Stories of New Mexico

FIGURES IN A LANDSCAPE--Paul Horgan --Harper ($2.50).

Sound works of fiction centred in the Southwest are few & far between. The grandeur of that country, its translucent and heady atmosphere, have had a superficializing effect on many artists and writers. Of the few serious writers able to work in New Mexico with a steady mind, Paul Horgan is one. Author of the Harper Prize Novel, The Fault of Angels (1933), Horgan has held the job of librarian at New Mexico Military Institute since 1926. Prolific, uneven, liable to fits of preciosity, his writing is at its thoughtful best in Figures in a Landscape.

The book consists of 30 sections, of which nine are stories, the others short panels of monologue giving the historical setting, sketching the traces of old times from which the author has imagined his scenes. The panorama extends from the Pueblo Indian civilization that "watched the steel and silver helmets of the invaders spark with sunlight" in the distance, to an imitation Hollywood pr'meer conducted by a promoter in a sound truck under a local marquee. It is an eventful 400 years.

Two Spanish boys are left in charge of their farm in the Rio Grande valley and of their mother, who is in labor. The adobe house is cold; they need skins to keep themselves and the new baby warm. Taking their father's musket they ride into the mountains, are separated in a blizzard, learn more of themselves and of each other in danger, return proudly with skins of mountain cats, a wolf, a bear.

A pioneer tells of striking into the Indian-haunted plains west of Missouri immediately after a troop of soldiers has been massacred. Led by a 23-year-old lieutenant who understands Indian "deviousness," the party forestalls a night attack by winking bull's-eye lanterns around their camp, concludes a treaty with the Indians by promising to conjure no more stars down from heaven.

Another good story, "The Candy Colonel," deals with army adventures in the '80s. To his sources for these chapters Author Horgan pays just tribute: "How many novelists and draftsmen and scientists the Army contained in those days!" But if Horgan is adept at recreating action and atmosphere from records, he is no slouch at direct observation. If he can reconstruct the fortunes of a German family from one of the strange, castle-like old mansions to be found here & there in the Southwest, he can also--as he does in the best story of the book--write a penetrating tale of a modern high-school love affair and its aftermath.

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