Fireblossom

Fireblossom

Matthews Novel #1

by

Cynthia Wright

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Please Note

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Copyright 1992, 2012 by Cynthia Wright Hunt. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Cover by Kim Killion
www.hotdamndesigns.com

eBook design by eBook Prep
www.ebookprep.com

Thank You.

Novels by Cynthia Wright

(many now available as

Special Author's Cut Editions

in eBook format)

CAROLINE

Beauvisage Novel #1

~

TOUCH THE SUN

A Beauvisage/Hampshire Novel

~

SILVER STORM

Raveneau Novel #1

~

SPRING FIRES

Beauvisage Novel #2

(A Beauvisage/Hampshire/Raveneau Novel)

~

SURRENDER THE STARS

Raveneau Novel #2

~

NATALYA

Beauvisage Novel #3

~

SILVER SEA

(previously published as BARBADOS)

Raveneau Novel #3

~

YOU AND NO OTHER

St. Briac Novel #1

~

OF ONE HEART

(previously published as A BATTLE FOR LOVE)

St. Briac Novel #2

~

FIREBLOSSOM

Matthews Novel #1

~

WILDBLOSSOM

Matthews Novel #2

~

BRIGHTER THAN GOLD

~

CRIMSON INTRIGUE

~

coming in 2012: TEMPEST - Raveneau Novel #4

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Gene Challed, my colorful father, who took me to Little Bighorn when I was a little girl and shared his love of western American history with me. I'm grateful that my daddy was able to read this book before he died in 1993.

"Our nation is melting away like the snow on the sides of the hills where the sun is warm, while your people are like the blades of grass in the spring when the summer is coming."

—Red Cloud of the Oglala Sioux

~~

"It is a good day to fight! Strong hearts, brave hearts to the front!"

—Crazy Horse, June 25, 1876

Prologue

June 24-25, 1876

Little Bighorn River country,

Montana Territory

It was the same dream again.

Dan Matthews jolted awake before midnight. Next to him in the bivouac, Captain Myles Keogh snored lustily. All around lay more than six hundred soldiers in Lt. Colonel George Custer's Seventh Cavalry. Most were unashamedly exhausted after the two days spent marching up a dust-choked Rosebud Creek. They were "huntin' Indians," tracking them as if they were antelope or buffalo.