"The Hands of Cantu" are the gifted hands of the best horseman ever seen in New Spain. There was a time when horses and their riders were strangers to the vast reaches of the New World. There was a time when the explorer rode North, before there was a West, to search out the enormity of desert, mountain and sky. There was a time when strange foxfire gleamed in dark Spanish eyes, and the "malady of gold" infected the minds of the conquistadors. Here are the scenes of these rendered by the talented brush of author-artist Tom Lea. Here are the hardened men of the New World -- the heavy-browed Spanish and the coarsely featured Indians. Here, in thirty exquisite Chinese ink drawings, are the great reaches of the Southwest, and, above all, the noble horses of Old World lineage. And here is the story of these times, told with the compelling immediacy which distinguished Tom Lea's 'The Brave Bulls" and "The Wonderful Country".