Dead Man's Boot — Patrick Dearen

Clay Andrews is like a dead man, adrift in an uncaring dark. But he's also searching, and in 1869 he has ridden to the Pecos River to find answers.

Back in Central Texas, Clay's sister has died, and only on this river might he learn why. The person perhaps responsible may have fled here, but no one enters this no-man's-land except at his own peril. Comanches are on the prowl, and across the Pecos, Mescalero Apaches range all the way to the mysterious Guadalupe Mountains.

In a dead man's boot, Clay finds a map to rumored gold in the Guadalupes. When Comanches approach, he flees upriver and finds Lil Casner at a lone schooner. Long abused in an arranged marriage, she must fend for herself while her obsessed husband combs the Pecos for the very map Clay has discovered.

Upstream at the Bar W Ranch, two other haunted figures await. One is an experienced cowboy who has come to the Pecos for reasons that strangely parallel Clay's. The other is a shiftless cowhand in whose mind lurks something evil and deadly.

Comanche attacks ... a kidnapping ... a chase through Apache country to Skeleton Cave and on to the Guadalupes. For Clay, the answers will never come unless he rides into a mountain range where Indian spirits may guard a golden hoard.