LAUGHLIN, RUTH (formerly Ruth Laughlin Barker). Caballeros, New York, 1931; republished by Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1946. Essayical goings into the life of things. Especially delightful on burros. A book to be starred. The Wind Leaves No Shadow, New York, 1948; Caxton, 1951. A novel around Dona Tules Barcelo, the powerful, beautiful, and silvered mistress of Santa Fe's gambling sala in the 1830's and '40's.
MAGOFFIN, SUSAN SHELBY. Down the Santa Fe Trail, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1926. Delectable diary.
PILLSBURY, DOROTHY L. No High Adobe, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1950. Sketches, pleasant to read, that make the gente very real.
RUXTON, GEORGE FREDERICK. Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains, London, 1847. In 1924 the second half of this book was reprinted under title of Wild Life in the Rocky Mountains. In 1950, with additional Ruxton writings discovered by Clyde and Mae Reed Porter, the book, edited by LeRoy R. Hafen, was reissued under title of Ruxton of the Rockies, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Santa Fe is only one incident in it. Ruxton illuminates whatever he touches. He was in love with the wilderness and had a fire in his belly. Other writers add details, but Ruxton and Gregg embodied the whole Santa Fe world.
VESTAL, STANLEY. The Old Santa Fe Trail, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1939.
18. Stagecoaches, Freighting
A GOOD INTRODUCTION to a treatment of the stagecoach of the West would be Thomas De Quincey's "The English Mail-Coach." The proper place to read about the coaches would be in Doctor Lyon's Pony Express Museum, out from Pasadena, California. May it never perish! Old Monte drives up now and then in Alfred Henry Lewis' Wolfville tales, and Bret Harte made Yuba Bill crack the Whip; but, somehow, considering all the excellent expositions and reminiscing of stage-coaching in western America, the proud, insolent, glorious figure of the driver has not been adequately pictured.
Literature on "Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Trail" is pertinent. See also under "Pony Express."
BANNING, WILLIAM, and BANNING, GEORGE HUGH. Six Horses, New York, 1930. A combination of history and autobiography. Routes to and in California; much of Texas. Enjoyable reading. Excellent on drivers, travelers, stations, "pass the mustard, please." Bibliography. OP.