Author: Robert Jordan as Jackson O’Reilly
Publisher: Forge Books, 1982, 256 pages
Robert Jordan is a very well-known author of the fantasy book series The Wheel of Time, beginning in 1990. He was able to complete 11 books in the series before he lost his battle with heart disease, cardiac amyloidosis, in 2007. He commissioned Brandon Sanderson to finish his epic story with another three books. So, I knew of Jordan’s fame and works … or, so I thought. I then found Cheyenne Raiders at my local Goodwill in mint condition, and to my surprise, it was written by Robert Jordan as Jackson O’Reilly in 1982. Seems Jordan started his career much earlier than I thought.
Cheyenne Raiders could be considered a Western as it takes place in 1837 with young Thomas McCabe heading out from Washington on assignment to write a report for the Office of Indian Affairs. The story starts with McCabe on a trail to the western territories in search of a tribe of Indians with whom he can hopefully earn trust and study for his report. It doesn’t take long, and on page five, he finds an Indian man named Spotted Fox with a broken leg under some bushes. McCabe sets his leg and helps the man back to his people, where McCabe is swiftly given a teepee, horse, and a 19-year-old slave woman named Looking Glass to sleep with immediately … all by page 26. Seriously. Not even joking. This all happens way too fast.
McCabe becomes best friends with Spotted Fox, and soon he learns the ways of the Cheyenne. They go buffalo hunting and horse thieving from other tribes. McCabe gets a new name of Horse Runner because he and some other men went to steal horses from the Utes (because that’s what the Cheyenne do for fun, I guess), and in their haste to get away, he couldn’t get on a horse so he just ran with the herd.
There’s a lot that happens in this story, but it all feels really rushed. At first, I thought this was because the author was used to writing massive tomes of 1,000 pages and was trying to cram 14 books into one. That isn’t the case because this was published very early on in his career. So then I assumed that Jordan was just meant to write long, in-depth tales.
The story lacks any kind of opposition. Everything just happens to McCabe, and there’s no real threat from anything. He falls in love with a woman, Night Bird Woman, the first night on his way to his teepee before being given Looking Glass and has to come up with 100 horses to pay for her as a bride gift. They don’t value gold to any degree, so McCabe heads out to trap beavers to buy horses from traders at a local fort. He traps more than 400 beavers in three months, but they get stolen by enemy tribes, so he just decides to go steal the horses of the Crow. He triumphantly returns with all the horses needed, and many to spare. All this and more happens just on page 123.
Oh, and then there’s that time he kills a bear … with nothing but a knife … and barely gets injured. And then that one time he dances in a sweat lodge with giant hooks in his pectoral muscles for four days without food or water, so he sees a vision because he’s the protagonist and that’s just how amazing he is. He’s the greatest white-man-Cheyenne ever!
If you’re looking for an adventure without consequences, this would be a fun read. The plot isn’t technical at all, and the vocabulary isn’t expansive (like my reviews), so it’s a quick read. Good for a plane flight or two.
