Eve Ball has lived in the Ruidoso highlands of New Mexico, close to the Mescalero Reservation. Geography made her neighbor to the Apaches; sympathy and liking made her their friend; sensitivity to their part in the historic Southwestern drama made her their historian--able to see experience through their eyes, just as she used the lends of a pioneer Lincoln County woman to view and relate the saga of Ma'am Jones of the Pecos. She also edited and annotated the colorful Lily Klasner autobiography My Girlhood Among Outlaws.

James Kaywaykla lived longer to recount Apache history than any of his fellow tribesmen. In his later years, he often stayed in the author's home to unwind more continuously the thread of narrative. On the warpath in the 1880s with his chieftain elders, shipped with his people to Florida in 1886, Kaywaykla later was a member of a committee that selected Mescalero as the home of the Chiricahuas and the Warm Springs.