Under Fire

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.

As with In Spite of Foes, published six years later, Under Fire tells the story of a cavalryman belittled, defamed, and ultimately accused of cowardice and incompetence.  In this case the problem starts because of his strong Christian faith—his father was a parson and he is quickly given the nickname “Parson’s son”—which was unusual in the U. S. Army of the time and caused his fellow soldiers to suspect that he might be too mild and forgiving to be a fighting man.  But those who serve alongside him in the various crises described, learn that he is every bit a fighting man and an excellent soldier.

This digital version of the book includes the five illustrations by C. B. Cox which appeared in the original.

Preparing old books for digital publication is a labor of love at Travelyn Publishing.  We hold our digital versions of public domain books up against any others with no fear of the comparison.  Our conversion work is meticulous, utilizing a process designed to eliminate errors, maximize reader enjoyment, and recreate as much as possible the atmosphere of the original book even as we are adding the navigation and formatting necessary for a good digital book.  While remaining faithful to a writer’s original words, and the spellings and usages of his era, we are not above correcting obvious mistakes. If the printer became distracted after placing an ‘a’ at the end of a line and then placed another ‘a’ at the beginning of the next line (they used to do this stuff by hand you know!), what sort of mindless robots would allow that careless error to be preserved for all eternity in the digital version, too?  Not us.  That’s why we have the audacity to claim that our re-publications are often better than the originals.