Winter Rain

for Jim Bourne

who helped point the way years ago,

with more gratitude than you

will ever know

How solemn and beautiful is the thought that the earliest pioneer of civilization, the van-leader of civilization, is never the steamboat, never the railroad, never the newspaper, never the Sabbath-school, never the missionary —but always whiskey! … Westward the Jug of Empire takes its way!

—Mark Twain

The Texas Rangers … had an off and on existence ever since 1823, when Stephen F. Austin formed a band of ten Rangers to protect the first American settlements from Indians…. From that time on—throughout all their ups and downs, disappearances and reappearances—the Rangers were irregulars. They were irregular as hell, in everything except getting the job done.

—Oliver Knight

The more Indians we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed the next war.

—General William Tecumseh Sherman

Destiny is nothing more than the unforeseen coincidence of events, the emergence into action of hidden forces which, in a complex and disordered society … no contemporary can be expected to discern.

—Guglielmo Ferrero

CAST OF CHARACTERS

^*Jonah Hook

^*Hattie Hook

^*Ezekiel Hook (Antelope)

^*Prairie Night (Antelope’s Comanche wife)

^*Gritta Hook

^*Jeremiah Hook (Tall One)

^*Shadrach Sweete

^*Pipe Woman

^*Toote Sweete / Shell Woman

^*High-Backed Bull

Danites

^*Colonel Jubilee Usher

^*Heber Welch

^*Frank Bolls

^*Charlie Smythe

^*Joseph Simes

^*Oran Strickler

^*George

^*Orem Slade

^*George Hines

^*Harry Hampton

Cheyenne

Roman Nose

^*Hair Rope

Little Hawk

Tall Bull

^*Wolf Friend

^*Plenty of Bull Meat

^*Tall Sioux

^*Bullet Proof

^*Red Cherries

^*Four Bulls Moon

Porcupine

^*Wrinkled Wolf

Starving Elk

White Horse

^*Bad Heart

^*Yellow Nose

^*White Man’s Ladder

^*Feathered Bear

^*Heavy Furred Wolf

Lakota

Pawnee Killer

^* Bad Tongue

Kwahadi Comanche

Quanah Parker

^*Wolf Walking Alone

^*Snake Brother

^*Coal Bear

^*Bums Red

^*Standing

^*Rain Woman

^*Bridge

^*Big Mule

^*Dives Backward

^*Old Owl Man

^*Tortoise Shell

^*Four Spirits Woman

Shoshone / Snake

^*Two Sleep