copyright 1941; Houghton Mifflin Company publishers, Boston; hardbound; very good condition with unmarked pages; no dust jacket.
 
Forward -
At the time of this story the part of the country that later become New Mexico was still part of Old Mexico.  Settlers were pushing westward through Missouri.  Beyond her borders the West began.  It was a land of trackless prairie, desert, and mountains, the home of fierce Indian tribes and wandering herds of buffaloes.  Through the prairie and desert wound the Santa Fe Trail, the long route of the traders carrying goods between the United States and Mexico.  Danger waited the brave and daring travelers at every turn of the Trail...
 
The story relates conditions of the country and events that happened along the Santa Fe Trail in the twenties and thirties of the nineteenth century and is based almost altogether on the diaries and journals of the traders who passed back and forth over this trail during that period...