Friday's Forgotten Books: "Under Fire" by Charles King

I've wished for a while that I could find some good older Western books centering around the frontier cavalry, since I've always enjoyed cavalry movies. And at last I found one! I'd had this novel on my Kindle for a little while and had only browsed a few pages, which gave me the impression that the writing style was a little dry and old-fashioned. However, once I settled down and began to read it in earnest, I was quickly pulled into the story and couldn't put it down. The plot is engrossing and some of the combat scenes are downright thrilling.

The central figure of a multi-faceted plot is cavalry lieutenant Percy Davies, a serious, devout young man who moves to active duty on the frontier after graduating from West Point, and wins the respect of officers and men alike by his coolness and courage and his care for the troopers under his command. Alas, his good judgement fails him in only one area, one which is destined to bring him much difficulty and heartache: his choice of a wife.

Davies is also unfortunate in falling afoul of the book's antagonist, Captain Devers, who in an attempt to shift the blame for a disastrous incident in the field onto the unwitting Davies's shoulders, takes every opportunity to discredit and disparage him. Devers is a totally infuriating antagonist and yet a masterful achievement on the part of the author, a near-perfect portrayal of a narcissist and master manipulator. I can only assume that King knew someone of this type in real life, for he nails all the tactics of the manipulator with devastating accuracy: shifting blame, twisting the meaning of other people's words, deliberately interpreting instructions the wrong way and then complaining the result isn't his fault, finding it necessary to express a contrary opinion in every situation, rewriting history (in Devers' case, literally)—and always managing to work it so that he can't be called to account for any specific wrongdoing. In Mira Davies, too, we see another style of narcissism: the kind that lives off admiration and flattery, and uses tears and hysterics as self-defense, flinging accusations of unkindness against anyone who attempts to remonstrate with her for wrongdoing.

Fortunately, there are plenty of thoroughly upstanding and likable characters to balance out the antagonists—the happily married Captain Cranston and his wife, the stalwartly just adjutant Leonard, plucky lieutenants Boynton and Sanders, the troubled but determined young trooper Brannan, and others. Another thing that I appreciated about the book is that its Christian characters are all portrayed in a very warm and positive light. The plot encompasses a large cast of characters and spans territory from West Point to Chicago and the plains of the Dakotas, Montana and Wyoming, with the main threads of the story—Lieutenant Davies' domestic sorrows, Devers' machinations against him, and the endeavors of Davies' friends to stand by him in both circumstances—playing out against the larger backdrop of the frontier army's campaigns against hostile Indians.

It's easy to detect the influence of King's army background in the novel. He gives us a glimpse at life for officers' wives and families on a frontier post in the 1870s, shows how crucially the character and personality of the officer in command can affect the outcome of a battle, and reveals many little practical details about Indian fighting and survival on the plains. He also shows the frustration of army men at being forced to act at the dictation of policy-makers in Washington, and reservation agents appointed because of political connections, who are totally ignorant of how to negotiate with Indians or how to fight them—consequently putting the army in the field (along with innocent settlers and army families) into unnecessarily difficult and disadvantaged situations.

Under Fire completely satisfied my hankering for a good cavalry story, and coming from the 19th century and from an author acquainted with his subject, provided that good solid feeling of authenticity that I've come to appreciate in older Westerns. I'm looking forward to seeing if King's other cavalry novels (he apparently wrote quite a few) live up to its standard.

Under Fire, first published in 1894, is in the public domain and available for free as an ebook at Project Gutenberg, Amazon, et al. This post is an entry for Friday's Forgotten Books, a weekly blog event hosted by Patti Abbot.