The Elk-Dog Heritage
Page 17
Next in the circle was the Elk-dog band. Heads Off rose, hands moist with tension. His elk-dog medicine glinted against his buckskin shirt.
“I am Heads Off, chief of the Elk-dog band,” he announced formally. “My brothers, ours has been a very big year.”
Also by Don Coldsmith
Buffalo Medicine
Daughter of the Eagle
Follow the Wind
The Long journey Home
A Victory for the People
Long Elk ran, bending and twisting, while the mounted Head Splitter pursued him. Heads Off surged forward in a charge and this time his thrust was true. The enemy fell heavily in the mud and lay still.
Heads Off glanced quickly around. A Head Splitter was helping a wounded comrade swing up behind him. Beyond that, another enemy warrior kicked his horse around to retreat. All along the line of battle, the attackers were withdrawing. Several of the young Elk-dog warriors seemed inclined to pursue, but Heads Off called an end to the battle.
“Fall back!” he shouted.
He must not allow them to divide their slim force. They would be unprotected in open pursuit.
“We will have another chance,” he reassured the young men.
Author’s Note
When The Elk-Dog Heritage was first published in 1982, its story was unique. A novel told largely from the American Indian point of view, with one white man as the minority character?
The great Jack Schaefer, whose Shane had already become a classic, once commented on the reaction to his book The Canyon, which had had no whites at all: “The public just wasn’t ready to read about Indians yet.”
The three finalists for the Western Writers’ Golden Spur Award for Best Novel of 1982 were Fred Grove’s Match Race, a story of early quarter horse racing; Terry C. Johnston’s Carry the Wind, a fur trade story with strong Indian characters; and this book, The Elk-Dog Heritage. The Spur went to Grove’s novel, a little closer to the “Western” of tradition, but it is worth noting that one of his strong characters was a half-blood Indian jockey.
“That was the year,” Johnston pointed out years later, “that it became okay to write about Indians.”
I think that’s true. This was only my third novel, but all had carried the Indian theme. They were not even in proper sequence yet, and were merely stories of a soldier from Coronado’s 1541 expedition to the Great Plains, left behind when they turned back. Later, these tales were rearranged in a series as the “Spanish Bit Saga,” now more than thirty books long, as we follow the descendants of Juan Garcia, the lost Spaniard.
This book is one of a few which helped to demonstrate in 1983 that the public was now “ … ready to read about Indians.” It is a special pleasure to see it re-introduced.
Don Coldsmith
2002
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE ELK-DOG HERITAGE
Copyright © 1981 by Don Coldsmith
All rights reserved.
Originally published by Doubleday in 1982
A Forge Book
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Book Design by Jane Adele Regina
eISBN 9781466820920
First eBook Edition : May 2012
First Forge Edition: September 2002
First Mass Market Edition: May 2003