liberty with blood and maintained it for nine
years as a republic with blood. It was fighting men who pushed back the
frontiers and blazed trails.

The fighting tradition is now giving way to the oil tradition. The Texas
myth as imagined by non-Texans is coming to embody oil millionaires in
airplanes instead of horsemen with six-shooters and rifles. See Edna
Ferber's Giant (1952 novel). Nevertheless, many Texans who never rode
a horse over three miles at a stretch wear cowboy boots, and a lot of
Texans are under the delusion that bullets and atomic bombs can settle
complexities that demand informed intelligence and the power to think.

As I have pointed out in _The Flavor of Texas_, the chronicles of men
who fought the Mexicans and were prisoners to them comprise a unique
unit in the personal narratives and annals of America.

Many of the books listed under the headings of "Texas Rangers," "How the
Early Settlers Lived," and "Range Life" specify the fighting tradition.

BEAN, PETER ELLIS. _Memoir_, published first in Vol. I of Yoakum's
_History of Texas_; in 1930 printed as a small book by the Book Club of
Texas, Dallas, now OP. A fascinating narrative.

BECHDOLT, FREDERICK R. _Tales of the Old Timers_, New York, 1924.
Forceful retelling of the story of the Mier Expedition and of other
activities of the "fighting Texans." OP.

CHABOT, FREDERICK C. _The Perote Prisoners_, San Antonio, 1934.
Annotated diaries of Texas prisoners in Mexico. OP.

DOBIE, J. FRANK. _The Flavor of Texas_, Dallas, 1936. OP. Chapters on
Bean, Green, Duval, Kendall, and other representers of the fighting
Texans.

DUVAL, JOHN C. _Adventures of Bigfoot Wallace_, 1870; _Early Times
in Texas_, 1892. Both books are kept in print by Steck, Austin. For
biography and critical estimate, see _John C. Duval: First Texas Man of
Letters_, by J. Frank Dobie (illustrated by Tom Lea), Dallas, 1939.
OP. _Early Times in Texas_, called "the _Robinson Crusoe_ of Texas," is
Duval's story of the Goliad Massacre and of his escape from it. Duval
served as a Texas Ranger with Bigfoot Wallace, who was in the Mier
Expedition. His narrative of Bigfoot's _Adventures_ is the rollickiest
and the most flavorsome that any American frontiersman has yet inspired.
The tiresome thumping on the hero theme present in many biographies of
frontiersmen is entirely absent. Stanley Vestal wrote _Bigfoot Wallace_
also, Boston, 1942. OP.

ERATH, MAJOR GEORGE G. _Memoirs_, Texas S