Ghost Rifle

SEARCHING FOR A GHOST, A LEGEND, AND A DREAM ... Descended from a long line of ramblers and rogues, Jack Picaro came to America to seek his fortune. But, after killing his best friend in a drunken duel, the apprentice gunsmith flees westward, leaving behind children he does not know, Gus and April. As Jack ventures up the Missouri River, he finds an unspoiled land where a man can live free, and also be attacked by an Arikara war party. His rifle stolen in the bloody skirmish, Jack sets out alone to reclaim it. His wild escapade ends in a fight to the death with a legendary Crow warrior named Standing Wolf. So begins a fateful epic search across the last frontiers of the untamed West. From the muddy banks of the Mississippi to the shining peaks of the Rockies, Jack Picaro will leave a trail of clues for an abandoned son, Gus, to find him, a famous gunsmith who will make history with a weapon of his own design-and forged a legend that would be passed down for generations. This is the story of ... THE GHOST RIFLE

Max McCoy, the Spur Award-winning author of Damnation Road, continues his American Western saga of the Ghost Rifle as the violence and bloodshed the weapon caused return to haunt the man who created it... THE WEAPON AND THE WILDERNESS Ten years have passed since Jack Picaro lost his Ghost Rifle-the firearm he invented, the one that never missed its target. The loss of the rifle calmed the hellraiser in his soul. Instead of returning to the gambling halls and whiskey bars of St. Louis, Jack has spent the last decade as a fur trapper in Wyoming's Wild River Range, married to Sky, the daughter of an Arikara war chief. Then, after helping rescue U.S. soldiers captured by Crow Indians in the Rocky Mountains, Jack hears the familiar bell-like report of his Ghost Rifle. Determined to retrieve his deadly property, he travels deep into Lakota territory, facing down old enemies-and resuming old sinful habits-unaware of what awaits him when he eventually returns home to his family.