Trouble Trail — J.T. Edson

While underneath for the third time, Hack gripped the lash of the whip in both hands and on surfacing gave it a savage jerk which shot the girl towards him. As he saw her coming, Hack's mind worked with its usual speed. Once he laid hands on her, he would half drown her, maybe give her a damned good licking to boot as an added lesson not to resist the honorable intentions of Milo Hack in future.
At that point his daydreams ended. Using a trick taught her by whip-fighting freighters, the girl permitted Hack to believe he was dragging her helplessly forward into his clutches, then when she came into range brought up a kick under his jaw to show him the error of his ways.
Milo Hack reckoned to be a smart man, but he never made a worse mistake than when he tried to rough-handle Martha Jane Canary. Not that anybody in the West would know her by that name. They called her Calamity Jane.

J.T. Edson was a former British Army dog-handler who wrote more than 130 Western novels, accounting for some 27 million sales in paperback. Edson's works - produced on a word processor in an Edwardian semi at Melton Mowbray - contain clear, crisp action in the traditions of B-movies and Western television series. What they lack in psychological depth is made up for by at least twelve good fights per volume. Each portrays a vivid, idealized “West That Never Was”, at a pace that rarely slackens.