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The author wishes to state that GUNSMOKE THUNDER was not our title. Our choice was COMANCHE BLAKE’S GIRL. However, our publishers at the time of its first printing, Brown Watson, Ltd., made this substitution, without informing us, on the grounds that readers would be put off by the mention of a female name in a Western’s title. A similar situation arose when Corgi Books replaced Belle Boyd with a male figure on the cover of THE WHIP AND THE WAR LANCE because a wholesaler said a ‘cowboy’ book had to have a ‘cowboy’ on the cover or it would not sell. The author considers some form of snobbery is responsible for such reasoning.