Blood of the Devil

 

The Life and Times of Yellow Boy, Mescalero Apache

W. Michael Farmer

Yellow Boy, Killer of Witches, returns wounded from a cat-and-mouse chase and rifle duel with Blood of the Devil, the giant Mexican/Comanche witch whose head is painted like a skull, his body covered with black spiral and flame tattoos. The witch, also wounded, disappears into the dry plains across the Rio Grande, knowing the Apache he left bleeding in the sand will one day reappear. With the Army occupation ended, Yellow Boy, Juanita, their new baby daughter, and his Mescalero band return to the reservation. Better days come with the arrival of a strong but fair Indian agent, W.H.H. Llewellyn, who the Mescalero call “Tata Crooked Nose.” Yellow Boy joins Llewellyn’s tribal police and for a time becomes an Army scout participating in General Crook’s Sierra Madre Campaign returning Apache to the San Carlos Reservation. He finds and faces Blood of the Devil but later loses his daughter to pneumonia sweeping the reservation. Warned of his destiny by Geronimo, he dreams of a young boy he will one day save from murder.

Blood of the Devil, Book 2 of the Life and Times of Yellow Boy, Mescalero Apache, continues Killer of Witches’s powerful story—truth told with fiction that transports the reader to a different background, culture, history, time, and religion. It is the other side of Apache history lived by a people fighting the tsunami of Americans migrating west and the terrors of their supernatural insights as their White Eye overseers attempt to change their culture.

Published:
Publisher: Hat Creek
Genres:

About the Author

W. Michael Farmer

W. Michael Farmer combines ten-plus years of research into nineteenth-century Apache history and culture with Southwest-living experience to fill his stories with a genuine sense of time and place. A retired Ph.D. physicist, his scientific research has included measurement of atmospheric aerosols with laser-based instruments, and he has published a two-volume reference book on atmospheric effects on remote sensing. He has also written short stories for anthologies and award-winning essays. His first novel, Hombrecito's War, won a Western Writers of America Spur Finalist Award for Best First Novel in 2006. His novels telling the story of the Mescalero Apaches  Killer of Witches, The Life and Times of Yellow Boy, Mescalero Apache, Book 1 and Blood of the Devil, Book 2 won Will Rogers Medallion Awards and were New Mexico–Arizona Book Awards Finalists in 2016 and 2018. Mariana’s Knight, The Revenge of Henry Fountain won the 2017 New Mexico–Arizona Book Award for Historical Fiction and Blood of the Devil, Book 2 was a finalist. Apacheria, True Stories of Apache Culture, 1860-1920 won the 2018 New Mexico–Arizona Book Award for History-Other and was recognized as the 2018 New Mexico Book of the Year and as a top twenty book about the southwest by the Pima County Library system. In 2019 Knight’s Odyssey, Knight of the Tiger, and Apacheria won Will Rogers Gold Medallion Awards.

Other Books By W. Michael Farmer

Stand-Alone Books

Sorted First to Last

Series: Chato's Chiricahua Apache Legacy

Sorted First to Last

Series: Legends of the Desert

Sorted First to Last

Series: The Apache Kid Chronicles

Sorted First to Last

Series: The Life and Times of Yellow Boy, Mescalero Apache

Sorted First to Last

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