Easy Company and the Bible Salesman

By John Wesley Howard

Jove, February 1983

Book 25 of the series.

During the ritual of the Sun Dance the young Northern Cheyenne braves tested their manhood. It was a sacred time, but it was also a time when the hatreds of the year could boil over into open warfare.

When a wild-eyed, Bible-thumping fanatic sets his band of two armed men and eight very disarming women right in the middle of the Cheyennes’ ceremonial grounds, trouble is certain.

Lt. Matt Kincaid has a feeling that there’s more to this “preacher” than meets the eye as he and scout Windy Mandalian move fast to head off an Indian uprising.

This book begins with a number of different story threads that gradually become linked by preacher Jeremiah Henson, the author switching between his excellent mix of characters at regular intervals ensuring I continued to read in the need to find out what happened next to each of them. In fact for the first half or so of the book Easy Company have little to do as it’s their scout who takes centre stage for this part of the very fast moving story.

John Wesley Howard is a pseudonym and this entry in the series was written by Kenneth Bjorgum, and he easily swept me up in his tale of mistrusts, lies, and broken promises, that soon become a frantic race against time to prevent an Indian war.

I’ve always enjoyed reading the Easy Company books and this story matches the quality of those before it, once again leaving me eager to read the next in the series.

Easy Company #19

EASY COMPANY and the INDIAN DOCTOR

as by John Wesley Howard

Jove, August 1982

A wounded rustler, who turns out to be a woman, the arrival, by mistake, at Easy of a ‘green’ army doctor and stirred up Sioux all link to provide Easy with more than enough trouble. Seems the rustlers have more than rustling on their agenda and getting the women out of the outpost is one of them, this involves a traveling photographer. The son of the Sioux chief ends up on the white doctor’s operating table and if he dies war is inevitable...could be if he lives too!

The author (Kenneth Bjorgum in this case) of this book puts the men of Easy into some tough situations and you just have to wonder at how they’ll come out on top. Many of the series' regular soldiers and wives play important parts in this story that seems to get more complicated as it goes on.

I found the book to be a fast easy read. The author must have done quite a bit of research into operations as these are covered in detail. The urgency to solve the problems faced by Easy are nicely balanced with the humorous banter between the soldiers and civilians, most notably the photographer.

All in all this is an entertaining book and a good entry into this series.