The Grave on War Drum Creek

Weld County, ColoradoOctober, 1878 They were up there all right. No doubt about that. From half a mile away the lieutenant, squinting through field glasses, had watched them scurry, like frightened prairie chickens, up the side of the strange, sloping mound that loomed ahead like a voluptuous woman's breast; like a treeless, lifeless island surrounded by a dry, tawny sea bed that stretched to the horizon in every direction. So begins the story of a tense, tragic standoff between a Northern Cheyenne peace chief and his family who, after escaping from a parched, disease-infested reservation in Oklahoma Territory, are trying to return to their homeland in Montana and a detachment of U.S. Cavalry and volunteer scouts assigned to intercept them. It's also the story of an ambitious second lieutenant who's in charge of the troop ; a half-breed former Civil War sharpshooter traveling with the soldiers as an interpreter and a newspaper correspondent sent by a publisher starved for excitement and motivated by greed to cover the expedition. Although The Grave on War Drum Creek is a novel, much of it is based on historical fact. And, like the hatred, the brutal, indiscriminate killing that had permeated more than 20 years of racial and culture warfare on the High Plains , the setting of this story is real. So are the timeless moral questions it raises.