The Best of the West: The Horse Soldiers Edited by Bill Pronzini & Martin H. Greenberg

A volume in the multipart anthology series published by Fawcett. It is a mighty useful set of books allowing Western readers to dip into shorter works by beloved authors and less familiar scribes to see what strikes the individual fancy and what might be less to one’s palate.

This volume of cavalry tales includes…

Verse by Omar M. Barker.

Short stories by Frederic Remington, Jack Schaeffer, James Warner Bellah, Bill Gulick, Gil Brewer, Dorothy M. Johnson, Bryce Walton, Brian Garfield, Elmore Leonard, Clay Fisher, and a grueling excerpt from the Elmer Kelton novel The Wolf and the Buffalo. 

While not all gold, more than enough nuggets to merit a panning session or two.

“The Glory Riders” by Brian Garfield

Diamond crouched down and spoke in a voice calculated to reach no further than the Indian’s ears. “Hear me, Iron Feather, I’ll see you dead before I’m through with you. Remember that, Indian. I’ll teach you what it means to suffer.”

Iron Feather said quietly, “If you could teach me anything, you wouldn’t be wearing that uniform.”

A brisk stark tale of Horse Cavalry and the Indian Wars from a dependable author. I was struck by the theme embodied in the quote that characterizes the tension between the warring factions.

A rigid and organized way of life [the Cavalry] seems confining and wrong-headed to the Indian.

The loose and seemingly unstructured way of the Indian seems a non-progressive dead-end to the white man. 

It is a tale of action, but Garfield plays at a wee bit more here

Solid stuff.