Trick of the Trade

Jeston Nash knew horses -- he'd stolen enough of them in his time. But the lookalike cousin of Jesse James was going respectable, almost. Then, in a New Orleans teeming with drunks and blue uniforms, he sold a horse toa well-bred lady. It was the biggest mistake of his careerŠ.

TRICK OF THE TRADE

He hit Fort Lincoln with a belly full of wounds and minus a boot. His horse had been stolen, and he'd stolen it back -- along with some bootleg crackers. All in all, it hadn't been a pleasant trip through the dreaded Black Hills. But at least Jeston Nash -- for the time being calling himself Beatty -- hadn't drowned. Now he fully intended to fulÞll a promise: to deliver an unridable horse called Honest Bob to a woman named Custer.

The trouble was, the wife of General George Armstrong Custer, Elizabeth, wasn't very interested in the horse she'd persuaded Nash to deliver. In fact, Mrs. Custer was on the warpath. So were the Sioux -- and General Custer's commanders in Washington. Suddenly, Nash Þnds himself in the middle of the most dangerous kind of Þght: a marital squabble. Before he knows it he's riding alongside a hardheaded, buffalo-hunting, blond-haired general who's sure glory awaits them -- at a place called Little Big HornŠ.

Ralph Cotton has been an ironworker, second mate on a commercial barge, a teamster, a horse trainer, and a lay minister with the Lutheran church. He's written several historical novels in the critically acclaimed Jeston Nash series, one of which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.