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Producer Harry Sherman's "Hopalong Cassidy" Westerns were usually assembled with more care than most B-Westerns of the period, but in Call of the Prairie there is a hilarious moment where an outlaw, clearly killed by William Boyd, blithely starts to get up from the ground while the camera is still rolling. As usual, very little other than a couple of names survives from Clarence E. Mulford's original 1926 novel Hopalong Cassidy's Protegee, but one entire sequence near the end of the film seems to have originated with Mulford, who had clearly been influenced by silent-era action serials. Discovered hiding in a deserted cabin by the outlaws, James Ellison is tied to a supporting beam, a rawhide noose is fastened around the trigger of a gun, and a candle is left burning. While the murderers are busy establishing their alibis, the flame will sever the rope and the gun go off and kill the defenseless youngster. Or at least that was the plan. In another sequence that perhaps also originated with Mulford, Ellison is nearly buried alive by none other than George "Gabby" Hayes, whose motives are rather vague this time around. Hayes, who had originated his popular character of Windy in the previous series entry, Bar 20 Rides Again (1936), was under personal contract with producer Sherman, but he wasn't fully integrated into the series until film number five, the self-explanatory Three on the Trail (1936).