Two-time Spur Award–winner Boggs (Camp Ford
) relates the 1880s exploits of Daniel Killstraight, a Kwahadi Comanche returning from the Carlisle Industrial School in Pennsylvania. Daniel’s train halts at Fort Smith, Ark., just as Jimmy Comes Last, a boyhood friend, is being led to the gallows, convicted of murdering a husband and wife: a white man and Creek Indian woman. Prompted by Jimmy’s grief-stricken mother, Naséca, after the hanging, Daniel, whose education sets him apart, resolves to investigate. On arriving at the reservation with the body, U.S. Indian policemen Hugh Gunter and Harvey P. Noble induct Daniel into the force. While the plot is thin, Boggs draws raw tension from it, and the relationships and setting shine: Daniel—striving at once to solve the case and reconnect with Comanche ways—is a complex, winning protagonist. (June)
