J Hoolihan Clayton – författare

Charles Wolfe Collins is a veteran of the Civil War, an Irish immigrant, a reluctant Pinkerton operative and an independent agent frequently performing confidential investigations for powerful politicians in Washington D.C.  In early 1879, he is summoned to the nation''s capital by the Secretary of the Interior and requested to gather intelligence regarding the escape of the Northern Cheyenne from Indian Territory and subsequent military actions intended to recapture and punish the fugitives.  Collins follows a heartbreaking trail of desperation, betrayals, bloody conflict and extraordinary courage, while the Northern Cheyenne strive to return to their homeland in the Powder River country in defiance of an unsympathetic government, willing to use any means to drive them back to a perilous and disease-ridden reservation.  With the steadfast and capable guidance of a Lakota woman scout, Charles Collins must seek information amongst belligerent soldiers and civilians, as well as militant Northern Cheyenne people who have been hounded, ravaged and slaughtered beyond reckoning.

Charles Wolfe Collins has been investigating various clandestine matters for influential Washington politicians since 1865, having been a confidential operative for General Grant during the War of the Rebellion.  In late summer of 1879, he is sent upon a mission into Colorado to assess the disintegrating state of affairs between the mercenary ambitions of white men and the treaty prerogatives of Ute Indian peoples. Drawn into a quagmire of hired provocateurs, vitriolic newspaper propaganda, fraudulent government contractors, a delusionary Indian agent and the baffled frustration of irate Ute chiefs, Charles Collins is charged with preventing a violent collision between U.S. cavalry troops and Ute warriors dedicated to protecting their families. Formidable economic and political interests are determined to contrive a situation within which the Ute people may be decisively eliminated while Collins seeks to unravel the tangle of deception, ultimately placing his trust in a fierce and mercurial war chief. Racing against time, they endeavor to disrupt the predictable outcome of an impending catastrophe.