The Old Spanish Trail
About this ebook
The only riches Texans had left after the Civil War were five million maverick longhorns and the brains, brawn, and boldness to drive them north to where the money was. Now, Ralph Compton brings this violent and magnificent time to life in an extraordinary epic series based on the historic trail drives.
For the ranchers riding with Rand Hayes, things had gone from bad to worse. The Santa Fe man who'd contracted five thousand head of cattle was dead— murdered by renegades. Now the Texans had a herd of longhorns and only one choice: cross two mountain ranges and the Mojave Desert to the gold-fevered market at Los Angeles. A trail blazed by ancient Spaniards, this was a route that would lead through a brutal, wondrous land, where a hostile Ute nation was only one danger the cattle drive faced, and California was a shooting war away . . .
Praise for the Ralph Compton's Trail Drive series, with over one million copies of in print
"Lovers of Louis L'Amour-type Westerns will welcome [this] series." — Nashville Banner
"A sweeping, historically accurate [series] that makes America's trail drives come alive." — Artesia Daily Press, New Mexico
"Compton may very well turn out to be the greatest Western writer of them all . . . Very seldom in literature have the legends of the Old West been so vividly painted." — The Tombstone Epitath
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About the author
Ralph Compton stood six-foot-eight without his boots. His first novel in the Trail Drive series, The Goodnight Trail, was a finalist for the Western Writers of America Medicine Pipe Bearer Award for best debut novel. He was also the author of the Sundown Rider series and the Border Empire series. A native of St. Clair County, Alabama, Compton worked as a musician, a radio announcer, a songwriter, and a newspaper columnist before turning to writing westerns. He died in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1998.
