The author's own words: "I loved the movie Tombstone, but it annoyed me greatly that the screenwriter took certain liberties with established historical facts. Hour of the Gun with James Garner and Jason Robards, Jr, was also a great film, but it too deviated from the absolute truth of what is known to have happened. Other motion pictures about Tombstone and Arizona Territory are just as flawed. In any event, having already published three other historical novels, I decided to tell the story of the taming of the Arizona Borderlands as never before told in fiction or on film. Inspired by a historical photograph by A Frank Randall, I first meant to call my novel Arizona Female Scout, that being Randall's title for his 1886 photo, which appears on the front cover of my novel. The actual identity of the girl in the picture is unknown today. I gave her a name and a family history, then simply allowed her to interact naturally with Comandante Felipe Neri of the Mexican rurales, Apache warrior girl Dahteste, Marshal Virgil Earp and his brothers, Texas John Slaughter, Johnny Ringo and Pony Diehl, CS Fly and his wife Mollie, Detective Fred Dodge, Dr George Goodfellow, Mayor John Clum, Doc Holliday, General Nelson Miles, the outlaw Pearl Hart, and other colorful characters. I made it a strict rule never to allow my story to deviate from the known history. Only where there is mystery as to what might actually have occurred did I exercise creative imagination. Oh, yes, my publisher, Archer Trent, insisted on changing the title of my book to Little Durango, which, I am happy to admit, is a much better title."