Ralph Compton the Too-Late Trail (The Trail Drive Series) - Softcover

Mayo, Matthew P.; Compton, Ralph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593333837 ISBN 13: 9780593333839

Verlag: Berkley, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

Western Writers of America 2022 Spur Award Finalist

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.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ralph Compton stood six foot eight without his boots. He worked as a musician, a radio announcer, a songwriter, and a newspaper columnist. His first novel, The Goodnight Trail, was a finalist for the Western Writers of America Medicine Pipe Bearer Award for best debut novel. He was the USA Today bestselling author of the Trail of the Gunfighter series, the Border Empire series, the Sundown Rider series, and the Trail Drive series, among others.

Matthew P. Mayo is a Western Writers of America Spur Award winner and a Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award finalist. His short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and his many novels include the Westerns Winters' War, Wrong Town, Hot Lead, Cold Heart, Dead Man's Ranch, Tucker's Reckoning, The Hunted, and Shotgun Charlie. He contributes to several popular series of Western and adventure novels.

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Chapter One

The bulge-eyed Texas longhorn snorted, her muscled red shoulders bunching and quivering in counterpoint to her skittering eyes and heaving, lathered rib cage. Flecks of white foam dripped from her trembling mouth. But it was the beast's foot-and-a-half-long mismatched horns that Mitchell Newland kept an eye on. She jerked her head and offered him a jaunty wag.

"If I wanted to cause you grief, missy, I'd have dosed you with a lead pill long ago. Maybe I should have at that, but your mama was ol' Broody Ethel, and Pa would never have forgiven me if I laid low one of her bloodline."

Somehow that got through to her, and the belligerent beast eased her post-legged stance and swung her head back toward the clot of scrub brush behind her.

Past her shoulder, Mitch caught a glimpse of what he had expected to see-a tiny red-and-white mottled face with drooped ears peering around the spiny branches. "Good mama."

The young rancher eased his black gelding, Champ, three, then four cautious steps backward, but then the horse balked. "Let's give her space. She's doing what we'd want her to, after all, was a coyote to come along intent on molesting her calf."

If Champ understood or cared about what Mitch was saying, he didn't let on, and he didn't budge another step. Mitch dug harder with his heels. The horse offered a low snort, then gave in and they eased back, sidestepping until they were at a distance safe enough should the ornery young mother change her mind.

"My word," said Mitch, rubbing his sweat-stained fawn hat back and forth on his head. "Was a few minutes there I thought maybe we were going to have to duke it out. And you"-he patted the horse's neck-"you big lummox, all but let me down back there. What's gotten into the critters on the Twin N spread this morning?"

Mitch half-smiled and gave a look around, as if someone on the scrub-and-sand plain might catch him nattering away. Conversing with himself was a habit he'd had most of his twenty-three years, and one his pap, Jakey Newland, had encouraged.

"You go right ahead talking to you and yours. You meet better people that way, son," he'd say with a wink.

"Don't know about that, Pap," said Mitch, resuming his one-sided conversation. "But I can tell you the only other person who doesn't think it's odd is Evie. She is, as you said long ago, a keeper, and I'm pretty certain she feels that way about me, too. Only trouble is, I can't in good conscience ask her to marry up with me if this ranch limps along. We need rain, money, and more of both. In that order. But I'll settle for two out of three."

Mitch looked up at the morning's wide blue sky and sighed. His gaze fixed on the worn, flat trail before him, dust kicked up by a gust, carrying off whatever useful dirt the Twin N had left. Nope, Pap hadn't left much. Despite that, Mitch felt something deep inside for the place. A warmth different from the sun's unceasing heat driving down, day on day, week on month on year.

He shook off the tiring thoughts and drained his canteen. He was in sight of the cabin anyway. With luck, the pool at the creek would have collected more of its slow flow. It'd still be the silty color peculiar to muddied water, enough so that he told himself it was no different from creamed coffee. He'd much prefer to sip from a clear-flowing stream on his own property.

"We will again," he said as they trudged homeward. "All it takes is a little rain. Just a little rain." Mitch looked skyward once more, in case a stray thunderhead had lost its way and wandered over in his direction. Maybe it would linger above the Twin N and figure it was as good a place as any to let loose its precious cargo. But nope, nothing but blue above and brown below.

He sighed and urged Champ into a trot. "Race you home, boy," he said, smiling at the same old tired joke his father had always told to whatever horse he'd been riding. And somehow, the horse always won . . . by a nose.

Chapter Two

Papa, you know that's not true." Evelyn Bilks narrowed her eyes at her father, the single most annoying man she'd ever met. Of course, that didn't mean much, living on a dusty old ranch three miles from the limp little town of Cawlins, Texas. She'd been raised by her father, or so he thought.

It was Carmelita, cook, housemaid, and unofficial ruler of the house, who could take most of the credit for keeping the young firebrand from straying too far off the straight, if not always narrow path. And of course there were the dozen ranch hands always about the place whom she regarded as little more than annoying brothers.

Still, Evie had met enough men to guess her suspicion was true-her father was infuriating. And claiming Jakey Newland had been a liar and a cheat was two falsehoods too far.

"I knew Jakey about as well as I know Mitch, and neither of them has ever lied to me, nor cheated anybody I've ever heard of. Those claims of yours will be the first."

Corliss Bilks jammed the wad of ham and egg into his mouth and dropped the fork with a clatter to the china plate. Both Evie and Carmelita looked up, unimpressed with his tired display of annoyance.

"I about have had enough of you correcting me in my own house, young miss. And in front of the help, to boot!"

Evie suppressed a smile, as did Carmelita. To call the older woman "help" was like calling their nine-year-old bluetick hound, Golly, a feisty pup. The dog spent all his time asleep and farting on the ranch house's long, low porch. His only worth was as a conversation deterrent.

Evie hated it when her father talked with his mouth full of food, something he'd always done. She long ago gave up trying to change his ways where manners were concerned.

"Your mother never could, so leave off it," he'd say around a mouthful of steak and beans.

She shoved away from the table and threw her balled napkin on her plate.

"You ain't eat yet!" Corliss looked as though it was a high crime to skip a meal, an offense he'd not committed in many a year.

"I have lost my appetite." She turned to walk out.

"Where you going?"

"Riding."

"Yeah, to that cursed Newland spread. I have half a mind to forbid you from ever seeing him again."

Evie paused in the dining room's doorway. "You do and you'll never see me again, Papa." She strode down the long, cool hallway, her riding boots snapping hard on the polished planking.

Bilks shook his head. "Worse than her mother, she is. Girl's going to cause me grievous harm one of these days." He ladled another serving of beans onto his plate.

As Carmelita cleared away Evie's setting, she muttered, "Evie is right and you know it."

"What was that?" said Corliss through his beans.

The cook sighed. "I said Evie is right."

"You, too, huh?" He gulped coffee, then wiped his mouth. "Gettin' so a man can't speak his mind in his own home else a passel of women descends screeching out of the skies like . . ."

"Eagles?" she said, not hiding her smirk as she walked out.

"No!" He shoved away from the table. To her back, he said, "Like vultures! That's what I was going to say!"

To the empty room he sighed. "One of these days I will have to do something about young Newland and Evie. I do not like where it's all leading. Not a little bit at all."

Chapter Three

T. C. Trundleson paused in sweeping the boardwalk in front of his mercantile and leaned on the broom handle. He dragged a sleeve across his forehead and sighed long and low. It was fixing to be another griddle-hot Texas day, like all the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Berkley
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593333837
• ISBN 13: 9780593333839
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: BERKLEY; https://www.penguin.com/?s=BERKLEY; ; Unit 2 Limavady Business Park; Limavady; County Londonderry; BT49 0HR; Vereinigtes Königreich
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar