Blood on the Land — Paul Bedford

In 1844, young British Army Officer, Thomas Collins, is sent to the fledgling Republic of Texas. His mission: to meet the legendary President Sam Houston to negotiate terms for the British Empire's involvement in his country. What Thomas finds is a world of subterfuge and danger. The republic is scourged by an implacable and deadly enemy, the Comanche Nation, for whom rape, pillage and bloody warfare is a way of life. His desperate fight for survival brings him into contact with Captain John Coffee Hays, and his effective Texas Rangers, and ends in a lethal climax aboard a steamboat on the unpredictable Brazos River.