A stubborn band of hard-driving Texans lock horns with a ruthless railroad baron in a bloody battle for an untamed land. 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 history blazing trail drives. Benton McCaleb and his band of bold-spirited cowboys brave over a thousand treacherous miles to drive 2400 head of ornery cattle into Wyoming's Sweetwater Valley. They're setting up a ranch just north of Cheyenne when a ruthless railroad baron and his hired killers try to force them off the land. With the help of a Shoshoni Indian tribe and Buffalo Bill Cody, McCaleb and his men vow to stand and fight. Outgunned and outmanned, they'll wage the most ferocious battle of their lives - to win the right to call the land their own.
Author Biography
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.
