Most of these stories date from the 1950s and were first published in various pulp magazines. However, they already exhibit the leanness of style, description and dialogue that were to become Leonard's trademark. And amazing how many of them have been turned into films: the classic "ThreeTen to Yuma" with Glenn Ford; "Valdez is Coming" with Burt Lancster; and "Hombre" with Paul Newman, to name but a few. Most of them are traditional Western stories, featuring laconic, slow-moving heroes who turn explosive when called into action. The female characters are also of a type; patient women always ready to stand by their men, although in the story "The Colonel's Lady" the eponymous heroine turns out to be as lethal as a spitting cobra. As befits the time and places, there is quite an amount of violence, but there are also quiet moments, as in the title story "The Tonto Woman", where a lonely, betrayed woman is reunited with her husband. The tales here have a certain curiosity value because of their author's later fame, but they also stand by themselves as depictions of episodes in the evolving of the American West.