4 Rare hotsell Vintage Books~1968 Hero Henry~Double D Western +1978 Apache Agent~Clum +1974 Conquest of Don Pedro~Fergusson +1964 Pathfinder~Cooper

I am including 10 photos of the 4 vintage novels you will receive. They are NOT stock photos.

1. A Hero for Henry
A Double D Western
Written by Herbert R. Purdum
Hardcover with Dust Jacket
215 pages
Doubleday & Company
First Edition ©1968

Condition:
Previous Apache Junction, Arizona & Pinal County, Florence Arizona Library book. Sticker on inside of front cover, very first page & inside of back cover. Western sticker with a boot icon & white W FIC PUR stickers on the lower spine. Tape on binding inside of front cover & back cover. Dust jacket is protected by clear Mylar. There are a few soiled pages (see photos) but none obstruct the text. The very last page has writing in ink on the very bottom "OK 2/1/92". There is a taped .75" tear on the top of page 32. There is a PINAL stamp & a pink marker dot on the bottom edges of the pages. There is a WITHDRAWN COUNTY stamp & a black dot on the top edges of the pages. The spine is leaning to the right. The top corner of the front cover is bent downwards a bit.

Review:
Purdum's books are a little like screwball comedies, if screwball comedies had heroes facing challenges big enough that failure equals death. And if screwball comedies had a bit of gore, & some serious violence, & shootouts where people die, & children who want justice for having been orphaned by vicious killers, & if screwball comedies were considerably more character driven.

From the front flap:
Clarence E. Peale should never have come West. He was a dude from the top of his neatly groomed hair to the tips of his newly polished boots. But he had been ordered by his Sherriff to clean up the dirtiest little town on the Mexican border, Sangre. As a test of Deputy Peale's mettle, Sangre was unsurpassable: more law officers had been gunned down in its streets than in any other settlement in the territory. But Clarence took up his Herculean labor almost joyfully.
He had brought to Sangre a secret weapon that any hardened outlaw -- and any rational man -- would have run from in horror: a pistol-packing, puma-tempered, hotsell scatter-brained, but beautiful toboy named "Henry."

From the back cover:
"Hey, turn around, dead man!"
With a cry of alarm Clarence hurled Henry away from him violently. The movement saved his own life. It not only caused Lassen's first bullet to miss completely, it placed between them the post supporting the store's awning. Lassen's second and third shots merely splintered wood from the post. By that time Clarence had completed what must have been the slowest draw in the Territory's history. He had followed Marshal Taggart's instructions and was carrying his revolver, but it was thrust inside his belt under his buttoned coat. He tore open his coat, got the gun disentangled from his shirt and flung a hasty shot in Lassen's direction.
It was a lucky shot as anyone ever made. Lassen swayed, took one lurching step and fell on his face with the ugly sogginess of death.
Clarence stopped and stared down at what had been a man. A wetly red worm crept from under Lassen's body and crawled across the hard-baked dirt. Clarence turned away to lean against a hitch rail, his stomach rolling and heaving uncontrollably.
After her sprawling tumble into the street, Henry had squirmed into a sitting position spluttering dust and a smoking commentary on her escort and his disreputable ancestry. Gunfire sliced off her words and brought her around, reaching for the derringer. She had the little weapon out and cocked when the fight was suddenly over. She gaped in sheer disbelief, then slowly replaced the derringer in her pants pocket.
She rose and started towards Clarence, her eyes gleaming with hot pride of a woman who's seen her man conquer another in mortal combat. The female is far closer to primitive emotions than any male. It's one of the reasons they're so much tougher.

2. APACHE AGENT
The Story of John P. Clum
Written by John's son, Woodworth Clum
Paperback
297 pages
University of Nebraska Press
$4.25 on back cover
Originally published in 1936
©1978

Genre: Biography
Subject: Apache Indians -- Government relations, San Carlos Indian Reservation in Arizona / AZ, Late 1800s, 1870s, 1874-1877

Condition: The front cover has been taped on the outside and inside. Other pages are clean & intact. Shelf wear present, mostly on back cover. See photos provided.

John P. Clum became an Apache agent after 25 years of government occupation of their land in Arizona had embittered these Indians (Native Americans) toward all white men. "For 300 years," as Woodworth Chum reminds us in the preface, "Apaches had defied control; had been known as the most dangerous of all the nations of red men in North America; the most resourceful fighters; the most difficult to subdue. John Clum went amongst them when he was 22 years old, disregarded all precedents of Indian management, and in 3 years tamed the much-heralded untamable." In Clum the Apaches found "a man who did not speak with split tongue" and was their friend. As a measure of their trust, they even helped him achieve the capture, without bloodshed, of the notorious renegade Geronimo and his followers.

3. The Conquest of Don Pedro
by Harvey Fergusson
Introduction by John R. Milton
Paperback
250 pages
$2.95 on back cover
A Zion Book
University of New Mexico Press

Condition: Piece of tape over blemish on upper left corner of back cover from removing a price sticker. No spine creases. Pages are clean & intact.

The protagonist, a Brooklyn Jew who goes to New Mexico to recover from an infection with TB, becomes a peddler, a merchant, and a wise man in a rough country. Character development and description of life on the New Mexico frontier are the strong points of this well told story.

From the back cover:
When American pioneers began coming to New Mexico in large numbers after the Civil War, they found a venerable Spanish-American civilization firmly established in the Rio Grande Valley. The feudal society of the ricos, with their immense tracts of land and vast herds of cattle and sheep, had endured for two centuries, but that world was changed forever by the arrival of the Anglos, who thought in terms of dollars and cents rather than ancestral power and privilege.
The Conquest of Don Pedro describes the end of the rico era in a small New Mexico town. The story is told through the eyes of a New York Jew of Portuguese extraction who comes to the Southwest for his health. After gaining acceptance as a peddler in the villages up and down the Rio Grande, Leo Mendes moves to Don Pedro to open a store. In his success as a merchant he challenges the power of the ruling Vierra family and becomes a rico himself, although he is never completely a part of the tradition-bound Catholic society.
More than an authentic picture of territorial New Mexico, this is a moving novel of character and place that defies stereotypes about western literature.

4. The Pathfinder
Complete & unabridged
by James Fenimore Cooper
60¢ on front cover
Paperback
384 pages
Airmont Classic
©1964

Genre: War Fiction, Western, Family Saga

Condition: Chipped corner on front cover & 1st page (see photos). Tiny chips along the bottom of front cover.

Set in Lake Ontario in the last months of French success before the Plains of Abraham in 1759. Chronologically in the continent's history, it deals with the decisive years when French or English supremacy in North America was being battled out.

The hero is Leatherstocking at the height of his physical & spiritual capacities, and, for the only time, in love.

In many ways The Pathfinder represents both the climax & the apogee of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. Chronologically in its hero's life, it is central, third in the five-novel saga of Natty Bumppo, alias the Deerslayer, alias Hawkeye, alias the Pathfinder, alias Leatherstocking.