Ten years after the Civil War the great American Centennial Exhibition opened to the astonishment of the entire world. This tale takes
Alex Balfour from his mysterious awakening at the Exhibition through his friendship with Mark Twain and ends at the killing fields
of the Little Big Horn with General George Custer.
CHAPTER 1
It was the last hour before true dawn.
Alex Balfour stood at the top of
a hill.
The world was white with snow.
Down in the small valley the land was smooth and round beneath the heavy drifts. On the crests
of the hill that surrounded the valley, the soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry stood with their horses. Custer's order had been whispered
through the ranks: remove overcoats and remain perfectly still, no swinging of arms, no stamping of feet.
Alex did not feel the cold.
Nearby,
wet snow slid from a branch with a muffled thump, and the branch, now free, rose, knocking snow from other branches. All eyes turned
toward the tree and men waited with held breath to see if they had been discovered. A small brown deer looked out from beneath the
tree, stared for a moment, and turned silently and disappeared. Down below a dog began to bark.
To Alex it was as peaceful as a Christmas
card. There were tamarack and lodgepole pines on the hillsides, and sheltering cottonwoods on the valley floor. A narrow iced-over
stream, the Washita, meandered between the rows of cottonwoods. He could see a cluster of tepees on the banks of the stream. As the
sky began to slowly gray, the cluster became a village. The dog continued to bark...
"Originality and brio!" The Washington Post Book
World
"Vivid...Engrossing...A lesson in history, current events and conscience." Minneapolis Star Tribune
This is the second of the four
time travel novels, known collectively as the Pastmaster Series. All four are difficult to find. Although not officially out
of print, they are still unavailable at the publisher. Copies can be found in used bookstores and on the NET using the search term
Appel, Allen at http://www.abebooks.com/
