About the Author

Robert J. Horton was born in Coudersport, Pennsylvania in 1889. As a very young man he traveled extensively in the American West, working for newspapers. For several years he was sports editor for the Great Falls Tribune in Great Falls, Montana. He began writing Western fiction for Munsey’s All-Story Weekly magazine before becoming a regular contributor to Street & Smith’s Western Story Magazine. By the mid-1920s Horton was one of three authors to whom Street & Smith paid 5¢ a word—the other two being Frederick Faust, perhaps better known as Max Brand, and Robert Ormond Case. Some of Horton’s serials for Street & Smith’s Western Story Magazine were subsequently brought out as books by Chelsea House, Street & Smith’s book publishing company. Although all of Horton’s stories appeared under his byline in the magazine, for their book editions Chelsea House published them either as by Robert J. Horton or by James Roberts. Sometimes, as was the case with Rovin’ Redden (Chelsea House, 1925) by James Roberts, a book would consist of three short novels that were editorially joined to form a “novel” and seriously abridged in the process. Other times the stories were magazine serials, also abridged to appear in book form, such as Unwelcome Settlers (Chelsea House, 1925) by James Roberts or The Prairie Shrine (Chelsea House, 1924) by Robert J. Horton. It may be obvious that Chelsea House, doing a number of books a year by the same author, thought it a prudent marketing strategy to give the author more than one name. Horton’s Western stories are concerned most of all with character, and it is the characters that drive the plots rather than the other way around. Attended by his personal physician, he died of bronchial pneumonia in his Manhattan hotel room in 1934 at the relatively early age of forty-four. Several of his novels, after Street & Smith abandoned Chelsea House, were published only in British editions, and Robert J. Horton was not to appear at all in paperback books until quite recently. Rainbow Range will be his next Five Star Western.