Clarence Mulford created the forerunner to the iconic Western hero when he wrote Bar-20 Days and brought Hopalong Cassidy to life. But this is not the Hoppy of the silver screen and television as depicted by William Boyd in the 1940s and 50s. This is a hard drinking, cigarette smoking, none-to-gentle with his language Cassidy that, right or wrong, backs his friends play in this, the first in a series of novels that stretched from 1914 into the 1950s when Louis L'Amour was chosen by Mulford himself to continue the saga. Bar-20 Days was Hoppy's debut and 100 years later, he is still alive and well on the plains of Western Texas.