Produced by Al Haines. [Illustration: Cover] [Illustration: Suddenly a rope ... yanked him from the saddle Page 342] The Coming of Cassidy— And the Others BY CLARENCE E. MULFORD Author of Hopalong Cassidy, Bar-20 Days, etc. Illustrations by Maynard Dixon CHICAGO A. C. McCLURG & CO. 1913 Copyright 1908 by The Red Book Corporation Copyright 1911 by Field and Stream Publishing Co. Copyright 1912 by The Pearson Publishing Co. Copyright 1913 by The Pearson Publishing Co. COPYRIGHT A. C. McCLURG & CO. 1913 Published, October, 1913 Copyrighted in Great Britain PRESS OF THE VAIL-BALLOU Co. BINGHAMTON, N. Y. PREFACE It was on one of my annual visits to the ranch that Red, whose welcome always seemed a little warmer than that of the others, finally took me back to the beginning. My friendship with the outfit did not begin until some years after the fight at Buckskin, and, while I was familiar with that affair and with the history of the outfit from that time on, I had never seemed to make much headway back of that encounter. And I must confess that if I had depended upon the rest of the outfit for enlightenment I should have learned very little of its earlier exploits. A more secretive and bashful crowd, when it came to their own achievements, would be hard to find. But Red, the big, smiling, under-foreman, at last completely thawed and during the last few weeks of my stay, told me story after story about the earlier days of the ranch and the parts played by each member of the outfit. Names that I had heard mentioned casually now meant something to me; the characters stepped out of the obscurity of the past to act their parts again. To my mind’s eye came Jimmy Price, even more mischievous than Johnny Nelson; "Butch" Lynch and Charley James, who erred in judgment; the coming and going of Sammy Porter, and why "You-Bet" Somes never arrived; and others who did their best, or worst, and went their way. The tales will follow, as closely as possible, in chronological order. Between some of them the interval is short; between others, long; the less interesting stories that should fill those gaps may well be omitted.