



The Fire Arrow
A Barnaby Skye Novel
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- 10,99 €
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- 10,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
Barnaby Skye, the most durable and unforgettable character in modern Western fiction, returns in this harrowing tale of survival from his early years in the Rockies.
In the midst of a brutal winter, Skye's beloved Crow Indian wife, Victoria, is critically wounded when a Blackfeet raiding party attacks a Crow hunting camp. Despite Skye's attempts at doctoring, Victoria's life hangs in the balance as the two, left alone in the frozen wilderness, struggle to survive cold and starvation.
Miraculously, an old mare and her foal wander into their camp. Victoria believes they have been sent by her spirit guide, and finds the strength to ride. Skye and his wife make their way toward Victoria's home village on the Musselshell River. Breaking winter trail is a slow and laborious process, but at the end of the journey they will find peace. Or will they?
Skye's love of whiskey puts his life, and Victoria's, in peril when they encounter a renegade band of Yankee traders taking a wagon-load of a cheap and poisonous raw alcohol to trade among the Indians. Their leader, a former West Point officer, forces Skye to guide them, but all the while the legendary mountain man plots to ruin their deadly enterprise.
In The Fire Arrow, Richard S. Wheeler has fashioned an unforgettable tale of love and survival in the unforgiving wilderness of the American West.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rough luck plagues mountain man Barnaby Skye in this fourteenth installment to Wheeler's colorful Skye's West series (The Deliverance, etc.). Once a British seaman, Skye is a hunter and trapper in 1850s Yellowstone country, where he lives with his wife Victoria, a Crow Indian, and her people, the Absaroka. When Victoria is horribly injured in a Blackfoot raid, Skye stays behind to nurse her after her people depart. The miraculous appearance of two horses provide transportation out of wintry Blackfoot territory, but traders rob Skye's rifle and kit, and he returns to the Absaroka a pauper-and with horses they consider a bad omen. Exiled, Skye is tricked into working for a ruthless gang of fur traders who bilk the Indians for their valuable buffalo hides, doling out rotgut whiskey as payment. During a disastrous drunken trading exchange at Victoria's village, Skye is forced to act as translator, leading the Indians to blame him for their misfortune. Skye is once again an outcast, but vows revenge on the traders. In what may be the best Skye's West novel to date, Wheeler deftly balances the violence and brutality of frontier life with the love and tenderness of a husband and wife caught between cultures.