Acknowledgments

 

The 1954 black-and-white photograph of the famous alligator pond in El Paso’s downtown San Jacinto Plaza is reprinted by permission of the El Paso Public Library from their Aultman Collection, with the assistance of librarian Danny Gonzalez.

I’d like to thank publisher Tom Doherty of Tor/Forge Books for allowing me another book in print and editor Bob Gleason for once again helping with good story notes. Assistant editor Kelly Quinn and copy editor Susannah Noel were also helpful in readying this text.

Former Northland Press editor Tom Carpenter from Flagstaff and frontier-weapons expert Phil Spangenberger from Leona Valley, California, both provided their expertise, as did Los Angeles producer/filmmaker Marcos Cline-Marquez with my weak Spanish. Mr. Spangenberger can also be enjoyed on two of Mark Allen’s DVDs, Gunplay Made Easy and Gunplay: The Art of Trick & Fancy Gun Handling. Wes Patience is a Western historian retired to Bisbee, Arizona, who pointed me in right directions research-wise.

And lastly, my dear mother, Kathryn Swarthout, for her help removing modern words from these Old West characters’ mouths. Without these experts’ wise suggestions, this Western tale could not have been polished.

As for the master storyteller himself, the great Glendon, well, he knows.