Murder on the White Sands: The Disappearance of Albert and Henry Fountain (review)

8oSouthwestern Historical QuarterlyJuly against Goodnight and other ranchers. Who was the foreman of the grand jury? Charles Goodnight. The author also delves into the successes and failures of Goodnight's attempts at crossbreeding animal and plant life. The man within the man is the personal side of Charles Goodnight. He was a man subject to fears and doubts—uncomfortable with educated people. He was tough and stern in his business dealings, but soft and gentle with his wives. Deeply sympathetic to die Indians, he felt the ranchers had encroached upon their land. Goodnight was a man with so many ideas he would have required several lifetimes to pursue them all. With this book, William T. Hagan weaves a tale about the Panhandle during a time before law and order, when the only transportation was on horseback. He introduces a cast of characters more interesting than any found in fiction, and Col. Charles Goodnight shines in the leading role. Dallas, TexasLana Payne Barnett Murder on the White Sands: The Disappearance ofAlbert and Henry Fountain. By Corey Recko. (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2007. Pp. 244. Illustrations , notes, sources, index. ISBN 9781574412246. $24.95, cloth.) Corey Recko's Murder on the White Sands: The Disappearance ofAlbert and Henry Fountain examines the bizarre disappearance of lawyer AlbertJennings Fountain and his young son Henry on their 150-mile journey from Lincoln, New Mexico to their home in Mesillat. Fountain, a New Yorker who in the 1850s moved to northern California where he was introduced to journalism, served as a reporter for the Sacramento Union during filibuster William Walker's expedition to Nicaragua. It was during this time that Fountain experienced his first brush with death. Having exposed Walker's plan to turn Nicaragua into a slave-holding republic with Walker as its appointed president, Fountain was arrested and sentenced to death but managed to escape. After passing the bar, Fountain enlisted in the First California Infantry Volunteers in August 1861 and served until his discharge in 1864. His unit saw considerable action against Native Americans. Recko highlights Fountain's wounding while tracking a band of renegade Navajos. Taken to Fort Bliss to recover , Fountain was frequendy seen on the streets of El Paso and eventually moved his family there, started a law practice, and was elected to the Texas senate where he served as the Republican majority leader. Recko adequately covers Fountain's move to Mesilla, New Mexico in 1873 and his activities there prior to the conflicts he later had with Albert Bacon Fall. In November 1 888, Fall ran against Fountain for a seat in the New Mexico state legislature, which Fountain won. During the reelection of 1890, Fountain lost to Fall by forty-five votes, a loss which heightened the rivalry of the 1892 election. Republicans called in the militia to guard the polls, while Fall enlisted the help of his friend Oliver Lee, along withJames Gililland and William McNew. Fountain disappeared while on his way home to Mesilla, a trip he chose to 2??8Book Reviews81 make despite having received (onJanuary 30, 1886) a tiireatening message: Unless proceedings were dropped against a number of men indicted for cattle rustling, he (Fountain) would never reach home alive. As Recko clearly lays out, Fountain had been at Lincoln where he helped to bring thirty-two indictments against twenty-three men, two of whom (William McNew and Oliver Lee) figured prominendy in the mystery of Fountain's disappearance. On February 1, 1886, Fountain and his son left Lincoln for Mesilla but disappeared near White Sands. Search parties managed to locate Fountain's buckboard and a trail but no bodies. The bulk of Murder on the White Sands examines the investigation into the Fountains' disappearance by Pat Garrett and John Fraser, Pinkerton National Detective Agency operatives. In total, thirty-nine individuals were named as possible suspects or conspirators, with Lee, Gililland, McNew, and Fall leading die list. Recko's narrative is weakened primarily because it relies on newspaper accounts to piece together the niai due to the loss of trial transcripts. Recko saves the best for last, summarizing what he believes was each individual 's involvement in the disappearance. The author concludes that...