"But," Rabbit Stockings said, "don't blame the white women. This is kind of an unusual happening. Just one of those weird things that happen through a misunderstanding.""Maybe civilization is based on a misunderstanding," the trader said. "The misunderstanding that if you asphalt the whole world, replace nature with chrome, do everything and get everywhere ten times as fast as before, then you got progress.""Don't be bitter, boy," Rabbit Stockings said.* * *Portrait of an Artist with Twenty-Six Horses is a wonderfully convoluted clash of cultures, of the city and everything that is not the city, of man and himself. It's about sinking in the quicksand at the bottom of the arroyo or making an indelible mark in the cliff-face towering above. And this Empty-Grave release is about preserving paintings on stone instead of standing by as the rain and wind brush them away.* * *WILLIAM EASTLAKE was born in New York City and spent his early years in Liberty Corners and Caldwell, New Jersey. He served in the Army from 1942 until 1946 and after the war spent three years studying and traveling in France, Italy, and England. Upon his return to this country, he purchased a ranch in New Mexico where he now lives with his wife. His chief interests are good cattle, good horses, and the plight of the Navajo Indians. Mr. Eastlake's other novels are Go in Beauty and The Bronc People. His short stories have appeared in Harper's, Hudson Review, Evergreen Review, The Saturday Evening Post, and other magazines, and have been reprinted in various anthologies.Eastlake received a Ford Grant in 1964, a Rockefeller Grant in 1966, a Doctorate of Letters from the University of Albuquerque in 1970, the Les Lettres Nouvelles Award for the French translation of Portrait of an Artist with Twenty-Six Horses in 1972, and the Western Literature Association Distinguished Achievement Award in 1985.