Description
It was a long journey and one that no one had tried before. Jeff Kennett and his drovers have brought a herd of 2,000 longhorns all the way from Texas to California. It is Kennett's conviction that there is a fortune to be made by transporting the cattle by river boat from Lassen Meadows down the Sacramento River for sale in San Francisco. The Gold Rush is on and there is a tremendous demand for beef and no way to get it. Kennett has been referred to Captain Bill Ballinger, headquartered in Sacramento, as the man who can best pilot the cattle downriver, transporting the herd in increments aboard The Sunset Trail. At a U.S. Army camp on the Truckee River, Kennett first met Deborah Sharpe, who was then on her way from Boston to join her father in Sacramento. Kennett renews their acquaintance when he is invited to the home of Colonel Nathaniel Sharpe, her father. The colonel with his partner, Noah Carlin, is in the shipping business with a fleet of river boats. Sharpe assures Kennett that he can accomplish the job faster and at less expense than Ballinger. And he won't take no for an answer. When Kennett does give him a no, Noah Carlin enters the room with a man named Shag Taggart, who claims he represents the law and intends to arrest Kennett on a charge of murder. Kennett has not come to this meeting unarmed, and he is able to hold the three at bay by gunpoint to make his escape. But if he doesn't know it for certain by then, Captain Ballinger makes it plain ? Sharpe and Carlin will do everything they can not only to stop The Sunset Trail from transporting Kennett's cattle, but to seize the herd before even it can be shipped. This novel is set against a vivid panorama of California in the days of the Gold Rush, with its teeming population of men from all over the world and those ruthless fortune seekers who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals.
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