Paintbrushes and Pistols is the story of an unusual alliance that changed the American West and American art at the turn of the century. It was an alliance between Ernest Blumenschein and other immature, naive men of great artistic talent who became known as the Taos Society of Artists, Fred Harvey, a genius in the field of food and lodging, and the promotion-minded men who operated the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe Railroad. Together, they helped to create the westward migration that resulted in vast cities and smaller towns that exist today. And together, the highly eccentric members of the Taos Society of Artists - the last artists who would devote themselves to capturing the dying West on canves and in sculpture - radically changed styles of American fine art and commercial illustration.