«The Coming of Cassidy—And the Others» by Clarence Edward Mulford is a collection of fifteen, loosely related, short stories about Hopalong Cassidy. Of course, this is a hilarious and rip-roaring Western adventure, massive on action and light on romance and mocking realism! It's also fascinating as a social study. Excerpt: “It was in the '70s, when the buffalo were fast disappearing from the state, and the hunters were beginning to turn to other ways of earning a living, that Buck Peters stopped his wagon on the banks of Snake Creek and built himself a sod dugout in the heart of a country forbidding and full of perils. It was said that he was only the agent for an eastern syndicate that, carried away by the prospects of the cattle industry, bought a “ranch,” which later was found to be entirely strange to cattle. As a matter of fact there were no cows within three hundred miles of it, and there never had been. Somehow the syndicate got in touch with Buck and sent him out to look things over and make a report to them. "
