The Dice of God

When the men laid down gun and saber at Appomattox Courthouse, many headed West to settle new land. Many, the taste for soldiering in them now, took up gun and saber again and went to press the Cavalry’s tough, thankless fight against the Indian. The hard-bitten veterans came, and the fuzz-cheeked boys, and certain violent men who lived for the moment’s opportunity; and their lusty women followed on the skirts of enterprise.

They came from every part of the country and every cut of society. On the way westward some brushed elbows unknowingly, as people do; some crossed paths and soon forgot one another; some found their lives inextricably bound together by circumstance. And it seemed that the strongest, as if singled out by their own excesses of passion or arrogance or ruthlessness, were drawn toward the Black Hills, where fate was preparing for them a grim retribution that would shock the nation—Little Big Horn.

In this hearty, virile novel Hoffman Birney tells their stories in wonderful profusion, with a mature mastery of character and a historian’s command of authenticating detail. He tells of three love affairs—one young and hesitant, second adult and frankly sensual, the third makeshift and rich in earthy humor. The color and flavor and excitement of the times—Washington and the frontier and points between—a great slice of America and American life in the backwash of the Civil War—all are here, a proud background for the adventuring of proud men.