His Arrows Fly Straight into the Hearts of His Enemies was the Comanche name given him by his father. But the Pale Eyes gave him a new name, Daniel Killstraight, and that was the name by which he was known after his return to the reservation of the Kowas, Comanches, and Apaches. He became a native police officer, called a Metal Shirt by the Indians.
When Toyarocho, drunk on contraband whiskey, rolls over onto the body of his four-year-old daughter, smothering her to death, Leviticus Ellenbogen, the new Indian agent, is appalled and wants Killstraight to find out who supplied Toyarocho with the whiskey. If it was a white man, Killstraight cannot make an arrest, but he can collect evidence. There is one clue. The whiskey Toyarocho had drunk was in a ginger beer bottle manufactured by Cox and Coursey Bottling Works of Dallas, Texas.
In the course of his investigation, Killstraight finds additional instances of whiskey running among the Indians, all of it in the same kind of bottles. But Killstraight is working against impediments other than not being able to arrest a white man. Teepee That Stands Alone, the dead girl's grandfather, perhaps knows something, but he will not share it with a Metal Shirt.
If Killstraight leaves the reservation in the course of his investigation, he will have no authority at all. And the white men involved undertake to have Killstraight jailed for numerous infractions against territorial and federal laws as an opening strategy. There is an even more certain way of making sure that Killstraight's investigation is stoppedpermanentlyand that is by killing him.
