The Killing Trail — Johnny D. Boggs

After visiting his late mother's people on the Mescalero reservation, Comanche tribal policeman Daniel Killstraight waits to catch a train home when local cowboys bring disturbing news: an Chiricahua Apache has brutally murdered a teenage girl in the railroad town of Demingand a bunch of locals plan on lynching him.
Killstraight has no jurisdiction in this territory. He knows nothing about Deming, the murdered girl, or the accused killer; and he doesn't really care much for Apaches anyway. Yet, still heartbroken over the death of his beloved Rain Shower, he is in no hurry to return home. So he hops on a train to Deming to help a fellow Indian.
However, once he arrives Killstraight learns that the man in jail isn't really an Apache. Francis Groves, is a brooding, embittered, binge-drinking white man who had lived with the Chiricahuas and was known as "Walking Man." He had once been an excellent tracker who scouted and interpreted for the Army during the last of the Apache wars, but has had nothing to live for since his wife and daughter were murdered by Mexican scalp hunters. Killstraight sets out to prove Groves innocent- in a town that hates Indians and where he has few allies and many enemies--all the while with this thought in the back of his mind: What if Groves is really guilty?