Blood of the Devil (The Life and Times of Yellow Boy, Mescalero Apache, 2)

Yellow Boy, Killer of Witches, returns wounded from a cat-and-mouse chase and rifle duel with Blood of the Devil, the giant Mexican-Comanche witch whose head is painted like a skull, his body covered with black spiral and flame tattoos. The witch, also wounded, disappears into the dry plains across the Rio Grande, knowing the Apache he left bleeding in the sand will one day reappear. With the Army occupation ended Yellow Boy, Juanita, their new baby daughter, and his Mescalero band return to the reservation. Better days come with the arrival of a strong but fair Indian agent, W.H.H. Llewellyn, who the Mescaleros call "Tata Crooked Nose." Yellow Boy joins Llewellyn's tribal police, and for a time becomes an Army Scout participating in General Crook's Sierra Madre Campaign returning Apaches to the San Carlos Reservation. He finds and faces Blood of the Devil, but later loses his daughter to pneumonia sweeping the reservation. Warned of his destiny by Geronimo, he dreams of a young boy he will one day save from murder.


Blood of the Devil, Book 2 of the Life and Times of Yellow Boy, Mescalero Apache, continues Killer of Witches's powerful story; truth told with fiction that transports the reader to a different background, culture, history, time, and religion. It is the other side of Apache history lived by a people fighting the tsunami of Americans migrating west and the terrors of their supernatural insights as their White Eye overseers attempt to change their culture.

W. Michael Farmer combines in-depth research into nineteenth-century Apache history and culture with his southwest experience to fill his stories with a sense of genuine times and places. A retired Ph.D. physicist, his published research includes atmospheric aerosols and laser-based instruments. He has published short stories in anthologies, and award-winning essays. His first novel, Hombrecito's War, won a Western Writers of America Spur Finalist Award for Best First Novel in 2006 and was a New Mexico Book Award Finalist for Historical Fiction in 2007. His other novels include: Hombrecito's Search; Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright: The Betrayals of Pancho Villa; Conspiracy: The Trial of Oliver Lee and James Gililland; and Killer of Witches, The Life and Times of Yellow Boy, Mescalero Apache, Book 1.