Author Description

Henry Risenhoover is 12 years old in 1878 when he leaves home to avenge his father's death at the hands of a band of renegade Indians. He is an unusual in that most grown men cannot handle a pistol, rifle and shotgun with the skill that he can, nor can they move through the wilderness with the stealth he exhibits. He moves like a ghost in any terrain in his quest for justice.. His vengeful journey to find his father's killer takes him throughout Arkansas and the Indian Territory (Oklahoma) where he encounters an unusual and memorable cast of characters, many of whom seek to put him in a pine box for good. He discovers, quite by accident, that with a pistol he is one of the fastest guns alive. However, he depends more on his 10-gauge coach shotgun than on his Colt 45 or Winchester rifle. Henry becomes the youngest U.S. deputy marshal to serve under Fort Smith's Judge Isaac Parker (the hanging judge) and earns a reputation of never bringing an outlaw in alive. And he earns more bounty money than any marshal or deputy marshal. The book is a combination of truth and fiction with more than one mention of Henry's Anabaptist ancestors moving to America from Palatine, Germany in 1708. A lawman, fisherman, hunter, trapper and farmer, Henry died in 1963 at the age of 97.