GUADALUPE CANYON
In southeastern Arizonas Guadalupe Canyon just at daybreak on a warm July morning some 25 men hiding atop a rocky ridge opened fire on 7 cowboys... asleep below in their tarp-covered bedrolls. The year was l88l... and five of those cowboys, hired to drive a cattle herd to Tombstone, died quickly. Two survived. Harry Ernshaw took a bullet in his side but escaped. Billy Byers, shot through the arm and stomach, leaped aboard a chuck wagon and raced to Tombstone...telling an angry posse the gunmen were Mexicans. It was rumored that a Captain Alfredo Carillo, leading troops from Fronteras, Sonora had been scouting a party of cowboys depredating on Mexican soil. This report was never verified, nor was the ambush ever explained. Many locals suspected the fabled Earp brothers, since one of the murdered cowboys was Newman Clanton, an Earp enemy in a long family feud with the Clantons. Some suspected it was revenge against another cowboy, Slim Jim Crane, involved in various killings and the recent and deadly Benson stage coach holdup. But most likely it was payback for an ambush Clanton had led on a Mexican smugglers train in Skeleton Canyon. There was also the unresolved matter of Johnny Ringo leading a cattle raid into Sonora where many Mexican ranch hands were shot dead. The historical record of outlaw border violence in the Old West is often unclear, contradictory, and incomplete.

ARNOLD & SLACK
By 1871 the search for gold and silver had also turned up rare turquoise in the southwest, opals in California, flawless blood-red rubies in Idaho, gem sapphires in Montana ... and an incredible discovery by Philip Arnold and John Slack of diamonds in Wyoming.A leather pouch of the diamonds was quietly deposited in the Bank of California in San Francisco. But bank president Bill Ralston got a secret peek, after being sworn to silence. What he saw was exciting. Gem experts pronounced the diamonds authentic and Arnold and Slack told of discovering a huge field of the diamonds near Rawlins. Wyoming mining held a new source of fantastic wealth. Investors gathered, and 2 of them agreed to be blindfolded for a trip to examine the field. They returned to advise that the field was literally strewn with diamonds. A ten million dollar corporation was formed with Arnold and Slack given half the stock. Mining engineer Henry Janines estimated that 25 miners could wash out a million dollars worth a month. After a final examination of the bag of diamonds by New Yorks Tiffany & Co showed them to be absolutely genuine, Arnold and Slack were persuaded to sell their stock for $300,000 each. A month later government geologist Clarence King, doing a survey of the 40th parallel, visited the Wyoming site and found that some of the diamonds he picked up from the ground were already partially cut and polished. The field had been salted. With the swindle exposed Arnold was arrested on a Kentucky farm. $150,000 was recovered from him. Slack was never caught.

ARROWS
Guns ultimately ruled the old West but Indian arrows were a deadly weapon that kept surgeons busy through the 1800s. Removing an arrowhead caused a gaping wound gushing blood. Pulling out arrowheads stuck in bone took great strength or mechanical traction. Most arrow hits caused arm injuries as Army soldiers and white settlers sought to protect their heads. Serious head wounds required surgeons to remove the arrowhead by sawing into the skull. Many of Custers 7th Cavalrymen fell with arrows in their backs at the Little Bighorn as a result of the arrows being fired in a high trajectory...when Sioux Chief Galls warriors got behind Custers men. Silent arrows were better than guns for night attack and taking out guards. Arrows were light and easily carried, and launching them from ambush would not reveal the shooters position. Arrowheads were made from stone, antlers, bone, shell and metal. Major John Burke in 1867 observed some Apache warriors creating arrowheads in about six minutes. Paiute Indians were known to dip arrows in rattlesnake venom and various plant poisons. Hopis poisoned arrow points with rotting animal livers. When an arrow pierced the chest and protruded out the back... a whiskey soaked rag was tied to the shaft and pulled through. Shaman medicine men who could cure arrow wounds were highly respected. Pima tribe healers shot arrows at ghostly evil spirits they saw around the patient. Modoc medicine men sank arrows in the ground around their patient to protect his soul and ward off disease and infection.

BAD DREAM
A gunfighters fame made him a prize and constant target for young wannabes and tough saloon drunks seizing the opportunity for a reputation... and various town dandies who fancied them selves quick on the draw... and lawmen who kept one eye on the wanted posters and the other on drifters...and there were also the numerous cunning and unscrupulous bounty hunters. A good nights sleep was out of the question. It was said there were times when Wild Bill Hickok went to sleep nervous as an old maid peering under her bed for intruders. He would spread crumpled news papers across the floor...to be awakened by any sound of rustling. He was up a dozen times a night. Other men routinely set a glass bottle atop the bedroom door knob for instant warning, and seldom slept twice in the same room. Gunfighters stayed alive by constantly inspecting windows and doors, sitting and sleeping out of any possible line of fire, and keeping a wall at their back. Entering doorways was done swiftly with a quick inside move up against the wall. Each man in that room was looked over before moving to where he was headed. No gunman ever turned a back to a door or crossed the middle of a street. Leisurely and deliberate steps generally signaled vigilance. Gunfighters had to be quick to strike...ready at the slightest provocation. Taking any advantage was considered both prudent and fair. Skill and speed and accuracy counted plenty... but crafty winners most always shot first...often from ambush.

BAD
Texan George Hay wasnt a bad fellow, but got branded as one when he killed an Omaha, Nebraska sheriff in 1884. Hay was with a girl one night, and the sheriff who was stuck on this same girl came to the door shouting Let me in or Ill kick the door in. George Hay told him If you do Ill shoot you. The sheriff kicked it in and George shot and killed him. Hay knew if he hadnt shot, the sheriff would have killed him for certain. So there was nothing to do but go on the run. He rode nights and hid out days and finally got up on the Powder River, where a Texas outfit gave him a job. When the fall beef roundup was finished the herd owner gave foreman John Burgess $500 cash to pay Hay and a hand named Jones. Burgess put the bills in a shirt pocket and lost them. After looking all over he said Theres only 3 of us here, and one of you fellows has got it. Jones took insult and quit. Hay got the blame. Weeks later Jones returned to the ranch saying it was to get his chaps. But Jones didnt own chaps, and then everybody knew that the real thief had returned to get the $500 he had cached. Afterwards Jones made a big splurge with the cash in Miles City, where an embittered Hay confronted and then killed him, in a misguided attempt to clear his name. Angry with the hand life had dealt him, Hay hired out as a gunman in the Johnson County cattle war. His life ended in a Wyoming jailhouse fight.

BANDIT QUEEN
Late in May of 1899 near Florence, Arizona a small figure with long black hair tucked under a sombrero hid alongside the road... a .38 revolver drawn on the approaching stage coach. It was 21 year old Pearl Hart getting set to rob the Globe stage passengers of $428 cash and a Colt 45. Escape into mountain terrain failed when she lost her way and emerged10 hours later just a mile from the robbery site... where a posse waited. Pearl Hart had eloped at l6 with a fast-talking gambler who took her to cheap East coast hotels and bars and race tracks, and on to the 1893 World Fair Exposition in Chicago... where the Wild West Show inspired her to head West. She tried cooking in Colorado mining camps and working an Arizona claim with no success... but notority came quickly with the posses capture of this female outlaw. Sudden fame replaced years of rejection and struggle. The press loved her style. After a dramatic Tucson jail break, and re-capture in New Mexico with her gang, Pearl Hart became a popular symbol of wild west womanhood. At her trial she told a sympathetic jury that she would not consent to be tried under a law my sex had no voice in making. After 10 minutes deliberation the jury set her free. An angry judge re-tried her for theft of the pistol and gave her 5 years in the Yuma Prison. 18 months later embarrassing incidents at the all male facility brought a pardon from the govenor. Pearl Hart moved to Kansas City, and disappeared from history.

BANDITO
Border bandits came from and worked both sides. American, Canadian, Mexican, Indian and some times Chinese, these men were generally well-armed and extremely deadly. Border towns made perfect hide outs since lawmen rarely entered, and with borders seldom clearly established outlaws took full advantage. These bandits operated nearly free of law and order. Travelers were usually vulnerable, easy targets, and carried cash. Horse stealing was common. Herds of stolen livestock moved at night both ways across the border. Small holdups of individual miners occurred, then bandits found the risks of larger mining company payrolls worth taking. Stage coach strong boxes and passengers were robbed. Lone riders were left afoot minus all goods. Certain border saloons became notorious. Bandits fought among themselves for the easy takings, settling disputes with knives and six-guns. Fueling these fights were men who considered banditry just a continuation of the many lawless years of border states wars. They were out for themselves and had no conflicting loyalties. Outside lawmen rarely challenged these desperados without very good reason. Not a few border bandits had been on the losing side of the Civil War. Some felt this a legitimate excuse to rob and kill. Owning a new Navy Colts cap and ball pistol gave an edge to a fast-draw gunslinger. U S Marshals finally got the upper hand, thanks to help from Mexican vaqueros, and proficient killers hired by the Cattlemens Associations.

BARRYMORE
Most citizens of Marshall Texas likely expected just another Victorian dandy when the great stage actor and Broadway impresario Maurice Barrymore in 1878 rode the new railroad out into the wild West bringing New York City culture. But Barrymore was a muscular middleweight amateur boxing champ who took no gruff from anybody... and particularly a drunken Texas cowboy who was insulting his best friend and fellow actor Ben Porter. Big Jim Currie was a hard case with a violent temper who wore a white sombrero and pair of Smith & Wesson pistols under his frock coat. He had killed a number of men in just such circumstances as he found at Nat Harveys Lunchroom with Porter and Barrymore. After insulting the actors he pulled pistols and dropped Barrymore on the floor with a shot to his chest. Barrymore survived, forever thankful for the bad aim of a drunken gunfighter. Porter was shot in the stomach and killed instantly. An hour earlier actress Ellen Cummins had accepted his marriage proposal. Porter owned an unusual portable coffee pot from his early days as a Union volunteer in the Civil War, and friends regularly gathered to talk and drink the coffee of a much admired man for dutifully supporting an estranged wife and his own mother, as well as his widowed sister and her son. Barrymore eventually healed, and went on to create a legacy unparalleled in the annals of theater...but the New York press never forgave Texas, calling it ... a place where whiskey and pistols are too plentiful, and law and order too scarce.

BEAVER RUSH
The l820s beaver rush, like the l849 gold rush, was fueled by dreams of riches, and nearly trapped beaver to extinction in less than a decade. East coast and European demand for a gentlemens high crown beaver hat meant brave and rugged adventurers who fought and survived savage Indian attacks could live a life of luxury for years... on a single seasons harvest of furs. Iron leg-hold traps were used anchored with a five foot chain to a stream bank and baited with musk. The trapped beaver attempted escape by diving into deep water, and drown. His large flat tail was considered a culinary delight. The skinned pelt was salted, dried, packed with others in hundred pound bales and lashed to a mule for the dangerous return journey East through hostile Indian territory. James Pattie led a 30 man group trapping the Colorado River through Arizona Territory in l826, encountering savage Indians who killed 3 of our party... cutting their bodies in pieces... roasting them over a fire. Twenty more died when slaughtered in the middle of the night by Maricopa Indians who had pretended friendship and invited them to camp together. Apaches stole a cache of furs and ran their horses off forcing them on foot into New Mexico. In l827 after new provisions and a successful trapping season Mexican General Jose Encheandia captured and jailed the trappers and confiscated all pelts. Pattie died in jail... demoralized and broke, his son surviving to record a bitter chapter of frontier history.BIG FOOT Famed western artist Fredric Remington wrote in l896 that the old type Texas Ranger is all but gone. A few reside in outlying ranches near San Antoine - including Big Foot Wallace, who came out from Virginia in l836 to take toll of Mexicans for killing his relatives during the Fannin massacre...and concedes he squared accounts. But they had him on the debit side for awhile having captured him in the Meir expedition, and walked him clear to Mexico City where he did public work for that country wearing a ball-and-chain attachment for two years. He and other prisoners then overpowered their guards and escaped for 11 days, but were recaptured by Mexican cavalry while dying of thirst in a desert. Santa Anna ordered their decimation . This meant every tenth man was shot, their lot determined by the drawing of a black bean from a pot containing a few white beans. Big Foot drew a white one.Later he carried mail to El Paso through a howling tough wilderness, always bringing it safely - if safely can be called lying l3 days by a water hole waiting for a broken leg to mend, and living meanwhile on the one prairie wolf he managed to shoot. Wallace later became a professional hunter. He fought Indians and hated greasers: He belongs to the past, clinging to changed beliefs... and abandoned by a civilization in which he has no place, and is today living in poverty.

BLACK MARY
She was the only woman ever allowed, by order of the Mayor, to drink at the local bar in Cascade, Montana. She was often seen smoking cigars in public. And there was never anyone foolish enough to take up her standing bet that she could knock out any man in Montana with one punch. She weighed 200 pounds, wore cowboy boots and kept a Colt revolver under her apron. She was Mary Fields, born a Tennessee slave in 1832 who worked the cotton fields of Mississippi and served as a chambermaid on the steam boat Robert E. Lee. She befriended in 1870 and nursed to health the Mother Superior of Saint Peters Womens Convent near Great Falls, and undertook the dangerous job of hauling supplies by wagon for the nuns from the distant Cascade railroad depot. Black Mary roomed at the convent, fed 400 chickens daily and kept the garden, washed the nuns clothes... but preferred the company of men and drank and swore with the best of them. Montanas first Catholic Bishop in 1888 forced her to leave. She moved to nearby Cascade and became only the second woman in America to operate a mail route. For generations she babysat, taught and treated and clothed children, took in laundry, fed the hungry, and used her money to help young Basque sheepherders. Townspeople closed the local school each year on Black Marys birthday. Cowboy artist Charlie Russell did a pen and ink drawing of her being knocked down by a horse and spilling her basket of eggs. She lived an 82 year legend of toughness and kindness.

BLACK POWDER
Prior to 1844 Indians with bows and arrows had superior firepower over their white enemies. A warrior could shoot 12 to 15 arrows in the time it took to prime and fire a single-shot muzzle loader. One early and very successful fighting strategy was to fake a weak attack deliberately drawing rifle fire, then quickly rushing the real attack before the enemy could reload. Old style flintlocks were used from the early days of frontier settlement. Long rifles made in Kentucky and Missouri were especially prized. A sharp flint attached to the hammer struck a spark that exploded the powder sending a lead ball down the barrel toward the target. Misfires were common. Too heavy a charge of powder could explode in the shooters face. Wet weather made these weapons nearly useless. Black powder saw wide use until the l890s, producing clouds of acrid white smoke... enough to quickly fill most saloons. Western historians believe powder smoke clouds were responsible for the poor shooting in saloon gunfights. Cockeye Frank Loving fought with Levi Richardson at Dodge Citys Long branch Saloon in 1879...with all 9 shots fired at close range missing, but the powder ignition did manage to set Franks clothing afire. Invention of the Colt 45 six-shooter brought multi-shot capacity with powder protected in a cartridge. The 1848 Sharps rifle fired 5 rounds a minute, sending a .50 caliber bullet so far it could be fired today and kill tomorrow. These new weapons settled the West.

BOOTHILL
Double Dobe gang member Johnny Blair was out rustling near Tombstone Arizona in 1887 when he contracted smallpox, and died a few weeks later. A shallow grave was dug in the cactus and sagebrush hill on the edge of town. With one end of a rope tied to his feet and the other to a saddle horn Blair was a fast drag to Boothill. Rocks piled atop the grave discouraged coyotes. A simple hand-carved wooden marker told the details. Boothill populations grew where community law was a knife or gun. An 1879 gunfight made John Hicks the first man buried wearing a white shirt. Wells Fargo agent Les Moore (4 slugs from a .44 - no Les no more) did not survive Hank Dunstans rage over a torn package he received. May Wood put William Kinsman in Boothill when he announced in the lo cal paper he would not marry her. T.J. Waters died in Corrigans Saloon defending his newly bought plaid shirt from Ed Bradshaw, who hated the color. Luke Short, called the under-takers best friend, interrupted his faro game long enough to put Charlie Storm in the ground with his boots on.Petite blonde prostitute Little Gertie sank a hidden dagger into the sultry Tina Margarita when dance hall cowboy Bill Milgreen switched his affections. 19 year old Billy Claibourne should have learned from watching the OK Corral fight, but stood at the Oriental Saloon front door to challenge Frank Leslie, who used the side door to ambush Claibourne. Tombstones Boothill contains one very unusual grave marker with an epitaph that reads...M. E. KELLOGG 1882. DIED A NATURAL DEATH.

BORDERLINE
Americas south west frontier with Mexico is still a land of conflict but in 1859 the conflict turned to deadly confrontation in Texas. Governor Sam Houston reported the whites had suffered a thousand out-rages...and federal soldiers could not even protect their own horses. Within the first four months news came of the murder of 51 men and 2 boys, 2 women raped, 2 ministers shot and 1,800 horses stolen. This was the good news. The bad news was fearless Cheno Cortinas, a charming red-bearded vaquero living on his mothers ranch on the U.S. side of Brownsville- Matamoros Indicted twice for cattle theft but never convicted, Cortinas became the spokesman of land-holding Mexican families cheated out of property titles in U.S. courts by unscrupulous American lawyers. It was a ti%me when both politics and law victimized Mexicans, breeding a race war on the Rio Grande. It began when Cortinas reacted to the brutal arrest of a friend by shooting City Marshal Bob Shears. A posse gave chase. Cortinas gathered a hundred armed Mexicans and took over Brownsville forcing thousands to hide while killing Americans on his list and a Mexican shielding them. He blasted the jail to liberate a dozen men while killing the jailer. He raided the towns fort to steal gun powder and hoist a Mexican flag, and continued for months to loot and burn white ranches Rangers finally gained control, while Cortinas became general in the Mexican Army, Governor of Tamaulipas, and amassed a huge fortune.. which he used for years of bitter hatred to finance his deadly raids into Texas.

BUFFALO SOLDIERS
In 1866 the first of four historic regiments of black men, the 10th Cavalry, was formed in Kansas to defend settlers and livestock across the plains from Texas to the Dakotas. These men were assigned to frontier Army posts to patrol western deserts and put an end to stage robberies and Indian attacks on covered wagons and outlaw depredations. After a fierce attack near Fort Hays by Cheyenne Indians and an 1870 fight with Apaches (which earned one man the Congressional Medal Of Honor) the regiment was honored with an Indian name for them...the buffalo soldiers. The name stuck. A buffalo was included in the regimental crest of these tough black troopers who fought more than 60 frontier battles, including the 1877 rescue of the New Mexico town7 of Lincoln from outlaw control. An 1878 near-disaster after 4 days without water when thirst-crazed soldiers slit the throats of their 30 horses and fought each other to drink the blood. But they survived to rescue Teddy Roosevelts cowboy Rough Riders from certain extermination in 1898 after they came under heavy gunfire from Spanish sharp shooters on a Cuban hillside. Buffalo Soldiers were said to not know what fear was in fighting shoulder to shoulder with white units at San Juan Hill to win the Spanish-American War, where 1 of every 5 black soldiers died. Black heroes again won Medals of Honor and as late as 1916 undertook their toughest campaign... across the border to capture Pancho Villa. Buffalo Soldiers paved the way for the 99th Pursuit, Americas first squadron of black fighter pilots.

BUFFALO
Buffalo and Bison are the same critter, designed to run long and hard and fast. Buffalo can outrun a good horse in a stampede, ford ice-choked rivers, feed in snow four feet deep and live for 40 years. They are extremely dangerous when approached too closely, may charge, and will trample anything in their path including other buffalo too slow to keep up. Buffalo once ranged from Mexico to Alaska, traveling in herds Colonel Irving Dodge estimated in l87l to be 50 miles wide and of unknown length. Once nearly extinct, they have survived ice ages, wolf and bear predators, disease, the saber-toothed tiger, and hunters....and may yet take back control of the Great Plains. Plains Indians used the animal for meat which was seasoned with berries and dried as jerky. They made moccasins from tanned hides, stitched hides together for tepees and clothes, slept under warm buffalo robes, used rawhide for saddles and ropes. Spoons were carved from horns, bones became tools and sinew made strong bowstrings. Buffalo chips fueiled the campfire. General Philip Sheridan figured Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone and vast herds vanished during Indian wars of the late l9th century.The slaughter continued as professional hunters supplied a lucrative market for hides and tongues. Popular sport for some train passengers of the l880s was firing at buffalo from the open cars. Buffalo Bill Cody shot more than 4,000 in l8 months. By l889 few had survived. Just 21 remained in Yellowstone Park when President Cleveland signed a bill of protection. Buffalo had become so scarce that the death of one was front page news in Montana. The US Treasury issued the $10 buffalo bill in l90l, and the buffalo nickel on George Washingtons birthday in l9l3. Major public herds were established.Today the buffalo grazes safely in National Parks, preserves, reservations and wildlife refuges, as well aEs private ranches....a living symbol of the American West.

CALAMITY JANE
No ma&tter what good intentions the historian has... its truly impossible to get it down right. Historical accuracy, like the life of Calamity Jane herself, is a delicate balancing act between legend, fact, memory, myth and lie. Was she beautiful, or ugly... or somehow both? Witnesses report Calamity Jane as the roughest looking human being I ever saw, and also extremely pretty. Was it red hair or raven black tresses, a degenerate alcoholic whore or angel of mercy? She definitely was at various times a wagon driver, cook, laundress, prostitute, nurse, prospector, and scout. Was she really Wild Bill Hickoks lover? She was a woman who dressed and passed as a man, a dead eye pistol shot who chewed tobacco and cracked her bull whip in Deadwood saloons. But did the name Calamity come from notorious behavior? Black Hills brothel madam Dora DuFran said that whenever there was illness or calamity at the mines Jane was there to nurse and help. Even her birthdate is disputed. It was around 1850. Some biographers believe she was bi-sexual. Others say playing a male role was the only way to get work and experience the wild west frontier. During the smallpox epidemic of 1878 she was a doctor, cook, preacher and undertaker for men most others wouldnt go near. Claims that she was married many times have produced no record or proof of any marriage. On one point all the historical records agree. Calamity Jane was a versatile, habitual, and outrageous liar... who either couldnt tell the truth from fiction, or, more likely, came to believe her own stories true.

CAPTAIN JACK
Both courage and a savage treachery propelled a Modoc Indian named Kientpoos, better know as Captain Jack, to leadership of an outlaw band that in 1852 slaughtered an entire emigrant train near Tule Lake in Oregon. These Modoc renegades escaped into a nearly impenetrable maze of red lava beds, but were lured out into ambush by a posse leader who promised them peace talks. Many died. Captain Jack and the entire Modoc tribe was then forced onto a reservation together with their worst enemy, the Klamath tribe. But fighting and raiding settlers went on for 20 years, with warriors Hooker Jim and Scar Face Charlie joining Captain Jacks raids. In one ambush of a local posse 17 whites were killed. U.S. Army troopers pursued into the lava bed hideout, where a fourth of the regiment was picked off by Modoc sharp shooters. Captain Jack soon arranged an unarmed peace council with 5 Oregon Peace Commission members in a tent in an open field on the morning of April 11, 1873... and killed them all when they foolishly came unarmed. A week later 40 US troopers chased his band into the lava beds, but only 18 wounded troopers survived, with not one Modoc casualty. An enraged Fourth Artillery Unit wheeled their canon into place and unleashed deadly fire into the lava beds... inflicting severe Modoc losses. Captain Jack was finally captured along with five other fighters considered war chiefs and given a public trial, on orders from Washington, before being publicly hung... with the entire Modoc tribe forced to watch.

CAREER
Pinkerton detectives say Bill Miner coined the term Hands Up! during a 50 year career of stagecoach and train holdups beginning in 1865 at Auburn, California when he announced Im on the rob and took at gunpoint the clerks watch and a fancy suit from Housers Clothing Store on Main Street. In jail Miner removed a bolt from the cell window to gouge an escape hole, which got him 3 years at San Quentin. He did the time and went straight to Hickmans Hardware in Stockton, stealing double-barreled shotguns and six-shooters soon used to take a Wells Fargo box from the San Andreas stage, which earned Miner a 10 year San Quentin sentence, reversed because his conviction while in chains prejudiced the jury. The retrial verdict was 13 years. A convict fight got Miner 20 lashes, but flogging was ended in 1880, and more prison reform brought his release. He rode for the Sierras and the Forest Hills stage holdup, on to Colorado for 3 more in Gunnison County, and after capture for a Saguache holdup he shot two deputies to escape... and rob the Silver City, New Mexico stage and another near Angels Camp, which cost Miner 25 years more at San Quentin. He walked out on February 10, 1900 at the age of 55 to begin a dedicated criminal career of train robberies, documented in the 1983 film The Grey Fox.. Captured in 1909 by Canadian Mounties he was sentenced to life, but escaped a year later. The White Sulphur Springs robbery in 1911 got him 20 years. He broke out 6 months later, but finally acknowledged he was too old for this and died with a iron ball and chain.

CASPAR COLLINS
The Platte River valley skirmish between Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians and the U.S. Army Calvary in the summer of l865 is just a footnote in American frontier history... known as the Battle of Platte Bridge. The hero of the fight was a fearless red-haired 20 year old who lent his name to a Wyoming town by saving two dozen men who were defending the strategic Platte bridge from two thousand warriors. Lieutenant Caspar Collins had been stationed at Fort Laramie but sent to Sweetwater Station near South Pass when raiding Indians burned buildings and ambushed an emigrant wagon train... leaving scalped and mutilated bodies staked out there. It was a dangerous and violent environment, but even worse at the stockaded post protecting emigrants using the thousand foot long Platte River bridge. Powder River country warriors launched daily attacks on the white mans fort. On July 25 Indians began to gather and taunt the soldiers. Some swam the river below the bridge trying to run off the forts stock. Lieutenant Collins stuck stuck a pistol in each boot and led 24 armed men across the bridge... into attacking Indians. Sgt. Sebastian Nehring was immediately shot dead. George McDonald took a tomahawk in the head. Collins was shot in the hip. With five men dead Lt. Caspar Collins ordered the others, including 12 wounded, to run for their lives back to the stockade... while he covered their retreat...taking an arrow in his forehead but at last sight still charging into the midst of his attackers with the bridle reins in his teeth and revolvers in both hands firing.

CHARACTER
The end of the Old West era brought a decline in social and personal moral values, and loss of a certain kind of nobility of character. Few today realize a man of his word was an absolute statement... about sincerity, reliability and commitment. There was proud honor in truthfulness. Speaking in a simple and straightforward manner implied integrity, and inspired trust. An untrustworthy man had no loyalty... thus could not be relied upon and would likely cost you your life. Honorable also meant upright.. trust worthy with money, with any womans safety... and relied upon to do the right thing. So many frontier men and women acted heroically that they were called courageous... a word nearly absent in modern times.What it meant was that bravery and perseverance in the every day struggle for life had transformed the individual. Brave was just a half-step from fearless. Settlers protecting family and lawmen facing deadly gunmen routinely transcended fear of death. Outlaws stepping up to the gallows were often reported to say...Tell the boys I died like a man...without fear. Good men had reputations for fair play. They were also quick to extend a hand with no hard feelings. Acting polite and mannerly was a natural outgrowth of shared respect. It may be that historical circumstances of the Old West provided greater opportunity for development of noble moral character... but even getting there demanded a bold and adventurous spirit seeking freedom at any price.

CHEATED
James Marshall is credited with the discovery of gold that set off the great California Gold Rush but he never made a dime from it. He was quickly pushed aside by a horde of would-be miners after Sam Brannan showed a quinine bottle full of gold nuggets and dust around San Francisco... sending half the city population to the high Sierras in just 3 days. Some historians even credit vaquero Francisco Lopez with the first big California gold find near Los Angeles in 1842. The first nugget Marshall found is now called the Wimmer Nugget. Its on display at the University of California in Berkeley honoring a carpenter named Peter Wimmer. Conflict with a stern Baptist father had driven him from the family home. Marshall never married. He remained embittered after two women he had hoped to marry rejected him. Miners even threatened to lynch Marshall when he pressed his claim to the Sutters Mill site. He had to run for his life. Angry, resentful, broke and seriously depressed he wandered the mountains as a troubled and eccentric recluse. Alcoholism took hold. Marshall proclaimed strange supernatural powers enabled him to find gold, which drove his last friends away. By 1853 he was starving and destitute. But he had been an influential, and some believe accidental, footnote to history. The California Legislature in 1872 awarded the 62 year old Marshall a $200 per month pension for life. Two years later the pension was cut in half, and a year later eliminated entirely. Marshall hung on until 1885 working as a blacksmith, and selling autographed postcards.

CHICO and JOE
Joe Sitters was one of the toughest and best liked Texas Rangers ever to serve. Even as late as 1913 at El Paso the border was dangerous duty, and Sitters rode the Rio Grande patrol as a U.S. Mounted Customs Inspector. He could hardly spell his name but had first rate tracking skills and was quick with a six-gun to confront smugglers and cattle thieves. The Southwest Cattle Raisers Association counted on Joe to recover stolen herds. Chico Cano never gained major notoriety as a border bandit but he was a thief and vicious killer said to be an outlaw who would steal the canteen from a man dying of thirst. Chico and his gang of 35 pistoleros once escaped lawmen who had surrounded his sisters wedding party. Knowing a Texans code of chivalry he requested the wome!n be given safe passage before the shooting began... then stripped the women of gowns and shawls to sneak away disguised in the night. Joe Sitters continued pursuit, but the May 25, 1915 El Paso Herald reported him ambushed in a canyon below Marfa, 60 shell casings found scattered around his body indicating he had put up a tough fight. Chico and his gang took the officers clothes, boots, watch, money and weapons. Chico Cano also sent word to Sitters wife and 7 year old daughter Mattie that he would kill them both if they did not immediately leave their ranch at Valentine forever. The frightened and heartbroken wife took the girl and moved away. Years later Mattie recalled, I did not understand what it all meant, but knew only that my father never came home to us again.

CHINATOWN
Most mining camps and frontier railroad towns of the old West had a Chinatown. Thousands of laborers imported by the Central Pacific Railroad to lay track established communities where they could, later sent for their families, and drifted on to larger cities like San Francisco seeking work. By 1877 men in cork-soled slippers wearing baggy pants, flat round black hats and pig tails were a common sight in the west. They sold from sidewalk bamboo vendor carts a variety of sugar cane candies and tiny saucers of sweetmeats, salted almonds, oranges, coconut pieces, cherries, and slices of betel nut wrapped in a green leaf... all a welcome diversity from the beef and beans cowboy fare. Some Chinese establishments kept open until 4:00am serving roast pig, rice, tea, and mysteriously fragrant side d#ishes at tables lit with red and yellow candles. Chinese shops were crammed with green jade bracelets, tiny embroidered silk pouches, tea pots, gold earrings, and opium pipes. Strips of red paper ink- brushed with nature scenes were sold like wall paper by the yard. Burning joss sticks sent sandalwood smoke chasing away the devil, while butcher shops displayed salted fish and ducks split down the middle and pressed flat as paper. But for more than 50 years Chinese were regularly abused for sport... and badly treated by law. California legislation prohibited Chinese from staking a claim in the gold fields. They could not file a court suit, give testimony in a court, organize a union or become American citizens. A San Francisco ordinance even made doing business with a Chinese illegal.

CIVIC IMPROVEMENT
Hard times hit Pecos County in 1886 when the the U.S. Cavalry abandoned Fort Stockton and both railroads chose to bypass the town. Real estate suddenly got cheap. A.J. Royal arrived a few years later with 265 head of cattle which he traded for 1,800 acres of irrigated land and the old forts store building. Within months he was elected county tax assessor... but also charged with assault, and disturbing the peace. To some Fort Stockton citizens it looked as though A.J. Royal considered himself above the law, especially after he was again charged in 1892 with assault, but acquitted, and just a week later faced felony charges in the shooting death of Apollinar Mendoza... found dead behind Herman Koehlers store with a load of buckshot in his back. Royal appeared in Justice( of the Peace Fell Sanders court with a shotgun in hand. Witnesses to the shooting suddenly could not remember any details. With a grand jury looking into the matter A.J. Royal decided to run for county sheriff, and won. This provided opportunity to intimidate jury members and pistol-whip witnesses, and kill Jose Juarez for stealing a watermelon from Royals farm. He beat a man who objected, and with the grand jury probing this matter Royal opened the Grey Mule saloon. He tried to get rid of the competition by shooting at bartender Jim Roney... but missed. In an 1894 unsolved crime suspected of being a civic improvement project... A.J. Royal was shot gunned in broad daylight in the middle of town sitting at his desk in the Pecos County Courthouse. No one saw a thing.

COLORFUL
19 year old Ben Thompson, the top of his 1858 class at Prof Swancoats private school in Austin, got his first job as news reporter in New Orleans where he was immediately challenged to a formal duel, after a fight with a Frenchman over a girl. Ben had the right to choose weapons. He chose Bowie knives, and settled the quarrel with a fight to the death while blindfolded in a dark room. Returning to Austin he soon proved just as good with a gun ... killing a party of hostile Comanches raiding dusty back streets of the town... as well as a noted gunslinger who tried to cheat at cards. He then shot a U S Cavalry lieutenant and sergeant in a brawl in San Antonio. He killed two Mexicans in Laredo during a gambling dispute. In 1866 Mexico Emperor Maximilian hired him to lead a company of 58 men against Republican brigades. By 1871 Ben had pushed Texas longhorns up the Chisholm trail to Abilene, and opened the notorious Bulls Head Saloon. He staked a gambling venture in Ellsworth Kansas, where he outdrew the sheriff. He returned to Austin in 1879 and won the election for town marshal by challenging anyone to prove he had ever failed to protect the timid, defenseless or weak from the wrongs perpetrated by over-bearing aggressors. Most citizens believe he did a pretty good job as sheriff, but Ben Thompson ended his career ambushed, along with his pal the six-gun bully King Fisher, by hired killers. A carriage full of orphans for which Ben had for years secretly provided food and clothing wept at his funeral.

COMMON KNOWLEDGE
It is often accepted as fact that US Army caval2rymen brutalized innocent Indians on Americas western frontier to steal their land in over a hundred years of racial war. But renegade Indians and outlaw whites did most of the killing. In truth most of the fighting was not war but skirmishes with those seeking tribal approval, captives and goods in their ancient tradition of inter-tribal raids... begun long before any whites arrived. Military historians report that between the end of the Civil War and the final 1898 Indian fight about a thousand soldiers were killed, in 938 encounters, averaging about one man lost per skirmish. Few real battles occurred. War for territory was never an Indian style, or temperament, due in part to the life of hunting buffalo herds. Land ownership was under-stood as anywhere that buffalo traveled. Thus %many different tribes laid claim to the same ground. The US government could never bridge this cultural barrier. Well- intentioned property sales with fair payment to a tribal chief brought out other chiefs of the same tribe demanding the same payment. Meanwhile other tribe members continued to occupy the land, while dishonest men caused the worst uprisings in forcing tribes off land found rich with minerals or timber. By 1690 the Spanish had already enslaved the Zuni and most southwest farming tribes, who had fought and lost their lands. Californias Indians who gathered nuts and berries and fish were seldom hostile and largely ignored. They retreated into the hills, often suffering white diseases. Destruction of the buffalo, not the US Army, ended traditional Indian life.

CONFLICT
It wasnt all just cowboys and Indians. Inter-tribal warfare and clan hatred meant fierce and ugly fighting through the1800s. Bloody clashes between Indian and Mexican continued an old border war tradition. Laborers imported from China to work mines and lay railroad track endured violent racial abuse. Even some Easterner-types found little acceptance in the West. Hatred between Northerners and Southerners erupted in western gun fights for many years after the Civil War ended. Bitter feelings and desire for revenge motivated some gunslingers. Religious prejudice was the catalyst for Mormon attacks ... whose practice of polygamy many considered as unacceptable. Western townsfolk often saw cowboys as wild and dangerous and unwelcome. Cowboy drifters were routinely run out of town. Real estate speculators and lawyers were despised and teachers had a tough time overcoming suspicion of empty book learning. Gamblers got no respect...especially from lawmen who knew them as the root cause of much frontier crime. Outlaws and lawmen battled, big cattle outfits fought small ranchers and farmers and each other, sheepmen challenged cattlemen, and most everybody hated the government-railroad-banker land swindlers. Corrupt law enforcement was common. With the great shortage of women social attitudes about prostitutes were tolerant, while everybody hated the lowest of the low...whiskey sellers supplying guns and fire water to Indians.

COWBOY COFFEE
Winchester, Colt, Levi and Stetson did their parts - but Arbuckles was The Coffee That Won The West. No one is around today to describe that original taste, but we know it was a heavy bodied dark roasted South American bean brew, with a smoky robust flavor. It was the cowboys choice. American fondness for coffee is said to have originated with the Colonial rebellion against drinking tea... because of the hated British tea tax. Up until Civil War times most coffees were shipped and sold in green bean form. This was the only way to ensure relative freshness. Customers then roasted their own in cast iron fry pans over a fire, later grinding the beans as needed. Charles Arbuckle took over the industry in l868 with his patented method of sealing in the goodness of oven- roasted beans (coating them with a glaze of sugar and egg white) thus locking in the flavoring oils and aromas for months. By the l880s Arbuckles single oven roasting operation had grown to 85 ovens, and his Ariosa brand was the cherished favorite for cowboys, soldiers, miners and settlers across the frontier west. On a dangerous trail drive, hard-digging ore prospect, or grueling Cavalry campaign a cup of Arbuckles was the only luxury. The tendency was to make it stout. Most camp cooks believed Theres no such thing as too strong coffee.... only weak people!

COWBOY
The cowboy was born in l866 with the first herd of Texas longhorns trailed across hundreds of miles of wild and dangerous country, filled with predators and hostile Indians, to the wide open town of Abilene.... created by the Kansas Pacific Railroad as the western frontier railhead for shipping cattle East. From that time on the big Texas cattle drives fed the market for a beef-hungry America. Six hundred thousand cattle came up the Texas trail in l871 in herds of about 2,000 each led by a wild and reckless and tough bunch of young men with great courage and fortitude. Huge numbers of longhorn cattle had multiplied in Texas after the Civil War, the result of few predators, few fences and plenty of grass and water. They ran wild while Texas men went off to fight for the Confederacy. Cow-gathering was a challenge but getting a herd all the way to the Kansas railroad paid big. Early cowboys had very little grub (mostly corn meal and salted bacon,) used homemade saddles and chaps, no tents or tarps, braided their own rope from horsehair, and bragged they could go any place a cow could, and stand anything a horse could. Lay on your saddle blanket and cover with a coat was the Texas trail bed. The twelve-inch-barrel Colt was necessary equipment. Strong, lightweight and wiry men who were persevering and loyal defined a new American spirit of freedom and independence. Mothers shared great pride in seeing their sons grow up to be cowboys.

CURTIS and LAFAYETTE
You might wonder what 19 year old dance instructor Lafayette Grime (with such small feet he wore ladies shoes) was doing in frontier Arizona in 1882. He was not doing well...and made a huge mistake joining Curtis Hawley in robbing a mule train hauling gold from the Pinal mountains. After killing a Wells Fargo guard and a witness, the two were quickly caught by a Gila county posse. As the two prisoners were brought down Globes main street hundreds of miners poured out of the saloons angry and armed. Deputies barely got Grime and Hawley locked into a jail cell when men using a cottonwood log as a battering ram hit the cell... knocking the door off its hinges. Ropes were produced, the sheriff pleaded for a brief hearing, which was held, and the killers confessed. They bought 3 more hours of life guiding citizens to a hiding place outside town where the stolen gold had been stashed. Returning around midnight Hawley was allowed to make out a will. Then the vigilante mob marched the prisoners to a big sycamore tree outside St. Elmos saloon. With a rope around Lafayettes neck he went limp and collapsed... dying of fright before the noose could be tightened. Hawleys noose went askew, the Arizona Gazette reported, causing him to writhe and whistle like a choking horse. Sheriff W.W. Lowther let the bodies hang. Bells from the Methodist church pealed throughout the night.

CUSTER
Military men are generally competent in firearms use and a natural success at hunting. They take their hunting and tracking and their horse and weapon skills seriously. Most prepare so as to live, rather than die, by the gun. General George Armstrong proved an ominous exception when, on April 20, 1867 he wrote his wife Elizabeth the details of his first buffalo hunt... which went terribly wrong. After some of his troopers encircled and held a small buffalo herd for him, Custer reported spurring his mount after a large buffalo with six-gun in hand. But as he charged, the buffalo turned to face him and fight rather than run. His horse reared and plunged and backed and raced away. Custer finally got control of the horse and reigned him in. The buffalo then turned tail and again the chase was on. Drawing alongside his quarry at top speed Custer tightened his finger on the trigger...just as the buffalo hooked its horn at his horse... which abruptly veered off. Custer grabbed for the reins and accidentally fired his Colt .45 into the horses neck... killing him instantly... and giving new meaning to the expression of having a horse shot out from under you. The horse fell dead, throwing Custer hard to the ground, but he survived to keep an appointment at the Little Big Horn. Elizabeth was reported quite upset. Custers mount had been her favorite saddle horse.

CUT FENCE
The late l800s saw Texas land suddenly bought up and fenced with barbed wire. Pioneer ranchers refused to honor these newly-fenced claims... and petitioned for FREE GRASS and FREE WATER. They considered that fighting off the Indians had given them ownership.Taking nippers they rode by night cutting down miles of fencing. Lawmen ran scared, townspeople backed the status quo, and everybody hated the new barbed wire. With rule of law threatened a tough Texas Ranger was called in. Captain Bill Shely had trailed bandits through the chaparral and carried 2 ugly bullet scars attesting to a bloody campfire shootout. He had once ridden a Spanish pony 62 miles in six hours to capture the fleeing State Treasurer of Tennessee, his guide, and two gunmen hired to get them over the Rio Grande. Ranger Shely soon lodged scores of local ranchers in the new county jail. An outraged mob gathered at the jailhouse firing pistols and threatening to tear it down. Shely stood in the door and calmly told them... Do not tear down the jail gentlemen! You have been taxed for years to build this fine structure. Do not tear it down. I will open the doors wide - you can all come in - do not tear down the jail. But there are twelve Rangers in there, with orders to kill as long as they can see. So come right in gentlemen, but come fixed ! Whether the clarity of the message, or its respectful and formal delivery...its reported that the mob was immediately calmed. Texas land claims soon flooded the courts, and some continue to this day.

DEACON JIM
The Old Wests most deadly and notorious professional killer carried an air of church-going respectability wearing a black Stetson, black boots and collarless black broadcloth shirt. But he kept ready in saddlebags the real tool of his trade... a double barreled 12 gauge. Deacon Jim Miller was a killer for hire who loved his work. He started early by murdering his grandparents in l874... at the age of 8. When finally hung in 1909 he bragged... Let the record show it was 51 men. Deacon Miller shotgunned his brother-in-law John Coop as he slept on his own front porch. In a midnight l887 ambush Miller blasted from the saddle Ballinger Texas City Marshall Joe Townsend. He boasted of having filled my notch stick on Mexicans killed along the border throughout the 1890s. As a Pecos deputy by day and cattle rustler by night Miller snuck in a saloon back door at Toyah, Texas to blow the head off the card-playing sheriff... leaving his body still seated at the table. But the Deacon staged a convincing public display of Godly devotion and got an acquittal. In Fort Worth he charged $150 to murder any sheep man the cattle ranching interests named. He made $500 dry-gulching Lubbock lawyer Jim Jarrott, in 1904. At long last justice prevailed, although not in a court. It took 40 determined vigilantes in Ada, Oklahoma to end Millers career... a deed said to be the one mob action in America entirely justified in the eyes of both God and man.

DEFENDER
You may have heard of the most feared outlaw gang in the West - the Dalton gang - but what about truly heroic and brave men like Charles Brown, Tom Ayers, Lucius Baldwin, George Cubine and Marshal Charlie Connely? They stood and fought and put an end to the last bandit gang of the old West one October morning in l892... when the Daltons tried to rob two Coffeyville Kansas banks at the same time. The citizens of Coffeyville had been toughened by life on the western frontier - and at the first shouts of robbery they grabbed Winchesters and ammunition from a near-by hardware store. Like a wind-whipped prairie fire the good citizens surrounded both banks and quickly sent bullets through the plate glass windows ...serving notice these robbers were in for one of the fiercest gunfights that ever took place in the Old West. Teller Tom Ayers drew a pistol but was killed with a shot to the face. Marshal Connely untied bandit horses but was hit with a bullet in the back and fell dead. Store clerk Baldwin died with the pistol in his hand still firing. George Cubine, a boot maker, fell with a bullet in his heart, a smoking shotgun dropping at his feet which Charles Brown grabbed, blowing a robber out of his saddle before he too fell. But the townspeople continued a deadly fusillade of lead. When gun smoke cleared only bandit Emmett Dalton survived ... to do a long stretch in prison, being released in l907 a truly reformed criminal who gave public speeches challenging the world to produce the history of any outlaw who ever got anything out of it but death.

DESPERADO
Romantic tales of handsome young cowboy gun- fighters of the old West refuse to die. No matter what historians write about outlaw killers, the legends of daring adventure and a life of individual freedom follow these folk heroes, partly because what often appears to have been a murderous assault on enforcers of the law turns out to be a just, fair and necessary self-defense. Quite a few gunfighters were created from conditions in the South after the Civil War. Not only did vengeful and bitter ex-Union soldiers take over the courts, but they acted as sheriff-judge-executioner as well, wearing their old Calvary uniforms and riding as deputies... while out for revenge. They burned Confederate farms, grossly abused the women, and taunted and challenged teenage boys. It was well understood that young southern men stood no chance of justice, no matter what the facts, in such courts. Fathers routinely encouraged sons to ride for Texas, or beyond, whenever trouble arose. Such outlaw young men offered the only family protection from outright legal theft of property, horses and any personal goods these so-called deputies could grab. Challenges and ambushes of such corrupt and violent lawmen became common-place in some areas, creating more young outlaw desperados on the run, with no homes to return to and nothing left to lose.

DESTINY
With frontier mountain men and trappers and trail blazers gaining a reputation as little more than white savages, and sympathy growing for Indians and Mexicans being pushed back by western settlers and expansionist interests, it was left to New York City journalist John O'Sullivan to legitimize and inspire the movement West when he called it the American peoples manifest destiny. When some pointed to the problems of assimilating Indian culture, and the hugely violent acquisition of Texas...he called it a divinely ordained mission. Many easterners understood westward expansion as the convenient answer to European immigrant populations piling up on Americas shores. Profound social change was possible in encouraging poor workmen and farmers to seek a new life of fortune and land by going west. Business leaders understood manifest destiny to mean a new trade route to Asia by shipping goods overland to the Pacific Coast, thus cutting off 20 thousand miles of sea route around Cape Horn to California. MANIFEST DESTINY captured the imagination and moral energy of men who felt it their personal duty to bring about democratic government and economic progress for all. MANIFEST DESTINY was even interpreted as a matter of the proper use of land, rather than mere possession... an idea still today changing private land ownership rights and public law. But despite much high-minded philosophical sentiment about destiny and social brotherhood ...it was clear to almost everyone that Mexicans and Indians lacked the industrious energy of the true American frontier settlers.

DETERMINATION
The bottom line of living or dying in the Old West always came down to courage and determination. No matter what circumstances of environment or enemies... women defined a truly noble standard with resourcefulness and iron will. Consider the story of a middle-aged Warm Springs Apache grandmother captured in 1865 by Mexican bandits near Sonora. The Apache men in her party were executed, but she was sold into slavery to a Baja California hacienda. She worked hard for two years gaining her captors trust while secretly hiding supplies for a break to freedom. Leading six other women along the coast north with angry vaqueros tracking the women slept days and traveled nights. Eating desert roots and insects and nearly drowning fording the Colorado river, they struggled halfway home through thick brush along the Gila into Arizona Territory...only to be ambushed by Yuma raiders. Just the Apache grandmother and one companion survived... starving yet walking hundreds of miles further in unlivable heat to avoid Papago and Pima enemy camps. Finally, crazed with grief and thirst and too weak to move she built a signal fire... miraculously discovered by her own family tribe... thereby outwitting all pursuers to survive an heroic thousand mile return from the dead. No better example exists in all the historical records of Americas western frontier than this feat of a resourceful, determined and courageous woman.

DIAMONDBACK
Rattlesnakes have always had a bad reputation. The snake in the Garden of Eden was likely a rattler, and Arizona territory in the 1880s held a cold-blooded gunslinger called Rattlesnake Jake... referred to by the local papers as a diabolical killer with the moral capacity of a rattlesnake. Lower than a snake was a serious insult generally used to confront and provoke a deadly response. Seldom acknowledged is the fear cowboy horses had of rattlers. Runaways due to snake encounters threw riders, overturned stage coaches, broke horse legs and took miles at full gallop to rein in. Poison from a rattler bite could kill, but the treatment of cutting into fang marks was nearly as dangerous. Drawing off venom by sucking could cause a life threatening infection. Whiskey was the common antiseptic when available. A story from Colorado mining camps recounts how two men died from one bite...the father who was struck by rattler fangs penetrating his boot, and the son who wore the fathers boots a day later ...still holding the poison-laden fangs. Rattlers coiled to strike are a fearful sight. Leaps of twelve feet are recorded... as well as rattlers dropping from tree branches. Snakes have spooked herds of cattle... even at night. Present day southwest tourist trade features rattler ear rings and rattlesnake skin belts and boots and hat bands. You can still get a real hands on experience... at the annual Sweetwater Texas Rattlesnake Roundup.

DOC'S LOVER
John Henry Doc Holliday was said to consider loyalty the highest of all virtues. He found it in Kate Elder, a woman who could down a shot of whiskey just as fast as he could. Their drunken battles at frontier saloons became legendary. But at Fort Griffin, Texas in 1877 Kate Elders resourcefulness and courage and loyalty saved his life. Earlier in the evening a friendly high-stakes poker game turned ugly. Doc was playing cards with a man named Bailey and caught him cheating. Gamblers generally understood that the very least you could expect if caught cheating was to give up the pot. It was the polite way to settle disputes. Doc raked the pot in but Bailey couldnt stand losing face and money to a puny tuberculosis wracked dentist from the East and went for his gun. Doc brought up a boot knife and sank it into his throat.The town constable arrested Doc and held him in the saloon while angry citizens gathered outside preparing for immediate rope justice. But Kate responded quickly. After saddling two horses behind the saloon and setting fire to a building across the street she used the chaos that followed to sneak Doc out the back door, and all the way to safety in Dodge City. Kate Elders loyalty made the difference between life and sure vigilante death for Doc Holliday, who went on to play his role in the shootout at the OK corral. Wyatt Earp is know to have greatly admired Kate Elder for backing Docs hand.

DODGE CITY WAR
Cowboys in 1878 Dodge City regularly shot up the town. Marauding Cheyenne Indians led by Dull Knife panicked the citizens.Gambling and whoring ran unchecked while the town Marshal was murdered, a train was robbed, and buffalo hunters and gamblers fought in the streets. Doc Holiday practiced dentistry in room #24 of Dodge House after banking a substantial reward capturing a couple of horse thieves. But by 1883 enough was enough, especially at the center of the action... Luke Shorts Long Branch Saloon, where Deputy Marshal Henry McCarty was gunned down. A reform group forced Short to close his business and choose East or West...but either way to get out of Dodge. Short left but soon formed The Dodge City Peace Commission... a group of friends including Three Finger Dave and Wells Fargo guard Shotgun Collins. The local newspaper also listed Bat Masterson (a man killed for every year of his life) and Wyatt Earp (famous for depopulating the country) and Doc Holiday (relegating to the dust no less than 8.) Black Jack Bill joined up, along with Charlie Basset and Neal Brown Town citizens hurriedly wired the governor for help. Adjutant General Tom Moonlight and a company of state militia came armed and ready to intervene. But in a sudden change of town policy Luke Short was once again allowed to conduct business as usual at the Long Branch, Indians whooped the back streets, and numerous shootings of trees, wagons, barns and cowboys continued again.

EASY COME EASY GO
Gambling was a popular frontier institution of the early American West. Saloons featured poker tables and roulette wheels. Many a pouch of gold dust traded hands on the turn of an ace. Easy come was easy go, and striking it rich could mean raking in a big pot. Lubricating the games was a fiery whiskey said to be capable of peeling the hide off a gila monster. Prostitutes worked saloons at a time when women were out-numbered by men 30 to l. Those were better odds than found at roulette. Dealers seized opportunities to cheat drunken miners and cowboys and inexperienced settlers. Gunfights settled the problems that arose. Crooked gamblers plied their trade across the west. There was always excitement and danger and maybe a fortune to win at frontier gambling. Part of the allure came from the desperate life many led, where survival itself could be a win or loose proposition. Tomorrow held no certainty at all for many. Living the present moment fully was everything. The future could bring good fortune or bad. Lady Luck was goddess, whiskey the common sacrament, and a flush or a straight just as bankable as a college education. Risking all at gambling or panning gold or cowboying demanded the same go for broke spirit. Losing the shirt off your back was no mere metaphor. Life was chance, gambling an attitude, and EASY COME EASY GO profound realism.

EASY VIRTUE
Americas Old West frontier life was perfect for women seeking escape from social morals and family values to do as they pleased,... historians code for loners, prostitutes, alcoholics, petty thieves, eccentrics and adventurers. Some sought escape from a failed past. Others headed West looking for riches. The truly wild women took up life in teepees and adobes, while most of the mail-order brides had nothing to lose in seeking a mate. Idaho in the late 1800s had a reported 16,584 bachelors for 1,426 women.Polygamist sects filled a need, but with so many men outnumbering women the cowboys lined up, and working the line was fast money. Dance hall girls or savvy senoritas could earn hundreds of dollars a night. Most fallen angels worked noon to dawn servicing men who by custom never removed any clothing except for a hat. Camp followers took the trade to cavalry troops in the field. Although madams like Denvers Mattie Silks and Jennie Rogers were welcomed in society there were limits. Madam Mary Miller did 90 days in the county jail for depressing real estate values. Most working girls sought a husband through common law marriages, which seldom lasted... likely leaving them abandoned and even further embittered. Prostitutes were laid to rest in cemetery fields far from the respectable plots. There was a certain romanticism in the business, but also much opium use, violent assault, suicide, alcoholism... and death from a job-related injury known as inflammation of the bowels.

EXPERT ADVICE
A young man heading west in the l870s wearing a brand new Stetson and a pair of six-shooters would do well to seek advice from one of the all time great gunfighters, Wyatt Earp, who said he had learned by paying attention to old-timers who had to take their gunplay seriously. Earp was a deadly gunfighter with natural skill, total lack of fear, and great intelligence. Many a bad man backed down rather than draw against Earp. Hours of practice honed high speed with absolute accuracy to gain the edge between life and death. Earp said the most important thing he ever learned was to take his time in a gunfight. What he meant was taking only that split fraction of a second that makes the difference between deadly accuracy and a miss. He saw men use triggerless pistols who fanned the hammer so fast five shots fired sounding like one... but went down confronting another who took his time and pulled the trigger once. Earp advised that whenever you see a man firing two pistols at once... you are looking at a fool or a fake. Gunfighters had two guns for displaying force against a gang or crowd, or as reserve switched rapidly to the shooting hand in a border shift. The gunfighters intent was to make his first shot the last of the fight. There was no bluffing or intimidation. A fast draw could beat the ignorant or careless who already had the drop. Bluffers never lasted long in proficient company. Earp also advised that no gun fighter who amounted to anything notched his gun for the men he had killed. Outlaws who killed for brag sometimes did follow this custom.

ELKO ROBERY
APRIL 8, 1899 was the wrong time to be hanging around Elkos Club Saloon. Around midnight three armed and masked men entered with pistols drawn, put the customers on the floor, and got the drop on owner Jason Gutridge who was just closing up. When he protested one of the robbers struck him on the side of the head. Night barkeep C.B. Nichols had just opened the safe and was putting away the days receipts when ordered to raise his hands. A shotgun kept under the bar was just out of reach. The robbers quickly cleaned out the safe and rode off into the night on horses saddled and waiting behind the saloon. A posse searched for weeks across northeastern Nevada but returned empty-handed. Meanwhile Constable Joe Triplett rounded up the usual suspects...John Page, J. Cook and Bart Holbrook...but no evidence was found against these men and they were released. Three others soon became suspects - Joe Stewart, John Hunter and Frank Bozeman - when they were found to have disappeared from Elko on the night of the robbery. They were never located. Western historians believe Elkos Club Saloon robbery was actually the work of Wyomings Wild Bunch gang, who a few weeks later robbed Winnemuccas bank, and a gold shipment from the Southern Pacific railroad near Humboldt.

EYE FOR EYE
Handsome 24 year old Texan Mike Alexander violated the strictest prohibition known in the West when he shot and killed a woman. Holding down a deputy Sheriff job near Yuma in Arizona Territory he sought to evict Mary Burns and her family from a small ranch house outside town. A quarrel ensued and Mary defiantly held a Winchester rifle in her hands. The official report states... Alexander became enraged, took a double barreled shotgun from a scabbard on his saddle, deliberately firing both barrels at Mrs. Burns...the shot taking effect in the abdomen. She fell dead in front of her children. News of the killing raced across the territory. The Arizona Republican wrote that...A man has murdered a woman, and no circumstance in the killing of a woman... could be an excuse. Mary Burns came from the pioneer King family, and brother Frank, a cattle broker, Nogales newspaper owner and former Sheriff of Maricopa county headed for Yuma. With him was family patriarch Sam Houston King, and brother Sam, a former US Customs border patrolman. Yumas saloons hummed with speculation about justice. Deputy Alexander got a brief trial. The jurors hardly had time to announced their sentence of life in prison when the young deputy was shot down in the courthouse doorway...by an unknown gunman... who got away. Years later Frank King wrote his frontier memories and admitted...It has always been the custom of our family to kill anyone who kills one of us.

FANNIE
1887 brought the worst winter Montanans ever experienced. Many cowboys and thousands of animals froze to death while a world champion cowgirl was being born on a ranch near Helena. Fannie Sperry grew up helping capture and break wild horses with her father, who saw to it that she became a dead shot. Passing the hat after rodeo rides earned the money to keep her competing, and she became the Womans Bucking Horse Champion of Montana in 1904. Every rodeo promoter sought out the beautiful blue-eyed girl with waist length black braids wearing a vaquero style beaver felt hat and ankle length divided riding skirt. On the meanest of buckers she rode like a man...with one rope, one hand free. Fame came on the big outlaw horse Red Wing at the first Calgary Stampede in 1912. Four days earlier this bronc had thrown and stomped to death cowboy Joe LaMar. In the most dramatic moment of rodeo history, with Red Wings eyes glowing hatred as he thrashed frightened gatemen about, Fannie Sperry delivered an incredible 10 second ride to the whistle on a horse side-stepping on hind legs out of the chute.The crowd exploded. Lady Bucking Horse Champion Of The World was hers. And she did it all over again one year later on a terrifying bronc called Midnight at the Worlds Frontier Days in Winnipeg. Sometimes riding as many as 14 broncs a weekend, Fannie also shot china eggs out of her husbands hand and cigars out of his mouth working the 1916 Buffalo Bill Cody Wild West Show in Chicago. She died at 95 a legend and true champion of the West.

FIRST WHITE WOMAN
She was beautiful, intelligent, gifted, wealthy and married well to a New York doctor... and she was the very first white woman (30 years after Sacajawea helped Lewis and Clark) to cross the impassable Rocky Mountains to reach Americas western frontier. In 1836 Narcissa Whitman, with help from mountain men and fur trappers and her missionary party Indian guides made it all the way to Oregons coast. She was also the first white who came to preach and not to trade. Her project for salvation was the Cayuse tribe, who competed for the honor of having Narcissa live on their land...but turned against her once they heard her message of morality...and her husbands demand that they learn to plant and eat potatoes, rather than rely on fish and wild game. With Indian children attending Narcissas school to learn their ABCs... some Cayuse leaders began to demand money for teaching the Whitmans Cayuse language. Indian ponies trod the potato fields nightly. A gristmill burned down, and a warrior snuck into Narcissas bedroom window. After a fatal measles disease broke out among the Indians Narcissa was blamed. When treatment with medicine failed she was accused of dispensing poison. Finally a raiding party using tomahawks and rifles murdered the beautiful white woman and a dozen other missionaries. Hudsons Bay Company men who reached the site reported wolves eating the bodies. Word of this tragedy, and the value of far west lands where it occured, caused President James Polk one year later to declare Oregon a protected US state-territory.

FORDING
Few bridges existed across the early American West frontier. Travelers had to get across a stream as best they could. Cowboys moving a herd had to get themselves and their cattle across. Late spring snow-melt turned quiet streams to raging rivers. Fording fast water was often a life or death challenge of itself, and always left you extremely vulnerable to cattle rustlers or Indian attack. One technique was to send the camp dog across first, which told nothing about depth of water but gave a good indication of how swift the stream was running. Dogs also tended to drift to the best far side landing. If there were women and children and wagons and goods, and enough rope to span the river, a picket was set. Anyone who could walk the river clung to this rope...rather than ride a wagon, which was liable to become a boat. One problem with fording freezing fast moving water across treacherous rocky streams with deep holes and powerful currents was that once you got across it was tough to dry out and warm up. Another problem was anybody caught in the current was gone. Riverbanks were generally brushy and rocky. Rescuers couldnt make way alongside the river nearly as fast as the water flowed. Fording on horseback was safest. Some horses needed little encouragement. Others had to be dragged and cajoled and whipped, reluctant all the way. A couple of men across first with weapons held high and dry was the best security.

FOUND
The coroners report on a recent discovery of a skeleton at Angels Camp in Californias high Sierra gold mining country tells an Old West story. The bones indicate a male between 30-35 years and about five and a half feet tall. A broken thigh bone (nicely healed femoral fracture) from a gunshot wound (lead particles located by X-ray) 5 years previous to death would have made a noticeable limp...the right leg being 2 inches shorter than the left. A badly rusted H&R 5-shot .38 (produced in 1883) double- action pistol (four bullets found in chamber, one missing) was laying on the right hand. Near the left was an empty glass whiskey bottle (pumpkin-seed flask.) Spectacles were carried for reading, and an 18K gold watch (made 1875, Elgin Watch Company #338397) with no inscription (case in perfect condition, workings rusted away, crystal shattered, solid gold chain, fob missing.) 2 suspender slides (patented 1888, Wilson Brothers, silver plated, fancy scroll pattern on front) and one suspender snap (lion and sword design) with leather remnants (C.F. Co.) and small metal suspender buckle were found near what may be heavy winter coat (herringbone pattern, brown wool.) Pockets held one knife (multiple blade,) wooden handle of a toothbrush (boar bristle style) one bone button and pewter fly buttons (made in Paris. ) Pocket money included $5 gold coin (1886 S,) $1 gold coin and half dollar (1875,) two quarters (1878 CC) and V nickel (1867.) Four short .38 rounds found in right hand pocket, with items of paper turned to mulch. No fatal trauma observed. Skeleton was found in sprawled position.

FREE LAND
April 22, 1889 was a beautiful spring day on the Oklahoma prairie. The grass was high and green, wildflowers grew in colorful bunches everywhere, and best of all a fast horse and quick six-gun guaranteed you 160 acres of frontier Oklahoma paradise. It was a once-in-a lifetime chance for profit, or a home, or wild adventure when Oklahoma territory was opened to free public settlement. Ten thousand quarter sections of prime land was up for grabs. Fifty thousand people pushed and shoved and argued and fought to stake their claim and hold it... churning up clouds of red dust and sending out a sound like thousands of caged animals. Italians arrived from New York, blacks from North Carolina, immigrants came from Sweden, miners from Utah and both cowboys and Indians rode in from Texas. Almost everybody was armed. At noon on that day a bugle blast sent thousands on horse-back and afoot, on bicycles, in carriage and wagon and buggie and a fleet of chartered stage coaches rushing across the prairie. Within 24 hours numerous people were dead from gun shots and wagon crashes, while 10,000 citizens had erected a 50 building shanty town amid a forest of tents. Make-shift stores appeared, and restaurants, and by the following day 2 banks had opened. Despite Indian attacks, sickness, drought and grass-hopper plagues...and endless litigation over claims... most of the settlers stayed to build their churches and schools and communities. Nothing was ever heard from the 4 men reported to have launched themselves in a balloon for a jump start on their piece of Oklahoma.

FRONTIER JUSTICE
Cowboy Harvey Alliance was a handsome gunslinger and shrewd gambler who in l87l rode the Santa Fe Trail from Abilene to Dodge City to Cimmaron, New Mexico. Hisdtorical accounts indicate he won big in an l875 poker game at Tombstone Arizona It was this money that bought him the finest suit of clothes in Tucson and put him on the stagecoach to Deadwood, along with 8 soiled doves from Denver hired as saloon dancers.The trip turned into a nightmare. Just north of the Point Of Rocks coach station a gang of drunken outlaw-miners stopped the stagecoach by shooting all the horses. After killing the driver and robbing the passengers... and grossly abusing the women, this gang set the stagecoach afire. In the confusion Harvey Alliance gathered the women and somehow led them to cover while getting hold of a Winchester 30-30 carbine with which he killed every robber, either 11, or l6, as some historians reported. Alliance guided the women to refuge at the present-day site of Alliance, Nebraska where they set up caBmp and got aid from a friendly party of Niobrara River Indians.

GAMBLER
Old West gamblers had a reputation for dishonesty. With a black suit, poker face, ace up the sleeve, and stacked deck many were also quick with a concealed derringer or knife, especially with a big pot at stake. But nowhere on the frontier could you find more strict and formal and precise rules of behavior than at the poker table. Before every deal the man on your right was offered the deck to cut. This courtesy showed good intentions. Cards were shuffled with care and held and dealt face down. A fast shuffle, a careless superficial shuffle, or an accidentally flashed card were violations of etiquette not tolerated by even the novice gambler. Strict poker rules helped avoid the serious misunderstandings, which were often settled with a six-gun. Up cards were always called out loud as dealt. Every pair was called as they were dealt, as well as possible straights and flushes. To peek at down cards, especially if you were out of the hand, created distrust and ill-will. Nobody wanted to have a bluff exposed. Peeking at anothers hole cards could cost your life in late night alcohol-fueled betting, even after a player had won and nobody had called. Folded cards were gathered at once and carefully added to the bottom of the deck so they couldnt be seen. Folding out of turn or betting out of turn came near to cheating. Losing gracefully was expected. A man was entitled to lose his own money any way he wanted. Only a fool commented on anothers luck.

GERONIMO
His real name was Goyathlay. Born a Bedonkohe Indian the young Geronimo quickly took up tribal Apache hatred of Mexicans... gathering a band of warriors to raid large herds of Mexican cattle and horses... which were then sold to white ranchers in New Mexico. The money went for whiskey, guns, new clothes and plenty of ammunition. Geronimo early on developed a life-long addiction to whiskey and crime. His renegade band killed and burned and stole at will from a nearly impregnable stronghold in the Sierra Madres... until the famed Indian fighter of the Black Hills George Crook took Geronimos entire camp of 251 women and children captive, holding them while peace treaties were signed. Geronimo agreed to a reservation life of farming and ranching. But he secretly returned to the war path of raiding, robbing and slaughtering frontier settlers. Finally in 1886 the U.S. War Department assigned General Nelson Miles and 5,000 troops aided by thousands of civilian irregulars and hundreds of Apache scouts to pursue Geronimo and his 24 warriors throughout Arizona and New Mexico. When he was caught an angry President Grover Cleveland wanted Geronimo hanged. Instead he was sent to a diseased Florida prison created for Indian incorrigibles. Released in 1894 as a drunken and disorderly old man, he sold photographs of himself for whiskey money and made bows and arrows for the tourist trade in Oklahoma...dying in 1909 a living legend of the traditional warrior leader... his death the result of a fall in a drinking stupor from a wagon.

GLORIFY
Sam Bass & Company was the media darling of 1870s Texas newspapers. To hear the local reporters tell it Sam was the most beloved outlaw in the West and the new Robinhood distributing gold coins to the poor (from the train robbery-murder of 3 men at Big Spring, Nebraska. ) There was wide- spread admiration of his ability to outwit the Denton County Sheriff. The Bass gangs fast horses outran Army troopers and Texas Rangers...making Sam Bass a frontier legend. Within 20 miles of Dallas he robbed trains at Allen Station, Hutchins, Eagle Ford and Mesquite... and all within a few weeks. Bass rustled cattle and held up the passengers of seven stages in the Black Hills near Deadwood. Often absent in the accounting of these criminal deeds are the injuries, the wounds, and the bloody body count. Some Americans both then and now understand violence and theft as a heroic response to life, and outlaw life a means of getting even with powerful men in high places. Both institutional and personal corruption in government, real estate, corporations, banking, railroads and religion created resentment and hatred in 1877 as they do now . Outlaws in this unjust world such as Sam Bass rage and challenge our social values... but you can find the real Sam Bass legacy etched in granite at the Round Rock, Texas grave of Deputy Sheriff A.W. Grimes... killed in an attempt to apprehend Bass. The simple inscription reads... He left a wife and three children. She received $200 and one of the Bass Gang horses as indemnity for her husbands death.

GOING NATIVE
Charles Wesley Allen soldiered across frontier South Dakota- Wyoming-Nebraska, hauled wagon loads of onions into 1876 Deadwood, witnessed the massacre on Wounded Knee Creek, stole Cheyenne ponies, traded whiskey to Indians...and became a faithful husband to a Lakota wife. Their 50 years of marriage produced 12 children. Allen also observed a number of intermarriages of white men and Sioux, Brule and Oglala women. He recorded that practically all of the young trappers of the Hudson Bay Company had taken Indian wives, in accord with the centuries-old custom of the tribe. They raised families, cut and sold wood as the fur business declined, and hauled supplies for military forts. When forts became trading posts and later frontier towns they built permanent homes and schools for the%ir children. But going native also meant crossing the sacred confines of white society with return impossible. Allen knew some squaw men who wore red shirts and beaded moccasins and lived on government rations given to Indians... smoking cigarettes and idling away the time. But most inter-married whites were truly honorable hard working men devoted to and protective of family life. Indian agents who manipulated and cheated had good reason to speak ill of white men among the Indians who witnessed their criminal acts. Contrary to popular historical notion, most of the mixed-blood children were generally hired as ranch hands and carpenters and clerks, and some became business owners, accepted in community life, their marriages publicly solemnized by church or civil authority.

GOLD CRAZY
Considerin3g that people today still search for gold reported in 1536 to be covering the seven golden cities of Cibola, its little wonder Californias 1849 strike caused crews to abandon their ships, soldiers desert their posts, and San Francisco to become a ghost town. Theres certain madness in the fever. Prospectors died in ambush, outlaws roamed the mining hills, and Arizona Indians killed over 400 men in the 1860s with regular raids on wagon trains carrying bullion to Phoenix. Ten thousand mining claims kept in a folder under the bar at Gold Hill, Nevada brought millions for lawyers disputing these claims. Ira Tabors $17 dollar grub stake of food and shovels gave him a share of Colorados Little Pittsburg Mine which later paid him half a million dollars. Prices went sky- high, with eggs at Sutters F0ort $1 each. The only bathtub in Tonopah, Nevada filled once a night and rented at $1 first bath, 50 cents second, all others 25 cents. People with skills cashed in and carpenters who made their own lumber from nearby trees got rich. Marcus Daly turned his smelter knowledge at Butte, Montana into a fortune. Saloon owners and whores seemed to own the gold just about as fast as it came out of the ground. But the great bulk of gold profit went to those who brought in ore processing machinery and hired hard rock miners to dig. These miners died regularly from cave in rock falls and from foul air in shafts like Nevadas Comstock Mine which went a half mile deep. Temperatures at the Crown Mine in Virginia City reached 150 degrees. Ice was lowered every 15 minutes. 10 hours of mining work paid $3.

GOLD
Gold miners of the early American West were a hardy breed and had to be as living conditions were primitive and food mostly a matter of what you could hunt. Miners put in 18 hour days shoveling gravel and sand into a rocker or sluice. Hand panning was the common method of hunting silver and gold. Gems were sometimes recovered, as well as fools gold.... actually worthless brown mica or pyrite. Gold never occurs as a pure metal. Most gold nuggets are 650-900 Fine, or 65-90 per cent pure. Gold ranges in color from silvery-yellow to a reddish-yellow to the unique greenish-yellow gold of the Black Hills. Gold does not tarnish but may appear black due to manganese or iron oxide deposits. Nuggets show sparkle in sunlight and have been found weighing up to 20'0 pounds in California, Colorado and South Dakota. Early prospectors used small leather pouches or pokes of gold nuggets and dust as common currency. Banks and gambling halls stood ready with a set of gold scales and weights. Claim-jumping was an ugly fact of the miners life. Some were killed for their claim. Others were cheated by mining lawyers and swindlers. They were constant targets of Indian ambush. Outlaws struck on remote mountain trails and left no witness. Gold fever was an addiction. Crazed miners were common-place. Some spent a lifetime going broke and seeking one more grubstake of food, pick and shovel in exchange for a share of any gold found. And many were quick to finance a prospectors dream of finally striking it rich!

GUN LEATHER
Early day western adventurers carried handguns in a pommel holster attached to their saddle. But as pistols improved from cap and ball to cartridge and quick access was often necessary the hip holster design became popular. Saddle makers sewed custom inside vest holsters for professional gamblers, and California Slim Jim designs with closed buckle top flaps used by prospectors living in lawless mining camps. New fast draw open-top holster styles soon became standard with a leather loop sewed to the back for wide belt-mounting. Decorations of elaborate floral tooling and fancy monograms of cactus thread appeared. Conch sea shells and silver coins edged vaquero rigs. Fully beaded Indian holsters were decorated with elaborate fringe. And a classic Texas jockstrap style appeared which allowed a forward rake setting the pistol grip ahead for a quicker draw. Shoulder holsters provided a quick draw while mounted on horseback. The l870s saw cartridge belts in great demand by the cowboy who carried one common caliber for both rifle and pistol. A full belt of 35-50 cartridges provided an edge in prolonged gunfights with cattle rustling gangs or hostile Indian encounters. Simple southwest Mexican loop patterns slipped easily over wide belts and became commonplace through out the West. Frontier cowboy Teddy Blue has written that... In those early days six shooters kept the peace. Each man wore a deadly weapon in plain sight. Men were soft-spoken and respectful to each other, because it didnt pay to be anything else.

GUN SENSE
You may have seen cowboy-western movies where men seem to be always sitting around the campfire at night wiping on pistols. The reason is simply that it had to be done. Nobody wanted a gun or ammunition failure that might cost a life. Moisture and trail dirt were constant enemies. If that movie had a cowboy firing warning shots in the air... chances are the result could have been a blown ear drum. Of course bullets come down at the same velocity as they go up... and that movie hero might just need those wasted rounds real fast if suddenly attacked. Old West cowboys seldom fired a warning. Ammunition wasnt cheap. And those black powder guns were almost never loaded while horseback. Also, pouring from the powder flask directly into the chamber could result in an explosion. Even small variations in powder greatly affected accuracy, as did the exact right size caps. Even with caliber matches there were frequent problems.. since ammo for the Colt .45 Peacemaker wouldnt fire in the .45 Smith & Wesson. Colt .45s would take .45 S & W rounds but Schofields would not handle the long Colt rounds. Perhaps not suprisingly, Army Cavalry units frequently were issued wrong ammunition. Dropping a gun, or falling down, could be the hard way to learn never to carry a live round under the hammer. Greenhorns learned fast the difference between double action revolvers...which cock and drop the hammer on a pull of the trigger... and single- action revolvers, which had to be cocked first with the thumb... since it could be a matter of life, or death.

GUNSLINGER
The term is reserved for those seeking a reputation...the kind of man who drank deep at any bar he entered, then invited any man there to outdraw him. Some got an early start in the Confederate Army, where sanctioned killing gave no cause to look back. There was also secret and often cowardly Indian killing, and easy small town killing of local boys at saloons along the Texas Panhandle into New Mexico. There was regular employment for awhile in various county cattle wars. Gunslingers invariablely had the cold blue-eyed killers stare and a cool nerve, which maybe indicated no feelings at all. Bitterness over the Civil War and lost property and possessions provided some men an excuse to rob and kill. A certain vanity grew with skill in fast-draw shootouts. Law enforcement was itself a trade successfully practiced by men who understood the job to include the judgment and execution part also. Most confrontations didnt call for a fair fight. Killing was just a matter of getting a job done. There was glory in the trade. Newspapers headlined the bloodiest encounters. There was hometown acclaim. And any local heller with the ambition and just plain ornery mean who liked to brag and had some fast draw ability was on his way...until he met another just a touch faster. Gunslingers also fought to the death with bare fists and knives. Late night ambushes were common. Some men were extremely deadly. Bill Longley was only 27 when finally caught and hung in l878... with at least 3l dead men to his credit.

HANDCART
It was Mormon leader Brigham Youngs idea, after watching 1849 gold rush miners walking to California pushing wheel-barrows, for a cheaper and faster method of traveling west to Zion... and some 3,000 Mormon pioneers loaded 17 pounds of private possessions and as much food as they could push or pull into a narrow 5 foot long box... usually made from hickory wood and mounted between two lightweight spoked wheels made of oak. These handcarts held up to 500 pounds of goods. Some had a hooped canvas cover. They had to be dragged or pushed nearly 1,500 roadless miles to the great Salt Lake valley. Ox-wagon trains and horse drawn carriages filled with the more affluent emigrants rolled ahead ...leaving the handcart pushers to struggle up steep slopes, across rocky outcroppings and around deep mud wallows. In good weather with 15 miles made each day the trip took 70 days. But in 1856 the last handcart company ever to attempt the journey west floundered in heavy Wyoming snows. A thousand emigrants, many children and the elderly, pulled their carts to the shouts of leaders who demanded more faith in God while continuing to ignore the realities of frontier terrain. But each morning found more bodies frozen in sleep. Rations were cut, goods thrown from the handcarts to make room for the weak, and strong women pulled sick husbands. Wheels froze to the trail. Children crawled through snow and mud. The morning prayers became a regular funeral service. Nearly 300 died... while most handcart survivors suffered amputated feet and fingers and toes.

HIDE PARK GUNFIGHT
Shootouts in the Old West are considered from many different angles by amateur historians, but the 1871 massacre at Newton Kansas definitely requires a body count. It began with an election day fist fight in the Red Front Saloon. Gambler Irish Mike McCluskie knocked Special Policeman Billy Bailey through the swinging doors and out into the street, then killed him with a bullet fired into his chest as he lay where he fell. A week later McCluskie goes to Tuttles Dance Hall and sits at a corner faro table, where four of Baileys friends spot him. Jim Anderson pulls out his pistol and fires point blank, and McCluskie drops dead on the floor. Anderson sends another shot into McCluskies back, which enrages 18 year old Jim Riley, who pulls a pair of Colt revolvers and with a wild shot hits his best friend Jim Martin. Martin runs across the street to the porch of Krums dance hall where he collapses and dies. Riley fires rapidly hitting five more people. Anderson takes bullets in the leg and thigh, but lives. Cowboy Bill Garrett is hit in the chest and dies. Pete Hickey survives a shot in the leg. Texan Henry Kearnes dies with a shoulder wound. Santa Fe railroad brakeman Pat Lee dies with a shot in his stomach. Jim Wilkerson survives leg and nose hits. With both guns empty young Jim Riley, never known of ever before causing any trouble, casually holsters his pistols, steps over the bodies and walks out of the dance hall... never to be heard from again.

HORSE THIEF
Todays carjackers may very well be unrepentant horse thieves reincarnated from the old West. Perhaps they just never learned their lesson. But back then when caught hanging was swift and sure. That was because, so often in hostile terrain or weather, losing your horse cost your life. Bitter cold and snow and ice, extreme heat, little water and no food was what a man often faced walking the trail. Long walking was not a real option. Murderous enemies lay in wait to take advantage. Snakes and predators, heat and thirst, rugged and steep mountainous trail, cloudbursts, high wind and far distances threatened survival. Usually fording a river without a horse was near impossible.In many places horses were hard to come by, and no horse often meant no work. Not a few men kept everything they owned tied to their saddle. A stolen horse meant stolen gear, clothes, gun, food and money. Horse theft was a desperate act. A man who would steal another mans horse was low as a snake. No insult went deeper than horse thief. As transportation and roads developed, stealing a horse led to a stretch in prison rather than a death sentence. The Sundance Kid did only a year in jail for horse stealing. (He was also kicked out of the county.) Today stealing a horse might be considered a drunken lark bringing a few months of probation in most cases. But dont make a joke of calling some cowboy a horse thief. It still cuts deep.

INCIDENT AT MEDICINE LODGE
A heavy rain storm early on an April morning in 1884 greeted the four men who rode quietly into Medicine Lodge, Kansas and tied their horses to the coal shed at the rear of the First National Bank. Henry Geppert looked up from his cashiers window to find a robbers pistol in his face. He reached for his own revolver but two shots hit him in the head... killing him instantly. Another blast killed the bank President Ed Payne who fell at the door to the vault... leaving behind his wife Susan and nine children. Reverend Bill Friedly yelled to town Marshall Ted Dean who was standing down the street at Herrington and Smiths grocery store. Dean opened fire as the robbers fled Medicine Lodge riding hard. In just minutes a citizen posse of every gun and horse in town gave chase... capturing the robbers in a nearby canyon. Leading the gang was Caldwell Kansas Marshal Hank Brown and his deputy Ben Wheeler. Brown had once raided in New Mexico with Billy the Kid but appeared to have reformed. He was just a few weeks earlier presented a unique gold plated Winchester in appreciation of law enforcement service. But that evening a crowd of angry men marched on the jail. Reports say Brown tried to escape... and was shredded with shots from everywhere. The other four robbers were hung vigilante-style from a large Elm tree south of town. The coroners report of this incident states the deaths came either by gun or pistol shots or hanging. Hank Browns one-of-a-kind gold-plated Winchester is now on exhibit at a museum in Topeka.

INDIAN TORTURE
Descriptions of the tortures inflicted by American Indians are rare. Most of these acts are referred to in news accounts or letters as cruel or horrible mutilations without the awful details. But it is clear to many historians that a shared frontier knowledge of Indian atrocities effectively terrorized whites throughout the 1800s. Nathan Knowles gathered the facts of torture for the American Philosophical Society. He observed that torture had a strong religious significance, with the concept of human sacrifice underlying the act. He wrote that Indians got great emotional satisfaction from the prolonged torture of their captives. He saw cultural satisfactions derived from the infliction of pain upon a human being as a dividing line for moral or social acceptability. In short, burning a captive alive at the stake, or pouring burning hot sand into a freshly scalped wound, was unacceptable. Arrows shot into sex organs or disembowelment was mostly understood as mere brutality. Torture was the art practiced on a platform or in a ceremonial room to produce a sexual-like delight in the frenzy of death vibrations. As the soul or spirit was forced out of the body the torturers could steal power. Hot embers pressed into flesh cuts worked, and also tearing out hair, slicing ears or nose or eyes, twisting fingers off, firing splinters under fingernails, or applying torches to the bowels. Captives were left hung by the feet and staked spread-eagle in the desert sun. Eating the enemy, especially his heart, and blood-drinking was usual after torture. Many whites never overcame the deep fear of such treatment from Indians.

INVASION
The attack on the small Texas town of Victoria in the summer of 1840 was the first ever by Indians on a white western settlement. Earlier a raiding party of 40 or 50 entered the town of Bastrop and stole horses while the people were at church, and settlers were harassed by marauders, who murdered those few caught unarmed away from home. But on August 8 a deadly invading force met with great success. An estimated one thousand Comanche warriors descended totally unexpected on the town killing an unknown number among terrorized families, and in the confusion made off with a reported near 3 thousand head of horses and mules. Flush with victory they headed 50 miles east to sack the seaport town of Linnville, once again achieving total surprise on August 8 by riding in hi7dden over the sides of their horses. Unsuspecting townsfolk saw a great cloud of dust, believing it a large herd being brought up from Mexico, and hardly got a chance to fight back. Entire families were slaughtered to the last. A few of the panic stricken leaped into boats and paddled away... pursued in the water by warriors wielding scalping knives. It was a violent and bloody encounter. Indians plundered at will... packing several hundred stolen mules from Victoria with all the goods from homes and merchandise from stores that they could carry, then set the entire town afire, burning it to the ground. They tore strips of red cloth from the shop bales and made streamers tied as head bands and to the horses tails. The invasion force was reported to be a gaily be-decked and colorful sight.

IRON ROAD
Cheyenne Chief Turkey Leg hated the iron road and in August 1867 led his warriors in a raid that killed the railroad crew at Lexington Nebraska, derailed a train heading west, and blocked the track with logs for four days of looting and burning the freight cars. Plains tribes attacked the iron horses from Nebraska into Utah. Sioux staged lightning raids out of the hills to cut telegraph lines and murder track surveying parties. With a government grant of ten sections of free land per mile of track laid the railroad workers pushed on. Half the crew at any given time stood guard against ambush while the other half worked. Six thousand tie men, graders, bridge builders and track layers worked through 20 foot Sierra snowdrifts. Chinese workers dangled by rope down thousand foot high granite peaks to set dyn!amite charges and blast out an iron roadbed. Transcontinental tracks linked in the desert of Utah in 1869 with the driving of a golden spike, signalling outlaws such as the Jennings gang of Oklahoma to try blasting freight cars off the track in crude attempts to open the safes. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid perfected the art of train robbing... stealing a hundred thousand dollars in gold at the turn of the century. The James brothers from Clay County Missouri in 1873 stole ten thousand in gold by prying loose a track to derail a Union Pacific train. But Pinkertons railroad detectives prevailed. Hauling buffalo bones used for fertilizer, hides for clothing, and beef to feed eastern markets created an easy and cheap return trip west for anyone seeking adventure and a new life along the iron road.

IRON SHIRT
Texas in the 1850s was an extremely dangerous place to be. Fearless bands of skilled Comanche warriors raided white settlements and Mexican ranches at will... until 1858 when the governor hired 100 new Texas Rangers... to make them an effective fighting force. Alongside the Rangers rode hundreds of Tonkawas Indian scouts friendly to whites but generally despised by other tribes because they practiced cannibalism. Comanche victims reported a near supernatural leader of one marauding band... hereditary Chief Pohibit Quasha... know as Iron Shirt... a cunning and ruthless fighter who somehow appeared immune to bullets. Skilled gunslingers who rode in pursuit of Iron Shirt told of chasing and shooting him numerous times, with no. effect. Iron Shirt could rally his warriors by boldly leading an attack parading a taunt daring his enemies to shoot. John Old Rip Ford led a Texas Ranger expedition assigned to confront Iron Shirt, crossing the Red River and traveling the Sweet Water Creek arroyos to keep out of sight. With him was expert Indian marksman Jim Pockmark who carried a .58 caliber Henry buffalo rifle. Soon blood curdling war cries arose and the Battle Of Antelope Hills was on. Pockmark waited his chance, taking aim on Iron Shirt just when his mount turned sideways. Pockmarks bullet went under Chief Iron Shirts hidden magic, killing him instantly. His bulletproof secret was an old piece of iron chest armor from early Spanish conquistador days... a war relic hundreds of years old.

JOHN JONES
In 1874 a handsome 135 pound forty year old John Jones from Corsicana, who never touched liquor or tobacco, but loved sponge cake and buttermilk... accepted commission as major of Texas Frontier Battalion. He quickly became addicted to coffee on the job... since water available on the plains was usually the green-scummed stagnant kind. Drinking it boiled and black helped. Major Jones had a perfection of neatness and inborn high intelligence. He used it to make a disciplined force from men inclined to leave as they wished by arranging a brother or friend to stand in. A surgeons certificate became required for sick leave. Jones canceled furloughs and forced the Austin legislators to supply his men adequate pay and the best pistols... by keeping exact records of stolen live stock recovered and the death7 of dozens, the arrest of hundreds, the flight of thousands of fugitives, murderers, feudists, thieves and highway men. Jones ended widespread cattle rustling by inspecting herds for brands changed from S to 8 and P to B or R. He gained some fame after an Indian encounter in Lost Valley when one warrior killed was discovered with the scalp of a white woman tied to his shield. The 1874 invention of barbed wire brought a new responsibility of lying on the fence waiting for wire-cutters to come. When horsemen holding up stages found they could also rob trains Jones led his men to deal with it. He was peacemaker of the Mason County war, calmed the Salt Wars mobs at El Paso, ended the Horrel-Higgins feud and quietly buried forever the notion that Texas Rangers shot first and ask questions later.

JAILS and JUDGES
Early frontier justice was the instant kind with fists, knives and guns... partly the result of few law officers, and few who knew the formalities of law. Court houses and jails just didnt exist. Serious incidents could mean prisoners hauled hundreds of roadless miles by wagon to a formal court. Once there the judge might charge an ounce of gold per motion made, or hold court at a local saloon, with recesses frequent. The judges pistol reinforced legal authority.Stone or timber for jail buildings was scarce. Kansas outlaws were safely kept down a dry well. Texas prisoners might be chained to a windmill. Drunken miners in Colusa might wake in an iron cage built under a shade tree. One sheriff would throw a cowhide over his prisoner and peg it to the ground. Felons could be chained to s1tumps. The first jail in San Francisco was the brig of a sailing ship. Criminal evidence and records were easily stolen or burned by those awaiting trial. Numerous flimsy courthouses went up in smoke in Texas in the 1870s. Judicial formality was often a matter of a judge chewing on a quid and spitting, sipping whiskey from a pocket flask, smoking cigars or whittling during court. Most community citizens gladly paid the taxes that built the jailhouses. Respect for the law came slow. At Fort Smiths frontier outpost 65 deputies lost their lives trying to establish a court and jail system. Judges like Roy Bean of Texas didnt help matters by ruling, in one murder case, that it served the deceased right for getting in front of the gun. He also couldnt find anywhere a law against killing Chinamen.

KESEBERG
Captain Tuckers relief party climbing the Sierras from Sacramento through deep snow reached the Donner party camp on February 19, 1846 to find frozen human bodies, terribly mutilated legs, arms sawed off, skulls opened and portions of remains strewn about... and 31 year old German scholar Lewis Keseberg still alive...his tracks all over the grisly scene. With a rope around his neck Keseberg gave up $531 dollars in gold gathered from the corpses, and begged for mercy. It was clear he had eaten his fellow emigrants to stay alive. He was called a cannibal... and accused of murdering Mrs. Donner and emigrants Foster, Hardcoop, Wolfinger and Murphy in order to eat them. I have been born under an evil star, Keseberg said. After rescuers reported finding two kettles of blood at Kesebergs tent, he said Before any man judges me, he should be put in a similar situation. Keseberg had lost his wife and infant son to starvation in the Sierras freezing blizzards, and survived to face years of insults and taunts from people who shouted Stone him! Stone him! wherever he went. The flesh of starved beings contains little nutriment...its like feeding straw to horses, he wrote years later. This food was loathsome and disgusting. I cant express the horror I experienced. Many a time Ive had the muzzle of my pistol in my mouth. God Almighty provided only this one horrible way for me to subsist. Did I boil the flesh? Yes, but the details are too agonizing. I often think the Almighty has singled me out among all men to see how much of hardship and suffering and misery a human can endure!

KID FROM THE RECOLLECTIONS OF TEDDY BLUE:
I was really dangerous. A kid is much more dangerous than a man because hes so sensitive about his personal courage. Hes just itching to shoot somebody in order to prove himself. I did shoot a man once. I was only sixteen, and drunk. A bunch of us left town on a dead run, shooting out the gas lamps. I was in the lead, and the town Marshall jumped out of the dark right in front of me calling, Halt! Halt! Throw em up. And I throwed em up all right, and shot right in his face. I always had that idea in my head ...SHOOT YOUR WAY OUT! The bullet went through his shoulder and he was only sick a few days... then back on the job. I did not go to town for a long time afterwards, but he never knew who shot him, because it was dark enough he could not see. So that was how us cowboys got away with a lot of such stunts. And they say he never tried to get in front of running horses again. But I was worse than ever afterwards. When my older brother died at l9, the wind blowed my hat in his grave, and his death made an infidel of me. I asked my mother if God could have kept him from dying, and she said, yes, God was all-powerful and could have prevented it if He wished. So I told her...Ill never go to one of your damn churches again...and I never have.

LAWMAN
The old West of the artists imagination is often thought an exaggerated view of outlaws and cowboy desperados. But consider the historical record. California bandit Joaquin Murietta in l851 led a gang of 80 men (and his wife dressed as a man) attacking gold-laden stagecoaches and robbing and killing throughout the high Sierra mining camps, even luring a Sacramento river schooner to shore to murder nearly everybody aboard. Clay Allison rode a black horse through Texas and New Mexico bragging and challenging and shooting many including the Marshal of Cimarron. Bill Longley hated blacks... killing 8 in one night, shot a trail-herd boss near Abilene, and by the age of 27 was known to have killed 31 men. Jesse James was a Civil War Quantrell Rider with a fast gun hand who killed men and robbed banks and stage coaches for l7 years. He gunned down a conductor and passenger in an l88l Alabama robbery just about the same time Billy the Kid paid the price for his career. Curly Bill Brocius was know to be a fast and accurate executioner, and with John Ringo ambushed and slaughtered l9 mule drivers moving a pack train of silver bullion. Their boss was Old Man Clanton, who employed some 400 frontier outcasts to murder settlers, collect taxes, and steal cattle around Tombstone. Numerous historical accounts of outlaw confrontations with lawmen are bloody and horrible. Courageous lawmen, who also had to be skilled gunfighters risked their lives for justice, and earned their respect, and status, as the true American heroes of the old West.

LITTLE BIG HORN
On June 25, 1876 on a wind-swept ridge in Montana Territory overlooking the Little Bighorn River five companies of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry, under the command of General George Armstrong Custer, were annihilated. Also in that year Colorado became the 38th state, and Jack London was born in San Francisco. Alexander Graham Bell spoke over a telephone wire that year. James Butler Wild Bill Hickock was murdered in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, and the outlaw careers of the James brothers came to an end in a hail of bullets outside a bank in Northfield, Minnesota. That year people were reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and singing a new song called What A Friend We Have In Jesus, and buying the new player pianos and Remington type writers and Heinz tomato ketchup and bottles of Hires Root Beer. President Grant opened the Philadelphia celebration of a Centennial of American Independence. Some 2,000 warriors, many armed with .44 caliber l6 shot repeater Winchester rifles, fought 263 troops armed with .45 caliber single-shot Springfield rifles, and Colt six-shooter pistols. The rest is history.

LONE WOLF
Perhaps no man has ever carried more hatred for Texans than the principal chief of the Kiowas during the late 1800s. Lone Wolf believed Texas hide hunters were the root cause of the destruction of the Plains buffalo. Kiowa life and religion depended on plentiful herds of buffalo. Lone Wolf led a series of raids into Texas where dozens of men, women and children were slaughtered like buffalo without mercy. These raids produced loads of loot and hundreds of horses and mules. Lone Wolfs sons Mamadayte and Tauankia led both Kiowas and Comanches from a hideout camp on the Nueces river... while Lone Wolf and a few warriors professed peace and harmony at the Fort Sill reservation... but slipped away at night to join the raids. They operated between Eagle Pass and Laredo freely until a Fourth Cavalry patrol struck the band, killing Tauankia. A grief-stricken Lone Wolf cut off his hair, killed his best horses, burned possessions and led 25 hand picked warriors into Texas to recover the body of his son and seek revenge. Army patrols began a 3 year search of south Texas for Lone Wolf, who escaped capture by hiding in caves high in the Wichita Mountains. Finally in 1875 a patrol of 25 Texas Rangers trapped the renegade band, forcing their surrender. Lone Wolf was imprisoned in Florida, but released three years later... dying in 1879 of malarial fever... but living long enough to watch his Kiowa tribe abandon raids on Texas settlers and take up a peaceful reservation farming life.

MANGUS
A powerful giant of a warrior called Mangus Red Sleeves Colorado already had two Mimbreno Apache wives in 1825... but added another when he captured a beautiful Mexican girl ... thus bringing the challenge of a knife duel to the death from two Apache brothers upholding family and tribal honor. Mangus killed them both... winning chieftain-ship of the Mimbreno band. Deadly Apache raids on Mexican settlers throughout frontier Arizona and Texas finally caused the Mexican government in 1837 to offer a $100 bounty for Apache scalps Trapper James Johnson figured this was easy money and invited Mangus and his Apaches to a whiskey fiesta. During the party Johnson and other unscrupulous trappers uncovered a howitzer loaded with scrap metal and fired into the Indians killing over 400. Mangus escaped, organized his warriors and took revenge.. killing every trapper but Ben Wilson (who survived to become a California senator and mayor of Los Angeles.) A marriage of Mangus daughter to Chiricahuas chief Cochise brought an alliance and further attacks on the Mexicans, and an 1863 massacre of 14 miners prospecting for gold. But a foolish attack on a U.S. Army regiment cost him his force and demoralized the chief. Mangus Colorado deliberately walked alone into a trap set by Cavalry troops... choosing to end a proud warrior life at a desert campfire... where his enemies emptied their rifles into his body.

MASSACRE
Disarming, hoisting a white flag, and begging for mercy didnt help. Mormon settlers and their Paiute allies murdered every man and woman in the Fletcher caravan crossing Utah in 1857. 123 died. A few children survived. And just one man was convicted of this worst crime in Utah history. Massacre leader John D. Lee was taken to the scene of the tragedy, 20 years later, and hung. He left behind 17 wives and 72 children. Frontier historians consider the Mountain Meadows Massacre a legacy of the hatred and distrust created after the murder of Mormon founder Joseph Smith in Illinois, and the invasion of Utah in 1857 by Colonel Albert Johnston leading a force intent on destroying what many considered to be a dangerous cult. The Mormon doctrine of polygamy or Plural wives challenged Christian communities built on a marriage foundation of faithfulness. Mormon teaching against liquor and tobacco and gambling drew a hard line between Latter Day Saints and the general frontier population. Even more difficult to accept was the teaching that Mormons could reach the highest levels of heaven by conceiving as many children as possible, so that more souls could be brought out of the limbo of pre-existence. Brigham Young fathered many hundreds of children and made polygamy the issue which kept Utah territory from statehood for more than half a century. Finally, in 1896, after Mormon leaders prohibited polygamy in the state constitution, Utah gained legal acceptance...but still today struggles with a tradition of moral values that challenges popular notions of what religious freedom means.

NELLIE
Many thousands of people stampeded across the 1800s western frontier searching for gold. Overnight boom towns filled with European migrants, Civil War deserters, cowboys, freed slaves and outlaws... all would-be prospectors gambling their lives on a strike. Few had any idea of how to proceed. Many believed mining was picking up nuggets from a streambed or shaking gold from the roots of sagebrush. Irish Nellie Cashman learned the hard way by surviving the 1872 Pioche Nevada silver mining district chaos of claim jumping quarrels and cave-ins to become a knowledgable prospector, mining engineer and geologist. She bought and sold claims and worked her own gold-placer ground at Juneau Alaska. Nellie mushed a sled load of medicine and food to six miners trapped by the severe winter of 1874... gaining world-wide notoriety for their rescue. She opened an 1879 restaurant in the railroad town of Tucson, worked claims at Prescott, Globe, Jerome, and Yuma and established Tombstones first Catholic Church and hospital. She also led 21 Tombstone miners to near death across Mexicos Sonora desert in a failed venture. Nellie took on sole support of 5 nieces when her sister died. With word of the1897 Klondike strike she made the grueling trek over Chilkoot Pass to Dawson, working claims for 20 years in the harsh Yukon climate. And she died a true pioneer woman who proved she could brave any challenge of man or nature and triumph... earning wide respect and maintaining a womans dignity in a tough community of outlaws, drunks, prostitutes and con men.

NINE - ONE - ONE
Its nice to know you can pick up a phone and dial 911 for someone with a gun to come and help you out of trouble. But it hasnt always been that way. Back in the Old West days you better have had your own gun kept near at hand. Every man had to be his family and his neighbors law enforcement. Some women who were especially vulnerable at their jobs quickly learned to shoot fast and straight. Remote ranch life had unique dangers. Assaults and robbery plagued small town residents. Guns were always needed. Some occupations had built-in dangers. Bank employees could expect to be robbed. Mining payrolls, stagecoach strong boxes and later railroad mailcars were favorite targets which had to be defended. Prostitutes were regularly assaulted. Often the only way to stop a saloon gunfight was with a gun...not in a fair fight, but any way you could. Main Street drunks firing at random had to be dealt with before they shot an innocent. Six-gun bullies had their way unless faced with a faster gun. Frontier lawmen drew and fired with deadly accuracy at top speed. Knowing an easy victim was likely armed gave some criminals second thoughts. Small derringers gave women a measure of safety. Frontier cowboys were also of necessity skilled with a knife. Open range cattle wars, Indian attacks, rustlers and natural predators made the saddle gun necessary equipment. The development of law abiding western communities came about at the business end of a gun. Its still that way.

O K CORRAL
Old West history buffs have mulled over and over and over again the 30 second shootout of October 26, 1881 in an Arizona vacant lot behind Flys Photo Gallery... referred to as the Gunfight At The OK Corral. Here is what they think they know. After a few boom years of silver mining in Tombstone 4 churches were built, a two-story school, and a bottling plant for the warm whiskey supplied to 110 saloons. A blonde whore called French Marie came to town and did so well Madam Moustache, Big Nose Kate and Crazy Horse Lil set up shop. The town became home for drifters and outlaws. Free flowing whiskey made gunfights inevitable. When the OK Corral battle started Wyatt Earp carried a Buntline Special 10 inch barrel .45 Colt which he fired 5 times. One shot hit Frank McLaury in the stomach and one hit Tom McLaurys horse. 3 missed. Virgil Earp hit Billy Clanton in the stomach with a shot but missed 3 more. Morgan Earp fired 5 times hitting Clanton in the wrist and chest and Frank under the right ear. Doc Holiday used a 10 gauge borrowed from the Wells Fargo office to blast Tom McLaury in the side, then pulled either a Lightening .38 or a 44-40 to shoot again,and miss. Billy Clanton hit Morgan Earp once in the shoulder out of 6 shots fired from a Colt SA. Frank McLaury hit Virgil in the leg and Holiday in the hip but missed twice. Its possible Billy Clairborne and Wes Fuller may have fired Colt .45s from their hidden position behind the Earps. Tom McLaury is thought to have missed with 3 shots and run.ONE OF A KIND After a severe beating from his father 14 year old Tom Horn ran away from home to work at laying railroad track, got a job driving wagons for a freight company, became a stage coach driver, and at 16 joined the U.S. Army... putting in 10 bloody years as a scout. Tracking Geronimo to a Sierra Gordo mountain hideout near Sonora, Mexico and arranging his official surrender ended the last great Indian war in America Horn prospected for gold, became an Arizona ranch hand cowboy, won the 1888 Globe Rodeo World Championship in steer roping, and joined Pinkertons Detective Agency in Denver chasing train thieves and bank robbers across Wyoming and Colorado. He faced down any desperado or gunman to draw pistols... in a fearless and what some called a madmans bravado. He rode alone into the Hole-In-The-Wall outlaw camp to capture the notorious Peg-Leg Watson. Reportedly killing 17 men while a Pinkerton agent, Horn in 1892 hired on as a gunman for the Swan Land and cattle company and killed another dozen men, both rustlers and innocent farmers. He began to shoot from hiding, perfecting the art of long distance murder with a Sharps buffalo rifle. In 1898 he joined Teddy Roosevelts cavalry action in Cuba, but in 1901 on the Powder River Road near Cheyenne Horn killed an unarmed 14 year old boy. He was jailed for the crime. But after wounding two deputies in a failed jailhouse breakout Horn spent his last days quietly writing memoirs... admitting he was a business man and killing men had been his business... and weaving the rope later used to hang him.

OUT TO PASTURE
Many Old West gunfighters died as they had lived ... by the gun. Bill Tilghman, who may have been the Wests greatest police officer, after a colorful career ridding Oklahoma of outlaw gangs was shot dead in l926 at the age of 70 trying to tame the oil-boom town of Cromwell. Wild Bill Hickok took a bullet in the back of the head while gambling at a Deadwood South Dakota saloon. John Wesley Hardin died the same way at the Acme saloon in El Paso. Famed Jewish gun fighter Jim Levy survived l6 shootouts but ended ambushed while unarmed in a dark Tucson alley. Fearless Texas sheriff John Selman, half-blinded and crippled by Mexican black smallpox, was shot gunned on the back streets of El Paso. New Mexico train robbers killed renown lawman George Scar-borough. Wyatt Earp died at 81 ... peacefully asleep. Famous gunslinger- lawman Jim Roberts was last heard from in l928 at 72 years when he drew his six-shooter and killed a bank robber escaping in an automobile. Sheriff Pat Garrett put an end to Billy the Kid, only to be shot in the back...while relieving himself. Desperadoes Butch Cassidy and his partner the Sundance Kid were killed by a Bolivian federales posse. Train robber Bob Ford earned $600 shooting an unarmed Jesse James in the back. Deadly gunfighters tended to avoid each other. Jesse James stayed a night in Abilene and sent word to town marshal Wild Bill Hickok hed cause no trouble... but in case an arrest was tried a coffin Hickoks size had already been ordered. Hickok stayed out of sight.

OUTLAW ROMANCE
Gunfighters had an extra-ordinary attraction for women. Some of them had children and loving wives but most, like Wild Bill Hickok, lived with a succession of soiled doves and prairie madonnas. But for certain bored and restless women in strictly puritanical western cow towns the most ruthless gunslinger at times seemed as though a romantic hero come to rescue her. Women trapped in remote ranch house chores read dime novels of fantasy outlaw romances. Gunfighter fame brightened a sometimes dreary and lonely life with common-sense hard working men. Thus it was that Kid Currys jail stay featured an endless flow of packages, flowers, love letters and fine foods into his cell. A young school teacher fell in love with Tom Horn (jailed for murder of a l4 year old boy) and desperately tried to save him from hanging. Billy the Kid (held for killing 2 guards) was serenaded nightly by devoted women camped outside his cell window. An infatuated woman secretly assisted her hero Kid Currys escape from the Knoxville jail. Numerous wives of farmers volunteered to deliver home-cooked meals for handsome Harry Tracy (killer of 9 in the posse that captured him) and reported that Tracy was a courteous soft spoken gent