An extraordinary saga of the trail-blazing cowboys who made their fortune driving cattle from Texas to the Great Frontier. They left Missouri and were headed to Santa Fe. Standing in their way was a parched desert, a land of outlaws and enemies-and one man's dangerous past. He was a wealthy englishman with two beautiful daughters. They were five dusty texans and a gambling man. And they were all on the ride of their lives. 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-making trail drives. The Santa Fe Trail Gavin McCord and his brawling cowboys came to Missouri with a 3,500 longhorns and not one buyer. That's where Gladstone Pitkin came in. A man with money and a dream of ranching in New Mexico, Pitkin bought McCord's cattle and hired his Texans for a trail drive from Independence to Santa Fe. But with an ill-fated gambler on the drive, the courageous, hardened riders weren't just a thousand brutal miles from Santa Fe-they were heading into a death trap.