The terse command cracked through Texas Ranger headquarters like a rifle shot -- and no one had to be told that the most dangerous assignment ever handed out was custom-made for the coolest lawman of them all, Walt Slade!For a hot, bloody week Slade haunted the trail of the vicious outlaw whose senseless cruelties shocked El Paso. One by one he whittled down Juan Covelo s gang of killers, but always the black-hooded leader escaped his blazing irons.Now Slade knew that he was up against an outlaw every bit as fiendish and elusive as his arch-enemy Veck Sosna. When the Ranger ace fingered his guns and stepped into Coveto s hillside hideout he was grimly prepared for a deadly duel in the dark that meant either his own death or a killer s doom!