For the ranchers riding with Rand Hayes, things had gone from bad to worse. The Santa Fe man who'd contracted five thousand head of cattle was dead - murdered by renegades. Now the Texans has a herd of longhorns and only one choice: cross two mountain ranges and the Mojave Desert to the gold-fevered market at Los Angeles. A trail blazed by ancient Spaniards, this was a route that would lead through a brutal, wondrous land, where a hostile Ute nation was only one danger the cattle drive faced, and California was a shooting war away...