Blood and Gold: A Ralph Compton Novel by Joseph A. West

An eighteen-year-old cowpuncher finds himself inheriting $30,000 in gold from his boss, an old Dodge City cattle rancher paralyzed from a drive, with the edict that he must return the money back home to the boy's mother, who lives just over the Red River in Texas. The problem is, word about such an obscene amount of money tends to draw hardcases like honey draws flies.

It doesn't help that he also must travel through the Gypsum Hills in Oklahoma and the Indian Territory, site of the biggest and most bloody Apache uprising ever seen this side of the Rio Bravo.

Saddled with the gold, desperados gunning for him on every side, and having to protect a young woman trapped with her father in the middle of the uprising, the young man gets a hard and fast education on life . . . and death . . . dealt in quick draws, fleet feet, and level aim.