The Way of the Eagle — Ned Conquest

Both of these short novels take place in the sun-baked, rattle-naked American Southwest of the 1870s. A small town called Paco serves as their common setting; and both stories are told in the first person by a Paco townsman, Sam McCallum. A number of the town's characters appear in both tales, and the struggle to achieve some viable sense of community justice underlies the action of each. The first novel deals with a capital crime and its effects on the people of Paco. The second tells of a peace officer whose rough but efficient ways incur the hatred of the town he serves. Here, in a milieu usually thought to be dominated by men, each novel features a distinct female character who, in her own way, could teach the angels (if not the men around her) a lesson in love and courage.