Just three days after the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana harbor, Ben Tyler arrives with a string of horses to sell - cover for a boatload of guns he's running to Cuban insurgents, risking a firing squad if he's caught.

This cowboy's first day ashore sets the pace for a wild ride to come. He sells the horses to an American planter, Roland Boudreaux, who's making a killing in Cuba ... meets the man's sparkly New Orleans-born mistress, Amelia Brown, and falls in love ... makes an enemy of a terrorizing Guardia Civil officer named Tavalera, and a friend of a mysterious old Cuban, Victor Fuentes ... is forced into a gunfight and thrown in prison, Tavalera determined to nail him as a spy.

Tyler has done time in the past for robbing banks, but never in a place like Morro Castle. America is about to declare war on Spain, and if Tyler doesn't manage to get out very soon, he's a dead man. How his escape comes about, with surprising help, is the high point from which the plot takes off on a train ride across Cuba, with Tyler and Amelia looking for more than love, a lot more - a chance to snatch a bundle of Boudreaux's cash, if they can pull it off. But who can you trust?