"Old grudges, tribal traditions, and outside influences collide for a Kiowa woman as forces threaten her family, her tribe, and the land of her ancestors...A cryptic voice message from her grandfather, James Sawpole, telling her to come home sounds so wrong that she catches the next plane to Oklahoma...When Mud and her cousin Denny discover her grandfather missing...and stumble across a body in his work room--Mud has no choice but to search for answers....

"On a scalding summer day in 1866, the Kiowa Nation gathered at Rainy Mountain to witness the magnificent Cheyenne Robber standing before them--charged with murdering a fellow tribesman. It was a day Tay-bodal would never forget. A day that threatened to tear the unity of the entire Kiowa Nation ... Known as a wanderer and eccentric healer, Tay-bodal was always on the outside of the clan. Now, for the first time in his life, Tay-bodal's unconventional...

Amid troubling times for the Kiowa, Tay-bodal must investigate the murder of the son of another chief. "The one accused of killing him is a member of the Rattle Band, and to make matters worse, he is the same man who has been plotting to steal Tay-boda's wife."--Jacket.

"In the wake of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas, giving live readings from newspapers to paying audiences hungry for news of the world. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his rootless, solitary existence. In Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver a young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio. Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa...