"Readers unfamiliar with the works of Paul Horgan might assume his kind of Southwestern literature means cowboy boots, spurs, chaps, a horse and six-guns. How far from the truth! Horgan, whose identification with the Southwest is as firm as that of J. Frank Dobie, is no Zane Grey, no Louis L'Amour nor Walt Coburn. His writing blazes with feeling not revolvers. His characters do no swallow the final "g" on every ing-word, nor do they twang away in Texas drawls. Paul Horgan's frontiers are more likely to be represented by the first mission than the first corral. Coming from his own experience and broad knowledge of history not wild flights of fancy, his people, the people of his books, are both real and symbolic; they are more likely to contemplate life and their relation to it than take direct, thoughtless action."--Foreword.