The Reformed Gun -- Marvin H. Albert

Concho Reynolds is the reformed gun of the title. "Who was going to believe that his name and reputation were not for sale any more?"

But it doesn't play out the way you might think. Reynolds is a young man, and he swears off being a hired gun when he takes part in a botched bank robbery. The other man who was in it with him is killed, and Concho is severely wounded. He makes it to Mexico, where he survives only because he's discovered lying near death by Ben Grant, a rancher who's rounding up mustangs to sell back in the U. S.

Grant has his own problems, namely that he's been in prison for several years for killing a man in self-defense. When he's released, he learns that his partner, Pete Cooley, has kept all the profits from their ranching operation for himself and has no intention of cutting Grant in for any of them. So Grant's trying to start over, and Cooley's planning to stop him.

Now you might think that everybody's trying to get Concho into gunfights and such, but that's not what happens. Concho goes to work for Grant, and . . . that's enough plot summary, or maybe too much. This is another slick job from Albert, 126 pages of entertainment for a quarter. Hard to beat.