The infamous Sam Bass. Outlaw Sam Bass is one of the largest legends of the Old West -- an orphan turned career criminal who managed to elude Pinkerton detectives, federal marshals, and a special task force of manhunters led by Captain June Peak. But with his last breaths Sam told one man the real story of his life: a tale of dreams and dashed hopes, and how a good man ended up on the wrong side of the law -- and now lay dying with a bullet in the back...
Bound for Texas. Bound for blood. Young Sam Bass lit out for Texas with visions of a cowboy's life dancing in his head. Honest hard work got the Midwestern farm boy on a real-life cattle-drive to Dodge City. But soon Sam made a fatal choice, and found himself in Deadwood, South Dakota, a place that could turn even the best men bad. Once Sam Bass picked up a guun and robbed a stagecoach, there was no turning back. The law wanted him dead, fate wanted him in Texas, and the outlaw trail waited in between.
2000 by Jason Manning St. Martin's Press (New York) 232 pp ISBN: 0-312-97569-4
My favorite of the three biographical novels that formed The Westerners series, this is told from the end -- as Sam Bass, the closest thing to a genuine Robin Hood-style outlaw Texas ever had -- tells a reporter his life's story from his death's bed. Well-received and, like the others in this three-book set, more or less true to historical events.