Set in the Southwest of the '80s, this is the story of a very young man trapped by one fateful act into a sequence of violence foreign to his nature-- a nature equipped by birth with sensitivity, by environment with self-sufficiency, and by a cynical fate with a genius for the rifle. The Hell Bent Kid is more than a character study, however. It is a taut, beautifully controlled narrative of action. It is a tale of the genuine West-- not that surrogate West of film and book-- of the years when the cattle men ruled private kingdoms in West Texas and the New Mexico territory. It is the tale of search and pursuit and vengeance written with the utmost intensity. At its center is the figure of young Lohman, gentle, dangerous, memorable-- a masterful creation of the novelist's craft -- Book jacket.