The War Trail, The Hunt of the Wild Horse, by Captain Mayne Reid.
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This book, along with several other of this author's, occupies an
important position in the history of English literature, for it was one
of the first to deal with the Wild West. The events take place shortly
after the Mexican War of the late 1840s. The Mexicans themselves have
been conquered, but now it is necessary to protect them from a further
enemy, one who would war with both Americans and Mexicans--the Comanche
Indians. The troop of rangers consists of many kinds of men, of Scots,
Irish, English, German, Swiss, Polish descent, and many others. Some of
these take major roles in this story, and their words are reported just
as they would have been said.
Numerous extremely difficult situations are encountered, and it is often
the woodcraft and ingenuity of these men that gets them out of them,
sometimes in extremely (for you and me) unexpected ways. This results
in a series of tense incidents, and, though the literary style is a bit
unusual, they are very gripping.
Many books by this author were published in the second half of the
nineteenth century, and some of them were printed with rather damaged
type. The copy of this book that we worked from was one of these, so
there may well be a very few typos left, for which we apologise.
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THE WAR TRAIL, THE HUNT OF THE WILD HORSE, BY CAPTAIN MAYNE REID.