In a foreword to his posthumously published "The Rawhide Knot and Other Stories," Richter's daughter Harvena tells of her father's latter-day fascination with the New Mexico he moved to in middle age. Applying the same standards to stories of the early Southwest that he had used in his novels about the Eastern forests, Richter wrote five tales about the days of Bent's Fort and the Santa Fe and Chisholm Trails. They are published in "The Rawhide Knot" along with three stories of earlier frontiers in Appalachia and Ohio….

Survivability was the test, and courage was the characteristic most prized in Conrad Richter's world. As Richter's daughter notes, violence, cruelty and harshness were necessary to the conquest of new lands. Marriage and death come paired in the Southwestern stories called "Early Americana" and "The Flood," and in the Pennsylvania tale of "The Dower Chest." Marriages were seldom romantic: Women...