The principal theme throughout Schaefer's fiction is the loss of Western frontier values to the civilizing influences of the East. Although Schaefer recognizes that this change was inevitable, he regrets the displacement of the rugged characters and credos of the frontier. In his best-known novel, Shane, the title character is a gunslinger who struggles desperately to conform to the settled, domesticated life of a farmer.

In Monte Walsh (1963), Schaefer's most ambitious novel, a skilled cowboy is first constrained and then destroyed by his inability to adapt to this new environment.

Old Ramon is related to this general theme in that the values Ramon imparts are those which he had learned when humans, like the open prairie, were not fenced in by the rules of a larger society.

It is important that the boy learn these values, so that they are not utterly lost when the ancient...