This is the story of 150 of the most adventurous scouts, gold prospectors, gunslingers, buffalo hunters, and Civil War veterans of both sides—they may have been the deadliest collection of shooters to ever hit the trail. This is the most detailed work ever produced on the obscure legend of the 1874 Yellowstone Wagon Road Prospecting Expedition in the Montana Territory—the product of multi-year research across the country, and visits to the three battlefields and expedition route of over 500 miles—an event that impacted the Little Bighorn in 1876. Numerous legends of the West rode on the expedition, later playing roles in the Great Sioux War of 1876. Their adversaries now were the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne—some of the greatest light cavalry to ever gallop over the North American continent. And watching their every move were Sitting Bull, Gall, Hump, Crazy Horse, and a renegade chief named Inkpaduta, ready to strike.

For over thirty-four years, Col. French L. MacLean, United States Army, (Ret.), served with many of the leading lights of the United States Army. Born in Peoria, Illinois, he graduated from West Point in 1974 with a commission in the infantry; served four tours of duty in Germany; commanded two companies and a battalion; attended the School for Advanced Military Studies; fought as the operations officer in a mechanized infantry battalion during Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait and Iraq; and served as the US Army Fifth Corps historian during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 in Iraq. He additionally served as the Inspector General for the US Army in Europe, and as a course director and professor at the National War College in Washington, DC, where he taught military strategy to many of the military’s future leaders. In addition to the acclaimed Custer’s Best: The Story of Company M, 7th Cavalry at the Little Bighorn, he is the author of twelve books on World War II. Living in Decatur, Illinois, with his wife Olga, when not writing, he can be found traveling to solve a new mystery that can be followed at www.thefifthfield.com.