Indian Lover: A Biographical Novel Based on a True Story
About this book
George Scott, born in Winnebago, Wisconsin in 1866 into a prosperous craftsman’s family, is a cocksure and willful boy, but eagerly learns his father’s trade. He is drawn to the lifestyle of the native Americans living nearby, from whom he learns hunting, trapping, and survival skills. Always a misfit in school, he drops out at age twelve, packs his rifle, bedroll, and a few necessities on his horse, Banjo, and sets out on the long journey to Texas to become a cowboy on the Chisholm Trail. When the advancing railroads make the Trail obsolete, he begins a new career, supplying wild meat to railroad work crews. When refrigerated cars put him out of his job, he settles down for a couple of years as a ranch hand, but a cruel winter that kills millions of range cattle bankrupts the ranch, and forces him to move on. Follow his exploits as life leads him to become a rustler, then a rancher, then a pioneer of sorts, fighting hardships and hostile Indians as he takes his young wife and her illegitimate son on a perilous covered-wagon journey to claim a New Mexico homestead. Yet more danger and twists of fate await him as the twentieth century dawns and his iron will is tested again and again.