WHEN the stage coach dropped the shabby, barefooted girl off at Paradise Flats, no one saw anything about Pearl Chavez to indicate that she was to become a legend. She was just a waif whom rich, old Senator McCanles was befriending.

The McCanles' were a strange clan. There was the Senator, only five foot two, fantastically rich, a political power in the new state. His four tall sons: calm Jesse, a lawyer in spite of his father; Lewt, spoiled, handsome, reckless; methodical Gil; and Ruck whose mind has never grown up to his huge body. Laura Belle, the Senator's wife—twenty years of ranching could not make her forget her gentle upbringing in pre-Civil War Texas.

This powerful story is built from conflicts —Pearl's fight for security vs. Lewt's desire for freedom mirror in little the struggle between the civilized ways of the town and the old, wild ways of the rancher.

This special edition of DUEL IN THE SUN by Niven Busch has been made available to the Armed Forces of the United State through an arrangement with the original publisher, William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York.

Editions for the Armed Services, Inc., a non-profit organization established by the Council on Books in Wartime