Legends of the Old West - CRAIG JOHNSON INTERVIEW | “Next To Last Stand”

Episode Date: December 23, 2020

We welcome New York Times bestselling author Craig Johnson back to the show for our annual conversation about his latest novel in the Walt Longmire mystery series. This interview covers his 2020 release titled “Next To Last Stand” from Penguin Random House publishers. Join Black Barrel+ for early access and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Lego Fortnite. Lego Fortnite is the ultimate survival crafting game found within Fortnite. It's not just Fortnite Battle Royale with minifigures. It's an entirely new experience that combines the best of Lego play and Fortnite. Created to give players of all ages, including kids and families,

a safe digital space to play in. Download Fortnite on consoles, PC, cloud services, or Android and play LEGO Fortnite for free. Rated ESRB E10+. Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news.

We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex.

Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Welcome to the final episode of 2020 here on the Legends of the Old West podcast. This is my annual conversation with New York Times bestselling author Craig Johnson about his newest novel. Candidly, we weren't sure it was going to happen this year, but we were able to squeeze in a remote recording. So the audio quality will be a little different this time around, which is just the way the world is right now. But as always, Craig has fun stories to tell and I hope you enjoy them. Here's our discussion of the next installment in the Walt Longmire mystery series called Next to Last Stand.

Craig, welcome back to the show. Thank you again for coming back on. This is our third interview about a book, fourth interview overall, I believe. So I appreciate you coming back. Thank you. My pleasure. Absolutely. Wonderful to be here. Yeah. And typically, as we were just talking about, we've done these the previous two interviews at the Poison Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale. As you're beginning your book tour, that's obviously not happening, a physical in-person tour this year. Like we were just talking about, you're doing a lot of virtual interviews. We are doing this one through the miracle of the World Wide Web.

So I appreciate you taking the time. We got our technology figured out. We're ready to go here. Oh, my pleasure. I'm getting a lot of writing done and a lot of work here at the ranch too. I was about to say, yeah, well, that's actually what I wanted to follow up on that in our previous interview, you had mentioned, and I think this has made it into the last couple of books, that you were also spending some time renovating a cabin. So I want to check on cabin renovation. Has cabin renovation progressing?

Well, it had to because the cabin itself is up around 8,000 feet. And so if I didn't get it done quick, the winter was going to close off the opportunity. My window of opportunity was rapidly closing. And so, yes, I did get the majority of the work done. It's not completely finished, but that's just pretty much the same as it is with the books. You never really finish a book. It just hits a deadline and they take it away from you. That's all I'm willing to do. It feels like you actually work really quickly, though.

So by the time we actually have this conversation, you're well down the road on the next book. I am, I am. We'll get to that at the very end, as we normally do. But now we'll actually jump into your newest book here. So I want to, you teased it a year ago when we were talking about this. So I guess I want to ask a question that I'm sure you're going to get variations of as you're doing the media blitz, but what made the painting of

Custer's last fight so interesting to you that you wanted to make it the centerpiece of an entire novel? Well, I mean, the Little Bighorn Battlefield is only about 90 minutes up the road from my ranch where I'm speaking to you now, and you cross Wyoming, population 25. And, you know, it's one of those mountains I had yet to climb. Like, it was one of those things where I thought, okay, inevitably, I'm going to have a storyline that'll have something to do, you know, with the little bighorn, because it's just too much of an opportunity like that. I mean, it's one of those places like, you know, I mean, the old joke in New York is, I guess, that nobody ever goes out to the Statue of Liberty until they

get relatives, like, or people from out of town who come into town like that. And it's pretty much the same way with the Little Bighorn. I mean, you go driving by it on I-90 all the time. But, you know, I've been up there a couple of times like that. But, you know, whenever anybody comes in from other countries or from other parts of the country and things like that, they like to go up and see the battlefield. And it's truly an amazing place. I mean, you definitely get a sense that, you know, that it's haunted. There's no other word for it. That something epic, you know, happened here. And then the question becomes, okay, well, yeah, you can use it, you know, as a plot point in your

storyline or something, but why do it if you're not going to discover something new and something different, you know, that maybe readers are not aware of. And so, you know, what I decided was, is that, you know, everybody, you know, knows the painting. I can just about guarantee the majority of your listeners, like, if they don't know the name of the artist, Cassili Adams, they know his work, and they know it because it's sometimes referred to Custer's Last Fight or sometimes the Budweiser painting. The reason being, of course, that after it hung on a saloon wall in St. Louis for a number of years that went out of business and they owed Budweiser money, Augie Bush went down there and collected the painting off of the

wall, rolled it up under his arm and went back up to his brewery like that and rolled it out for his marketing guys and said, okay, we're going to make posters of this painting, and we're going to send them out to every restaurant, every saloon, every bar all over America, everybody that sells Budweiser beer. By the time we're done with this, we are going to be a lot bigger brewery, and boy, did it work. With a vengeance, it worked, like, and so you've seen it. I know people have seen it, like, it hanging in the bars and saloons and everywhere else like it. And I just decided, okay, well, I wonder what the story is on that painting anyway. So I started doing a little bit of research and discovered that the history of that painting is almost as dramatic as the historic moment that it displays. And,

and so I decided, you know what, that may be my access point to the little bighorn. Great. Yeah. And I, as you just said, if people who, if a listener, if someone's listening right now and they can't picture it in their minds, I guarantee if you run to the internet and you look it up, you will have seen it. Whether in person hanging above an actual bar or in something like in a book or, you know, referenced in a movie or something, you will have seen the painting in some form or fashion. So you're absolutely right. And what an amazing PR campaign. I wasn't thinking it was ever going to bring something like that back again. Well, and then the fact that like, you know, that there are some controversies, you know, involved with the painting, like at first of all, you know, that, you know, that it was given as a gift, you know, back to the seventh cavalry, like in the thirties and hung, you know, in their headquarters in Fort Bliss, Texas, like until in 1946 when the commissary

burned to the ground and the painting was destroyed like that. But of course, you know, in my version, the question becomes, was it destroyed or, you know, did something else happen to that painting? Sure. And then, of course, the difficulty is, you know, well, how do you get, you know, the sheriff of the least populated county and the least populated state involved in this investigation? And so it's very joyful for me to point out on Veterans Day that just outside of Buffalo, which is, I guess, the model for Durant in the books, the county seat of our fictitious county, Absaroka, is Fort McKinney, which was actually built in response to the Little Bighorn Massacre, like in the sense that, you know, a lot of communities here in the High Plains, they felt at that

period in time that, you know, there were going to be uprisings, you know, that there were going to be Indian uprisings like that. And so they needed protection, they needed forts. And so a lot of them prescribed that thought and the federal government responded. And so the one that was built just outside of Buffalo was Fort McKinney. Well, over the years, they figured out that, yeah, there probably weren't going to be any great uprisings, like it was pretty much the end of that period in time. And so in 1903, the federal government sold Fort McKinney to the state of Wyoming, and they turned it into the

Soldier and Sailor's Home, which became the Wyoming Veterans Home. And ever since, you know, home, which became the Wyoming Veterans Home. And ever since, you know, when I first built my ranch, you know, 20 years ago, I would drive by the Veterans Home and those guys would be out there, some of the veterans, you know, and these would be guys that were veterans of World War II, of Korea, of Vietnam, you know, and they would have incredible stories. And, you know, I have, you know, I have a weakness. Like whenever I think somebody has a story, you know, it's always grist for the mill. I'm always looking forward to have the opportunity, you know, to be able to hear some of those stories. So I would pull up with my pickup truck and back in there and drop the tailgate and just sit there and talk to those guys. Well, yeah, you actually, you hit on something that was going to be a question and something that I had already assumed since we've done a few of these interviews now.

already assumed since we've done a few of these interviews now, I assumed that the characters you refer to collectively as the Wavers were based on real gentlemen who probably lived at this home. And so I had to assume that was the case. And now hearing you talk about it, clearly a lot of the stuff that Walt experiences on the mundane side of things, or just the fun personal side of things, were inspired by your real experiences, pulling up to the home and seeing these real people. were inspired by your real experiences, pulling up to the home and seeing these real people. So were there, how closely are the characters in the book portrayed from the real life guys? Are there actually guys out there in wheelchairs waving at the traffic like people are going to see in the book? Oh, absolutely. I always live in fear, you know, whenever anybody might come, you know, to my portion of the world and actually see what it's really like, they're going to come

to the conclusion that Craig Johnson's not really that good of an author. He just knows lots of interesting people in that little corner of the world in which he lives. That's okay. One of my favorite quotes is the one from Wallace Stegner, where he talks about the fact that the greatest piece of fiction ever written is the disclaimer at the beginning of every book that says nobody in this book is based off of anybody alive or dead. And that's a crock, you know, that that's your job is to go find interesting people, you know, and put them in your books. And so for me, that's one of the joys, like it is being able to include those stories that, you know, sorrowfully, like, you know, are going to be lost, you know, an awful lot of those individuals, those voices are going to be gone and they take a lot of those stories with them. And so for me, it's a wonderful opportunity to kind of include them and maybe preserve that, you know, for the future. Yeah. And I've, I'm one

of the few, well, I don't know if it's few, but I'm one of the people who's been fortunate enough to be up in that area, though. I haven't spent a ton of time in Buffalo itself. I've driven through that corridor. I'm on the way from Deadwood to Billings when we first met at the Western Writers Convention a few years ago when you were there with A. Martinez. So I got to see some of that area, but I haven't spent a ton of time there. But I think anybody who's able to make the pilgrimage would recognize that you do have some fascinating people in a very small corner of the world. And I think we're all thrilled that they get to make appearances in these books.

So we can, I suppose we're all waiting for whoever the next inspiring character is going to be, who's going to show up in next year's book. Well, and that's, that's part of the joy of like working with a, you know, an ensemble of characters, like, you know, because, you know, writing a novel in many ways, it's kind of like conducting a choral group and you're going to have to pick and choose, you know, which voices you know, writing a novel in many ways, it's kind of like conducting a choral group, and you're going to have to pick and choose, you know, which voices are going to illustrate that and tell that story, you know, to its best advantage, like, and so I knew that this book was going to have a very strong Native, you know, aspect to it, like that, there was going to be an awful lot of the Native characters that were going to come rushing back in,

and so that's kind of a joy. I mean, it was a joy to get Lonnie Littlebird, you know, back involved, look at to get Barrett Long, look at Lolo Long, the tribal police chief's, brother, back involved, look at and, and to see, you know, the response also, I guess, the cultural kind of antagonism a little bit, you know, the controversy, maybe rather than antagonism between Henry Standing Bear and Walt, you know, the controversy maybe rather than antagonism between Henry Standing Bear and Walt, you know. I mean, Walt kind of voices, you know, a lot of, you know, what he'd learned about the Little Bighorn from the textbooks, you know, that he read when he was a child like that. And as we've come to learn, you know, over the decades, you know, the centuries like it, well,

you know, maybe those textbooks had a little bit of a spin to them. You know, they might not have been completely, you know, truthful in their portrayal of the situation and maybe left out some details maybe that nobody knew about either, like that, which have kind of come to light here as of late, you know, because of the marvelous writers that are suddenly writing a lot of historical works these days. You know, I was just doing an interview with Nathaniel Philbrick in his book, The Last Stand, here just last week. And it was stunning to find out the information that's been discovered in the last, let's say, even 10 years about the battlefield

and the battle itself. Right, right, of course. Yeah, and that somewhat leads into a question that I wanted to ask as one that we spoke about that I'm going to talk about obliquely in some of the artifacts that do make an appearance that are related to the battle. And you're kind of talking about it as well, that it feels like when you go to the battlefield, you have that haunting sensation. And it takes on a different level than if you just simply talk about it or if you read about it or you see pictures or videos or whatever. you just simply talk about it or if you read about it or you see pictures or videos or whatever it when you're writing about it and writing about some of these artifacts that make an appearance do you feel a sense of transportation back to that time like as as i was listening to george

goodell's audiobook as i was going through this really fast i started smiling and think god that must have been fun to write about these things you must have i felt a little sense of transportation back to that time i could almost feel a little sense of transportation back to that time. I could almost feel a little bit of fun hearing it. So I had to imagine you felt some kind of sense of, of transportation and fun and maybe some of that mythical quality thrown in as well. Oh, absolutely. But I mean, you know, you know, as well as I do, that's why we read is to be transported, you know, back to those periods and to know about those things that, you know, time periods like and experiences that we may never have in our lives like that.

But reading about them brings them about as close as they can possibly be. For me, you know, one of the excitements was, you know, like I was discussing some of those, you know, the history books that I've read and the research on this book started like almost eight years ago. And the reason I know exactly when it was that I started doing the research on this particular book was, is there's an episode of Longmire on the television show on Netflix that actually uses the painting as one of the subplots. And I had to laugh about it like that because I had a number of people who after they read the book said, well, did you get the idea, you know, from the television

series episode? And I was like, no, that was when I told the producers about the book that I was doing research on. A lot of research went into this book. But then the fun thing was to also give credibility, maybe not credibility, but give credence to the native voices. Because it wasn't just a one-sided battle. It wasn't just the 7th Cavalry that was involved in this particular battle. You know, there was a nomadic people. One of the things I think that a lot of people tend to forget is that this was not two armies on a battlefield. This was one expeditionary force pursuing a nomadic people that, you know, were a grouping of people that were the size of a good-sized city. You know, This was like close to 10,000, both Lakota and Cheyenne peoples there. They had not only the warriors that were there,

but they also had their wives, their children, the elderly. Their entire families were all there. I guess when you look back at it, you can say to yourself, well, what an incredible inconvenience, like a difficulty to have, well, what an incredible inconvenience or difficulty to have your loved ones right there on the battlefield with you because you realize that you're going to have to protect them, that you're going to have to save them. But then the other side of that coin is that I can't imagine anything that would be more motivating than having your loved ones behind you like that. And I'm afraid that that was something that the seventh cavalry, um, learned on that sunny afternoon on the hills, you know, along the Bighorn river and, uh, Montana in 1876. Yeah. And actually it's, it's interesting that I

I've tried to do the story of the little Bighorn a couple of times on this podcast. And it's, it's the one that keeps that I keep putting on the back burner. I've teased it a couple of times and it never comes to fruition for one reason or another. And I won't get into the whole backstory of it, but it's, but one of the reasons is that I've, I've wanted to make a priority, the native voices. I have a very specific way that I want to tell that story. Uh, and without getting too deep into it, I've, I've talked to various writers and researchers and say, look, it has to be done this way. The native voices have to be included far more than they have been in the history books, for sure. And then maybe some other sources too. So I have a really conscious idea and trying to

pull that off is very difficult. But I started hearing the way Henry Standing Bear talks about the battle in your book and clearly the recent level of research you did. It started to remind me, yeah, that's what I wanted to try to do with this. That's why it keeps getting delayed because it really has to be done right at this point in time, for sure. Well, it's a mountain to climb. I mean, that was the big thing. I mean, whenever I started thinking about the utilization of this and part of the storyline,

like I thought, okay, first of all, you got to make sure you get it right. Because if you make any mistakes, there are enough, you know, custer files and sitting bull files and crazy horse-o-files like that out there that, you know, they'll eat you alive if you don't make sure that you get all the facts straight. And so that's, you know, part of the battle there. And then just the sheer bulk of material like that to go through. I mean, the one thing that I've discovered over the number of years and the amount of of little bighorn books um that i've read is is there a lot of really bad little bighorn books out there that you know and a lot of the older movies oh and

they're horrible again and then the only thing that can give them any kind of like you know competition for how bad they are is the amount of movies and television shows that are out there about the little bighorn horrible, have absolutely no resemblance to reality or what it was that actually happened. And then some of those I was able to kind of lampoon during the Custer, you know, festival like that. I can't remember. I think it's like Turner Movie Classics or something like that, that they're playing

behind the bar at the Red Pony Bar and Grill. As Henry gives a counterpoint, you know, to all the bad movies like that have been made. So and then that kind of brings in, you know, even the realities of, you know, the painting in question, the Custer's last fight painting in itself is, you know, the key element of the book is incredibly historically inaccurate in a number of different ways. I mean, you can just take the figure of Custer himself. The scarf is wrong. The outfit is wrong. He cut his hair the night before. He didn't have sabers because it was an expeditionary force and they would make too much noise on the horses. So he didn't have a saber. I mean, and then you start working from there and you start looking that, you know, like even the geography of, you know, the Little Bighorn area in the painting is wrong. The village is on the wrong side of the river. The mountains are not really shown appropriately. And it was kind

of pointed out to me over at the Center for the West, over at the Buffalo Bill Center for the West, it's quite possible that Cassilly Adams got his idea since he had never been to the Little Bighorn area, that he might have gotten the idea for the geography from Buffalo Bill's Wild West shows, that he just took the background from the Buffalo Bill Wild West shows and just included that. And his son stated quite plainly that he actually had models come in in St. Louis to his studio, cavalrymen and Lakota warriors that would come in like that, and he would paint them. And if they did, the cavalrymen came off quite a bit better than the Lakota warriors do, who looked like they might have arrived at the battle by way of, you know, Rourke's drift in Africa or, you know, the seminal, you know, Everglades,

you know, and somewhere in, you know, Florida, like because the headdresses are all wrong. The shields that they're carrying look like they're Zulu warriors, you know, which is, you know, when you actually look at it historically, since it was painted about 10 years after the actual little big one battle in 1876, that was the period and time of the Zulu uprisings. And in many ways, you know, there are a lot of comparison contrasts that can be made between the United States as this, you know, up and coming technologically advanced country that kind of got set back on its heels. I mean, you got to remember that at the time that this

battle was being fought, the White Sox were playing a double header back in Chicago. And so the difference between the eastern portion of the United States and the western portion of the United States was very, very different that period of time. But, you know, that it was being influenced also by what was happening over in Africa to the British,

who were kind of being set back on their heels also by the Zulus. You did touch on something, and you've talked about it. You're talking about it to some degree right now in the effect that the Battle of the Little Bighorn had, not only on both sides who fought in it, of course, the Native peoples and the American side of the equation, but the mythology that it created. It helped create the mythology of both the West and the United States of America. What's your opinion on how that battle?

And then, as you mentioned in the book, Libby Custer's PR campaign afterwards had an effect on the battle, how we view the battle itself, and then how it helped create the mythology of the West as we look at it today, back 100 years ago, 140 years ago. Well, there's a resonance. ago, 140 years ago? Well, there's a resonance. There's a resonance that goes along, you know, with the fact that there's a lot of ambiguity involved in like, you know, what it was that Custer did and why he did what he did. And then there's a lot of ambiguity as to what actually happened. You know, because as stated, like, you know, the only survivor on one side was a horse, you know, that survived like it. And so, you know, and the horse was not available for comment as far as that was concerned. And so, and then, you know, the native side, you know, that survived like it. And so, you know, and the horse was not available for comment as far as that was concerned, like it. And so, and then, you know, the, the, the native side, you know, they were a little bit concerned as rightly they should have been like that,

because they were kind of waiting, you know, for the, the boot to drop, like they, they won the battle, but they knew that inevitably they were going to lose the war, like that they were a nomadic people who no longer had any way to be nomadic, that the American government wasn't going to allow for that. And that was, you know, when they were trying to herd them all onto the reservations like it. And so it was a major turning point, I think, you know, in American history, like with a lot of ramifications like that, you know, that were going to, you know, resonate, you know, for the rest of the history of this country. And so, you know, you knew that it was going to be

impacting. There was no question as to whether it was going to be impacting. And also, you had some incredibly charismatic individuals that were involved with this, you know, not only to mention, of course, Custer like that, but also Sitting Bull like that, and his predictions like that, that there would be a battle and that the, you know, the blue coats, the long knives, you know, mentioned, you know, for the, you know, the sabers that they carried were going to suffer a terrible loss. Like, and the reason he saw this was because he saw these blue coats falling from the heavens, you know, with no ears, because they would not listen to what had been told to them, you know, in these meetings before. Like, and then you've got somebody like Crazy Horse,

who was probably, you know, maybe one of the most incredible cavalrymen you know in the history of american you know in america like that he what he was able to do like it in battles you know such as the battle of the rosebud or the battle of the greasy grass were just amazing and then also even the view you know that that the natives you know had on this you know the the cheyenne you know in the lakota they didn't even include this in their winter counts you know i mean you know the winter count for those you know, and the Lakota, they didn't even include this in their winter counts. You know, I mean, you know, the winter count for those, you know, in the audience who might not be aware, like they had these large buffalo skins like that. And what they would do, it was literally the calendar year for the tribe, like to show, you know,

the major events that had happened during the course, you know, of that year. Well, you know, the Little Bighorn Battle didn't even make it on to, you know, the winter count, you know, for that particular year. Well, you know, the Little Bighorn battle didn't even make it on to, you know, the Winter Count, you know, for that particular year. They thought of it as a kind of a messy skirmish that really wasn't all that important of a battle. And it was only after the fact that they discovered that, you know, that Custer was actually even involved in the battle. So, you know, the viewpoints on all of these things, I think, you know, make for an ambiguity that, you know, does open for mystery. And, you know, I won't lie to you and tell you that I don't know the value of mystery. That, you know, whenever you can put that carrot out there to try and find out what it is that really happened during the course of a book, you know, whether it be the last stand or

the next to last stand, look at it's an opportunity to draw the reader in like that and get them involved with that story. And as you stated earlier, let them feel as though that they were actually there. Yeah. And I think you actually just touched on probably my favorite part of the book to get specific for a second. And this won't ruin anything for anyone, but a scene where Henry Standing Bear says some of the things that you just said, where Henry Standing Bear is talking more about the native side, about the Lakota and the Cheyenne, not even realizing that a guy named Custer was on the battlefield. It's just that they didn't know that part of the equation. And this wasn't a big enough deal to them to even include it in the winter count.

It only grew in stature and had far-reaching ramifications long after the fact. That was fascinating to me. I don't think, I mean, I knew what the Winter Count was, but I didn't know those two little pieces, that they didn't know that Custer was there. They didn't know that this guy was a general named Custer and that they didn't include it in the Winter Count afterward as a huge part of their history. So that was fascinating.

I love that part of the book. So hopefully that's a good tease for people to go read it who haven't already. Well, a lot of it like is the credibility also. You have to always keep in mind that there were two factions there. And, you know, an awful lot of the Seventh Cavalry, like in the U.S. militaries, has been written about and gone over with the finest, finest tooth comb. But then again, there's also the native voices like it.

And I was fortunate enough to discover, you know, a number of anthologies like that, because you have to remember that period in time. These were tribes like that. Their major source of information was an oral tradition. They didn't write things down. You know, the winter count like it was, you know, the penultimate aspect of their their writing like it on the history. But, you know, majority of the the time, it was vocal. It was verbal, like it being passed down from generation to generation. And so I was fortunate enough to discover a number of anthologies where actual warriors who had fought in that battle, some of them as young as 12 and 13 years of age, had fought in this battle, like that was able to utilize some of that material into the books. And then also going up and talking to my good friends up on the Northern Cheyenne and the Crow

Reservation and, you know, getting the stories from them that had been handed down, you know, from, you know, generation to generation like that. And the opportunity to include those in your books, like it is just, you know, it's just too much to try and pass up on. Oh, yeah. To have the ability to go hear first person stories, but obviously ones that have been handed down through the generations is an invaluable resource. I would love to do that at some point myself. That'd be fantastic. So I want to wrap up with one more specific question about this. And then of course, we got to do the obligatory tease of the next book, which you're probably damn near done with at this point. I am. I'm working on it.

I know it's getting closer. So the other thing that struck me as I listened to the book, as most people are probably reading it, was that this was very obviously a shift in tone from the previous book. This was much more lighthearted and fun and had some of those whimsical qualities. Was that a conscious choice based on the severity of the previous book? Or did it just develop as you started thinking about the characters that were going to be a part of this and it just flowed naturally? Well, I think that there's like a natural, you know, propensity like it to, you know, to have the pendulum swing. You know, with the quality of expertise as far as the, you know,

what Walt and Henry would be talking about throughout the entirety of the book, it was, you know, kind of fun for me to put maybe a little bit lighter tone on this. And that was actually easier to do, like, simply because there were so many Native voices involved with this particular book. This was a joy to write simply because, you know, I mean, the majority of the book takes place, you know, up on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, between the Northern Cheyenne and the Crow Reservation, right there at the battlefield. And so I knew that those Native voices were going to be back involved again. And those Native voices for me are the ones that have such an incredible sense of humor. I mean, you know, when I'm talking to my good buddy, Marcus Red Thunder, or I'm talking to Charles

Little Old Man, or any of my other, you know, friends up on the res, look at the one thing that they have that I think maybe gets, you know, forgotten about when people talk about, you know, the Native Americans is they never get as much credit as they should for the amount of humor that's involved in everything that they do. I mean, you know, one of my favorite quotes is the one from John Steinbeck, where he said, you know, the Indians have incredible senses of humor. Look, they've had to put up with us for 200 years, so they better have a sense of humor. Right, and we're clearly running over it. Maybe your next interview is about to start here, so I'll just ask you for the quick tease. We know,

I think it's well-established that Lonnie Littlebird is my favorite. I love that guy, as you're talking about. He is the epitome of humor for me in the books, but I will just quickly ask for your little tease of what are we going to see next year from Walter? You'll see Lonnie again. Lonnie's got a double header here, because there'll be a lot more of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in the next book. It's actually a situation where, you know, we have a little bit of a plague going on in Indian country like that, where there are a lot of situations with missing women, Native women who have, like, you know, been disappearing, like, and it's kind of a horrible situation. along, like at the tribal police chief, like, you know, gets in touch with Walt and Henry about the possibility. There's a young woman who's on the basketball team with the lady, the lady stars. And the problem being that, you know, there'd been threats against her. She has a sister who's been missing like that. And so Walt and Henry get called in like at kind of like, you know,

do a little bit of bodyguard work. And, you know, of course, you know, Walt's been in some tough situations before, but he's never been stuck on a bus with an entire team of teenage girl basketball players. So this may be Walt's most toughest adventure so far, I have to admit. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoyed that interview. We'll be back on our regular Wednesday schedule in two weeks with the story of Texas Ranger Frank Hamer. And if you're a member of our Black Barrel Plus program,

you'll get the entire series one week from right now. A little gift right before the new year. We'll see you then.