Bitter's Run

<p class=ql-align-justify><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>John Bitter scanned the hilltops with his field glasses blaming unfamiliar territory for his uneasy feelings but past experience taught him not to ignore his hunches. <em>Something's brewing</em> he thought</strong><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Following Lee's surrender of the Northern Army of Virginia to Grant on April 9 1865 at Appomattox Captain John Bitter of Abiqua Creek Oregon musters out of the 40th Missouri. A loner Bitter plans a quick ride home over the Oregon Trail. The good Lord however has other plans for him.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>After a month on the Trail two gun battles a bruising fistfight to settle a blood feud a new wife and two adopted sons Bitter tells Rockford his big mean black horse This sure complicates the business of getting back to Oregon.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Bitter now finds himself the leader of a mixed entourage going west: a black pioneer family earlier wagon trains shunned; an Irish rebel turned galvanized Yankee; a dispossessed Cherokee turned Cheyenne medicine man; the rescued sister of a Bannock chief; a white boy adopted by the Cheyenne; and a scout for the Union Army who is also one of the richest men in Oregon.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span></p><p><em>Bitter's Run</em> is a spirited and adventurous tale. Told in three parts it portrays the realities and uncertainties of life on the Oregon Trail of war-weary men seeking or returning to a homestead in Oregon and of the courageous women who rode with them.</p>