the Riders Of High Rock (1993) (25 page)

For those of you who have not read The Rustlers of West Fork and its Afterword, here is a brief history of my father's involvement with Hopalong Cassidy stories:

In the early 1950s, actor William Boyd took his version of the Cassidy character from the big screen to television. His earlier movies and Clarence Mulford's Hopalong books had been very popular, and so Doubleday, Mulford's publisher, became interested in marketing some new Hoppy novels. Mulford, who had been retired since 1941, did not want to continue the job, and so he turned the task over to a young (actually not that young; Dad was forty-two) writer of pulp magazine westerns . . . Louis L'Amour.

The publisher chose the pen name Tex Burns for him, and in 1950 and '51 he wrote his four Hopalong Cassidy books. They were published as the feature stories in the short-lived periodical Hopalong Cassidy's Western Magazine and in hardcover by Doubleday. Due to a disagreement with the publisher over which interpretation of the Hopalong character to use (Dad wanted to use Mulford's original Hoppy, a red-haired, hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, and rather bellicose cowhand instead of Doubleday's preference for the slick, heroic portrayal that Boyd adopted for his films), my father refused to admit that he had ever written those last four Hopalongs. Starting with The Rustlers of West Fork, this is the first time they have been published with his name on them. For a more in-depth version of the story of how Louis L'Amour came to write and then deny that he had written the Cassidy stories, you can take a look at the Afterword in Rustlers.

I again offer my thanks to David R. Hastings II and Peter G.

Hastings, trustees of the Clarence E. Mulford Trust. Also to the late C. E. Mulford himself for creating the classic character of Hopalong Cassidy.

My best to you all,

Beau L'Amour

Los Angeles, California

November 1992

"/ think of myself in the oral tradition--as a troubadour, a village taleteller, the man in the shadows of the campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered--as a storyteller. A good storyteller."

It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world recreated in his novels as Louis Dearborn L'Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally "walked the land my characters walk." His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L'Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L'Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, "always on the frontier." As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family's frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L'Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, assessment miner, and an officer in the tank destroyers during World War II. During his "yondering" days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and

worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

Mr. L'Amour "wanted to write almost from the time I could talk." After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L'Amour published his first full-length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 100 books is in print; there are nearly 230 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel), Jubal Sackett, Last of the Breed, and The Haunted Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L'Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio publishing.

The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L'Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life's work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

Louis L'Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L'Amour tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam well into the nineties--among them, an additional Hopalong Cassidy novel, Trouble Shooter.