The keen-eyed, cool-headed, and fearless men (Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, Buffalo Bill Cody, Big Foot Wallace, and Captain Jim Cook, among others) who were pivotal personalities for more than half a century in the almost ceaseless task of clearing the way for and guarding the lives and properties of explorers, emigrants, and settlers in the West, are an extinct type of pioneer, Accounts of the heroic deeds of this handful of men, however, remain today as indelible records that dramatize the melting away of this country's vast frontiers.