I have been asked if this was based upon a true story…. that’s all in the perspective I suppose. This is a story I always wanted to pull together and put on page. I knew it wouldn’t be easy. Especially as I came to understand the hunger the white settlers from other countries brought with them and drove them to push westward into unknown territory. A different hunger drove the scattered Indian tribes to resist these whites from encroaching upon their lands…. lands they wanted to remain free for their own people.
The distrust grew from a simple misunderstanding. The hatred grew because it seemed there was no solution to how each people saw their own future. Ill feelings simmered for years across the whole Southwest, pitting the white man against the indigenous, until killing and 
torture became the norm.
And then to throw slavers into the mix… These were the paid outlaws from Mexico who roamed into a vast and unknown territory, not even a state yet, and take captives back across the border to work and die in silver and lead mine. It made no difference who you were, if you were an able body to do manual labor, you became a slave to be sold.
As far as the story… it’s a story of many tales, all waiting for just the right time to be compressed into one adventure. Then as I wrote, it was up to a roll of the dice to see where the story would take me. But always, as in all of my writing, humanity had to shine through, and a new respect between the white man and the Native American Indian is reborn.