Ralph Compton Red Trail

Informationen zum Autor John Shirley Klappentext A cattle drive faces long odds in this exciting new installment in Ralph Compton's Trail Drive series. An outbreak of hostilities with Comanches has disrupted the usual trail routes. But Mase Durst must get his cows from his Texas ranch to the railway up in Wichita, Kansas, or face losing his land, which the bank is fixing to foreclose on. He's forced to take his herd on a little-used route called the Red Trail-little used for good reasons. It's a tough trek: dangerous, narrow, and fraught with banditry. Along the way, Durst and his men face numerous obstacles thrown up by Mother Nature, cattle rustlers and crooked lawmen. But even their safe arrival in Wichita will offer no relief if he can't make it home in time to save his ranch from the bank-and his wife from the predations of their rapacious neighbor. . . Leseprobe CHAPTER ONE   Central Texas, April 1874   The ranch stretched out near far as the eye could see, flat and sun warmed below them, green with springtime, in places dappled light brown by the herd of longhorn cattle. Mase and Katie Durst sat astride their horses, poised on the bluff overlooking their ranch. The bluff was set amongst the San Vincente hills, just about the only elevation hereabouts, and Mason "Mase" Durst could see most of the 2,340 longhorns. He gazed upon them with considerable satisfaction, for they'd been hard-won. Years back he had hired Crane Williams, young Lorenzo Vasquez, and Pug Liberty to help him "scrape" the start of the herd from the underbrush around the Brazos River. There were said to be a hundred thousand such cattle, descendants of strays, free and legal for the taking in that wild region of Texas. Most of the cattle on Durst Ranch were the offspring from those captured by the Durst hands. It was dangerous work, driving the wild longhorns from the brush-choked oak mottes around the river into the ramshackle pens they'd set up to contain them. Herding the feral cattle back to Durst Ranch carried its risks, too. Mase had gotten badly gored in his right leg from one of the longhorns-but once the cattle were contained on his medium-small ranch, he'd bred them and built up his herd. For some years he'd sold off part of his herd every spring, but for the last four, he'd simply built it up.   They'd lived lean these last years, but Katie never complained. Not even when he'd signed on for other ranchers' trail drives, to be gone for months at a time for a hundred dollars and a chance to learn the trails. He glanced at her affectionately now. His wife was a sturdily attractive woman, the kind people called handsome due to the strong planes of her face, her piercing dark blue eyes, her strong chin. Her shoulders were wider than most women's, her hands a little bigger. He was six feet one himself, and she was five eight. An armful and a sweet one-but tough as leather when she needed to be. She wore buckskin riding breeches today, cut for a lady, and a tan top, the sleeves rolled to her elbows. She had smooth, flawless skin, a contrast to his own craggy, weather-beaten features.   "There's Jim and Curly," Mase said, pointing to the south.   They could see their son, Jim, riding his small cow pony on the flatlands below and doing a good job of it for a nine-year-old boy. Riding alongside him on a quarter horse was the only full-time hand the Durst Ranch had, Carlos "Curly" Chavez. He was a kind of unofficial uncle for the boy, as well as a ranch hand. Curly lived with his family in a sizable cabin in the hills beside the ravine through which ran San Vincente Creek.   Katie grinned. "Look at Jimmy waving that lasso!"   "He's driving a cow back into the herd. Not that she needs it. She's just looking for sweeter grass."   "We're lucky we got those early rains," Katie remarked. "Gave us the good gras...

Product details

• Authors: Ralph Compton, John Shirley
• Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 31.12.2020
• EAN: 9780593102343
• ISBN: 978-0-593-10234-3
• No. of pages: 304
• Dimensions: 106 mm x 171 mm x 20 mm
• Series: The Trail Drive Series
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature