Ralph Compton the Too-Late Trail

Ralph Compton the Too-Late Trail
Author: Matthew P. Mayo
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2021-04-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0593333845

A rancher discovers just how many times a man's luck can hold out in this thrilling novel in the bestselling Trail Drive Series After struggling for years to work a raw-patch ranch in the arid flatlands of Texas, young Mitchell Newland learns that his herd of scrubby range cattle will fetch ten times their local price if they're driven to Montana. He strikes a one-sided deal with the devil, neighboring rancher Corliss Bilks, to back his play with cattle, men, and horses. The trail brims with hellish hardship: prairie fire, stampede, flooded rivers, hailstorms, rattlers, sickness, long, broiling days and frigid nights. Halfway to Montana, range pirates and a rogue Apache war party close in. Mitch and the boys fight, grim and helpless, watching as their herd is driven westward in a cloud of dust and cackling laughter. Cut down to two bloodied men, Mitch collapses, far too late, and admits the old man has won the bet. But salvation in the form of a Basque sheepherder revives Mitch and his pal, Drover Joe, and Mitch realizes he isn't done. Not by a long shot. And now he has nothing to lose.

The Goodnight Trail

The Goodnight Trail
Author: Ralph Compton
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Total Pages: 390
Release: 1992-08-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429933437

Former Texas Rangers Benton McCaleb, Will Elliot, and Brazos Gifford ride with Charles Goodnight as he rounds up thousands of ornery, unbranded cattle for the long drive to Colorado. From the Trinity River brakes to Denver, they'll battle endless miles of flooded rivers, parched desert, and whiskey-crazed Comanches. And come face-to-face with Judge Roy Bean and legendary gunslingers like Clay Allison. For McCaleb and his hard-riding crew, the drive is a fierce struggle against the perils of an untamed land. A fight to the finish where the brave reach glory—or die hard.

Ralph Compton The Sagebrush Trail

Ralph Compton The Sagebrush Trail
Author: Robert J. Randisi
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2021-11-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0593334043

In this fast-paced new installment in bestselling author Ralph Compton's Trail Drive series, a trail drive boss faces many challenges. Luke Ross is determined to drive his herd to the trailhead, but along the way he'll have to cope with rustlers, bandits, and warlike Indians.

The Western Trail

The Western Trail
Author: Ralph Compton
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2009-09-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429933461

In the aftermath of the Civil War, cash-starved Texans turned to the only resource they possessed in abundance: longhorn cows. Despite the hazards of trailing longhorns across some three hundred miles of Indian Territory, this was the only way to access the railroad... THE WESTERN TRAIL Benton McCaleb and his band of bold-spirited cowboys traveled long and hard to drive thousands of ornery cattle into Wyoming's Sweetwater Valley. They're in the midst of setting up a ranch just north of Cheyenne when a ruthless railroad baron and his hired killers try to force them off the land. Now, with the help of the Shoshoni Indian tribe and a man named Buffalo Bill Cody, McCaleb and his men must vow to stand and fight. Outgunned and outmanned, they will wage the most ferocious battle of their lives—to win the right to call the land their own.

The Deadwood Trail

The Deadwood Trail
Author: Ralph Compton
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Total Pages: 302
Release: 1999-01-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429903198

They had beaten the harsh odds of the frontier. But for the two powerful ranchers, the most formidable trail lay ahead. There had never been a trail drive like this before... The only riches Texans had left after the Civil War were five million maverick longhorns and the brains, brawn, and boldness to drive them to market along treacherous trails. Now, Ralph Compton brings this violent and magnificent time to life in an extraordinary series based on the history-blazing trail drives. For veteran ranchers Nelson Story of Montana, and Benton McCaleb of Wyoming, it was an opportunity a man didn't pass up. In gold camps of the Black Hills, miners were hungry for beef, at boomtown prices. But within the two outfits were Indians, gunmen, Texans, lovesick cowboys, and high-spirited women. Worse, the drive would pass through Crow and Sioux territory, when Custer's defeat at the Little Big Horn was just hours away. The drives were tangled by violent grudges, stampeding herds, and dangerous deception. The two brawling outfits had one thing in common: a deadly surprise awaiting them at the end of the trail...

Ralph Compton Broken Rider

Ralph Compton Broken Rider
Author: John Shirley
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2020-08-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0593102304

In this exciting new Ralph Compton western, a man without a memory meets an unforgettable ally: the one and only Bat Masterson. Riding into the town of Smoky River on a mangy mule, Dane looks as broken down as his old mount. His Stetson is ragged, his boots are tied together with leather thongs, and he wears a Colt Army revolver with exactly three bullets. He wouldn't know what to say if you asked him where he got the gun, or how he learned to shoot it so well. He doesn't know if Dane is his first name or his last. Something happened that cost him much of his memory, and he can't remember what that something was. For three years he's been traveling the West as a cowboy, a buffalo hunter, a farmhand. Smoky River looks to be a fine place to settle down. If only his past didn't decide to catch up to him here. . .

Ralph Compton The Reluctant Lawman

Ralph Compton The Reluctant Lawman
Author: Craig Barstow
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2022-02-22
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 059333406X

A gunman wants to hang up his Colts in this fast-paced installment of Ralph Compton’s Sundown Riders series. Luke Lessing was told his career at the Pinkerton Agency was assured, thanks to his skill with pistol and rifle. But when his partner got ambushed, Luke was widely blamed. Discouraged with Pinkerton politics, he moved on to a job as sheriff in a “sleepy” little town in Colorado, only to barely escape with his life. So Luke happily traded wearing a badge for cooking at the Comstock Café in Virginia City, hub of the fabled Comstock Lode. He’d put his past behind him—until a bushwhacked marshal and a confrontation with an old enemy drag him into a whirlpool of corruption, missing miners, and concealed treasure, where you can never tell who will betray you next. Luke’s pressured to pin on a badge yet again, not only by the Secretary of the Nevada Territory, but the Secretary’s boss, who happens to be President of the United States. There’s a lot of dough on the line, but not the kind he’s got a talent for. What does a fella have to do to get back to baking biscuits? More than eight million Ralph Compton books in print!

Dark Horses

Dark Horses
Author: Ralph Cotton
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2014-06-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101636173

SOUTH-OF-THE-BORDER SHOWDOWN Trouble follows horse trader Will Summers as soon as he sets foot in Dark Horses, Mexico. A party of men is intent on hanging Summers, believing him to be a horse thief, but not before they take him to their boss—Ansil Swann, the very man Summers is delivering four horses to. Will is saved from the hangman’s noose when the men are waylaid by Ansil’s beautiful wife, Bailey. Only Bailey has an agenda of her own, one that lands Will right in the middle of a deadly shootout. Now, in a lawless land where anything goes, Will’s gunslinging skills are put to the test—and if he’s not careful, he may never make it back across the border alive….

Ralph Compton Bounty Hunter

Ralph Compton Bounty Hunter
Author: Ralph Compton
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2009-10-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101140682

A bounty hunter is outgunned and under fire in this Ralph Compton western... John Tone was good at his job. Some would say ruthless. If there was killing to be done, Tone showed no mercy. In another time, far across the ocean, he had lost the only person he had ever loved—and he’d been dead inside ever since. That was the hand Fate dealt him, and he would play it out. But when a powerful criminal from San Francisco’s notorious Barbary Coast makes him an offer he can’t refuse, Tone himself becomes the hunted one. He has to draw out six of his client's worst enemies—making himself a target for the men he would kill. And against those odds Tone knows he may be loading the six chambers of his Colt for the last time… More Than Six Million Ralph Compton Books In Print!