodiest massacres in American history. With them was Miles Lorette, hard-bitten civilian scout whose life had twice been wrecked, by white men and Indians, and who was to take part in the violent and terrible hours of that blood-soaked Sunday in 1876.

 

THE HIDE HUNTERS 

LEWIS B. PATTEN

Jess Burdett, a solitary buffalo hunter, is en route to join a group of others in the Indian country south of the Arkansas when he meets up with attractive Edith Clinger. Alone and badly beaten by a brutal husband, she spelled further trouble for Burdett. Yet he couldn't just leave her alone, to be another victim of the Comanches...

 

The Hide Hunters is the tale of the epic historically documented five day siege of the ramshackle town of Adobe Walls—in the Texas Panhandle—between a handful of buffalo hunters including Bat Masterson and Billy Dixon and literally hundreds of Comanche, Kiowa, and Southern Cheyenne warriors. 

 

BLUSTER’S LAST STAND

PRESTON LEWIS

Events on the Little Bighorn might have turned out better for George Armstrong Custer had he listened to H.H. Lomax rather than trying to kill him. To save his own skin—and scalp, Lomax must outwit Custer and his troopers as well as face the horde of Sioux warriors swarming Last Stand Hill.

 

At least that is how Lomax tells the story in his inimitable and humorous romp across Old West history. Lomax’s latest misadventures take him from the Battle of Adobe Walls to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. In between, he’s a bouncer in a Waco whorehouse, a prospector in the Black Hills, a bartender in a Dakota Territory saloon and a combatant in the worst defeat in the history of the frontier Army.

 

Told with Lomax’s characteristic wit, Bluster’s Last Stand puts a new spin on the Little Bighorn and its aftermath. Whether you believe him or not, you’ve got to admire Lomax’s luck and pluck in both surviving one of the darkest days in Old West history and writing about the disaster in the latest volume of The Memoirs of H.H. Lomax.

 

FLASHMAN AND THE REDSKINS 

GEORGE MACDONALD FRASIER

Coward, scoundrel, lover and cheat, but there is no better man to go into the jungle with. Join Flashman in his adventures as he survives fearful ordeals and outlandish perils across the four corners of the world.

 

What was Harry Flashman doing on the slopes of Little Bighorn, caught between the gallant remnant of Custer’s 7th Cavalry and the attack of Sitting Bull’s braves? He was trying to get out of the line of fire and escape yet again with his life (if not his honour) intact.

 

Here is the legendary and authentic West of Mangas Colorado’s Apaches, of Kit Carson, Custer and Spotted Tail, of Crazy Horse and the Deadwood stage, gunfighters and gamblers, scoundrels and Indian belles, enthusiastic widows and mysterious adventuresses. The West as it really was: terrifying...

 

GREASY GRASS

JOHNNY D. BOGGS

Spur Award–winner Johnny Boggs adds another perspective to the Battle of Little Big Horn—known to the Native Americans as Greasy Grass, which is the title of his take on a Custer novel. Using the fictionalized narratives of historical participants, Boggs’ delivers a vivid account from the 7th Cavalry soldiers and the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians, as Custer foolishly leads his men to their deaths in a wild melee of crashing gunfire and arrows.

 

The story tells of the U.S. Army's campaign to bring the Indians to battle, as well as Sioux chief Sitting Bull's premonition of the upcoming fight, and Red Cloud's frustration over the white man's broken promises and treaties. Through the characters' words, Boggs also reveals the bitter feelings, rivalries, and hatred between Custer and his seniors and subordinates, along with several soldiers who have a palpable sense of impending doom.

The battle scenes are described in all their bloody savagery. The highlight is Boggs' portrayals of Capt. Frederick Benteen and Maj. Marcus Reno and their surviving cavalrymen during the battle, and the two officers' futile efforts to avoid blame afterward. The novel effectively paints a grim, gory, and realistic image of Indian warfare, period racism, and the political scapegoating that usually occurs after a military disaster.