The Ghost Dancers — Patrick Andrews

Captain Mack Hawkins, Lieutenant Ludlow Dooley and their Kiowa-Comanche Detachment of U.S. Scouts are dispatched to the Arizona Territory, their mission to put a halt to a series of raids on horse ranches. Neither they nor the U.S. Army realize these crimes are connected to a Native-American religion called the Ghost Dance. An Indian prophet is preaching war to the fierce Guerras Apaches living on a reservation in the Tierra Brava Desert. His sermons announce the coming of a messiah who can summon slain Indian warriors back to life. The Prophet promises there will be thousands of these ghost warriors resurrected to massacre all whites that exist.Hawkins and Ludlow lead the detachment into the hinterlands to kill or capture the horse thieves. But this time out their enemies are fanatical warriors who believe they have been made immortal by the Prophet’s big medicine. Then, as if things aren’t bad enough, there’s a group of white religious zealots who believe the messiah’s appearance on earth is the second coming of Christ. Their eccentric leader, believing the Ghost Dancers are acting as the Almighty’s disciples, gives guns and support to the Apaches.There’s a bloodbath in the offing ... and Hawkins and his men are damned, no matter what they do to prevent it.