Empty Ground

In 1849, a seventeen-year-old Irish immigrant named Declan Shea stands at the Powder River and watches sixty million buffalo come over a rise. By 1883, he rides the same country and cannot find eleven.

Between those two moments lies a life. Declan learns his trade on the northern plains-the Sharps rifle, the skinning knife, the arithmetic of a hide taken clean. He takes a Cheyenne name he did not choose: Heávohe. He works beside a ruined man named Bill until the day Bill stops working. He cr...