LAST REVEILLE

Morrell's third novel, this time a horse-soldier Western set in 1916, is by far his best. At center is Miles Calendar, 65, a Georgian who as a boy saw his home destroyed by Northern troops and commonsensically began marching with them. He fights in the Plains War against the Sioux, and charges up San Juan Hill with the Rough Riders. Now a scout on the New Mexican border, he joins General ""Black Jack"" Pershing and leads the US cavalry on its reprisal raid into Mexico to punish Pancho Villa for his forays into Texas and New Mexico. A young cavalryman, Prentice, becomes the first to break through Calendar's defensive hostility and is taken on as the old scout's apprentice. The action has a peculiar glory about it, what with mounted pistol charges (.45 automatics, not six-shooters), primitive airplanes, and the rigors of desert battle. As graphic as a glass-plate photograph.