ALBERT EDELFELT - KUNSTANNUSOSAKEYHTIÖTAIDE HELSINKI

Perustuu samojen kirjoittajien Ars - Suomen taiteen 1-6 artikkeleihin.

Soumen taiteen on kustantanut Weilin+Göös, suunnitellut ja toimittanut

Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava 1987-1990

Graafinen muotoilu:

Markku Reunanen

Värierottelu ja painaminen:

Finnreklama Oy

Sulkava 1992

Saz & Avaz , Lotfi - Motamedi ساز و آواز محمد رضا لطفی و محمد معتمدی

THE Gunfighters "LEA F. McCARTY" - old west gunfighters

 A FOREWORD FROM A: M: KING; 

ONCE WYATT EARP´S DEPUTY

 I’ve often heard tell that the gunfighter hat his beginning when pistol types were changed from those old flintlocks o the cap-and-ball. He could draw and shoot these faster and more accurately. All the formalities of the duel were forgotten. Draw. Shoot. That was it.
I’ve often heard Wyatt Earp say Jesse James was among our first gunslingers to carry a Navy Colts six shooter, the same as Butler Hickok, or "Wild Bill," who carried two of these cap-and-ball equalizers in his red sash. Wild Bill was presented with these ivory-handled guns by the Vice-President of the United States – a Senator Wilson then.
Ben Thompson and Wes Hardin brought the draw-shoot era into Prominence, in my opinion, and all our gun fighting took place in about 20 years.
The gunfighter was a fellow with a cool nerve. You had to have it to last. Personal histories of the gunfighters show that the top hands had it, and the cold blue stare of a killer was unmistakable. About 95 per cent of all the gunslingers were blue-eyed.
Many were related, like Jesse James to the Younger’s, the Younger’s to the Daltons, and Cole Younger, the uncle of Tombstone killer, John Ringo. Wes Hardin had relatives all over Texas.
Yes, the gunfighter was a product of the Civil War. Post-war feeling, according to Earp, ran high. The new Negro police caused a lot of trouble and actually bred gunslingers’, such as in the case of John Wesley Hardin. Railhead towns of the big cattle drives also generated the gunfighter, and many a gunman has stood before an old, dusty, warped mirror to stretch and admire himself from hat top down to his sparkling "waistband of death", as I once heard it called.
Anyway, it is all history now. Yet, it happened only yesterday when you come to think of it. There was an old boot dug up from Custer's Little Big Horn burial ground last year, in 1958, and the damned thing looked as if it had only been in the ground a couple of months – sole on the boot, hooks and nails, 
Looking like you could wear it. And when I come to think of working with Wyatt Earp not so many years ago – well, it hasn't been too par back in history.
Every man has a place to fill in the making of America. The gunfighter has been no exception. The great, in both sin and morality, stand shoulder to shoulder in stone, bronze, or on canvas; and many a boy, yes, even grown men, would rather hear of the deeds of Wild Bill Hickok than read all the books written on Georg Washington or Abe Lincoln.

- A. M. King
Wyatt Earp Deputy
Arizona and California
1900

Joaquin Murrietta

1830 - 1853

Joaquin Murrietta, California bandit was perhaps our first fast-draw artist, although he used the old model French cap-and-ball large bore pistol which he wore for quick use in his sash.
This swarthy Mexican came to California when he was not yet twenty years of age, and with him he brought along a pretty wife, Antonia Molinera, who was raped by the miners of the Mother Lode country while Joaquin was away at work dealing Monte in one of the saloons. This criminal act almost drove Joaquin out of his mind and started him on a career of gun slinging robbery which has never been equaled. His small 49 gold claim was forgotten in Stanislaus as he took to nursing his bitterness by small holdups of individual miners and then larger ones. He became implicated in horse stealing and was beaten with a thronged bullwhip. The bleeding Joaquin became a gringo-hater from that moment on.
He organized a band of desperadoes, and each man had to be fast and deadly with a gun, and each man had to be fast and deadly with a gun, and his wife was dressed as a man and also trained to slip a weapon speedily from its sash and shoot to kill with a single shot. With some 80 men at his back, the gun fighting Mexican swooped down upon stage coaches to rob and loot them and called to a halt lone riders from whom he took all goods and left them afoot. He robbed for gold and dust, up and down the mining camps of the High Sierra, and to add to his already growing fame, he tied Chinamen together by their queues, made them dance to the tune of a pistol, then shot their eyes out.
It is said that Joaquin lured a Sacramento River schooner to the beach to take his hand aboard. In the lonely reaches of the river where they boarded it, they killed and made off with more than twenty thousand dollars in gold and dust. On another occasion, Joaquin offered a thousand dollars for his own capture and arrest and then told the sheriff who he was and killed him. Again, he is said to have stolen 50 fine-blooded horses from the estate of the old California governor and run them off into Mexico.
But like Robinhood, Joaquin was secretly loved by many of the rancheros who, it is said, he helped with money and many kindnesses.
The end came when Captain Harry Love, a noted Los Angeles gunfighter, with 20 men, rode down upon the bandit, surprising him at a campfire near Lake Tulare.
His head was severed and carried back by Billy Henderson to the sheriff´s office, where it was auctioned off and sold for thirty-five dollars.
Dr. Allan Thomson, once the doctor of Jack London, saw Murrietta's head in a large jar of alcohol in the old Cordon Museum on Market Street, in San Francisco, and the sum of twenty-five cents gained him admission.
Dr. Thomson tells us that Joaquin was a swarthy Mexican, "about like Mr. McCarty has painted him”, and that the place was crowded with visitors. “The earthquake of 1906 rocked the jar from its foundation and the head of Murrietta was lost forever."

Jesse James

1847 - 1882

Dr. Allan Thomson, who was once Jack London's doctor, lived a piece up the road from the James family, and he tells me Jess was born in 1847, the son of a Baptist minister and a mother who found it necessary to marry three times, her last husband being a kindly man, Dr. Reuben Samuel.

He also states that Jesse was spawned of the Civil War as a Quantrell Raider, and that his first gun hand can be attributed to the new Navy Colts cap-and-ball which set a faster pace in the art of draw-shoot killing.

Dr. Thomson says Confederate money wasn't worth a Chinese whisker, and, with the shame of having lost the war to a lot of no-good bluecoats, it was easy for a Missourian to saddle up, ride out, and do harm to anything Republican, whether it was a train, stagecoach, or a bank. Jesse, being no exception, found a democratic following in Brother Frank, Clell Miller, Jim Poole, George White, and a host of other staunch hearts, including the Younger cousins – some 17 men ready for anything at all in what was considered a continuation of the border states war. They were to peg up a quarter of a million dollars in train and bank robberies, consummating this record in 17 years of gunslinging.

They had relatives, he says, all over the state, and could tarry most anywhere while on the run. Few outside lawmen came into his territory because they feared being bushwhacked by relatives who could still handle an old squirrel rifle, relatives that had cut down Louie Lull, a Pinkerton snoop, and had cashed in a local police officer who had the wrong tendencies. Then, too, one of the Younger’s had outdrawn and outshot another Pinkerton whose body was found half eaten by hogs on a lonely rad.

Dr. Reuben Samuel, Jess's stepfather, had the misfortune to be standing by the fireplace when a Pinkerton threw a bomb into the fireplace which literally blew him sky-high and tore off the arm of Jesse's mother, killing his step-brother outright. A horrible thin, indeed.

Now Jess had a legitimate excuse to rob and kill, and he went at the business like a madman, riding east, west, south, north – sticking up trains, banks, stagecoaches, brusquely pushing people around and killing those who resisted him. He held up his first train in 1873, the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific, near Adair, Iowa, and his first band at Liberty, Missouri; then one at Russelville, in Logan County, Kentucky. Jesse offered little jokes and puns as he took the money. His blue eyes blinked and a dry smile showed the humor he inherited from his mother.

Feeling the urge to marry, he managed a respectable church wedding to his first cousin, Zerelda, who had nursed him back from his Civil War wounds. He was a hero now. Good Missourians liked to sing songs of him and his Robinhood legend.

On September of 1876 the boys rode out to Northfield, Minnesota, where they roared into a bank making definite demands at gunpoint. The people recognized at once what was taking place, and a withering gunfight followed in which Bill Chadwell, Clell Miller and a couple of citizens were cut down. Charlie Pitts went to his death. Jim Younger received five slugs, Bob Younger two; and although Cole Younger's big body felt the bite of five bullets, he still stood on his feet to bow to the ladies as the wagon rolled them off to jail.

All were sentenced to life imprisonment, but Jim and Cole Younger were paroled after 25 years of Jail.

Frank James was not caught. Jesse semi-retired up in the swank Nashville area living the life of ease, smoking success cigars, racing horses and sunning himself of afternoons, and making no particular effort to conceal the real identity of the great Jesse James while he passes himself off as a “Mr. Howard”. Later, he went on to California where he visited an uncle in Paso Robles, and then on to the wine country of Napa Valley to see some friends. But life grew dull, and James returned home.

Back into the saddle and his guns.  He robbed a stage at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, gunning down the conductor and an ambitious passenger – all in July, 1881, the year Billy the Kid was killed away off in New Mexico Territory.

Reward posters were now in evidence shouting a ten-thousand dollar bounty for Jesse, dead or alive. Bob Ford, a former member of the gang, could not resist this money, so he picked one of Jesse's pistols off the table in Jesse's own house and killed him while he was straightening a picture on the wall.

All Missouri mourned poor Jesse's death. Frank James surrendered to the governor. It was the end of the James banditry. You certainly knew this when you saw Frank James acting nightly as a doorman in a St. Louis burlesque not long afterward.

Wild Bill Hickok

1837 - 1876

 James Butler Hickok, or “Wild Bill” Hickok, stumbled along behind a plow on his father's farm in La Salle Country, Illinois, until he grew big enough to have the gumption to drop the reins and follow the birds. In 1851, after some pistol practice out behind the barn, he became known as “Marshal Hickok” when he assumed the troubles for Monticello Township. Wild Bill was a born lawman.
He proved his pistoleering genius when he shot down five desperadoes in a street in Leavenworth, in 1858. No scallywags in Bill's bailiwick were going to go about shooting up the town. Bill was equally as handy with a knife; too, which he wore thrust into his pistol sash.
He learned to know every of the Santé Fe Trail as he drove a stagecoach, but he had to give up this life after an encounter with then ordered by the company down to Rock Creek Station in Nebraska where a man named David McCanles rankled Bill's nerves to the explosion point. He had to cut him down and rid the earth of him, along with his five cohorts who took to a shoot-out settlement. Bill didn't fool around.
Independence, Missouri, a wild frontier settlement, needed a lawman as fearless as Wild Bill. He took on the job and in a fortnight or so cleaned out the blowhards, the gunslingers, and border roughnecks, and then left to serve as a scout in the Federal Army in Arkansas and Indian Territory.
The world looked big and wide to Bill, but it didn't daunt his spirit at all. He took everything in his stride, even a gunfighter named Dave Tutt, who had a terrible reputation for blood-letting. Although Wild Bill knew the blonde woman in question had something real personal to do with Tutt, he made advances just the same, because Bill liked women. This enraged Tutt, who demanded a showdown. He got it one Sunday morning when both men walked out into the wide street and people scattered. Both drew simultaneously, Bill shooting first, turning, walking nonchalantly, away, while Tut trembled as if in an ecstasy upon receiving the bullet, stumbled and fell on his face with not enough ebbing strength to pull the hair trigger. He was dead before he hit the ground.
It makes the armchair spectator laugh to think of Wild Bill with his frills and gimmicks of dandy dress, his big pancake hat and groomed mustache and flowing hair. However, the Texas cowboy made no fun of it whatsoever when Bill became the law in Hays City, Kansas. “No guns in Hays City, sir,” that was it. Take them off or get shot dead where you stood. Bill ruled with an iron hand. His reputation was enough to make a cowboy tremble, as he was always cutting down somebody famous running the Hickok peg up higher.
His lightning draw became the conversation along many bars in the Old West. Bill was a proud figure of a man with broad shoulders, a mane of loose hair, and an eagle eye that searched the faces around him.
Bear River Tom Smith carried his “I-carry-no-gun” philosophy too far and got stopped eternally with a bullet or two; and so, in 1871, when Abilene needed a man like Hickok to fill Smith's boots, the badge of office was readily accepted and Wild Bill moved up the board walks like a proud lion, peering into new faces, shooting searching glances along the bar rails of saloons, pausing, telling a cowboy to unbuckle his guns, etcetera.
Bill always had a big radiant smile for the ladies, courteous tip of his wide hat.
Bill Thompson's associate, Phil Coe, was co-owner of the famed Bull´s Head Saloon, and Wild Bill got a little peeved at a pornographic sign which hung over the establishment. He ordered it down. This eventually led Wild Bill to shoot it out with Phil Coe, killing him instantly, and to whirl about and shoot his own deputy, Mike Williams, by mistake. Many claim that Wild Bill was going bind, for it is a matter of record in the National Archives of Washington that he later visited Cheyenne where the post physician there noted his patient was going “blind from glaucoma”.
Bill joined Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show in 1876. The make-believe life, however, was not for a man of his tastes. He finally moved on to the Black Hills of South Dakota where he was shot in the back of the head in Deadwood while playing cards in Carl Mann´s saloon – shot by a drunken sot (whose name is unworthy of mention here), who was tried, convicted, and hung in 1877 in Custer City.

Bill Longley

1851 - 1878

Gunfighter Bill Longley was a Heller for sure. He had the anti-Negro complex and took it out savagely with twin Colts and no-church conscience. They say he shot a Negro dead for just sassing his pa.
He was born in 1851 in Austin County, Texas. His father had been a proud member of Sam Houston's army, so he understood guns and passed this heritage on to his son, who learned to use them so effectively.
Bill hated the free Negro. One night he rode hellbent through Lexington and shot down eight black men. Just ornery mean. It is little wonder that he struck terror to the Negro heart. This was his inroad to gun-throwing. He wore guns strapped to his waist and the tie-thongs went about his legs so that you didn´t have to guess whether he was a killer or not.
The Federals had a count against him and tried to ride him down. Bill killed a cocky sergeant and then lit out for Arkansas. His campfire lured a bum by name of Johnson (in reality a horse thief).
The Feds rode up on them one night and strung them up to a tree, then switched the horses out from under them. Before riding off into the night, however, they took a shot at the dangling figures. Johnson strangled and died. Bill was lucky to have his rope struck by a stray bullet and landed on his feet very much alive.
Luck was with him when he ran into one of the bragging Feds who was telling about how he had hung a big fellow to an oak. He found himself looking into twin barrels of eternity and Bill Longley telling him to march. Bill led him to the same tree and hung him to the same limb.
Bill rode trail-herd to Abilene, Kansas, and the trail boss was a cussed wretch who liked to brag about his shooting and drawing ability. One night, by the campfire, he told Bill he could outdraw him. Bill unlimbered but forgot it was in fun and shot the man dead.
He was indeed a dedicated Texan. He heard am man loudly declare, as he bellied up to the bar, that all Texans were "hoss thieves" and their women prostitutes.
There was nothing for Bill to do but slap him across the mouth, which knocked him down, and then kill him.
He rode out of Abilene he heard that Wild Bill Hickok would not tolerate any shooting.
Bill often found money hard to come by, and so he had to pick a fight with a wanted man, cut him down, and then collect the five hundred dollar reward from the sheriff. In this particular instance, he used some of the money to buy a pair of pistols. In those days, one had to spin the gun, try the balance, cock it, flick the barrel, and again try the balance. Bill did this and went to the trouble to put a couple of shells in the empty chambers, saw a Negro sauntering across the street, leveled off and killed him. He told the storekeeper casually that they were fine weapons and then paid for them.
The sheriff came running and tried to place Bill under arrest.
"I guess I'll have to kill you, too," said Bill, and he shot the lawman in the belly.
The U.S. Government had put a bounty on his head in Fredericksburg. Texas and the law grabbed him as he was eating dinner and took him to the U.S. Marshal.
The government refused to pay a reward. Bill sent a wire to his folks and they sent a rider on over with the money, and so Bill walked scot-free.
Bill drifted down into Old Mexico and shot up two or three Mexican gunslingers, then killed another man with his bare fists because he had no gun to match his.
Near San Antonio, he shot another fellow and had to unload both guns before the man would settle down and die.
Bill made his fatal mistake when he avenged the death of his cousin by killing a man in public. He was captured at once and sentenced to hang. His only jail complaint was that he felt he should get as lenient a sentence as that which was pronounced on John Wesley Hardin, another famous gunslinger.
Bill Longley was only 27 years of age in 1878 with 31 dead men to his credit. He lit his last cigar and climbed to the gallows. He literally smiled at his executioners, who themselves were trembling. When the trap was released, the rope slipped and Bill landed catlike on his feet.
“This time hangs the sonofabitch for good!” the jailer cried. And this time they did and Bill died in exactly 11 minutes – a great gunfighter. 

Ben Thompson

1843 - 1884

Ben Thompson was a top gunfighter and a good one to observe strong hunches. Has it been otherwise he would have died in error of judgment.

His birthplace has been set at Lockhart, Texas, in 1843. As a young man he was a printer but had a hankering for something more exciting and found it in New Orleans when he killed his first man over women.

Ben's pace led him directly into gambling and he was a common figure to be seen about town in many of the big saloons. He had taken to carrying a pistol or two on his person.

Ben went to the Civil War in Baylor's Confederate regiment but fought a gun battle with his sergeant, whom he cut down instantly and then deserted.

In Austin he killed a badman named Coombs and then shot up three Mexicans at Nuevo Laredo. He drifted into Old Mexico and joined up under Emperor Maximilian but quit when the Emperor was executed, and then rode back into Texas and stood trial for the Coombs killing, for which he was acquitted.

This gunfighter swaggered about dressed in his high silk hat and walking stick. He and his brother Bill roamed far and wide and raised nell-hell every inch of the way, shooting their way out of tight spots.

At this time, Wild Bill Hickok was marshal of Abilene and made the town toe the mark. Ben and a man named Phil Coe opened the Bull's Head Saloon and Ben displayed what Wild Bill thought was a pornographic sign. And so down came the sign. Then Ben left for Kansas City, but while he was gone Wild Bill shot Coe and left him lying dead in the street. Although Ben never saw Wild Bill again, he said he ought to look him up and cut him down.

But this time it said that Ben and his brother Bill had shot down 25 men. Bill was gun-happy and for this reason he killed Sheriff. C. B. Whitney in cold blood with a couple loads of buckshot in the plaza at Ellsworth. While Bill escaped, Ben stood off the town with peace officers hiding behind buildings and out of sight.

When Ben called out once too often for them to come out and fight, the figure of a single man appeared who had just borrowed a badge and a couple of pistols from the mayor. This man was young Wyatt Earp and he told Ben to either throw down the shotgun or he'd kill him. Ben had a strange hunch and threw down the gung.

He was fined $25.00 for disturbing the peace and his brother Bill was acquitted when tried.

Earp took off the badge as he frowned on this type of justice.

Ben got the job as city marshal for the city of Austin, but he killed one too many men and was let out. Then in San Antonio he shot down saloon owner Jack Harris, met gunslinger dandy-boy King Fisher, another reputable gunhand, and the two often ambled into the Harris place before, one might say, the body was cold.

For this brazen act they received blasts from several guns which sent them into the next world. He was 41 years of age when he was cut down and had killed over 40 men. His funeral stretched for blocks and his tall silk hat was placed atop the coffin.

King Fisher

1854 - 1884

Life in Old Mexico leaves its stamp on many men. It did on King Fisher, the good-looking, swaggering gunslinger who wore a big, black mustache and good-natured smile. He had the elegance of a Mexican gentleman, much the same as young Billy the Kid attained by living with the Latin’s, and his fine pearl-handled pistols and silver spurts with bells made him quite a figure as his boots rang along the walks and his silken tie fluttered over his shoulder. He often wore laced shirts, garments which nobody dared remark about unless the comment was complimentary.

King Fisher rated with the best gunfighters, with Ben Thompson and John Wesley Hardin, etcetera. His gunhand moved with unseeing swiftness and ease, his hip aim was deadly, even at some distance.

Fisher spent most of his time below the border, and it was some amusement to him to be set upon by bandidos and then whip out his guns and cut them down, always leaving one or two to flee so they could spread news of the dreadful American gunfighter. Many of the bandits took to their heels when they saw the man with the gringo spurs and big pistols and orange silk tie and red scarf at his waist.

Lawmen spent much time and money trying to track down King but had no lick in nailing him. He would slip away every time, out the back door maybe, or be hiding behind some curtain with a gun on the back of the bartender.

King killed many border gunslingers, cut them down without giving them any quarter whatever other than the chance to go for the gun. Mexicans who saw him unlimber never tired of telling about the uncanny swiftness of the gringo killer.

One night King came into a cantina where a fine fandango was in progress. He got liquored up and started to shoot up the place. A bald-headed fellow told him to go someplace else with his shooting, whereupon King saw his sweaty bald pate and shot at it to see if the bullet would ricochet.

Then the gunslinger settled down. He started to live a quiet life back in Texas and added no more illegal dead men to his score of over 20. He took on a deputy-ship in Uvalde County and became a very efficient and trustworthy lawman. He had to travel to Austin on official business, to extradite a man, and here he met his old friend, Ben Thompson, who was a renowned killer himself and who had once been City Marshal of Austin. Ben suggested they have a few rounds of drinks and then paint the town. When it was time for King to return home to Uvalde, Ben decided to accompany him as far as San Antonio. After reaching this destination, they continued to raise hell and drink up the town.

Ben suggested they attend a good vaudeville show at the old Harris Theatre. (Ben had shot dead the owner of this bar and theatre some months before this.)

So away they went to visit the Harris Theatre, in which they were suddenly ambushed and both Fisher and Thompson slumped to the floor with their guns half out of their concealment.

Fisher had lived by the gun as had Ben Thompson, a violent and hectic life, and he had some 26 dead men to his score. King Fisher was among one of the most deadly border gunfighters to have ever lived and old-timers living along the Texas-Mexican line tell tales in which his name appears time and again as they heard the same stories told by their fathers who had seen the great gunfighter in action.

Jim Courtright

1848 - 1887

Jim Courtright was the kind of man willing to oblige anybody with big trouble provided he was a reputable gunslinger. He knew exactly how to measure a man by the general appearance and particularly the manner in which he wore his gun. Long-haired Jim was like greased lightning with a single or twin Colts and he had learned to shoot accurately out back of the barn in Iowa where he spent his boyhood. It wasn't until he entered the Civil War that he got to see the country and also learned the fine points of blood-letting. As an army scout, under General Logan of Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, he had plenty of time to grow long hair and provoke barroom fights and thus satisfy that strange hunger of the killer.

Jim was one of the few gunfighters who was both dark-headed and dark eyed, as the majority had washed-out blue eyes, and the pallid complexion of night life.

Jim had a gunfight in Fort Worth with half the town getting the opportunity to see him unlimber and kill, so it is little wonder he was offered an appointment as marshal, which he accepted. He went to work by cutting down a few smart alecks to let the town know that Jim Courtright meant business. He played up to the political element and eventually ran a shakedown business in which he found himself out of a job and without friends.

He went on to a mining town in Lake Valley, New Mexico, and managed an appointment there that was considered a suicide job the way the lawmen had been bumped off. Jim didn´t fool around. He rubbed hard at the top men and got them heated to a point of drawing on him and then methodically cut them down in street fights. One man he literally cut to pieces by breaking his hands first and then his legs until he knelt and pleaded for his life. No quarter was given and it was good advertising for Jim. He tore the head off of the second gunslinger. Jim liked the job. However, the mines petered out and the town folded up.

Jim had reached a plateau in gunfighting fame where the expression ran: "Look out. Here comes Jim Courtright." His walk took on a swagger and his manner was causal – like a cat.

Jim couldn't get a job. He was forced to take one from General Logan as a foreman of his ranch in the American Valley in New Mexico. There was no question as to Courtright being a fine horseman let alone a good gunman. It was his job to flush out the rustlers on the ranch and kill them without quarter. But when Jim got to shooting he never knew exactly when to let up; he not only did in the Mexican rustlers but honest homesteaders fell under his vicious gun. He gave no quarter whatever. This riled the towns-people and so much pressure was brought to bear on the General that he had to let Jim go and advised him to leave in a hurry.

He no more than reached Fort Worth again than he was arrested by the U.S. Marshal. Jim escaped and managed to go on to South America, but he returned in a few months and stood trial and was acquitted.

He had to take on a job as a bouncer in saloons and gambling casinos, killing several men on the self-defense alibi.  He finally decided to open a detective agency, which he called the Commercial Detective Agency. This was, in reality, a front for the clandestine business of shaking down gambling men who had to pay rather than risk being either frisked or shot down.

Finally, Luke Short showed up in Fort Worth, a gunfighter of considerable reputation, and established himself in what he named the White Elephant Saloon. Jim was on his heels to give his so-called protection that Luke might run his business in peace. But the Dodge gunfighter told him to go to hell, that he could do all the gunslinging necessary to keep himself clear of leeches.

On February, 1887, the famous street fight between Courtright and Luke Short took place. Luke got in the first shot which tore off Courtright's hammer thumb, while Jim made a border shift without effect, being too late, and Luke blasted him three times as he staggered and sank to his knees in the street, then fell over on his face. He died in his thirty-ninth year, but it took a great gunfighter to bring him down.

John Wesley Hardin

1853 - 1895

Preacher Hardin, a God-fearing circuit-riding man, had great expectations for his son, Wesley, named after a bishop of the Methodist Church, and born in 1853.

Wesley served as a Sunday school superintendent for a while. But the time was ripe to change a man, and the northern bluecoats had made police of Negroes following the Civil War. In a burst of rage over an incident. Wes, at the age of 15, cut down his first man, a Negro, in Washington Country, Texas, and also shot four more men who pursued him. Young Hardin was right hand with a six gun. He was in big trouble, too.
This mere boy in a big-rimmed hat, with a heavy cap-and-ball pistol dragging at his pants, had to have a drink of hard liquor, and while so doing ran afoul of an Arkansas gunslinger from Horn Hill. He beat Wes to the draw, but Wes the better shot and the gunslinger died with a look of agonized dismay on his face.
Then young Hardin had to unlimber on a circus roustabout, outdraw, and kill him. At Kosse, another hot head just asked to be cut down. Then in Waco, Wes became conscious of this special gift and outdrew another gunman. Then the law had him good, but Hardin escaped from jail, killing Deputy Jim Smolly.
Talent, indeed. Down the road to hell. With eight men dead, with nicer clothes on his broad shoulders, he cut a fine figure, gunbelt and all. He went home to see his Pa, a man who knew what it was to carry a Bible in one hand and a un in the other, as he had been a captain in the Civil War. He advised his son to go on down into Old Mexico until the trouble blew over. However, Wes was grabbed by state police between Belton and Waco. During dry camp that night, both men dropped off to sleep. Wes grabbed the shotgun and woke up every chicken within a mile when he blasted them into eternity.
Wes's cousins Joe, Jim, Gyp, and Manning Clements, hard men of guns cattle, were camped out in the wild mesquite jungle and ready for a big drive to Abilene, in 1871. Wes was welcome to come along, drive cattle, and fight off greasers and injuns on the Chisum Trail.
Mid-spring found them in the famed frontier town of Abilene, a bedlam of bawling cattle, rickety western clapboard buildings, and a seething mass of fun-seeking hell-raisers from Texas crowding into the saloons-patrolled by the fancy dresser and killer, Marshal Wild Bill Hickok. Switch engines snorted and wheezed all night long, cattle bawled, piano keys got mixed up in the welter of sound.
With hair slicked down, Wes and his ornery cousins cruised the town, looking her over, and met the famed killer, Ben Thompson, all decked out in a hight plug hat like an undertaker, telling Wes to kill the stuffed shirt Wild Bill, as he didn´t like lawmen in any form. Wes told Ben to do his own killing. A short time thereafter, Wes met Wild Bill and the two got on fine. Bill just couldn't figure out this 18-year-old son-of-Satan who was growing in reputation. There is a tale abroad that Wes threw down on Hickok, but the wise wave it aside.
Back at his hotel room, he caught a man rifling his pants and killed him.
In between shoot-outs in Texas, Wes found the girl of his heart, married her, then lit out again to cut down Sheriff Dick Reagon and famed gunslinging lawman, Sheriff Jack Helms.
Wes had killed about 40 men at this stage of his career, at 21 years of age, and although Carlie Webb took the risk and outdrew him, creasing his side, Wes whirled and killed him with a bullet in his eye. For this act, although the killer was gone, his brother Joe and his cousins, Bud and Tom Dixon, were caught and strung up.
He was now on the run, but not for long, for he was soon nabbed by the Texas Rangers at Pensacola Junction, Florida, in 1877. Tried and convicted, he was sentenced to 25 years in Huntsville Prison where Bill Longley, Mannen Clements and John Ringo made him company. Here, Wes studied law. In 1894 after serving 15 years, he was pardoned. On the outside now, he passed the bar and moved along to El Paso where he hung out his shingle. But he was no longer the same man. He strutted and bragged, he got drunk, he pushed people around. It was only a matter of time.
Young John Selman got into an argument with Wes over a woman. Old John Selman, the young policeman's father, feared for his son's life. Wes was shot down while he rolled dice in the Acme Saloon with his back to the door where Selman stood, took careful aim and cut him down. Wes died as he had lived – by the gun.

Watt Earp

1848 - 1929

Few lawmen have lived the charmed and exciting life which was lived by my friend, Wyatt Earp. I worked with Earp in the 1900s when he was on the way out.

Earp told me he was born in Monmouth, Illinois, in about 1848, and following the Civil War his pa threw their truck into a big wagon and headed west to San Berdu, California, where they settled. L.A. and San Berdu then went on at the same chore in Arizona and later drove stage in the Salt Lake country, too.

Wyatt always was a good business man and hired out his own teams to the railroad in Wyoming. This gave him money to marry, and that he did. She was a child bride, so to speak. She died of the terrible typhus epidemic, which event just about tore Wyatt apart. So he went on to Kansas City where he met Wild Bill Hickok and learned to handle guns from this master killer. He also hunted buffalo with Bat Masterson.

Wyatt got into Ellsworth, Kansas, just as the famous gunslinger, Ben Thompson, had the town treed as he waved that double-barreled shotgun at the mayor and deputies who were hiding behind doors and in halls.

Wyatt opened his mouth and said that he'd shut the big Texan up if he had the guns and the badge. He got em right now. And out he stepped to tell Thompson to throw the gun in the road. Thompson later told Bat Masterson that he had a powerful hunch that Wyatt meant to kill him, and so he did throw down that shotgun. This made Earp a famous man up and down the Chisholm Trail. Ben was fined twenty-five dollars, and his brother, Bill, who had killed C. B. Whiney with that shotgun, was acquitted. Earp tendered the badge in disgust, for his pa had taught him a different kind of law.

In the spring, Wyatt told me he went on to Wichita, now a famous man, and was made deputy marshal there.

He at once waded into the bi shot, Shanghai Pierce, who owned half the cattle in Texas, and told him and his retinue of cowboys to tow the mark or he'd give them hell. Then he went after Mannen Clements, gunfighter that he was, with his cowboys behind him and read the law aloud to ém all. He got away with that, too. His fame spread.

A couple of Texans wanted to do battle with their dukes. Earp squared off and made both of them look like they had been eating honey while the bees were in the hive.

Wyatt said he pulled out and went on to Dodge and became chief deputy marshal there, with men like deputies Bat Masterson, Neal Brown, Joe Mason, Bill Tilghman and Charlie Bassett to give him a handsome mighty fighting men to give the right kind of confidence.

Well, Earp went after the famed outlaw, Dave Rudabaught, into Fort Griffin, Texas, and there he came face to face with Doctor John H. Holliday. He was a specialist in teeth who had a hobby of gambling and leaving dead men under tables – a real honest-to-god killer man who became Earp's lifelong friend. Back in Dodge again, Wyatt had a showdown with Clay Allison and made the famous gunslinger from the Washita ride out of town. Then one George Hoydt took a reach for fame and Wyatt stopped him by unsaddling this ambitious man with a bullet.

The fall of 79, as Wyatt gave it to me, found him in Tombstone, Arizona, a newly-appointed deputy under Charlie Shibell of Pima County. He rode shotgun on bullion stages, then acted as Tombstone District Marshal. He cracked Curly Bill Brocius on the head for killing Marshal White, and told the Clantons there would be no monkey business with them. The Clantons, as you perhaps know, ran a rustling empire and hid behind the big desk of Sheriff Johnny Behan.

Wyatt always was a brave man, and he proved it when he stopped a lynch mob with a shotgun. The Clantons didn´t  like this, however, and robbed stages night and day so that Wyatt had no rest, and his interest in the Oriental were left almost entirely to Bat Masterson and Luke Short, who ran his Monte and blackjack for him.

Finally, the showdown came in the famed shoot-out at the OK Corral, in which Frank and Tom McLowery and Billy Clanton were cut down in 30 seconds of gun fire. Virgil, Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday war wounded, the latter carrying a sawed-off shotgun no bigger than a horse pistol in length. Ike Clanton and John Ringo skeedaddled off into the cactus of Old Mexico, while Wyatt rode down and gunned to earth several others of the rustling empire. Old Man Clanton got his when Mexicans caught him stealing their cattle.

Wyatt said he was tired and went on to San Diego, California, into the real estate business, and then on to Alaska, where he opened up the Dexter Saloon there.

Finally, he came back to do some mining near Needles and to develop oil lands in Kern County.

I got word of Wyatt's passing in 1929. Although he had some 100 shoo-outs and trouble, he died with his boots off at the ripe old age of 81.   

Doc Holliday

1852 - 1887

It would be a rare thing for a man to say he had never heard of Doc Holliday – Dr. John H. Holiday.
For this man was schooled to become a dentist, and did practice at times, but gravitated to the gambling table and the thrilling excitement of a knife or gunfight.
Wyatt Earp said of him: "The most dangerous man alive". Doc had tuberculosis, and this may account for his philosophy of dangerous living. He knew he was a dying man with little to lose.
He was born the son of a fiery-tempered Confederate Army major in Valdosta, Georgia, about 1852, and educated in the medical college in Baltimore, but after the family doctor gave him but four years to live, he packed up and started to wander down through Texas.
For a while he practiced in Dallas, but after killing a couple of angry gamblers Doc moved on. Working on teeth along the way, drinking continually, and gambling, he became very proficient with a pair of pistols.
He practiced the fast draw at every opportunity.
An other man died over a card game as Doc flew across the table and knitted him, and two more died of gunshot in Jacksborough. His guns flashed again in Denver, and his knife sent another man under. In Wyoming he killed sill another ambling man. Doc was a chronic killer.
While in Fort Griffin on the rail of Dave Rudabaugh, the killer, Wyatt Earp met Doc Holliday and liked the renowned gunfighter from the start. A friendship grew and was cemented after Doc saved Wyatt’s life.
There was a “Mrs. Doc Holliday,” better known as Big Nosed Kate. She was a heller, but her big heart went out to Doc on many occasions when he had his coughing fits. She is known to have saved his life more than once. For instance, Doc shot down a man in Fort Criffing and Kate liberated her lover by setting fire to a building and having horses ready for his escape.
Doc went on to Dodge City where Wyatt was marshal. He arrived just when a bunch of Texas cowboys had the lawman in a tight spot in the Long Branch Saloon. Doc stole in the back door and threw down on the cowboys, killing two and covering the rest, whom Wyatt threw in the calaboose.
In Santa Fe Doc shot three more men who questioned his honesty at card, and met Wyatt Earp and his brother's family heading for Arizona. He joined the caravan, September of 1879.
One strange thing about Doc was his loyalty to Wyatt. The Earp brothers did not particularly like him, only tolerated this gambler-killer. Doc was never drunk although he consumed as high as four quarts of whiskey in a day and would put away a pint before breakfast.
Big Nosed Kate came to Tombstone where she and Doc had a falling out. So she went about town, screaming drunk, telling all she met that Doc had robbed the stage. Doc slapped her down and told her had he robbed the damned thing he would have taken all the gold instead of bungling the job. When Kate sobered she told the judge she had lied, and Doc gave her some money and told him if she ever came back to Tombstone he would kill her. She knew he mean it and never returned.
Doc was a terror when he got mad. Once, when John Ringo had showered imprecations on Wyatt Earp, he went through the streets of Tombstone with the sawed off shotgun Virgil Earp had given him, shouting for Ringo to come out a 'smokin'.
The gun battle at the OK Corral was the political showdown of two factions in Tombstone – the Earps and the Clantons. Out of 17 shots fired by the Clantons and McLowerys there were only three hits at the stable, while out of 17 shots fired by Doc and the Earp’s there were 13 hits. Tom, Frank McLowery and Billy Clanton were killed, butt Virgil, Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday were only wounded. Morgan was killed a little later.
Curly Bill was blasted by Wyatt at Iron Springs.
Doc finally went on to Denver where he died at 35 years of age in the high country of Glenwood Spring pale and thin – too weak to lift a playing card.

Clay Allison

1840 - 1877

It was seldom that a successful cattleman of the Washita, and at times an elegant southern gentleman, could also have the glittering reputation of being a top gunfighter. But clay Allison did. He was a hater of a stranger chained with bullets and swinging guns and bragging.
He'd hunt him down and have a street shoot himself, six feet two, was a vain and ballooned personality. Originally, he hailed from Tennessee and had been a soldier in the Confederate Army where he learned about easy-go killing. As a guerrilla he became adept at the art of gunslinging. He liked black horses and loved to ride through town with spurs a-jingle observed by the ladies.
He did some bloodletting in Indian Territory, cut down the breed type of competition, then moved down through Texas where he killed more men looking for gunpowder prominence. Then on up into New Mexico to unlimber his guns again, and back to the Panhandle.
His ranch lay around Las Animas, and any citizen could tell you, with eyes popping, how Clay hurrahed the town when drunk every Christmas with pistol blazing the sky as he raced his horse up and down the board walks like a roll of thunder.
They´d tell you about the time Clay had an argument over a neighborly fence, and to decide the argument dug a grave and got down into it and fought to the death with knives. Clay buried the man respectable-like as a neighbor should be laid away. A marshal felt his oats in this matter and also one of Clay´s bullets. Allison also cut down the marshal of Cimarron, New Mexico.
Tragedy and humor are cousins, so they say, and Clay liked to keep his teeth in good shape, but when the dentist pulled the wrong one he found himself jammed down into his own chair and his uppers pulled one by one. Clay also used the county found to keep a hung-up jury in hard liquor. He also rode through Canadian without a stitch of clothing on, shooting at those who peeked during his frolic. A lot of old-timers knew about the time he thundered into court on his black so as not to be late and disturb the judge.
New Mexico bred a gunfighter by name of William Chink, who drank deep at any bar he happened to frequent and then invited any man alive to outgun him.
A few spins of the weapon and a shoot-out of a bottle or two would punctuate what the man had declared quite dramatically, while he looked down his red nose at his trembling admirers. This was the kind of flea-bitten, gunpowder gent Clay liked to bite into.
So the two met. Clay rang out change for a few rounds of drinks and then invited his surprised guest to dinner. The dining room cleaned out in a hurry of those who love to linger over their food, for they saw that glitter in Clay's eye and heard the thickness of his tongue and knew to expect. Clay became suddenly irritated at the uncouth chomping of his guest's jaws and stopped them as still as death with a salad sticking out as he polished off Mr. Chunk. He left him lying at his feet, and then went on to complete his dinner, dessert and all and a second cup of coffee.
Wyatt Earp, while sheriff of Dodge, met up with this handsome gunslinger, but before Clay could make his play he fled the hard muzzle of Earp's gun in his belly pressing persistently and those cold blue eyes telling him to get on his black and out of town, which he did. He came back sometime later, with permission from Earp, to transact a cattle trade, and then left with no trouble.
Clay was a man by tall acts who created tall tales, most of them true, and any respectable tobacco chewing bench philosopher or blacksmith shop commentator would tell you Clay was destined to die by the gun. But the wheel of fortune put him on the seat of a freighter wagon.
It struck a chuckhole, the reins went every which way and when Clay fell down under the great wheel his back popped under the crushing weight, killing him instantly.

Bat Masterson

1856 - 1921

The changes which occur in a mans lifespan are indeed strange. From gunfighter to newspaper writer in a big city paper is what I refer to. And yet this is precisely what happened to gunfighter Bat Masterson, born in an age when culture was upon the eastern seaboard and savagery along Luis by the train the frontiers of an expanding country.
Bat was born William Barclay Masterson in 1856. As a young man he left home to become a buffalo hunter on the Great Plains when the vast herds were “being annihilated by thousands of hunters who left the meat to rot and shipped skin and bones off to St. Louis by the trainload.
Mr. Masterson had distinguished himself as a frontiersman by taking part in the historic Battle of Adobe Walls in which 19 hunters were attacked by 1000 Commanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne and Arapahoe warriors.
Also, Wyatt Earp, frontier marshal, had a good opinion of Bat Masterson as is indicated when we see that he was made one of the Dodge City Peace Commission of 1883. Bat also wrote a book about his frontier days.
That he was a fighter, there is no question. He knew and understood the big country and became an army scout at Sweetwater, Texas. He derived his name “Bat partially because of an incident which happened here in Texas. An army sergeant by name of King had a girl friend whom Bat asked for a dance and a fight ensued in which Bat was shot in the leg, fracturing the bone.
King was killed in the fight with a bullet in the heart.
This leg wound made Bat limp, and because he later came to use the cane as a club on recalcitrant cowboy heads when he became a peace officer, he earned the sobriquet, “Bat”.
Wyatt Earp became the marshal of Dodge and had his hands full of hell-raising cowboys off the trail, along with gambling men and killers in general, and so he offered Bat and his brother Ed jobs as deputies, which they readily accepted. Bat became a familiar figure along the board walks with that formidable cane, and with a tilted hat. It also gave him a debonair and a cosmopolitan look, save for the ivory-handled pistols swinging at his sides. He was a natural born fighter and as fearless as they come. He always claimed he owed much to his teacher, Wild Bill Hickok, for his manner in handling his guns.
Bat received word that Wild Bill Hickok had been slain in Deadwood, South Dakota, by Jack McCall and decided therefore to quit his job and go to visit the wild mining town. He got no further than Cheyenne, where he lost considerable money and then decided to return to Dodge. He ran for sheriff of Ford County, which he won at the age of 22.
Bat disliked many of the gunfighters who hung about the gambling halls of town, and he put up with Doc Holliday simply because he was Wyatt Earp's friend. It was Bat who captured and jailed the notorious Dave Rudabaugh, who had been robbing trains in the vicinity. Bat had shot down a couple of hard characters in fair street fights and so his popularity soared.
Ed Masterson was not the man his brother was. In a street gunfight with gunslingers Alf Walker and Jack Warner, Ed was cut to ribbons and lay bleeding in the street when Bat came upon the killers. His guns immediately went into action and left Jack Warner dead in the street and Alf cut down and on his knees with a bullet in his guts.
Wyatt Earp had gone on to Tombstone, Arizona, and wrote both Bat and Luke Short to come down to the lively mining town and he would put both of them to work in his new business venture, the Oriental Saloon.
This offer was accepted. However, Bat wanted to go into business for himself and soon left Tombstone for Colorado where he opened up a gambling house of his own in Trinidad.
The fast pace was telling on Bat. He decided to slow down. He was offered a U.S. Marshal ship in Arizona but declined this offer from President Theodore Roosevelt. Instead, he accepted a post of U.S. Marshal in New York State. Then he quit this job, feeling that some hoodlum would shoot him sooner or later, and went to work as a sports writer on the New York Morning Telegraph, where he became a familiar figure at ringside at all the top fights, and a nightgoer along the Big White Way of Broadway.
He took sick in 1921 and cashed in his chips at the age of 65 years.

Luke Short

1854 - 1893 

Here was a gunslinger who learned to shoot out behind the barn on his father's west Texas ranch, and there never was a truer shot to be found anywhere.

For Luke Short had that instinct to make a bullet go exactly where he pointed a gun. His small stature as a man may have developed the complex to be a big man with a gun.
And Luke was all of that.
He was born in Texas about 1854, worked on his pa's ranch as a cowboy until he was big enough to take a nation to go on alone. He started out as a trader with the Sioux Indians up around Nebraska country, found gambling an easier and more exciting way to earn money, and so Luke became a gunfighting gambler destined to make his mark in our western history books.
Faro dealing suited Luke around the mining camps of Colorado. This made it necessary to sharpen up on his gunslinging because many times it became urgent to shoot his way out of a card game in which some of the players were violent fellows. Luke always came out of the tight spots with his opponents lying dead under the table.
He journeyed by horseback down into Tombstone, Arizona, since Wyatt Earp had sent for him to work as a dealer in his new Oriental Saloon venture. Bat Masterson was also there to join him. The two of them could give any kind of a tough individual a bad time if they were looking for real trouble.
Little Luke Short had his first gunfight in Tombstone with dangerous Charlie Storms. It happened right out in the street so the whole town could see Charlie go for his gun only to wither where he stood and die as he fell.
Luke was a dandy dresser and wore a neat little mustache. Often he'd dress up in silk hat and ling-tail coat and play up to the ladies. It was surprising how 140 pounds of dapper gentleman could make a lovely lady's heart flutter. He was as lucky with love as he was with gambling.
He went on to Dodge City in the 80s and bought an interest in the Long Branch Saloon. The story is often told that he hired a pretty girt to play the piano, but an ordinance was passed forbidding girls playing pianos in saloons. Luke then took recourse to hire a band and an ordinance put the damper on that, too.
There was no question that a rival was pulling political strings to run him out of a very lucrative business. Luke, therefore, picked up a shotgun and went after his competitor and the following morning was ordered at gunpoint out of town.
Bat Masterson happened to be in Denver at that time and Wyatt Earp in Silverton, Colorado, following his famed gunfight at the OK Corral. Luke wired for both of them to come as soon as possible. Wyatt brought four top gunslingers with him, made a deputy deputize them so they could wear their guns in town, then went to the mayor of Dodge and literally dictated his terms regarding Luke remaining in business – with his pretty female piano player. The Long Branch did a lively business again.
Luke was offered a fine price for his interest in the business and sold out.
He went on to Texas and bought out the White Elephant gambling hall. Now Jim Courtright owned a detective agency and offered certain protection to gambling houses in town. He had once been the town marshal, had a reputation as being a top gunfighter, and strode about with an important air. Like would not be coerced, and told Courtright to go straight to hell, that he could do all the protecting of his place personally which might be needed. An argument followed in which Courtright went for his gun, got his hammerthumb shot off and three fatal bullets besides, which left him dead in the street.
Some say that Luke Short died in a gunfight later.
This is not the case. Shortly after he sold the White Elephant he took desperately sick and died in bed in 1893 in Kansas City at the age of 39.

Old Man Clanton

1830 - 1882

Old Man Clanton, or N. H. Clanton, came out of the French and Indian War country about 1830 during the flintlock period to arrive in Laredo, Texas. From there travelled westward mavericking as he came, selling off the stock in Fort Bowie. He went on to California and the Gold Rush, where he spent some time before being run out by the Vigilantes.

Some fool of a woman married him and gave him four sons who had already learned to snarl and bite: Isaac, Ike, Phin and Bill – all chewing tobacco and spitting on the floor, cussing like mule-skinners, disregarding the Ten Commandments, and the like. Their teacher – Old Man Clanton. He also gave them lessons in gunslinging so that each one of them was a proficient killer.

Old Man Clanton was said to be able to out-Apache the Apache. He took up a ranch near Fort Thomas.

When he didn't like somebody on his property, he simply pointed him out, and one of the boys would provoke an argument and shoot the man down in "self defense".

Ed Schieffelin's strike has skyrocketed Tombstone to fame, and Old Man Clanton moved in. he became so popular stringing into town with his four sons and others who buzzed around him, that the newspaper, The Tombstone Nugget, referred to them as “the cowboy party” of Republicans.

Clanton's rise to political power came through his favors to Sheriff Johnny Behan, such as certain moneys poured into Behan's lap for giving the protection necessary to operate without any arrests, especially when Wells-Fargo was knocked over, or cattle rustling too close to town.

Old Man Clanton had quite an organization. He now had Curly Bill, John Ringo, Tom and Frank McLowery, Joe Hill, Pony Deal, Jim Hughes, Frank Stillwell and many other lieutenants who had under them some four hundred frontier outcasts who carried out the evil pursuits which dominated human rights all over eastern and southern Arizona.

Headquarters were maintained at various waterholes reaching down as far as New Mexico, into Sulphur Springs Valley and beyond, and there was not a cowman in the Territory who dared raise his voice against the wrath and terror of Old Man Clanton, who would deliberately set the running iron burning right under the owner's nose, or drive off stock within sight of the ranch house. Being proficient gunmen, all of Clanton's boys loved to unlimber and show off their special skill.

The Clanton boys collected the taxes, too, and made what assessments they saw fit to levy. Curly Bill Brocius often rode along and was known to be a fast and accurate executioner whenever there was a quarrel with the assessor and it became necessary to cut the rancher down. Old Man Clanton and Sheriff Behan always treated the thing as a big joke.

This scandal became so widely publicized that the Congress of the United States brought it under discussion and open debate in their chambers, and President Garfield was advised to get rid of Fremont as Governor of Arizona Territory. Some talk was abroad to make Wyatt Earp, a lawman repute, the U.S. Marshal of the Territory, but this was never done.

Warnings and rumblings from Washington meant nothing to the Clantons. That was a distant place as far away as the moon. For instance, Curly Bill, John Ringo, Old Man Clanton and the boys rode out to

Skeleton Canyon and ambushed a mule-train carrying seventy five thousand dollars in silver bullion and slaughtered 19 muleteers. Old Man Clanton pocketed most of the loot, but enough was given to the boys for a hell-goorgy in Galeyville and Charleston.

The Old Man with six of his boys started his stolencattle drive into Tombstone. While passing through Guadalupe Canyon, however, they were ambushed by the Mexican vaqueros and relatives of the bulliontrain massacre. Old Man Clanton and his man were shot dead out of their saddles, with only Harry Earnshaw escaping.

With the famed OK Corral shoot-out in 1882, the Clanton gang was wiped out, but Old Man Clanton left the sear of his running iron on the history of the Old West for all time.

John Ringo

1844 - 1882

John Ringo looked more like a tragedian or an actor than a gunfighter. His fine manners and gentle decorum set him apart from the rough element. He had a dignified air about him, almost an aloofness of character, and his language carried the soft southern accent.

For John did come from people who originally hailed from Kentucky, although he was born in Texas.

His family was not proud of the Younger cousins who had been train and bank robbers under Jesse James, and it was seldom they mentioned the background of Grandpapa, Colonel Coleman Younger, who lived in San Jose, California, with John's three pretty sisters.

John wandered from home while still a young man and learned that he had a definite talent for gunslinging. He told his family he thought he´d go into the cattle business out west somewhere. He stopped off at Dodge City, and became known as a good-looking gunslinger, six feet two, and just as dangerous as he was big. An utterly fearless man to keep an eye on.

He drank heavily, and quoted long passages from the best in literature. His coat pockets often sagged with the weight of a book. He would recite poetry if liquored up properly, and there wasn´t a man in Dodge who had the courage to laugh at him, to take the risk of having him unlimber matched ivory-handled Colts which always spelled death.

Ringo finally went on to Tombstone where he made the acquaintance of the Earp brothers and renewed his hatred for Doc Holliday, whom he had known in Dodge. He joined up with the Clanton faction of cattle rustlers and stagecoach robbers, and, to show his loyalty, picked a quarrel with Wyatt and offered him a handkerchief duel, which did not come off because Mayor Thomas, even after Doc got mixed up in it, stopped it. But Ringo caught the Earps and Doc when they tried to cross the San Pedro Bridge to hunt down killer Curly Bill Brocius. Ringo stood there and reinforced his clipped speech with a shotgun, telling them to come on if they wanted to feel the bite of it. The Earps and Holliday were forced to turn and eat Jim Crow, as they knew John was no bluff.

Billy Claibourne, one of the Clanton faction, and Ringo went on a two-week drinking bout with Buckskin Frank Leslie, and they saddle-sang and whooped it up all over southern Arizona, stopping at every farmhouse for a few more rounds. They finally split up, and the next time Ringo was seen he was lying beneath an oak tree in Sulphur Springs Valley, near Turkey Creek Canyon, with one side of his head blown off. His coat had been torn from him, and strips of cloth from his shirt bound his feet and hands. His horse was found far up the canyon, and his boots were tied across the saddle.

Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday protested that they had nothing whatever to do with it, but admitted they would have liked to have gunned him down. Then when Claibourne pointed a long bony finger at Buckskin Frank Leslie, this killer whipped out a  0.45 Colt and cut Claibourne to pieces. The matter was finally solved when John O'Rourke, or "Johnny-Behind-the Deuce", admitted to the killing. He found Ringo drunk and passed out under the oak tree and shot him with ease. Ringo was 38 years of age, 1882. O'Rourke could never have matched up to him while sober.

Curly Bill

Birth (?) - 1882

Curly Bill brocius was born somewhere in Texas about 1840 – an ugly gunslinger who’d kill a man on the least provocation and laugh over a card game an hour later.  He rode into Tombstone from Texas, where he met up with one of the Clanton boys. He was invited out to the ranch at Lewis Springs, just up the San Pedro from Charleston, where Old Man Clanton, leader of the famed Clanton rustling empire, sat in his big stuffed horsehair chair and ruled. From that day onward, with young Clanton telling his old man what a gunslinging go-getter Curly Bill was, the Texan was one of the fold.   

Curly Bill had real character. He’d cut a man in two for a dollar, or, as they used to say, steal a Camp Rucker mule for a glass of whiskey. Curly Bill soon learned to hate the guts of Marshal Wyatt Earp as he raised hell on Allen Street of nights with Frank Patterson, Fran and Tom McLowery, Ike and Billy Clanton, Pony Deal, John Ringo, and others. When Wyatt told them to unbuckle their guns and store them behind the bar, they’d laugh in his face. Curly Bill liked this sort of play.

Old Man Clanton took a real shine to the kinky-haired boy after he was him in action once or twice. He liked the way this muscular six-footer took the lead and made his boys jump to it whenever they robbed the Wells Fargo or rustled a thousand head of cattle down into Old Mexico or in Pima County. He was a born leader for sure, and it was Clanton who always said that someday Curly Bill Brocius would take over the leadership from him, and undoubtedly cut down lawman Wyatt Earp when the big showdown came.

Curly Bill killed Marshal White one night while drunk and reeling noisily out on Allen Street. Marshal Earp cracked him over the skull and hauled him off to the calaboose, however. Curly would never forgive Wyatt for that. He had been drunk, this much was true, but when White grabbed for his gun it had accidentally gone off, he said, and struck the lawman in the belly.

Curly Bill couldn’t help that. Earp didn’t have to hit him.

With more than four hundred men (renegades all) working indirectly under Old Man Clanton in waterhole camps from Tombstone down into New Mexico, it was a big job and Curly Bill was a big help as he rode out over this vast rustling empire – the largest America has ever seen. They stole cattle from ranches all over southern Arizona, horses from army posts, and longhorns from Old Mexico, one thousand, sometimes two, at a clip. Their disregard for the international border was a subject of hot debate in Mexico City, and in Washington, President Garfield demanded that they he wiped out at any cost. The Arizona Cattlemen’s Association brought pressure to bear.

Curly Bill was a fast gunslinger and many men had died who faced up to him both in Tombstone and in Fort Thomas. It was Curly Bill who, with Old Man Clanton, led his renegades into Skeleton Canyon where they robbed seventy-five thousand dollars from the mule-train and left slaughtered Mexicans scattered up the canyon toward the San Simon – a veritable massacre in Arizona history. This was nothing more than a big joke to Curly Bill. He had a dozen or more slugs in his big body from gunfights from Abilene and Texas to Tombstone and put no importance on them whatever.

Money was what counted.

This six-shooting star from the Texan galaxy was doomed. His wanton killing as a county tax collector was too much for Wyatt Earp to bear, along with the death of his lawman brother, Morgan Earp, who was gunned down in a poolroom in Tombstone.

In March, 1882, shortly after the famous OK Corral shoot-out, Wyatt Earp formed his famous posse and rode out after Indian Charlie, Curly Bill and others, and at Iron Springs waterhole came upon some of them by surprise. He saw Curly Bill as the outlaw was squinting at him over the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun. There was an explosion and Wyatt felt his coat skirt jerk as the shot struck it, then Curly Bill let out a yell and hurled the gun at him, which fell at the feet of his rearing horse. In the next instant Earp let go with a double load of his Wells-Fargo gun and 18 buckshot almost tore Curly Bill in two as he was struck in the abdomen.

He screamed in agony and fell dead. The west was rid of one of the worst outlaws in Arizona history.

Mysterious

Dave Mather

Birth (?) Death (?)

There is nothing which breeds mystery faster than a gunfighter of few words. Dave Mather was just seeking a man and came to be known as "Mysterious Dave".

He Could Often be seen about the saloons of Denver, always Properly belted up with twin Cots bulging under his coat, stopping here and there to gaze at the players at a faro table, watching others playing blackjack, and never seen engaged in gambling himself.

Dave was a smallish man with square shoulders but frail, dark eyes and dark mustache. He could often be seen sunning himself along the boardwalk in front of the sheriff's office. Dave had a badge pinned to his chest, for him indeed what a deputy in Dodge City.

Dave Had come from a family of seafaring lawmen up in Massachusetts and his ancestors had been rugged Sailormen of the Seven Seas. So what Dave made ​​of whipcord stuff. Many claimed he was a descendant of Cotton Mather.

The real gunslingers of Dodge watched Dave out of the tail of their eye, because around him was a halo of mystery Which They Could not plumb. One night Marshal Tom Carson walked into a lot of trouble with a gang of desperadoes Known as the Henry bunch of gunslingers and needed help. Dave was there with him when the marshal what shot in the legs and arms both and lay crippled on the dance floor. He died from loss of blood shortly afterwards, but before he expired, Dave assured him he would kill every last one of the Henry outfit. He got to his feet and roared after them down the flimsy staircase, out of the dance hall into the street somewhere, with a gun in each hand; he cut down seven men and left them lying dead from the boardwalk on up to the Long Branch. Nobody had ever seen seeking a gun battle before. It was difficult to believe that this quiet little man could have done seeking damage.

Dave Said nothing more about it, and a few days later resumed his seat in front of the sheriff's office.

Dave had become known as a killer lawman, when a preacher came to town and pitched his tent and what holding a sawdust revival. Dave drifted into the meeting one night, a little liquored up, and sat down to listen. The sky pilot directed his religion at Dave, saying he would gladly die to save this man who had sent seven men to Hell. Dave resented the remark, rose to his feet with a gun in Either Hand. The tent became vacant in a few seconds as people scattered, and one blast from Dave's gun sent the parson under the canvas out into the night. The next morning the tent had been struck and a few kids were searching the sawdust circle looking for lost coins.

Dave decided to open a saloon but Marshal TC Nixon Dodge of what playing a high-handed game of politics and tried to stop him. Mather and Nixon quarreled in the street, in Which Mather got shot or grazed in the shoulder. He said nothing but told the marshal he'd better get out of Dodge. That Night They met again on the street and a gunfight ensued in Which Dave outdrew him and killed him on the spot. As He had witnesses, what it merely a case of self-defense.

He left Dodge in the late 1880s and journeyed horse back to San Francisco, thence on up by boat into Canada and enlisted in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, proving his prowess by showing what he could do with a pair of six guns and a horse. Dave what an Englishman at heart anyhow. Hey what silent unsung seen in the royal blue and red as late as 1920 Although, Dave Mather what one of our great gunfighters of the Old West.

Pat Carrett

1850 - 1908

Patrick Floyd Garrett was born in the Deep South and raised in Louisiana. He grew up like a string bean, and because he was conscious of his overgrown size for a kid, he quit school, picked up his old squirrel rifle, and headed for the great western country. He wandered down through the Panhandle of Texas and then on into New Mexico where he took a job with a buffalo hide hunting outfit. At Fort Sumner he met Pete Maxwell and went to work for him as a horse wrangler. It was here that he came to know a youngster by the name of William Bonney, or Billy the Kid, a lad with buck teeth who could do remarkable things with a .44-40 pistol.
Pat was eight or ten years older than Billy the Kid.
This made no difference, however, as they became good friends, playing cards together, riding out into the country together, riding out into the country together, drinking, and attending the fandangos together, and were known as “Little Casino” and “Juan Largo” or Long John. Garrett finally got married, his Polinaria Cuiterrez bearing him seven children.
Garrett was elected sheriff of Lincoln Count in 1880, at an opportune time, for certain officials who had an eye on the Kid who had gone bad in the Lincoln County Cattle War, had put a price on his head. Governor Wallace decided to turn Pat on the trail of his old playmate and comrade, the Kid, feeling that Garrett would know all his habits and hideouts.
Garrett’s first try at tripping up the Kid failed. At Fort Sumner he shot and killed the Kid’s lieutenant, Tom O’Folliard Billy skipped out. Pat kept on his trail, however, and at Stinking Spring, in September of 1880; a shoot-out resulted, Charlie Bowdre being killed. The Kid finally walked out of the shack, Pat luring him with the smell of food over the fire and many promises.
Along with the Kid were the notorious Dave Rudabaugh, Tom Pickett and Billy Wilson. Pat fed them well and then took them on into the Santa Fe lockup.
After one or two more escapes, Pat again captured the Kid and took him on to Lincoln, where he had been sentenced to hang. During Pat’s absence, the Kid killed both of his guards and escaped to Fort Sumner, where he hid out at Pete Maxwell’s place. Pat rode out after him, and hiding in Pete’s bedroom one night, shot the Kid when he walked into the dark bedroom, not suspecting that the sheriff sat there with a gun pointed at him.
Pat was severely criticized for what he had done.
Many thought one of the Mexicans or friends of Billy would cut him down. They said that Billy had been unarmed with only a butcher knife in hand as he had returned from the smokehouse where he had cut some beef.
But there was glory in it for Pat. Every newspaper in the land shouted the great news of what the New Mexico sheriff had done. There was the business of a $500 reward, too, and Garrett had to hire a lawyer and go into Santa Fe to persuade the State Legislature to pass a special act so he could collect.
There were no more praises now, as things settled down in New Mexico. Pat went into the cattle business in Fort Stanton, sold out and joined the Home Rangers, how hunted down rustlers in the Canadian River country. He soon tired of this, too. Restless and ill-at-ease, he became cattle boss for Captain Brandon Kirby, a large British outfit operating in Lincoln County.
Many hard looks met Pat at every turn from ranchers and townsmen; he felt their disapproval at what he had done to the Kid. He had written a book by this time and its publicity was well received outside of New Mexico. But hometown acclaim was nil. His heroism boomeranged, despite Teddy Roosevelt’s praise, and Pat grew sour and crabbed, men shunned him in many places.
He quit Kirby in 1886 and went to ranching in Roswell, New Mexico. He failed. He ran for sheriff of Chaves County. He failed again. He went on to Uvalde, Texas, where he took up breeding horses. Here he did make a friend of “Cactus” John N. Garner who got Pat elected as the County Commissioner. A few true friends in New Mexico prevailed upon Pat to return and run for sheriff again. This was done and he served a single term and then resigned. He purchased a ranch in Las Cruces in the Organ Mountains.
Pat leased out this property to a young rancher by name of Wayne Brazil, then tried to force him off the property over an argument on the running of sheep.
Brazil, a hotheaded man, shot and killed Pat as he went for a shotgun in the back of a buckboard.
Garrett was buried in Las Cruces. There is no marker on the grave and today few people know where it is.
They say it is a bleak and haunted place where only the weeds grow and an occasional coyote can be heard as it howls a thin, wavering note into the night.

Billy the Kid

1859 - 1881

Billy the Kid’s career began in Silver City, New Mexico Territory, where he killed a hulking blacksmith who had insulted his mother. The boy was 12 years of age when he left home. He never returned again.
He lived in hellhole towns and sagebrush beds from the border up to the Panhandle.
John Chisum’s daughter tells us that Billy was really a very nice boy with a winsome smile and carefree ways.
He was a talented musician, and could do a fine fandango. He was very polite, almost like a Mexican, even gracious. But he had a temper which could flare up suddenly in a roar of gunfire out of an old sloppy boot holster, with no remorse, no regrets.
He polished off three Apaches from Chiracahua in Arizona land, and then in Camp Bowie he closed the rubbery lips of a darkie blacksmith who called him a pleasant "mistah Billy Goat". He teamed up with another youth, and two of them cut down several men in bars and gambling halls and cut a swath of hell along the border.
John Chisum was the cattle king of the Pecos and his stock were easy pickings for the Murphy-Dolan outfit who owned a small spread and a merchandising company in the little town of Lincoln. This outfit loaned money to certain army officers who were very grateful, and in return gave them beef contracts to fill on the Indian reservations. To do this was simple, although Murphy-Dolan’s own ranch only ran 3000 head. They hired gunhand Billy the Kid and others to ride out with a running iron and rustle up 3000 head each year from old John Chisum, who knew it but could not prove it out of his vast cattle empire.
An upstanding gentleman by name of McSween became old John’s lawyer, and another Englishman by name of Tunstall bought a store to compete with the Murphy-Dolan outfit up the road apiece. Billy the Kit quit the rustling outfit to go to work for Mr. Tunstall out on his small Rio Feliz Ranch.
Colonel Murphy (he’d put in a hitch) had a temper and he didn’t like the way things were stacking up.
That damned Tunstall had a nerve opening a store and taking Billy! So he called in Sheriff William Brady and told him to from a posse and ride over to the Rio Feliz, to look for some of his stolen horses, and if Tunstall became unwieldy to shoot him down. Among those deputized into the posse were a few of the gun-happy lads who had worked with Billy.
They found Tunstall on horseback on his way into Lincoln. Jesse Evans pulled out a pistol and shot him on sight, and Moron blasted him in the head as he slid to the ground from his horse.
When the Kid heard of this outrage, he swore he would kill every man who had had a hand in it. This was carried out when he rode down Morton and Baker, shooting them out of their saddles. Then Frank McNab was next. He cut down before he could flex a muscle. The famed Lincoln County War was on.
Old John Chisum had to go east; he wanted no part of it now since the eyes of the nation were on it and the newspapers had picked it up. In the meantime, Billy barricaded himself with several others in the McSween home. The Kid’s killing of Sheriff Brady brought an indictment of murder against him.
Fort Stanton troops arrived on July, 1878, and Colonel Dudley ordered a cannon placed in the road and a cease fire. While negotiations were in progress, some of the Murphy-Dolan outfit stole around back and set the house ablaze. Several were killed, among them McSween, and Billy was turned out to run for his life.
All this news finally reached Washington. President Rutherford Hayes named Lew Wallace the new governor of New Mexico. He was told to go down into the country and tame it. He met Billy the Kid, and told him if he would stand trial and testify in the Chapman slaying – Mrs. McSween’s one-armed lawyer had been tormented and killed and Billy had witnessed it all – he could go scot-free. So Billy gave himself up, and as nothing came from the case, he skipped his flimsy jail and headed for Fort Sumner.
And old friend of the Kid’s, a tall, rangy individual by name of Pat Garrett, was elected the new sheriff, and finally ordered by Governor Wallace to bring the Kid in. this was done, and again the Kid was jailed. In reality, the governor did nothing for him, ignored him completely and worked on his famous novel, "Ben Hur", at night with shades drawn tight.
The Kid was taken to Lincoln and jailed there, awaiting his hanging, and made his famous escape by killing deputies Bell and Ollinger. He made off to for sumner where Pat Garrett found him in the dark bedroom of Pete Maxwell. Pat never gave him a chance and blasted him in the dark. Billy the Kid died at 21, having killed 21 men during his gunslinging career, a victim of circumstances, and many claim the dupe of the Lincoln County War.  

Calamity Jane

1848 - 1903

OLD WEST

GUNFIGHTERS

ARTIST - LEA FRANKLIN McCARTY