The Story of Fort Frayne by Captain Charles King

No writer is better than Charles King—at the point when this novel was published a captain, but eventually a general—at bringing the reader more vividly and realistically into the life of a U. S. Army soldier during the wars with the plains Indians of the American West. Because of his personal experience of those wars, he not only gets the historical details correct, but also the settings, moods, and day-to-day life, including the personal, romantic, and family life of the soldiers living on those far-flung military posts along the western frontier.

There is romance mixed with Indian fighting in The Story of Fort Frayne, but the story concentrates on one family with an honored sire who was killed in these same Indian wars a few years before; and now the remainder of his family is back at the same fort and facing a new uprising by the same tribe, this uprising instigated by unscrupulous cowboys with cynical financial motives in mind. The Army, as usual, comes fourth in line in the minds of eastern authorities as far as respect—behind the Interior Department, the Indians, and the cowboys who have many of the elected officials in their pockets... and just in case cut the telegraph lines after sending their side of the story.