Paso Por Aqui

Alamogordo, New Mexico: The Friends of the Alamogordo Public Library, 1963. Trade Paperback. Very Good. 6 1/2" X 9 1/2. Hurd, Peter - Cover and Frontispiece; Leftwich, Regal J. - Chapter Illustrations. 68 Pages. Staple-bound Limited Edition Copy Number 492 of 5,000. Covers show some light wear to edges and spine. Interior text pages are flawless. The cover and frontispiece are reproductions of paintings by Peter Hurd. This eight chapter story of a cowboy named Ross McEwen is reprinted from the copyrighted 1949 The Best Novels and Stories of Eugene Manlove Rhodes.This is a Western with a difference: not a fist fight or a killing. Not a shot fired in anger. It has been called one of the best Western stories ever written, and its popularity has endured since its first appearance in the Saturday Evening Post in 1926. In it Rhodes has created his own memorial to the decent people of his world who passed this way without fanfare. In so doing he has captured for all time the free, lonely, self-reliant, skilled, eternally optimistic essence of his West. It is a story of a cowboy named Ross McEwen who robs a store at Belen, New Mexico, with an unloaded shotgun, and takes to the hills. He successfully eludes pursuit, but pauses in his flight to aid a Mexican family stricken with diphtheria in a lonely ranch house on the edge of the White Sands. The bonfire he builds to attract help also attracts Sheriff Pat Garrett and his deputy. This story was filmed in Gallup, New Mexico under the title Four Faces West starring Joel McCrae, his wife Frances Dee, and Charlie Bickford. There is a six-page Bibliography listing Rhodes' books, collections, short stories, letters, articles and rare times. The Alamogordo Public Library has an extensive collection of Rhodes' literature and private papers.