An unforgettable American story continues in the gripping sequel to the modern classic Dances With Wolves —from the #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Blake. Eleven years have passed since Lieutenant John Dunbar became the Comanche warrior Dances With Wolves and married Stands With A Fist, a white-born woman raised as a Comanche from early childhood. With their three children, they live peacefully in the village of Ten Bears. But there is unease in the air, caused by increased reports of violent confrontations with white soldiers who want to drive the Comanche onto reservations. Disquiet turns to horror, and then to rage, when a band of white rangers descends on Ten Bear’s village, slaughtering half its inhabitants and abducting Stands With A Fist and her infant daughter. The three surviving great warriors—Wind In His Hair, Kicking Bird, and Dances With Wolves—decide they must go to war with the white invaders. At the same time, Dances With Wolves realizes that only he can rescue his wife and child. Told with all the sweep, insight, and majesty that made Dances With Wolves a worldwide phenomenon, The Holy Road is an epic story of courage and honor. “Epic, tragic . . . Inhuman agony, brilliantly portrayed.” — Kirkus Reviews , starred review “The young men were especially troubled. They had planned and dreamed and striven all their lives for opportunities to prove themselves, but the perplexing rush of events that culminated in the most recent council denied them the chance to live fully. If there were no buffalo, how could anyone hunt? Or feed a family? Or have a family? If there were no horses to steal, how could a man grow rich? How could a man win honors if there was no enemy to fight?” —from The Holy Road Michael Blake was an award-winning screenwriter and the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dances with Wolves . His other novels include Airman Mortensen, Marching to Valhalla, The Holy Road, and Into the Stars, along with the nonfiction books Like A Running Dog, Indian Yell, and Twelve, The King . Michael Blake died in 2015 and is survived by his wife and three children. Chapter I The scalp was red and thick but what made it especially extraordinary was its great length. It was the longest shock of hair anyone had ever seen, so long that its owner had to sit on the shoulders of another warrior to tie it to the rafters of his lodge. Had it not been tied so high the hair would have dragged the ground and people living in the lodge would have been forever brushing it aside, reducing it from a vaunted trophy of war to an unwanted, everyday annoyance. Still, it fell to a point about chest high and Wind In His Hair’s wives grumbled about its presence from the moment it assumed a prominent place among the many other scalps hanging in their large home. The grumbling was something the wives did under their breath and out of earshot of their husband for they knew that to complain openly about such a thing would cause unnecessary trouble. And it would be unfair to a husband who had sired so many healthy children, had unfailingly provided an abundance for his family, and was widely revered as the highest-ranking member of the elite warrior society known to all as the Hard Shields, the combat unit that viewed protection of the village and its people as their most sacred responsibility. They might challenge their husband on the proximity of the family lodge to water, or the sleeping habits of the children, or the preparation of a feast, but they kept their misgivings about the white woman’s scalp to themselves. How their husband displayed his souvenir, taken in honorable combat at the cost of his own disfigurement, was simply none of their business. Nor was it the business of anyone else in the village, and, like the wives of Wind In His Hair, every member of the community kept his feelings about the scalp hidden from public view. But the unvoiced opinions only added to a sense of dread that had been growing steadily among them for years. The presence of the white woman’s scalp in the village served as a constant reminder of the strange, unfathomable threat that had come to dominate their lives. It was the worst kind of threat a people can endure, an invisible horror that disturbs good sleep, confuses clear thinking, and makes the steadiest heart skip with odd, little ripples of fear at what tomorrow might bring. Even Wind In His Hair was not immune. In the deepest reaches of his instinctive, reactive soul, a soul as purely Comanche as any that had ever been born, he could feel occasional and upsetting echoes. He had always slept well, but in the last year he often woke inexplicably in the night. And sometimes as he lay blinking in the dim light of his fire’s embers, his eyes would pick up the outline of the long, red-haired scalp and he would wonder how many white people he might have to kill to safeguard the only life he knew. Having no answer grated against his