The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 65, July 1961 - April, 1962 Page: 602
663 p. : ill., maps (some col.), ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
chute of his mind and out into the broad pastures of 6,ooo Miles
of Fence. Frantz modestly writes that his main function was "to
moderate, to announce the next speaker, and then to get out of
the way." But he did far more than this. He organized the material
along meaningful lines; he selected the good and discarded the
dull; and he created from the actual words of men who had
ridden its ranges, a vivid and picturesque tale of life on the XIT
Ranch of Texas.
Bits and pieces of the reminiscences of seventy-two men and
nine women were used. The author of each fragment is identified
as Frantz weaves his words into the narrative, and a list of "those
who remembered" is supplied at the beginning of the book. No
bibliography nor footnotes are needed therefore, but a good index
was prepared, a unique feature of which is a separate list of the
names of the horses the XIT people remembered. Two maps of
the range and a thirty-two page section of pictures mainly from
Mrs. Duke's collection add to the book's attractiveness. The pic-
tures are well reproduced but poorly located in the book, falling
smack in the middle of an exciting outlaw yarn. "Men . there's
a frail chance that any of you can get through . .," reads the
last sentence on the page before the picture section. The reader
must then choose between looking at the interesting pictures or
dashing through them to find out if any of Yearwood's volunteers
came through alive-a poor choice for an editor to impose on a
a reader, although the picture signature could hardly have been
placed anywhere else except at the end of the volume.
This book, with all the merit of being an organized and beau-
tifully presented story, is more than a social history; it is source
material, resting on the firm bedrock of first-hand accounts. Hence,
while it joins in many libraries and collections several shelves of
other cowboy books, it will always be on the top shelf with a
select few that have made real contributions to the history of the
American West. As a man should be measured by his own stand-
ards, and an event in terms of its own time, a book should be
evaluated in relation to its purpose. By this standard, as well as
by comparison with other books in its library classification, 6,ooo
Miles of Fence is a success.602
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 65, July 1961 - April, 1962, periodical, 1962; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101195/m1/666/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.