Ty Chase

The Thunderbird and the Talking Rocks is number eight in the saga of Ty Chase, US Marshal.

The year is 1887. Chase finds himself caught between an army of renegade Utes ready for war and bloodthirsty miners hunting gold under the guise of a company created to bring water from the Dolores River to the Montezuma Valley near Cortez, Colorado.

The Man With No Name is number nine in the saga of Ty Chase.

Manco was born a slave in the shadow of the First Punic War as it was to be eventually called. His mother died when he was still a young boy. He knew little of her. For whatever reason, his right arm was withered, and his master had little use for him and began calling him Manco, which meant crippled. He never knew any other name though he was certain he had one. In his dreams sometimes his mother would come to him and call out his name. But he always awoke before he heard it. By the time he was grown, he was a burden. No one would buy him, so he was eventually abandoned. He spent a year alone and starving, wandering the streets, stealing food to survive. Exhausted as winter set in, he lay himself down at the curb to die. Another did likewise beside him. But what Manco did not know was that the other had already died. In the night, a pack of starving dogs moved in and began to devour the dead man. They would have attacked him as well had he not been able to kick them away. He crawled away and watched. He awakened the next morning barely alive. Manco decided that his reality was that he was no better than a dog. So, he ate with them. At first, he vomited. He picked himself up and went toward the outside of town intending to lay himself down to die. But he realized that must have retained some morsel, because even though he swooned and remained unconscious for several days, he survived. He awoke in a place where the city brings its dead to eventually be buried ... a sort of potter's field. A different sort of hunger overcame him. He wanted only human flesh, and only human flesh would do. Near him was the body he recognized as the man who died beside him. He tried to resist. He knew it was wrong. It went against everything he knew. Yet, that was the only thing that would slake his hunger. He began to devour that which was not already putrid, and even that did not matter so much. The more he ate, the more he wanted. His strength was returning. The dogs returned and came near. But with the back of his hand, he smacked one with unexpected strength, sending it reeling and stunned. Manco had become something else ... something inhuman. But exactly what this new creature he became was, he could not understand. It was two hundred years before he learned the truth of what he'd become ... a skin walker.