King of Spades

Under the veil of one of the oldest and most tragic myths known to humankind, a king is born. Magnus King, the son of a well-born English woman, continues his family’s aristocratic legacy on the frontier of the American West until the night a deadly shooting changes everything.

Young Earl Ransom, a man found long ago on the Cheyenne prairie with no memory of his past or of how his destiny is linked to that of Magnus King, finds his way through a tale as old and tragic as the Greek myth of Oedipus.


King of Spades is the final volume of Frederick Manfred’s acclaimed five-volume series, The Buckskin Man Tales. For this Bison Books Classic edition, Joel Johnson provides a new introduction.