Blood Dance — Joe R. Lansdale

Confederate veterans in a Yankee's world, Melgrhue and Bucklaw haven't had much post-war success. Family, friends and farms lost in the conflict, they've been drifting for the past decade -- driving sheep here, punching cattle there. It's work that pays a man's bills, mostly, but just mostly. More than panning for gold, it turns out, though that had seemed like a good idea at the time. And so they find themselves washed up in the Dakota Territory, staring a cold December in the face with empty pockets and emptier prospects. Which is how otherwise mostly-upstanding gentlemen come to contemplate signing-on as hired guns in a train robbery.

If the robbery came off well, no one was double-crossed, and the boys retired to live a comfortable life south of the border, it wouldn't be much of a Western. Fortunately, Lansdale, who's turned his hand at so many genres -- and invented a few new ones of his own -- knows better, and has written a rip-roarer. Long-unavailable, having fallen between the cracks of the publishing industry, Blood Dance is a genuine Western Adventure to rival any of the classics.