for the folk tales in
_Coronado's Children, Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver_, and _Tongues of the
Monte_, also for some of his animal tales in _The Voice of the Coyote_,
outlaw and maverick narratives in _The Longhorns_, and "The Pacing White
Steed of the Prairies" and other horse stories in _The Mustangs_.

The characters in Harvey Fergusson's _Wolf Song_ (1927) are the Mountain
Men of Kit Carson's time, and the city of their soul is rollicky Taos.
It is a lusty, swift song of the pristine earth. Fergusson's _The Blood
of the Conquerors_ (1931) tackles the juxtaposition of Spanish-Mexican
and Anglo-American elements in New Mexico, of which state he is a
native. _Grant of Kingdom_ (1850) is strong in wisdom life, vitality of
character, and historical values.

FRED GIPSON'S _Hound-Dog Man_ and _The Home Place_ lack the critical
attitude toward life present in great fiction but they are as honest and
tonic as creek bottom soil and the people in them are genuine.

FRANK GOODWYN'S _The Magic of Limping John_ (New York, 1944, OP) is a
coherence of Mexican characters, folk tales, beliefs, and ways in
the ranch country of South Texas. There is something of magic in the
telling, but Frank Goodwyn has not achieved objective control over
imagination or sufficiently stressed the art of writing.

PAUL HORGAN of New Mexico has in _The Return of the Weed_ (short
stories), _Far from Cibola_, and other fiction coped with modern life in
the past-haunted New Mexico.

OLIVER LAFARGE'S _Laughing Boy_ (1929) grew out of the author's
ethnological knowledge of the Navajo Indians. He achieves character.

TOM LEA'S _The Brave Bulls_ (1949) has, although it is a sublimation of
the Mexican bullfighting world, Death and Fear of Death for its dominant
theme. It may be compared in theme with Stephen Crane's _The Red Badge
of Courage_. It is written with the utmost of economy, and is beautiful
in its power. _The Wonderful Country_ (1952), a historical novel of the
frontier, but emphatically not a "Western," recognizes more complexities
of society. Its economy and directness parallel the style of Tom Lea's
drawings and paintings, with which both books are illustrated.

_Sundown_, by John Joseph Mathews (1934), goes more profoundly than
_Laughing Boy_ into the soul of a young Indian (an Osage) and his
people. Its translation of the "long, long thoughts" of the boy and then
of "shades of the prison house" closing down upon him is superb writing.
The