Ralph Compton the Too-late Trail

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.

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.