"Most particularly I must tell them about the Purple Tree herself. She was a great beauty in her day. Many a class from the University of Texas art school painted her portrait. Now, in her middle sixties, she is still a handsome creature, possibly the oldest surviving member of the Vitex family, but the neighborhood knows her simply as the Purple tree."--Introduction

No one today, and not many of the old timers back then, knew Mogollón as well as H.A. Hoover. His reminiscences begin in 1904, continue through the boom days, and he was still there, keeping a diary, in the 1950's when they started to call Mogollón a "ghost town." The Bloated Goat Saloon was where the old timers gathered and here are some of the best stories they told -- tales of Indians and desperados, mountain lions and mountain man Ben Lilly,...

Jim McCauley's life -- the best years of his life -- as just a common cowhand. His life story, centered in his teens and twenties, when he punched cows on the long drive, on the Texas plains, and in the farther West.