Clarence E. Mulford

The raw and mighty West, the greatest stage in all the history of the world for so many deeds of daring which verged on the insane, was seared and cross-barred with grave-lined trails and dotted with presumptuous, mushroom towns of brief stay, whose inhabitants flung their primal passions in the face of humanity and laughed in condescending contempt at what humanity had to say about it. In many localities the real bad-man, the man of the gun, whose claims to the appellation he was ready to prove against the rancorous doubting of all comers, made history in a terse and business-like way, and also made the first law for the locality-that of the gun. There were good bad-men and bad bad-men, the killer by necessity and the wanton murderer; and the shifting of these to their proper strata evolved the foundation for the law of to-day. The good bad-men, those in whose souls lived the germs of law and order and justice, gradually became arrayed against the other class, and stood up manfully for their principles, let the odds be what they might; and bitter, indeed, was the struggle, and great the price.

Dim old shop and the noisy, bustling city beset him strongly, despite his years of a life unfitting him for the hardships of the prairies and mountains. Being able to read Greek and Latin was no asset on the open trail; although schoolmasters would be needed in that new country...

The Coming of CassidyBuck Peters put everything he owned into the Bar-20 and thought he could make a go of it. He did well enough, until a gang of renegade buffalo hunters went after his spread, his cattle, his life. They swore to let nothing stand in their way. Then they met a cowhand named Cassidy... Hopalong Cassidy. Bar-20Cassidy could fan a gun like a Billy the Kid. Six rounds in three seconds was his slowest time. No one in Texas could beat him, until he met Slim Travennes, head of the Sandy Creek Vigilante Committee. Slim was snake-fast. "Death with a little skin wrapped around it," was the way the sheriff in Waco described him. No man could go up against Slim and live. Hoppy could stand or die. He had no other choice.