I’m reading this one from a paperback with TWO books, this one and The High Rocks. The High Rocks is a pretty short review, so I thought about combining them into one post, but I didn’t want to slight the unique qualities of each. 🙂
The Book
The story opens as Murdock books so often do, in Helena, Montana. Page is sparring with his boss Harlan Blackthorne about why he doesn’t want to go on the sketchy assignment Blackthorne wants to give him. It involves renegade Indians in the Dakotas, a place Page apparently hates even worse that Montana!
True to the actual book publishing schedule (1979 and 1980), this book is set one year after The High Rocks. We know this because the Judge’s ace in the hole (so to speak) for forcing Page to do this is threatening to arrest him for the bounty hunter Lucas Church in the last book.
Bullshit, we all know from reading the other book, but the judge don’t care, he just wants what he wants.
Bismarck South Dakota
p 189 Page takes the train to Bismarck. Now he remembers why he dislikes it so much!
He pisses off the hotel clerk, who complains to the law, and so Page meets his travelling companion, AC Hudspeth, in an unfortunate way.
p 195 Hudspeth answers to his own windbag Federal Judge. Page meets him and we get the sparkling Estelman back and forth that I love so much. This judge has Presidential ambitions!
Anyway, the mission is to bring in an indian named Ghost Shirt who ahs the Dakota Cheyenne all riled up. They think he is the Messiah who drive the white man from their formerly happy hunting ground.
Historical/Cultural Background
- 1874 – Custer discovers gold in the Black Hills (!! Custer??)
- The Federal government had ceded that land to the Cheyenne as their spiritual home.
- If you’ve ever been there, it’s easy to see why they didn’t want to leave.
- Reference the book title: this is their Stamping Ground!! (cool!)
- The Federal government had ceded that land to the Cheyenne as their spiritual home.
- 1875 – Pressure from settlers forces the gov’t to open it up to force the Indians out.
- Cheyenne massacred the first bunch of settlers to show up.
- 1876 – The combined Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho beat up the 7th Cavalry pretty bad at Little Big Horn.
- Ghost Shirt was a young guy then, back East learning the ways of the white man.
- 1877 – He was supposed to goto Canada, but peeled off 40 braves and did the Dry Hole Massacre.
- 1/1/1878 – The Army massacered a Cheyenne camp of some 400 people, most of which turned out to be women and children.
- He’s captured … but escapes (sigh…).
- April 1878 – His new crew storms Fort Ransom and captures a wagon load of repeating rifles.
(duh US Army)
p 205 Wow, all that history, and we haven’t even left the Judge’s chambers!
They banter back and forth another few pages, and our heroes are finally off on their mission to bring back Ghost Shirt!
p 213 They take the train to Fargo, whih is even more of a dump than Bismarck.
“Chinamen, Scots, Germans, French, and Scandinavians teemed the muddy streets”.
They are looking for Pere Jac, a Metis. He is evidently the best tracker Hudspeth knows, and Hudspeth knows everybody.
The Metis seem very interesting, a group of French and Indian mongrels who evidently started up around Hudson Bay, and for some reason move around a lot.
The internet says that the largest concentration of Metis nowadays is indeed in the Dakotas and the parts of Canada directly above.
p 236 They end up at Fort Ransom, where Ghost Shirt killed the Commandant a couple of days ago. Their interview with the major in charge doesn’t go well.
p 240 There’s an entertaining little pissing-contest/gun battle in the Commandant’s office over who cooperates with whom.
p 248 They make enough of a pain in the ass of themselves that he lets them leave if they will leave right them in the middle of the night.
p 250 A first hand account of the attack on the Commandant’s party.
Ghost Shirt’s crew is hiding at the old Morman Mission.
p 260 Marshal Hudspeth has his trusty “battered Army issue telescope” in his bag, and our crew is peeking over the edge of a rise where they can see Indians in the distance. There’s WAY more than they thought, > 300 braves.
p 262 It occasions another great burst of Estelman’s colorful prose:
“There’s nothing more colorful that a large group of Plains Indians girded for war. … half-naked or wearing fringed and beaded vests or remnants of sleveless blue cavalry tunics … skin painted yellow and black and red and white … decorated with beads and shells and claws and teeth.”
The braves from the Mission [the ones they’ve been searching for] are armed with the repeating rifles just stole from the Army.
The visiting braves have traditional war clubs and bows and arrows.
Ghost Shirt is dresses plainly, as befitting a messiah-type guy.
The other chief is super decked-out:
- feathered headdress to his waist
- strips of ermine from his ears
- precious jewels in his crown
Pretty fancy, right??
Pere Jac idendities most of the visitors as chiefs he as traded with. He thought they were in Canada, but not any more, it seems.
- Somebody has to go back to the Post and warn the Army … Page draws the short stick, so he’s it.
- p 268 He can’t ford the river and goes back, but his crew has been captured, and now he is too!
- p 270 More great prose on what the warriors smelled like and the creepy details of their battle regalia which I will skip because it’s kinda gross.
- p 271 More great prose on the Mormon Fort and the Mormons.
- p 275 Page ends up with his buddies in the dungeon-like room at the bottom of the bell tower.
p 290 They’re dragged before Ghost Shirt. He decided not to kill them now, but rather to kill them at an even bigger event down the road.
p 300 They are taken along with the war party for a few days. The descriptions of life in a Plains Indian war party for squaws and such is pretty interesting. Then one night they make their escape. They are just starting to get away when …
p 304 The entire US Army (or so it seems) comes thundering over the hill.
p 308 Our guys capture the almost dead body of Ghost Shirt.
Shortly thereafter the US Army captures our guys! The US Arny is pissed!
Page and Jac Pere (the Metis) will get paid with Ghost Shirt or not, but not so the old marshall.
– Hanging on to Ghost Shirt is real important to marshall.
– On the other hand, it is also important to the Army that they get credit for
bringing him in…
so I think this is the basic conflict of the rest of the book!
The quickest wat to get where they want ro go is by train, so they way-lay one. The one the stop is a charter trip for some batty former Senator who things he.s gonna take over Idaho and the Pacific Northwest.s it
p 347 Jac Pere gets it while they are boarding. I am bummed. He was cool.
p 379 One final thrill before we run out of pages! The Blackfoot second in command – Lame Horse – stops the train and springs Ghost Shirt.
Surprise, he was freeing him just so he could knock him off and be sure of the succession!
There was a lot action in the last few pages. Train gets stopped, train tracks twisted. Train trying to start again. But I was kind of worn out by it all, so hang I up right here.
Page survived and made it back to Helena to be bitched out by his judge. Hudspeth and survived and got bitched put by his judge for not bringing Ghost Shirt back alive. He starred in a wild-west show in his old age.