War veteran Pecos Quinn rides north, hoping to find his old commander, Colonel Carter Brantley. As the war ended five years earlier, he'd arrived home with his unit chased by Yankee cavalry to find his home burned by Comanche, his wife scalped and raped, then he was shot in the head. Left for dead when the rest of the Thirty-ninth Texas fled, remarkably he survived. After he recovered, the broken memories of that day faded in and out of his mind, haunting him. He was alone, lost and confused. He went to work scouting Comanche for his old enemy, the Yankee horse soldiers, and drank too much. But the savagery of the Indian wars sobered him. It was time to learn the truth. What really happened that fateful day along the Pecos River?
John came west as a young man and settled in Berkeley where he graduated from the University of California. He still lives and writes there and often gives a talk on the California gold rush to the gang at the Freight and Salvage.
He spent a lot of time digging into that gold rush too and many of his stories take place back then. John's characters are so real they'll jump right off the page and talk to you; his villains have hearts as cold as midnight and his heroes almost always do the right thing in the end.