THE character Misfit Lil, who will be appearing in several novels, was born out of correspondence with Black Horse Western publisher and editor John Hale, a man whose words to his writers are never profuse but always cogent.

The book Frontier Brides had been well-received by readers and was helped by a fine cover -- showing a lone, male range rider -- by Prieto Muriana whose art had graced Black Horse Westerns since their beginning in 1986. But I made the comment to Mr Hale, not ungratefully but a little regretfully, "Nary a pretty woman or potential bride in sight, alas."

His reply was, "I suppose I always turn down the occasional design submitted which includes a woman. This is not only because the presence of a woman on the jacket of a western can give the wrong impression, but also because in the relative few which include some female interest, the woman is usually of a Calamity Jane type."

This brought back to mind days in the 1960s in Mitcham, Surrey, south of London, when I'd worked as the editor of a range of British pocket library series, including Western Adventure Library and Cowboy Adventure Library. I remembered how hard it had been to match cover art from Continental agencies with the stories the scriptwriters submitted. Occasionally, I'd resorted to asking a friend -- for example, Vic Hanson who later became a prolific BHW author -- to send me a story for a particular cover that was hard to fit to any book.

Chance to be helpful, I thought -- and submitted to Mr Hale the outline of a story featuring a heroine of Calamity Jane's ilk as its leading character.

The world has been told recently that the Wild West was essentially a man's world of "fellers" and "pardners", where feelings were reserved for horses or other males, as in Brokeback Mountain. Around the time I was regretting the bias in cover art, at least one BHW author also went on record stating for the advice of potential contributors that the central character in a western for the Hale company must always be male.

With Misfit Lil Rides In,  it was proved otherwise. Commenting on the outline, Mr Hale said the story was original and had plenty of incident. He certainly didn't say female leads were out, and his word on covers was, "I hope that by the time we see the novel we will have had appropriate designs submitted. At the moment, if I had to make choice, I would not be able include one featuring Lil."

I pushed ahead, taking my chances. If the western had its roots in the dime novels of Erasmus Beadle, the western heroine of the kind planned had a long literary tradition.

The history of the early dime novels has been well recorded, notably by university professors Henry Nash Smith and James K. Folsom. Hurricane Nell and the fictionalized Calamity Jane were created by Edward L. Wheeler, one of Beadle's busiest authors, in the late 1870s.

The artists of those days had found no problem in producing the right images. They drew Calamity Jane as a female counterpart of Deadwood Dick and helped the writers put the western heroine who assumed man's clothing on the trail to popular acceptance.
   
By the time the cover illustration (right) for Wheeler's Deadwood Dick in Leadville; or, A Strange Stroke for Liberty made its appearance, the dime novel heroine was as tough as anybody. She smoked, drank, swore, and was handy with pistols.

Other Wheeler heroines were Wild Edna, the Girl Brigand, and Denver Doll, the Detective Queen.

The dime novelists began with heroines thirsting for revenge upon evil men who'd injured them or their parents. They were Amazons costumed in a feminine version of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking apparel, carried pistols and a rifle, and made themselves adept in the skills of the frontier.

Hurricane Nell made her first appearance in 1878. She was an early example of the "woman in jeopardy" theme. Nell was persecuted by a ruffian, Bob Woolf, who set fire to her home and hastened her parents' death. She sought vengeance and after a spell reappeared in Colorado mining settlements wearing men's clothing and able to "outrun, out-ride, out-shoot, out-lasso, and out-yell" any man in town. The hero was a handsome Philadelphia lawyer, who hired Nell as a guide. She lassoed a mustang for him and rescued him from Indians, thus turning convention on its head. When his mount tired, Nell seized the man about the waist, raised him high overhead "by the power of her wonderful arms", and put him on the back of the wild stallion.

Not that Wheeler let this strong-arm stuff obliterate Nell's femininity -- she was also beautiful with lustrous eyes that had a soft, dreamy, wistful expectancy when she looked at the hero.

The dime novel heroines, we are told by the literary historians, soon grew even bolder and less refined. Denver Doll wore the western gambler's boiled shirt and diamond stick-pin, Buffalo Bill's top-boots, and a bright sash with a Mexican flavour.

Somewhere down the line, after the turn of the century, these heroines with attitude -- to lapse into present-day parlance -- quietly bowed out of the general run of traditional westerns. By 1945, after two world wars, popular fiction and the movies were largely pigeonholing women in domestic roles. The Annie Oakleys and Calamity Janes who made it to the screen were surrounded by music, laughter and orthodox glamour.

Thus a user comment from an English viewer at the Internet Movie Database on Along Came Jones, a 1945 comedy western starring Gary Cooper, reads: "Lorreta Young was very good, and definitely showed an element of girl power which was unusual in the 1940s films, so in a lot of ways this film was quite ahead of its time." The viewer gives full credit to Cooper for playing the part of an incompetent being protected by a woman . . . "unlike the other one-dimensional western stars of the time".

Sharpshooter Cherry de Longpre (Loretta Young) keeps Melody Jones (Gary Cooper) from being killed at least four times in Along Came Jones.

In Britain, as wartime paper restrictions were finally eased,  westerns entered a late-forties, early-fifties heyday. I remember story papers, comics and paperbacks all featured them. For Sun comic, from the Amalgamated Press at Fleetway House, Barry Ford (Joan Whitford) wrote short stories, dime novel fashion, of a fictionalized Wild Bill Hickok that sometimes featured Calamity Jane as a subsidiary character. At the same time, Cowboy Comics was launched. It was a new-style British pocket library series where stories were told not in text but "64 picture-packed pages". It gave Kit Carson, "King of the West", Buckskin Annie as a useful friend -- for capturing by and rescuing from redskins!

My friend Steve Holland, a noted authority on British publishing of this kind and period, tells me the art shown here was probably by Patrick Nicolle.

The artist of the Calamity Jane scene heading this article was Naples-born Fortunino Matania who had a studio in London, exhibited at the Royal Academy, and is still much admired by many of today's greatest artists and illustrators.
 
During the next half-century, the prevailing approach changed again. Once writers discovered "historical reality", their Calamity Janes were supposedly based on the life of the true Calamity Jane, Martha Jane Canary. In the TV movies Calamity Jane (1984) and Buffalo Girls (1995, based on the Larry McMurtry novel), the story is told of a daughter who was adopted by an Englishman, and a gruff, mannish Jane's subsequent poignant journey to visit her in London while performing with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

The non-fiction biographers of Martha Canary (1852-1903) have failed to substantiate a relationship with Hickok, nor many other legends of "The Girl of the Golden West". They report she went to Dakota with a scientific expedition in 1875, probably as a "camp follower" rather than a hired teamster, and was in the Black Hills from 1876 to1880 at the height of the gold rush. She lived with a succession of men and on occasion turned to prostitution to survive. In later life she was an alcoholic.

These then were the antecedents that encouraged the dreaming-up of Miss Lilian Goodnight, or Misfit Lil.

One last image of inspiration should be mentioned. In 1985, the movie actress Jessica Lange portrayed the legendary country and western singer Patsy Cline in a biopic named after the song Sweet Dreams. Part of the moving, talking picture I constantly have in mind when I write the Lil stories is of Lange as she so vivaciously played Cline in that movie, disregarding that the story is of a very different period.

The Cline songbook also provides much of the rounding with which I try to make Lil a sympathetic character. Lil, though the Princess of Pistoleers, must have vulnerabilities. The notes accompanying a CD of Cline classics state, "Her songs expressed tenderness, playful sexuality, regret, remorse and an almost unbearable longing."

I hope readers will find these same fundamentals present in the Misfit Lil stories, adding a broader dimension to the action and adventure which must always be there in more obvious Black Horse Western measure. In my workroom overlooking the upper harbour of Auckland, New Zealand, the surround-sound system plays Cline songs constantly, at low volume, when I'm writing about Lil.

I don't know what the late, great singer's many fans would have to say about her work lending depth to shoot-'em-ups! Here, for those who know their Cline songs, and without spoiling the book for those who might like to read it, are the final paragraphs of Misfit Lil Rides In:

     It wasn't the time for such sentiments, Lil thought. Nor did she see herself as the marrying kind. If she were ever obliged to get hitched to the likes of a Mike Covington, she knew she'd cry all the way to the altar. The man she'd want would be mature and capable like . . . but no, it wasn't worth dreaming about. Her inadequate years ruled it out.
     Right now, she put a smile on her face, but tears of regret were in her heart.

Along with young Lil herself, each novel features a supporting cast of regular characters. Chief among them are civilian scout and guide Jackson Farraday -- who frequently serves as a point-of-view character -- Lieutenant Michael Covington and Angry-he-shakes-fist (Angry-fist for short!), a charismatic Apache renegade.

Jackson is twice Lil's age, which gives rise to the tension summarized in the third book, Misfit Lil Fights Back, as follows:

     Lil was forever full of surprises and dilemmas for Jackson. About half his age, she aspired to be a top scout, of worth to the military and others, exactly like himself. Nor was she much short of that capability, an achievement to admire.
     But she also idolized him; was that keen to impress him it often became a nuisance and embarrassment. In the West -- in the South maybe more so -- men did take up with females of tender years, but the practice bothered Jackson. Some future morning, he wouldn't want to wake with a wife beside him still in the spring of life when he was heading into winter.

Jackson sees spruce and dashing Lieutenant Michael Covington as the natural match for Lil, each with the ability of providing different characteristics to a mutually beneficial relationship. But though Covington sets other hearts aflutter, Lil professes to find "Mike" only a fool and he reciprocates by finding her familiarity with his name, let alone the wilderness, indecent.

The situation, and the verbal sparring that arises, adds opportunities for lighter touches. Take this clash from the second book (out November), Misfit Lil Gets Even.  It occurs after a shooting contest in which Lil has humiliated the Army's entrant:

. . . Not for the first time, he [Jackson Farraday] thought why couldn't Lil and Michael Covington settle their differences? They were of an age to make a good, complementary match.
     He forced a laugh. "Enough funning, Miss Lilian. You'll embarrass the lieutenant here."
     Covington said, "My observation, Miss Goodnight, tells me a proper gentleman will only approach a lady after she has acquired some social graces."
     Hollings was shifting from foot to foot in discomfiture at the clash threatening between his superior and his better in marksmanship.
     Lil just gasped. "My, ain't you the stuffed shirt? No, a uniform draped on a manual of etiquette and regulations. Why, if the corporal here wants to go to the latrines, I bet you'll insist on written orders in triplicate and the Colonel's signature!"
     The call for retaliation to her sassing got the better of Covington's ruffled composure.
     "A local tall tale has it you were bitten lately by a rattler, missy. I'm minded to believe the windy's payoff -- the snake died, you lived."
     "Oh, that's poisonous, Mike Covington!" Lil quickly retorted.

Of course, the novel also offers the usual quota of action and adventure. On receiving it, Mr Hale wrote, "Misfit Lil Gets Even is well up to your highest standards. Quite a tough yarn!"
 
But this is carrying us way past the images of inspiration and into detail best left for discovery by reading the books, which I hope you now might want to do. That, for me, would make this trip behind the scenes well worth the time we've shared on it. Please feel free to email me with comments, or questions if you want to know more.

Lastly, unfortunately, the answer to "What happened about the cover?" is that none of those Calamity Jane types were in stock at the publisher's when it came to choose artwork for Misfit Lil Rides In. The masterful Prieto Muriana's picture presents an evil-looking tinstar-toter storming toward us, gun ablaze in attention-catching style. He can be taken to represent one of the story's key characters, the crooked Sheriff "Wheezer" Skene.

But I hope some of the images accompanying this article will reach the artists. Then they, too, might be inspired, and one day Misfit Lil will make a BHW's cover as well as the 160 pages of blood, thunder and derring-do that lie behind it.