In the "horse latitudes" of the Gulf of Mexico, that zone where long periods of high pressure keep the winds away, becalmed sailors sometimes tossed the horses overboard to conserve water. In these unapologetically traditional and realistic stories, characters find themselves in circumstances which demand similar difficult and undesirable acts. Because the stories are set in the Southwest and Mexico, from about 1920 through 1990, they often hinge on the suspicions, antagonism and ignorance the region's different cultures, races and classes bear against each other. C. W. Smith is an accomplished fictionalist whose vision rings true and whose characters are familiar in the best sense of the word. Although he has published four novels this is his first collection of short stories.