PHANTOM GUNMAN: FARGO #11 – Belmont B75-2111, 1971 PBO. Fargo is asked to chase down a rumor that Billy the Kid is still alive in New Mexico .
2nd pr: BT 50278, 1972.

	KILLING SPREE : FARGO #12 – Belmont B75-2119, 1971 PBO. This is the last of the first editions to feature the “ Fargo head” icon. Fargo chases a gang of gold thieves across the Mojave Desert , killing them one by one.
	2nd pr: BT 50285, 1972.

SHOTGUN MAN: FARGO #13 – BT 50606, 1973 PBO. By 1973, Belmont Tower had reprinted the first six books in the “Fargo is His Name – Violence is His Game” series, so SHOTGUN MAN appears as a new #13 in that series. Re-uses cover art from FARGO #1. Theodore Roosevelt enlists Fargo – and his sawed-off Fox shotgun, Winchester , .38 Colt revolver and ten-inch Batangas knife - to escort a group of explorers through outlaw country to map the Colorado River .

2nd pr: BT 51155, nd.

BANDOLERO: FARGO #14 – BT 50621, 1973 PBO.  Cover re-uses John Duillo’s VALLEY OF SKULLS art. Fargo is running guns to Pancho Villa when all hell breaks loose on the morning of March 9, 1916 in Columbus , New Mexico . The original manuscript for this book, which Ben called FARGO 14: FIRING SQUAD, is now held in the collection of the National Outlaw & Lawman Association at the American Heritage Center in Laramie , Wyoming .

2nd pr: BT 51144 , ND .

WOLF’S HEAD: FARGO #15 – BT 50627, 1973. The next two books in the Fargo series were to be a reprint of WOLF’S HEAD, FARGO #7; and the new FARGO #15, SIERRA SILVER.  Instead, somebody at Belmont Tower put #15 on the WOLF’S HEAD reprint by mistake, damning countless fans and booksellers to years of confusion on the numbering of these books. To this day there are still disagreements about whether there are 23 or 24 books in the Fargo series. Another result of the confusion is there are no more reprints of WOLF’S HEAD, and when Tower did the Uniform Edition reprints a decade later, the numbers go from 1 to 6 to then skip to 8.

SIERRA SILVER: FARGO #16 – BT 50680, 1973 PBO. By John W. Hardin. With #15 assigned to the wrong book, Belmont Tower then puts “#16” on the 15th book. The rest of the books are therefore misnumbered. A later checklist (shown below) correctly lists SIERRA SILVER as #15 in the series. The first of three consecutive Fargos by “John W. Hardin”, who is not Ben Haas, SIERRA SILVER finds Fargo in Mexico fighting banditos at a silver mine.

DYNAMITE FEVER: FARGO #17 – BT 50712, 1974 PBO. Cover lists author as John Benteen, but the title page says John W. Hardin. Hardin’s style is unmistakable. Fargo vs. the Kaiser’s German thugs in Peru . This is actually #16. To avoid adding to the confusion, I will use the publisher’s (incorrect) numbering for the rest of the books. A corrected list then follows. So who was John W. Hardin? One possibility is Norman Rubington, who wrote a Sundance as John W. Hardin in 1973. If Rubington is Hardin, the sophomoric sex scenes here may be a joke, a take-off on Western pulp writing. Rubington had written many more adult sex scenes under another pen name, Akbar Del Piombo.

GRINGO GUNS: FARGO #18 – BT 50768, 1975 PBO. Actually #17. It may say John Benteen on it, maybe they noticed the Benteens sold better, but GRINGO GUNS is without question the work of “John W. Hardin”, as any Fargo fan will tell you. Benteen’s Fargo and Hardin’s Fargo are practically two different men.  The Hardin stories are good; they’re just not as good as the Benteen stories.     Fargo runs guns to the Nicaraguan Army in this adventure.

HELL ON WHEELS: FARGO #19 – BT 50889, 1976 PBO.  Extremely scarce. (Copyright was renewed in 1981 by Mrs. Douglas Haas.) Perhaps realizing the Fargo books were being issued with the wrong numbers on them, the publisher puts no number on the last six books in the series. Fargo fans were delighted to have the real John Benteen back with this one. It’s easy to tell the difference as “John W. Hardin” has no interest in weaponry (he calls Fargo’s beloved shotgun “the gun”) and John Benteen is fascinated with weapons: “He caressed it gently, as he might have stroked the body of a woman, and his gray eyes gleamed as one big forefinger traced out the inscription worked into the breech engraving: To Neal Fargo, gratefully, T.R.” A besieged mine operator hires Fargo to bring out the ore by railroad.

THE BORDER JUMPERS: FARGO #20 -BT 50899, 1976 PBO.  Ben’s son Joel Haas has told us he wrote this one for his father, who had given him a crash course on How to Write a Western Pulp Novel. The cattle ranchers of South Texas hire Fargo to stop cattle rustlers coming from south of the border in this action-packed adventure.

DEATH VALLEY GOLD: FARGO #21 - BT 50928, 1976 PBO. Ghostwritten by Joel Haas, edited by Ben Haas. Scarce. A half-crazed old prospector hires Fargo to escort his daughter to his “Castle” in Death Valley .

KILLER’S MOON: FARGO #22 – BT 50970, 1976 PBO.  Copyright by John Benteen. Running Springfield rifles to Pancho Villa, Fargo gets tangled up with Lola, who has half a million in stolen money. The three outlaws who want that money are all specialists: a knife expert, a gunfighter and a brawler. Fargo maneuvers it so he can take them on one by one – the first with his knife, the second with his gun and the last with his fists.

FARGO AND THE TEXAS RANGERS: FARGO #23 - BT 51126, 1977 PBO. Copyright by Ben Haas. A corrupt Texas Ranger and a shady lawyer are stealing land owned by Americans of Mexican heritage. When they ask Pancho Villa for help, he sends Fargo .

DAKOTA BADLANDS : FARGO #24 - BT 51173, 1977 PBO.  Copyright by Ben Haas. 1918: In the Dakota territory , Fargo is buying horses for the US Army. A tough gang of rustlers want those horses, and only one tough man stands in their way. “He was a big man, with wide shoulders, narrow hips, the long legs of a born and bred horseman. His hair was close-cropped and silver white, though he was only in his thirties. He had grown up hard and never looked back. He’d punched cattle, roughnecked in the oil fields – even fought in the prize rings. He joined up with Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders and found his true calling – combat.”   (Ben would always use that first sentence to describe Jim Sundance, too.)

This checklist from one of the last reprints shows the corrected numbering and lists all 23 Fargo titles.
THE TRAIL ENDS AT HELL – Belmont B60-2022, 1970 PBO.  Although some of the Fargo books list THE TRAIL ENDS AT HELL on the “other Fargo books” page between APACHE RAIDERS and WOLF’S HEAD, it is a stand-alone Western from the same author and publisher. Trail boss Boyd Kilpatrick rides into trouble at the end of the trail in the Kansas railhead town of Gunsight .
2nd pr: BT 50294, 1972.
	CUTLER – BT 50270, 1972 PBO.  After the success of the Fargo books, Benteen and Belmont tried to get lightning to strike twice with the Cutler series, but Ben only wrote two of them. One Fargo fan told me the difference was Fargo may be a son of a bitch, but he is a genuine and always reliable hero, a lovable son of a bitch, whereas Cutler is a drunken bum. Like Evan Hunter’s Matt Cordell, Cutler sobers up for each assignment and then goes back on the bottle. That wasn’t the stuff Western men’s adventure series readers wanted to keep buying.
	CUTLER #1: WOLF PACK – BT 50746, 1974. 2nd printing of CUTLER is retitled.

THE GUNHAWKS – BT 50277, 1972 PBO. Title page says CUTLER number 2: THE GUNHAWKS.  John Cutler is a hunter who can hunt and kill any animal – or any man.
CUTLER#2: THE GUNHAWKS – BT 50747, 1974. 2nd printing with new cover. In 1979 Tower tried to resurrect the Cutler series with four new books by H.V. Elkin, but it died again in 1980.