Zane Grey's Stories of the West #34
In "Saguaro National Monument," a 1957 Dell Western tale by Gaylord Du Bois with art by Al Micale, a former outlaw known only as C. E. Bolton—once a meticulous thief who left poems in empty express boxes—reemerges under a new identity. Now a schoolteacher named Boles, he’s trying to leave his past behind, but the desert’s quiet shadows still hold secrets that could unravel his present. The story unfolds with quiet tension, grounded in the stark landscape of the Southwest, and features a cover by Sam Savitt that captures the era’s classic Western mood.
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Schoolteacher Boles changes careers. As C. E. Bolton he banked his loot in San Francisco. Thirty odd robberies, never of passengers, only express boxes, carefully planned, using a shotgun he never fired (some believe was not even loaded), wearing a linen duster, masked with a flour sack. He would put the loot in the sack, and leave a poem in the empty express box. His undoing came when a hunter heard him pounding on the box; the driver took the hunter's gun, and fired. Bart dropped a cuff. A detective traced it to Bart's laundy, and he was arrested, did six years. Some say he became a farmer.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).