Wolf on Horseback — Merle Constiner

Jim Peters had always been figured for a wild young lobo, and everybody in the Double Eagle saloon had seen him arguing with Chris Hansen shortly before Hansen was found shot to death. Worse, Peters himself was lying nearby, passed out drunk with a gun in his hand. When the sheriff arrested him for murder, everybody in Stovepipe Wells figured he was guilty ? and Peters had to reckon so too, when he heard the story the next day. But then somebody told him Hansen had been shot with a .45, whereas Peters knew he never packed anything but a .44. So he escaped jail, and began finding out about rustling in the Valley, and about the Ferron brothers, the biggest landholders around. He thought he knew why he?d have been framed ? but he had to prove it.