The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

 

A journal is found during a restoration project.  It is determined that it was the journal of a Lutheran minister out in the West in the early 1900's.  Etsy Beaucarne is an academic and the last member of the Beaucarne family and this is the journal of her great-grandfather.  She hopes that publishing it can be her pathway to tenure so she starts the process of reading about her grandfather's life.

But this is no pleasant retelling.  It is the story of Arthur Beaucarne and Good Stab.  This Indian starts coming to the services at the church and after everyone leaves he weekly tells Arthur his life story.  Can it be believed?  He claims that while out hunting with other members of his Blackfeet tribe, they come across a group of white men with one imprisoned in a cage.  A battle ensues, and everyone is killed except for Good Stab and the caged man.  He is called Cat-Man and is a vampire who came over to America from Europe.  He infects Good Stab who then becomes known as Fullblood or Takes No Scalps among his people.  He becomes an outcast, roaming the West killing white men to survive.  Good Stab still has a loyalty to his people and saves children when he can and any buffalo he can spirit away as calves to a place where they won't be hunted.  Both Arthur and Good Stab are associated with a famous Indian massacre by the white soldiers although that is slowly revealed as the weeks go by and Good Stab's story is fully revealed.

Stephen Graham Jones is a Blackfeet Native American author.  His work is in the horror, science fiction and crime genres.  This may be his best novel so far.  The slow revealing of the story, the Americanization of a European horror trope, the revenge and the heart of Good Stab, all are fascinating and draw the reader deeper into the story.  I can't recommend this one highly enough for his fans and those who have heard of him but haven't yet read his work.  This book is recommended for horror readers.