The Old Spanish Trail

From the bestselling series, a historical saga of the Texas cowboys who made their fortune driving cattle across the western frontier to California.

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