“The Fire Arrow,” by Richard S. Wheeler (Forge, 320 pages, $24.95)
Fortunately for readers who enjoy fine historical fiction, Barnaby Skye, one of Richard Wheeler’s most unforgettable characters, is once again on center stage. This time Mr. Skye, as he insists on being called, is younger at a time when white men in the West are mostly trappers and those who run the scattered forts.
The tale begins during a bitter-cold winter. Skye and his Crow wife, Victoria, are living with her people when the village is attacked by the Blackfeet. Victoria is badly wounded and Skye’s Hawken rifle is stolen, leaving him with only his trusty belaying pin. The Crows prepare to leave, using the few remaining horses to pull the travois. But Victoria is too badly hurt to risk the trip. Skye uses skills learned as a seaman assistant to a surgeon in the Royal Navy and removes the arrow in her side. She rallies, but their food is almost gone. Then a gray mare and a colt appear outside their tepee.
Believing the horses’ appearance is a good sign, they gather what little supplies they have and, with Sky walking beside Victoria, head into the cold and snow. One night, a trader and his son appear at their camp. The next morning, Skye and Victoria wake to find they have been robbed of almost everything but his knife, belaying pin and the two horses.
They move on and somehow find the Crow village. But the head man considers the mare a bad omen and her colt too bold. Skye refuses to kill them, and he leaves to find work at the Fort Sarpy trading post on the Yellowstone River. But when he returns to the Crow with a rifle that will help guard Victoria’s people and discovers he is still unwelcome, he decides the only way to get back in good graces is to find and hunt down the rabid wolf terrorizing the village.
Out in the wilderness for several days, Skye again meets up with traders and learns they are attached to the American Fur Co. Their leader is Mr. Skittles, an unscrupulous West Point graduate, who runs his operation according to military rules. One night Skye accepts a large portion of whiskey, only to wake and find he has been shanghaied into service. He learns Skittles uses poisonous alcohol to trade for the furs of unsuspecting Indians. Ignoring certain death if discovered, Skye aims to stop him.
Based on the author’s considerable knowledge of the early West and driven by memorable characters, “The Fire Arrow” is a deftly written story of personal integrity and love.
“The Saddlemaker’s Wife,” by Earlene Fowler (Berkley Prime Crime, 305 pages, $23.95)
Known for her quilting mysteries featuring Benni Harper, Earlene Fowler introduces Ruby McGavin in her first mainstream novel. A survivor of a fractured family who earned a living as a waitress, Ruby had been married only a year when Cole McGavin died. She has no idea what she will do.
Ruby arrives in the small town of Cardinal in California’s Tokopah County, a few miles from the McGavin ranch, a week before Christmas. Still shocked she has inherited half her husband’s family ranch, Ruby is even more stunned to learn his family, who Cole claimed had died years ago, is very much alive.
Her old car barely makes it into town and Ruby goes in search of a garage. Waiting for the car to be repaired, she decides to first talk to her husband’s brother, Lucas McGavin, a saddlemaker like her husband. She takes a liking to him, yet as Lucas talks about his brother, she begins to wonder how well she knew the man she married.
When told the car repairs will take a few days, Ruby checks into the Tokopah Inn, run by Birch Hernandez, Cole’s sister. She discovers the bookstore owner was a close friend of Cole’s, but as she listens to how much everyone loved him, Ruby senses she is getting only half of the story. She strongly suspects there is more at stake than her inheriting half of the ranch. And she goes on a painful search for the truth.
Alternately told by Ruby, Lucas and Birch, the story is about family and basically decent people who allow their personal struggles to become convenient shields from the truth. It’s written in Fowler’s signature friendly style, and fans should particularly enjoy this heartfelt variation.
Boulder novelist Sybil Downing writes a monthly column on new regional fiction.
