I’m very happy to announce my
seventh novel – and seventh western novel – COYOTE’S PEOPLE has been published by prestigious, award-winning publishers Five Star Publishing.
The cover (designed by Kathy Heming) reflects the novel’s setting –
southern Arizona.
UPDATE!
COYOTE’S PEOPLE IS NOW ALSO
AVAILABLE AS AN E.BOOK!
As of April 2022, COYOTE’S PEOPLE, previously only
available as a hardback and in hardback large print, is now also available as an
e.book. The kindle version has been published by Andride Press.
The cover photograph is by YUKO U. SMITH. The cover design is by RICHARD HEARN.
COYOTE’S PEOPLE is a sort of
companion piece to my acclaimed western novel THE PEACEMAKER.
However, it is a
stand-alone novel and you don’t need to have read any other Andrew McBride
books to appreciate and enjoy COYOTE’S PEOPLE.
TAG LINE:
The Apache chief seeking peace in a time of war... and the 17-year-old white boy caught in the middle.
BLURB:
‘Arizona Territory,
the 1870s. Savage war rages between the white man and the Apache. And three
people are caught in the middle: COYOTE, an Apache chief seeking peace, trying
to find a refuge for his small band of wanderers; LIEUTENANT AUSTIN HAMILTON,
commander of remote Camp Walsh, a man sympathetic to the Indians' plight; and CALVIN
TAYLOR (nicknamed CHOCTAW), a 17-year old white boy. Choctaw has been taught to
hate Apaches, something reinforced by his own bloody experiences. But his
loyalties are torn when he unexpectedly falls in love with an Apache girl. Each
finds himself at the center of this bitter conflict, enmeshed in treachery and
violence, with their own lives, and the peace they're striving for, threatened
by enemies on all sides…’
ISBN number: 978-1432867256
TO BUY:
You
can BUY a hardback of COYOTE’S PEOPLE from Amazon.com,
Amazon.co.uk or Barnes & Noble. The sites
below may not be showing very much at the moment, but watch these spaces! You
can buy from here: https://www.amazon.com/Coyotes-People-Andrew-McBride-ebook/dp/B09XBJJDCB/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=and here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Coyotes-People-Andrew-McBride-ebook/dp/B09XBJJDCB/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
REVIEWS of COYOTE'S PEOPLE:
COYOTE’S PEOPLE
has been piling up reviews on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Goodreads – ALL FIVE
STAR! I’m flattered and humbled that my novel has been getting such a positive
response.
Here’s a quick
sample:
LUCIA ROBSON: (Winner
of the Owen Wister and Spur awards and ‘New York Times’ best-selling author)
‘An outstanding novel!’
ROBERT VAUGHAN: (Winner
of the Spur Award and Pulitzer-Prize nominated author)
‘McBride’s wonderful book’
KATHLEEN MORRIS: (winner of the 2020 Peacemaker Award for best first Western novel)
'McBride does a masterful job of... illustrating that justice and truth make uneasy bedfellows with blind hatred, blood lust and revenge...Very well done.'
RICHARD PROSCH: (Winner of the Spur Award)
'Five stars. Highly recommended!'
KATHLEEN MORRIS: (winner of the 2020 Peacemaker Award for best first Western novel)
'McBride does a masterful job of... illustrating that justice and truth make uneasy bedfellows with blind hatred, blood lust and revenge...Very well done.'
RICHARD PROSCH: (Winner of the Spur Award)
'Five stars. Highly recommended!'
WAYNE D. DUNDEE: (Peacemaker Award-winning novelist)
‘Western fiction at its best!’
W.
MICHAEL FARMER: (Winner
of Will Rogers Medallion Awards, the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award and Best New
Mexico Book Award)
'Coyote’s People is a
page-turner, entertaining and insightful, filled with the truth only fiction can
provide.'
OTHER REVIEWERS:
‘A stunning book… We're clearly in the hands of a
master… I would go so far as to say that if Andrew had written this book fifty
or sixty years ago in the heyday of western fiction it would be an acknowledged
classic. And hopefully, if there's any justice in the world, it will still
achieve that status.’
‘A breath-taking, page-turning, wrenchingly heart-breaking
tale.’
'A superb western adventure'
'A superb western adventure'
I’ve created a blog as an ongoing scrapbook of my reviews as they accumulate. You can read THE FULL REVIEWS here: https://andrewmcbrideauthor.blogspot.com/2020/05/reviews-of-coyotes-people.html
COYOTE’S PEOPLE
Chapter One
Around him men stood with rifles raised.
They stared into the darkness at the Apaches that might be there, waiting to
attack.
Choctaw swallowed a rock-sized lump of
fear in his throat. His arms trembled slightly, and his hands ached, holding
his Spencer carbine up to his shoulder. He looked along the barrel past the
front sight. Beyond was the gray gloom of the Gila River Canyon.
A few minutes ago, all had been peaceful.
The freight outfit was camped just south of the river, wagons coiled into a
defensive circle. The crew, thirteen bullwhackers, had finished their evening
meal. Pipes were being smoked and dusk was deepening when the stock became
nervous, and the teamsters also.
They had reason to be, here in southern
Arizona Territory. They were deep in Apacheria,
where the White Mountain and the Chiricahua Apache country overlapped. Six
Murphy wagons full of goods, the guns, ammunition, and gear of the outfit, the
coffee, bacon, and tobacco in the mess wagon, would tempt any sizable war
party. Apaches weren't said to be keen on beef, but they would want the mules
inside the corral.
The men found cover, behind wagons and
elsewhere, and stood to arms, watching the skyline. Above, a full moon hung
like a dollar of blue ice cut out of the night, turning the ground before them
into a checkerboard of black and silver. One of the teamsters called, “Who's
out there?”
Choctaw couldn’t see who the speaker was,
but he recognized the voice of the wagon master, John
Shadler.
There was a small sound, like a faint
musical note, and a blackness showed against the gray and came nearer and
stepped into moonlight and became a man walking towards them.
Shadler called, “Hold it.”
The approaching man halted.
The wagon boss asked, “Who are you?”
The newcomer said, “Prospectors.” His
English was accented, maybe Mexican. This fit with what Choctaw could see of
him in the uncertain light: the shape and wide brim of his hat, and what he was
wearing, maybe a serape. Although he was bigger than most Mexicans Choctaw had
seen.
Shadler’s voice came again. “How many of
you out there?”
“Four.”
“Okay. Come ahead.”
The stranger strode forward and Choctaw
saw he was indeed wearing a battered sombrero and serape. And big-roweled spurs
making that slight music. This man carried a Henry rifle. Something flashed on
his right cheek. A thin scar, like a blue weal, across the bone. There was a
rustle of movement, a rattle of hooves, and three more men filed from the
darkness, leading four horses and a pack mule.
Around him, Choctaw heard teamsters sigh out
their relief. Weapons were lowered.
The four men halted in a group just short
of the wagons. They all appeared to be Mexicans. Shadler walked over to them,
his rifle hanging in his right hand. He told them, “We can’t do much talking.
And we’ve got to keep our voices down. We got a lot of oxen here, and they get
spooky at night. Stampede real easy.”
The scar-faced man seemed to be the
Mexicans’ spokesman. He said, “I understand.”
“Where you headed?”
“Tucson. Mexico. We been prospecting
upriver a ways. Up the Gila Canyon. No luck, so we decide to go back to
Mexico.”
“Prospecting, huh? Where's your pack
animals? How come you only got one mule?”
“We sold 'em to get horses. Better for to
go quick through Indian country.”
“See any Apaches?”
The big Mexican shook his head.
“Any signal smoke?”
“No.”
“All right. Throw your horses in the
corral. You can camp over there,” Shadler indicated. “And I’d appreciate it if
you keep the noise and talk to a minimum. Like I said—”
Scar-face smiled faintly. “I know. The
oxen.”
*****
Choctaw was one of the two youngest
members of this outfit, alongside a boy named Finn. Both were seventeen. Their
main job was looking after the mules. But this evening they were given an
additional task, night herding.
So, whilst the other teamsters slept,
Choctaw and Finn patrolled the calf yard and corrals and made sure no thieves
made off with the livestock. Then it was daybreak and the outfit rose from
their blankets and began their daily routine. They skipped breakfast and got
moving, whilst the night herders and night guards slept in the wagons. Round
about ten, after covering maybe eight miles, the freighters halted. The stock
needed a few hours’ rest if they were going to haul through the afternoon.
The teamsters started on their morning meal.
Finn and Choctaw had learned the hard way that if they slept in and missed
breakfast, they wouldn’t eat again until dusk. So both were awake as the
cookfires were lit.
Choctaw sat under the lead wagon. He
hadn't been in Arizona long but had already realized shade was precious out
here. You grabbed it whenever you could.
A lesson Finn didn’t seem to have learned.
He straddled the tongue of the same wagon, shaping a cigarette. Which showed he was crazy, in Choctaw’s
opinion. It was only midmorning, it was February, and yet the sun was already
fierce. And Finn, being so fair-skinned, was peeling badly. He was a lanky,
straw-haired boy with a pleasant face you’d have trouble remembering.
Choctaw was luckier, as he was more dark-complexioned. His skin had tanned almost as brown
as an Indian's in sun and wind. But his features had nothing Indian about them.
As far as he knew, he didn’t have a drop of Indian blood in his veins. But
being born at Fort Towson, in the Choctaw Nation in
Indian Territory, where his father had been an army contractor and sometime
storekeeper, had landed him with his nickname. He was white, his parents were
white, his hair was dark brown not black, tousled not straight, and his eyes
were as blue as a Swede’s. He was working on his first mustache and trail
beard. For all that, he was still “Choctaw” to everyone in this outfit.
His real name was Calvin Taylor but he
couldn’t remember the last time anybody had called him that. Sometimes he
almost forgot it himself.
He was gangling, as his weight had not
kept pace with his latest spurt of growth, taking him to six feet. He was still
a virgin, although how he was mystified him. He’d come close to losing that
burden a number of times. Some girls and women involved on those occasions had
told him he was handsome.
Finn lit his quirley. “I see them Mexicans
is still with us.”
“Huh?”
“I figured they’d have ridden off by now.”
“Maybe they’re going to stay with us all
the way to Tucson.”
Choctaw felt thirsty. Reluctantly, he got
out from under the wagon. He walked a few yards over to a clump of prickly pear
and nicked some pads off with his clasp knife. He rubbed the pads against the
sand, wiping off the vicious fur of spines. Choctaw wounded the pad with his
knife and sucked.
And tasted dust. The flavor of a
bullwhacker's life. After a while, food, drink, and cigarettes all tasted of
dust.
Still . . . it was better than going home.
He’d take dust, thirst, and heat any day, rather than return to his pa. He felt
a free man here. Dirty, tired, and frightened sometimes, but free.
That was an illusion, of course. He was no
longer a prisoner of his father but of Schmitt and
Gottlieb, freighters of Prescott. They shackled him with five dollars and
ninety cents a week and two greasy meals a day, and for that he night herded
their oxen and took care of Evil Jenny, his mule, and the other just-as-evil
mules, and labored to get the wagons across the Ninety Mile Desert and make
eighteen miles a day doing it, so that Schmitt and Gottlieb showed a profit.
Finn asked him, “You figure them Mexicans
is what they say they is? Prospectors?”
“Why shouldn’t they be?”
“My pa says you can never believe a
greaser.”
“What about Luis?”
Luis was the
assistant wagon master, and hailed from Sonora. An agreeable, humorous man, though he’d
give you hell if you fell down on your job.
Finn filtered smoke down his nostrils. “I
don’t mean Luis. I never think of him as a Mex. He’s more like a white man. No,
I mean these new fellers.”
“What do you think they are?”
Finn shrugged. “They could be bandidos or something.”
Choctaw shaped his own quirley. “Maybe
somebody should drift over to where they are and listen in on ’em.”
“You mean spy on ’em?”
It was Choctaw’s turn to shrug.
Finn gave him an alarmed look. “I wouldn’t
do that, Choc. Might be risky.”
“Why?”
“You might end up with a knife in your
back. My pa says them spics are terrible knife people.”
Choctaw sneered at the fear in the other
boy’s face. “I ain’t scared of no Mexican.”
Choctaw walked off. He didn’t actually
know where he was going, although he was
heading in the general direction of the Mexicans’ campfire. But he wasn’t
really planning to spy on them. That was just big talk . . .
He glimpsed a bosky of mesquite trees on a
low hill nearby. His belly was starting to ache for breakfast. Choctaw strode
over and plucked some beans off a tree, chewing a few, taking the edge off his
hunger. He gazed at the land around him.
A landscape unlike any he’d ever seen, or
imagined. Along all horizons were a run of purplish mountains. Strange bare
mountains without trees, their edges sharp as knife cuts against a hot blue
sky. Below the mountains lay the desert, rusty earth streaked with the green of
mesquite, and studded with cactus. That included the ones Mexicans called
saguaro, standing like bullet-headed giants, arms raised in surrender.
Choctaw heard voices.
Lower and softer than Anglo voices, and
talking in Spanish. Choctaw moved into the grove of mesquites. He stared
through the screen of branches and slowly made out, at the base of the slope
before him, the Mexicans sitting around their campfire. Or at least three of
them. Then one got to his feet and strode about.
This man was something to look at. He wore
a large felt sombrero, bell-bottomed leather chaps with buttons all down the
sides, and a short, winged, olive jacket. True, his clothing was scuffed and
faded, but he was still a charro, one
of those Mexican cowboys.
Choctaw heard a small noise behind him,
stones rustling underfoot. He turned.
The fourth Mexican stood facing him.
Choctaw recalled Finn saying, about these
newcomers, “They could be bandidos.”
Easy to think that about this man. He was clean-shaven and very hard looking,
with high, powerful cheekbones pushing forward, his nose flattened against his
broad cheeks. His face might have been formed out of sun-darkened rock.
Something else Finn had said: “Spics are
terrible knife people.” Choctaw remembered that too. Because the Mexican
stepped forward and, sure enough, there was a knife in his hand.
