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!