Hopalong Takes Command by Frank Schoonover

'Well now, you young-uns can call me Hopalong, jes like everybody else. I don't mind - shucks, I've been called a lot worse in my life. Folks took to callin me Hopalong, cuz I walk with a slight limp. See, my left legs' a mite bit shorter than my right. If ya take a close-up look at this here paintin of me, ya can kinda see that.  Yep, moved out West when I was a youngster, and I guess you can tell, I ain't so young anymore. It wuz gettin too crowded where I come from, so I saddled up and headed West - me and my horse, Peaches.  Me and Peaches settled in Buckskin, Arizona; a place where a man don't need to wear no fancy-dan suit an tie, to do a job. Out here, amongst the cactus and coyotes - even tho' I walk a little funny, spit tobaccy, and drink my share of red-eye - a man and hiz horse can get by.  Now, this here paintin of me was done in the early 1900's, by Frank Schoonover, a famous painter, illustrator and a student of Howard Pyle, right there in Wilmington, Delaware. Seems like Mr. Schoonover loved the West and painted and illustrated Western scenes all hiz life.  I don't have much book learnin, but they tell me this painting was used as a magazine illustration and later in a book. Oil on canvas, they say. Took'em six days to paint it. Tarnation, sometimes it takes me that long juz to put my boots and gunbelt on.  Yes ma'm, that there's me a-sittin, real cozy-like, in the second-story window of an old barn. You can tell that barns' old, cuz the wood is as weather-beaten and dried up as the skin on my face and those barn windows have more holes than my hat.  Take a look, see for yourself.  I got Peaches relaxin inside the barn, and those sharp metal spurs I'm wearin are just for show - I would never hurt that ol' horse of mine.  Look at that shadow made by my boots, my gun, and my hat. I'd say, it's bout high noon, and the smoke arizing in the air, is from a couple of rifle shots I've just fired. Didn't hurt nobody, jez sort-of grabbin their attention, you know how us cowboys get sometimes, specially after a little too much red-eye….'