Bitter Trumpet — Fred Grove

A SURVIVOR

Jesse Wilder survived the horrors of Shiloh. He survived the hell of a Yankee prison camp and the shame of volunteering for the Union Army of the West--the only way to escape certain death in the camp. But when the war ended and he came home to Tennessee, word of his "treachery" preceded him, and Jesse found himself shunned by his neighbors and disinherited by his father. And so, like many survivors of the Confederacy, Jesse drifted west. In El Paso his drifting stopped. There he met Cullen Floyd, who ran weapons across the border to the Juaristas in Mexico. Cullen needed another gun against the marauding Apaches and the murderous banditos. Jesse needed a job. Before he knew it, Jesse was caught up in another desperate struggle, this time against the trained mercenaries of the Emperor Maximilian. But Jesse might have pushed his luck too far--this was one battle he might not survive.