During the infamous raid on Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916, Antonio Salazar, one of Pancho Villa's bandit chiefs, kidnaps Mary Wells, daughter of New Mexico rancher Frank MacPherson. MacPherson's longtime foreman, James Hampton, determines to go deep into Mexico to rescue the girl he remembers as Little Mary. Hamp's old friend, Bud Tyler, goes with him, as does MacPherson's nephew, the greenhorn Reuben Satterwhite. For Hamp and Tyler, the mission is reminiscent of adventures shared years before as Texas Rangers, when both were young and strong and felt immortal. For Satterwhite, it is adventure and apprenticeship. Once into Mexico, all three men must cross psychological frontiers as well as geographic borders. Mary, meanwhile, has borders of her own to cross. In clean, straightforward prose, the action alternates between Mary and her rescuers, and David Fleming draws the reader into a threatening web where ultimately survival is not the most important thing. In this, his second novel, Fleming demonstrates the creativity and historical responsibility required to turn history into spellbinding fiction.
