Man on a Red Horse

A HAUNTED MAN

Jesse Wilder was a man who had seen more than his share of violence. A former captain in the Army of Tennessee, he was inducted into the Union army as a “galvanized Yankee” after the battle of Shiloh. After the war he headed to Mexico to fight with the Juaristas against Emperor Maximilian. That cost him the life of his wife and his unborn child. All he wanted then was peace. But instead he was offered a position as a scout on a highly secret mission into Mexico, where bandits were holding the Sonora governor’s daughter for ransom. The rescue attempt was virtually a suicide mission; the small group was vastly outnumbered and was made up of men serving time in the garrison jail. Jesse had every reason to walk away from the offer—but he couldn’t. Not when one of his wife’s murderers was second in command to the Sonoran bandits chief.