In "A Man Was a Real Man in Them Days," Ruth Burns celebrates the life and character of the pioneers who dared to challenge the vast prairie of the Llano Estacado of Eastern New Mexico. In the 1880s along the Rio Grande and Pecos Rivers, the cities of Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Ft. Sumner were bustling centers of commerce, but on the High Plains, due to the lack of dependable water, the prairie was inhabited only by occasional outlaws, Indian hunting parties, Hispanic mustangers and buffalo hunters. After the Civil War, cowmen began to bring their herds to the plains; and in 1898 when the railroad came, homesteaders poured in, lured by promises of free land. Barbed-wire fences were put up, and the day of the open range was at an end. Using interviews and letters collected by her mother in the 1930s and 1940s, Burns reveals the courage, determination, and good humor of these first settlers by using their own words, recorded while they were still living.