OURAY, hiding in a tree, watched his enemies in their hideous scalp dance around the campfire. An Indian maiden stood bound, doomed to the fire torture. His finger flexed the trigger of his rifle and he took careful aim.

The Indian maiden was Ouray's sister, kidnapped by the brutal Arapahoes. Later they stole his son. But Ouray was deadly in battle and his fame spread throughout the west as the savior of his tribe and the friend of the white man.

White men swarmed through the Rocky Mountains, pushed by their fever for gold, and when they invaded the land of the Utes in Colorado, the tribes vowed war. Ouray alone, with wisdom beyond his years, pleaded for peace in a wilderness bent on carnage.

But Ouray was not a chief, and his own tribe mistrusted him. Powerful Chief Kaneache despised him. "Ouray calls himself The Arrow—but it is an arrow poisoned with friendship for the white man."

This is the dramatic story of a warrior's desperate fight against greed and treachery in his own teepees. President Lincoln trusted him and Kit Carson loved him, but when he became Head Chief of all the Utes he found himself alone.

In the bloodstained history of the west there were heroes that matched the mountains in grandeur, and Ouray was one of them. To save human lives he relinquished millions of acres of Ute land, but he never gave up the ideal of peace. When his tribe murdered white settlers he found himself hostage of the government, and when he returned to his own people his life was threatened many times. But he lived long enough to shape the trail of peace in the America he loved.

From the dust jacket