Reckoning at Dead Apache Springs — Kent Conwell

Joe Phoebe and his partner, Ira Croton, ride boldly into the forbidding hill country of central Texas for two reasons: first, to take a job bullwhacking for Mills' Freight and Livery in Dead Apache Springs; and second, on the outside chance that someone might recognize Joe, or that he might run into something that could trigger his memory, which has been wiped out by a mini-ball at Appomattox.

Instead, they ride into a tangled conspiracy of cold-blooded murder, barn burnings, cattle rustling, kidnapping, and buried gold. When a fragment of Joe's memory does return, the recollection stuns him: prior to the war, he had ridden with a band of outlaws that had robbed the bank in nearby Abbottville.

As rugged as the country in which the story is set, so is the blazing action as a hard-nosed cowpoke battles a cattle baron who will stop at nothing to drive out smaller ranchers in a land grab the size of Texas, a struggle that ends in an unexpected and bizarre twist of events.