Prior to Hombre, the last of his westerns, Leonard wrote four novels in the genre: The Bounty Hunters (1953), The Law at Randado (1954), Escape from Five Shadows (1956), and Last Stand at Saber River (1959). In the earlier novels, there is more action and less character development than in Hombre, the villains especially are one-dimensional stereotypes, and the outcomes are predictable. These books, in effect, are products of his apprenticeship. Unfortunately, after coming into his own as a western novelist with Hombre, he forsook the genre for crime fiction.