Vanguards of the Plains A Romance of the Old Santa Fé Trail

I honestly love the outdoorsy adventure feel of McCarter's books. If you have read and enjoyed Bess Streeter Aldrich and Willa Cather, here's another author who has that deep awareness of people and that wide descriptive tone about the first inhabitants of the prairies. This book in particular is about the Santa Fe Trail and all the colorful sights and dangers along the way.

What stood out to me was realizing how many people went back and forth along the trails back in the day; mainly I think of the Santa Fe and the Oregon as being mainly one-way journeys, and here's a caste of characters that goes back and forth a bit.