The quickest way to get from eastern Kansas to Denver in 1867, was The Smoky Hill Trail. It was 500 miles of open prairie where stage coaches and freight wagons could be high and dry one day and swimming in mud the next. Five hundred miles of surprise snowstorms, oppressive heat, violent thunderstorms, choking dust, and if Mother Nature's threats weren't enough, there were vast herds of bison covering a land that was the ancestral home Cheyennes and Arapahoes bent on securing their native homeland from the invading whites. Soldiers of the U.S. Army at Fort Hays, Kansas, were the only protection for freighters, stagecoach passengers, and gold seekers looking for a new way of life in the mineral-rich Rocky Mountains. It was a dangerous time and the Smoky Hill Trail was marked by anonymous graves, blood-soaked wagon tracks, and stories of legend. The book centers on Fort Hays, a sprawling military post in northwest Kansas, and Sergeant Major Thomas Barrett, the senior ranking enlisted man in the 18th U.S. Infantry Regiment in 1888. It is through his eyes and memories that the reader will be transported back to the dangerous, exciting, and memorable times when the Smoky Hill Trail was travelled by the brave-hearted European immigrants and equally brave-hearted Native Americans. "War Clouds on the High Plains" is the first in a series of books chronicling the "Tales of the Sergeant Major."

Bob Wilhelm was born in 1950. His father was a school teacher and administrator in several small towns in Kansas where Bob, his two older brothers, and two younger sisters grew up, living the "Mayberry" experience. Bob has had a life-long interest in the "wild west" and grew up watching Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, and Gene Autry on Saturday mornings. Following a stint in the U.S. Air Force, where he attained the rank of sergeant, he attended Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas, where his primary field of study was biology (another keen interest). After graduating with a Master's Degree in biology, he sought work as a museum director. As fate would have it, Natural History Museum jobs were practically non-existent. People get into those jobs because they have a passion for the job, not for the money, so jobs only open up when someone retires or dies!. However, a position at Fort Hays Historic Site became available, and he decided to take it while continuing to seek employment in natural history. Twenty-nine years later, Bob retired from the Fort Hays history museum. He had always wanted to write fiction, and so, immediately upon his retirement, he began writing his series "Tales of the Sergeant Major." This is his first historical novel set in the military world of Fort Hays in the late 1800s. He plans to write a tetralogy following the exploits of Sergeant Major Barrett, and the five troublesome privates of the 18th Infantry, but, as he is fond of saying, "You never know where the characters will take you." Bob lives in Hays, Kansas, with his wife, Joan.