That gimp-legged, liquor-swigging, tobacco-spitting Hopalong Cassidy couldn't have been more different from his creator--or from the William Boyd movie archetype. Clarence E. Mulford visited the West once, yet drew from a rich imagination, using continuing characters (such as Cassidy, Johnny Nelson, Buck Peters, and Mesquite Jenkins) who went from youth to midlife to old age in his stories. Uniquely blending detective story ingredients and Arthurian and Darwinian motifs, he remained faithful to his vision of the Old West. Seven original stories are reprinted.