Our newest anthology “Give Me a Texas Ranger” came out last month, but along with promoting and celebrating a new release, I was knee deep in writing the next of the “Give Me …” series “Give Me a Texas Outlaw”.  Of course I’ve had Texas Rangers and outlaws on my mind for months, so what better to write about than a Ranger named Bass Outlaw?

One of my favorite ways to create a character is to tailor them after a real person (preferably none of your family). While visiting East Texas, I found a book about Bass Outlaw, an ex-Texas Ranger short on stature and long on attitude. Bass Outlaw a/k/a Ranger Little Wolf was a moody, strange, and little known Ranger. I mirrored one of my characters in “Texas Ranger”, Muley Mullinex, after him. It was a simple plan for him to be the town’s darlin’ during the day but when he went on a binge he would be my antagonist. However, from the get go Muley proved to be as obstinate on paper as Bass Outlaw was in real life.

Not to be confused with a much better known Ranger, Sam Bass, Bass Outlaw, whose name was thought to be Sebastian Lamar Outlaw was the black sheep of a genteel Georgia family. He had an inferiority complex we might call the “little man syndrome” today, since he was around 5’4” and weighed maybe 150 lbs. His eyes, cold and unfriendly, were pale blue. He sported a mustache best described as bushy, not the heavy, flowing types worn by the likes of Doc Holliday or Wyatt Earp which were the fashion of that era. If it wasn’t for his prowess with a rifle and a pistol he would not like have commanded any attention at all.

Beginning in E Company, Outlaw soon earned a solid reputation for himself as a quick draw with a deadly accurate shot. He could ride with the best, learned readily how to track even the faintest signs and was earmarked as a Ranger with a future. He climbed the ranks and historians have noted that he could have easily become a legendary Ranger such as William J. McDonald and James Gillette, but Bass Outlaw’s hair-trigger temper changed the course of his life … and history.

The personification of a prairie wolf, earned him his nickname, Lone Wolf. He was a loner, never volunteering anything about his past, never asking anyone about theirs. A moody, sullen, often cantankerous individual, he still possessed the qualities the Rangers required in those days on a wild and unsettled frontier. He was brave, wily and determined in battle. Outlaw was unpredictable in that he was either withdrawn or dangerously aggressive depending on his mood … and the amount of alcohol he’d consumed.

His head was on the chopping board more times than not, but generally after a good dressing down, his Captain would decide not to fire the arrogant lawman because of some heroic deed he’d done.

Bass Outlaw, Top Row, Second from Left

Like all lone wolves, his luck ran out. In 1893, after his Company had moved to a remote part of Texas southeast of El Paso, Bass was placed in charge of the unit while Captain Jones was away on business. 

 One day, after chugging rotgut once too often, Bass left the compound with no one in command and joined a poker game with a former Ranger which lead to his undoing. Bass lost the game and his temper, but had enough sense to know not to shoot up the place. Another former Ranger, Sheriff Jim Gillett, grabbed Bass and pulled him outside, managing to settle the dispute before there was any gunfire.

Needless to say when Captain Jones returned and got wind of the going ons he was furious and fired Bass Outlaw on the spot, ordering him out of camp pronto. 

Although it was a mess of his own makings, until Bass Outlaw drew his last breath, he held a grudge against the Rangers. His bone of contention was at first with Gillett, because he thought the sheriff had ratted him out. Later, Bass learned that the lawman had not reported his behavior.

Gillett was spared, as he was not the Ranger that Bass was destined to kill.

Bass Outlaw stayed out of trouble for a while and took on other jobs, including prospecting for gold and hidden treasures. Failing at all, he eventually caught the attention of the El Paso U.S. Marshall, another ex-Ranger, who hired him as a deputy.

Famed Ranger John Hughes predicted, rightfully so, that Little Wolf would someday kill another Ranger. This proved true when Outlaw entered into a squabble with a constable in El Paso by the name of John Selman, after going into a rant over a soiled dove. Outlaw shot him three times. Leaving the saloon, still sullen and dangerous, Outlaw was confronted by a young Ranger, Joe McKidrict, where Outlaw shot him dead. It is reported that was the only incident where a Texas Ranger has ever been killed by an active or former member of the fabled organization.

Ironically, John Selman recovered. Although the gunpowder damaged his vision and he walked with a cane, he killed the infamous John Wesley Hardin in a saloon in El Paso. Two years later, Selman was killed by Deputy U.S. Marshal George Scarborough in another El Paso saloon.

A witness to Bass Outlaw’s demise stated his last sound was a whimper, the kind a wolf tends to make when he knows his time is finished. For Bass Outlaw there were no flowers, no eulogy and no mourners … not even the soiled dove who proclaimed to love him. He was buried in the Evergreen Cemetery in El Paso, and his tombstone reads: “B.L. Outlaw, 1854-1894, 1^st Sgt. Co. D. F. B., State Forces, Deputy U.S. Marshall.”

Now you can see why writing Muley Mullinex fought me tooth and toenail all along the way.  In “Give Me a Texas Ranger,” I referred to Captain Arrington, Hayden McGraw’s superior. Other than Mullinex, Arrington, and McGraw, do any of you remember the name of a fourth Texas Ranger I used in my story? 

I’m givin’ away an autographed copy of “Give Me a Texas Ranger” to the first person posting the correct answer.

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Sam, my heroine in my new book, The Lawman, is a pistol toting, whip welding, card playing woman of the west.

She was not unique for the time.

There are  many “real life” heroines of the west from which I modeled Sam. Some came from a book, “The Cowgirls,” by Joyce Gibson Roach. I’ve blogged about women from the book before because it includes some very remarkable ones.

These strong, independent women are why I love writing westerns so much. They had opportunities unavailable anywhere else. Widowed or deserted by husbands, they became ranchers, wranglers, doctors, proprietors, miners and entrepreneurs.   They opened rooming houses, taught school, drove mules and even robbed banks.

Eugene Manlove Rhodes in “Beyond the Desert” put into words an unwritten code for cattlemen. “It is not the custom to war without fresh offense, openly given. You must not smile and shoot. You must not shoot an unarmed man, and you must not shoot an unarmed man. . . ”

According to Ms. Roach, there was a different code observed by pistol-toting cattlewomen. These rules advised:

1. Strange men will do well to shoot.

2. Shoot first, ask questions later..

3. If you shoot a man in the back, he rarely returns fire.

4. Scare a man to death even if you do not intend to kill him.

5. If a man needs killing, do it.

My Samantha had at least two and possibly four of those reasons to shoot Marshal Jared Evans, a man she thought a ruthless pursuer of the man who raised her.

She would fit perfectly among Ms. Roach’s real life heroines.

There was, for instance, Mrs. Stevens who lived in Lonesome Valley, Arizona.. When her husband went to town thirty miles away, she stayed home to guard the homestead and their children. She glanced out the window and  saw a rag on a bush outside. Since she didn’t remember hanging anything on that bush, she decided it was an Indian. She grabbed her gun, drew a bead on the rag, and “plugged an Apache right between the eyes.” After the Indian fell, she discovered the ranch was surrounded by Indians. Emboldened by her success, she held off the Indians until some cowboys chanced by and ran off the Apaches. When finished, they asked Mrs. Stevens if she wanted to send a message to her husband. On a piece of paper, she wrote,

“Dear Lewis,

The Apaches came. I’m mighty nigh out of buck-shot. Please send more.

Your loving wife.”

No please come home. Just send buck-shot.

Then there was Willie. The story was familiar because I once wrote a book, “The Scotsman Wore Spurs” with a heroine just like Willie.

Women occasionally accompanied their husbands on cattle drives, but the usual mode of travel was a buggy.    Willie made it on horseback.

Willie was hired by a trail boss  looking for drovers in Clayton, New Mexico. The boy looked about nineteen, according to the trail boss, and made a good hand with the horses and cattle. According to Ms. Roach’s book, the boss declared that Willie got up on the darkest stormiest nights and stayed with the cattle. “Equally as impressive was the fact that Willie did not drink, chew or cuss.”

After four months, when the bunch reached the Colorado-Wyoming line, Willie said he was homesick, asked to draw his pay, and rode off. Later in the day, a well dressed young lady rode in and addressed the trail boss and asked if he recognized her. The startled trail boss finally recognized her as Willie and asked why she had done such a thing.

She replied her father had been a drover and she wanted to know what it was like. Upon hearing a trail boss was looking for hands, she’d taken her brother’s clothes and asked for a job.

But others earned respect without subterfuge. There was Maude Reed, a Swedish girl who gathered a herd of cattle in Colorado. According to a brief news item in the local paper, she started with a few head of cattle, and by strict attention, economy and bearing all the hardships of a frontier life, she became one of the shrewdest and ablest cattle owners in Mesa County.

In Texas, there were fifty cowgirls operating a ranch in the hill country between San Marcos and San Antonio in the mid-1880’s. Some supposedly came from the finest families in the state and some from the worst. They did, of course, all the riding and roping and branding. Their leader was a whip-cracking brunette from the Oklahoma territory whose boyfriend was an outlaw by the name of Payne.

Another Texas woman, Sally Skull, was very skilled in deciding who needed killing. A man once made an unkind remark about her and when she found out about it, she called him out and shot bullets at his boots until he danced.

Having learned about horses from her late husband, Sally was a horse trader. Totally fearless, she traveled south of the border to buy horses and sold them in Texas. She spoke fluent Spanish, hired Mexicans to work for her, and thought well of the Mexican people in general. She used a salty vocabulary which inspired respect from males, but her real talent was in handling firearms. She carried a rifle and was deadly with it. Two pistols hung from a cartridge belt around her waist and she could use them with either hand with equal skill. She also carried a whip with which she popped flowers off their stems for entertainment, She also liked to gamble, and she played poker at Haynes’ saloon which was also frequented by outlaw John Wesley Hardin.

I’ve always believed a writer can’t possible make up anything as fascinating as real life, and this is particularly true of the bigger than life characters of the west.

We’ve had such fun looking at pocket pistols and revolvers, I thought I’d share another I ran across: The Colt 1848 “Baby Dragoon.” Many consider this to be the first true hideout gun.

The Colt Model 1848 Baby Dragoon Revolver was manufactured in Hartford from circa l847 through to 1850 with a total of about 15,000 produced. A .31 caliber weapon, this baby held five shots in its cylinder.

In order to cut back on the weight of the gun, the loading lever was removed from under the barrel and the front sight was scaled down to a tiny bead. This also helped make the gun more “snag-free”, meaning it was less likely to catch in the lining of the pocket or purse when drawn. Rather important if you wanted to get the drop on a bad guy.

The one on the left has no loading lever; the one on the right does. See it, under the barrel?

The five-shot Baby Dragoon was a scaled down version of the large dragoon revolvers, and were manufactured with barrel lengths of 3″, 4″, 5″, and 6″ and a distinctive square-back trigger-guard.  The 3” and 4” are reasonable for a pocket revolver, but a 5 or 6” barrel, plus the cylinder and polished wood grip–not exactly a miniature weapon.

The “Baby Dragoon” pistol was more accurate and more powerful than earlier pocket guns, and their lighter weight made them the weapon of choice for Pony Express riders, and the Wells Fargo Company.

Want more info? Check out Colt’s Pocket ‘49: Its Evolution, Including the Baby Dragoon & Wells Fargo by Robert M. Jordan & Darrow M. Watt. The book is out of print, but you might be able to find a copy through your local library.

I thought it’d be fun to look back at some of the occupations of the 1800’s and even earlier. Some sound very weird to us but I’m sure back then they weren’t any different from computer technician, an astronaut, a day trader, or a stock broker.

And while everything had a name, settlers on the frontier tended to call things normal terms everyone could understand. Like simply a stage coach driver instead of a whip. People started moving away from the stiff technical terms, opting for less flowery language. Most folks back in the early days didn’t have time to waste on words that bent the tongue. They were too busy trying to survive.

Some jobs carried simple names that you know right off what the person did. Like:

Tanner - one who tans and cures animal hides (still around today but not real common)
Spurrer – one who made spurs
Saddler - one who made, repaired, or sold saddles and other furnishings for horses
Sawyer – one who sawed trees or wood by hand at a lumber mill or lumbering operation
Teamster – one who drove a horse, mule or ox-drawn freight wagon; a modern day truck driver  

Matchgirl – a girl who sold matches

A lot of these others you probably already know but maybe you’ll find a few surprises.

Lormer – a maker of horsegear
Boardwright – carpenter; one who made tables and chairs and the like
Bone Picker – someone who traveled around collecting rags and bones
Pettifogger – shyster lawyer
Peripatetic Artist – one who went from town to town painting portraits or panoramas on walls of homes and taverns
Cordwainer – one who made shoes – different from a cobbler who just repairs them
Farrier - a blacksmith who specializes in shoeing horses – called same today as back then
Cooper – someone who made or repaired wooden barrels, tubs or the like
Chandler – a candlemaker – had a steady business before gas and electric lights
Lamplighter – someone appointed to light streetlamps at dusk and extinguish them at dawn
Runner - someone who solicited business for a hotel, boardinghouse, steamship and the like

Whitesmith – tinsmith or worker of iron who finished or polished an item
Tinker – someone who made tinware
Wheelwright – one who made or repaired wheels for wagons, carriages or coaches
Snow Warden – someone appointed in one of the northern states to keep snow flattened and evenly distributed over roads for sleds and sleighs
Drummer – traveling salesman

In the old West, some of these jobs tended to overlap at times. For instance, a blacksmith often made spurs and/or tinware and the like in addition to forging horseshoes, plows, farm implements, tools, etc. He might also shoe horses and be the owner of the livery or stables.

All of this makes me wonder which of today’s occupations will vanish in the next 50 or 100 years. And what new occupations will take their place? It’ll be interesting to see. They’ll most likely have increased space travel; maybe take passengers back and forth to the moon, mars, or another of the planets. Wonder what those passengers will be called? Simply space travelers or something trendier?

What is the strangest profession (modern or otherwise) that you’ve heard?

www.LindaBroday.com

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The most famous gunfight in the history of the West took place on October 26, 1881, in a vacant lot behind the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.  Anyone who’s seen the movies/TV series, or read any of the uncounted books knows that the winners were legendary gunman Wyatt Earp, his brothers Morgan and Virgil, and their friend, a shady, alcoholic dentist known as Doc Holliday.  But who were the losers?  Did they deserve to die as they did?  Let’s take a closer look.

Ike and Billy Clanton were two of three brothers from a small ranching family.  Ike, the elder, wasn’t the brightest light in the candelabra.  Known as a loudmouth who liked to drink and gamble, he was also a hard worker.  Younger brother Billy was still in his teens.

Tom and Frank McLaury, also small ranchers, were known to be honest and respectable.  They’d made good money selling cattle to the army, but were planning to move away because of the growing Apache problems.  Their only fault, it appears, was being good friends with the Clantons.

A complicated trail of events led up to the gunfight. It started when some stolen government mules were found on the McLaury ranch. Tom and Frank were away at the time and it was later proven that a friend had left them there.  Tom and Frank were never charged but the Earps publicly branded them as thieves.  Other incidents and accusations followed, fueling the bad blood. 

On the night of October 25, Tom McLaury and Ike Clanton rode into Tombstone.  Ike planned to buy supplies for his ranch and find a card game.  Tom was there to settle his accounts prior to moving away.  In the saloon, Ike ran into Doc Holliday, drunk and spoiling for a fight.  Doc began baiting Ike and challenged him to a gunfight.  He was soon joined by Wyatt Earp (photo) and his two brothers.  The slow-witted Ike fought back with the only weapon he had, his mouth.  He shouted that he and his friends would come looking for the Earps and Holliday, and they would have to fight.

Fade to the next day.  After more blustering and baiting, Frank McLaury and young Billy Clanton rode into town, unaware of what had happened.  When Frank was told, he tried to calm things down and get Ike and his brother out of town, but it was too late.  Like a giant clock, fate moved the players toward the final confrontation.  Here’s how the two sides stacked up.

Carrying guns was patently illegal in town.  But Morgan and Virgil Earp were both peace officers.  They’d deputized Wyatt and Doc Holliday, so all were legally armed.  All of them had pistols, and Doc also carried a deadly sawed-off shotgun.

Billy Clanton had a pistol and had been told he could keep it because he and Ike were leaving town.  Frank McLaury also had a pistol, which he was about to turn over to Sheriff John Behan.  Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury were unarmed.

The Earps and Doc walked onto the scene with their guns drawn.  Ike put up his hands and Tom opened his vest, both declaring they weren’t armed.  But the Earps and Doc opened fire.  Frank and Billy fired back in self defense.

When the shooting ended thirty seconds later, Frank McLaury was dead.  Tom and Billy were mortally wounded.  Virgil Earp had been shot in the leg; Morgan had a bad shoulder wound, and Doc was winged.  Ironically, the only member of the “Clanton Gang” to escape unscathed was Ike, who knocked Wyatt Earp off balance and fled.

There’s a lot more to this story.  I’ve cut some wide corners for the sake of brevity.  If you have any corrections or anything to add, I’d welcome your comments.  Did Wyatt Earp deserve all his “fame and glory?”  What do you think?

 The Philadelphia Deringer is a small percussion handgun designed by Henry Deringer and produced from 1852 through 1868. The term derringer is actually a misspelling of the maker’s last name. Kind of like kleenex (with a small k), the term derringer is now used to describe any pocket-sized pistol.

The original Deringer pistol was a single-shot muzzle-loading pistol. That means you had one ball of lead backed by the power of a measure of black powder. No multi-shot shootouts with this little beauty. Subsequent models were made to use the new cartridge type ammunition–aka a bullet–but a derringer never held more than two shots.

Derringer often refers to the smallest usable handgun of a given caliber. They were frequently used by women, because the size made the pistol easy to conceal in a reticule on slipped into a stocking garter. Derringers are not repeating firearms. The original cartridge derringers held only a single round, usually a .40 caliber cartridge. [.40 refers to the diameter of the bullet, in this case .40” or 10.16mm.] The barrel pivoted sideways on the frame for reloading.

The famous Remington derringer, sold from 1866 to 1935, was designed with a second barrel on top of the first. This meant two shots instead of one, without much more weight to carry around. On this two-shot pistol, the barrels pivoted upward for reloading.

If you plan to use this pretty little thing, keep in mind that the bullet moved very slowly–about half the speed of a modern bullet. It could actually be seen in flight. Still, at close range, such as at card table or in a stage coach, it would be deadly.

Another thing to consider, should you want a character to carry a derringer: it took a lot to load and prepare the pistol. I’ll let you read for yourself.

“For loading a Philadelphia Deringer, one would typically fire a couple of percussion caps on the handgun, to dry out any residual moisture contained in the tube or at the base of the barrel, to prevent a subsequent misfire. One would then remove the remains of the last fired percussion cap and place the handgun on its half-cock notch, pour 15 to 25 grains of blackpowder down the barrel, followed by ramming a patched lead ball down onto the powder, being very careful to leave no air gap between the patched ball and the powder, to prevent the handgun from exploding when used. (The purpose of the patch on the ball was to keep the ball firmly lodged against the powder, to avoid creating what was called a “short start” when the ball was dislodged from being firmly against the powder.) A new percussion cap would then be placed on the tube (what today would be called a nipple), and the gun was then loaded and ready to fire. (The half-cock notch prevented the hammer from falling if the trigger were bumped accidentally while carrying the handgun in one’s coat pocket.) Then, to fire the handgun, a user would fully cock the hammer, aim, and squeeze the trigger. Upon a misfire, the user could fully re-cock the hammer, and attempt to fire the handgun once more, or, equally common, switch to a second Deringer. Accuracy was highly variable; although front sights were common, rear sights were less common, and some Philadelphia Deringers had no sights at all, being intended for point and shoot use instead of aim and shoot, across Poker-table distances. Professional gamblers, and others who carried regularly, often would fire and reload daily, to decrease the chance of a misfire upon needing to use a Philadelphia Deringer.” http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Derringer&action=edit&section=3

And how did this little pistol change history? It was the weapon used by John Wilkes Booth to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln in the Ford Theater on April 14, 1865.

There’s gold in them thar hills…somewhere!  Throughout the history of the West, stories are told of lost, forgotten and misplaced mines.  Many have been sitting undisturbed for years, shrouding their boundless wealth, just waiting to be re-discovered.  Gold and silver-bearing regions are awash with stories of miners losing their way; Indians killing off the miners and then hiding the markings; flash floods destroying the lay of the land; earthquakes changing the rock formations that helped a miner find his way.  
Some of these accounts, of course, are surely yarns, just like the “fish-stories” told by sailors.  But many are the true tale of mines “gone missing” to the poor fools that lost them.  In Arizona alone, there are thought to be at least twenty such sites.  Can you imagine how many the vast American West could be hiding?  

The naysayers can scoff, but in 1959 the Burro Mountains gave up their treasure of the long-lost Spanish mines, twenty-five miles northwest of Lordsburg, New Mexico. And in 1965, Arizona’s “Lost Coconimo” mine was found in the state’s Sycamore Canyon.  

If you’re feeling lucky and have been bitten by wanderlust, you might want to check out a few of the accountings I’ve listed of some of the most famous or colorful lost mines:

—Lost Blue Bucket at the Malheur River in eastern Oregon.  The date was 1846 when a wagon train pulled into camp on the middle fork of the Malheur.  Some pioneers, finding some stones in a creek bed, filled a hand-made blue papier-mâché bucket. Later they learned their finding was gold. Status: still lost.

—Lost Rhoades in the Uintah Mountains, northeastern Utah.  This mine was said to be owned and strictly guarded by the Mormons.  Only Brigham Young and a handful of elders and two other members of the Rhoades family knew of its location.  In 1877 the Indians placed a ban on visits to the ledge where the mine was located, because it was on the Uintah Reservation.  In 1905, Caleb Rhoads, the last living person to know its whereabouts, took the secret to his grave and the “bank” of the Mormon Church was lost, so to speak.  He left a crude map with only Rock Creek and Moon Lake as landmarks, but others have been unable to find its location. Status: still lost.

—Lost Padre, somewhere in the 113,809 square miles of Arizona.   This mine, originally owned by Indians, was taken over by Spanish missionaries.  After the California gold strike of 1849, the Southwest had a surge of hopeful miners looking for their Eureka.  To keep their mine secret, the padres sealed it off. It’s been re-discovered several times, but with all the lucky finders ending in a violent death. Status: still lost.

—Lost Gunsight in California’s Death Valley.  No date is given for the first discovery of a reef that was said to be heavily laden with silver.   It was discovered by a single man who was part of a Mormon migrant party.  He fashioned a gun sight for his rifle with the silver from the reef.  Stories of this silver reef in Death Valley have circulated for years, and it’s been found and lost several times.  It’s believed that the cause of its elusiveness is the shifting sands.  Status: still lost.

—Lost Adams, south of the Little Colorado River in northeast-central Arizona.  In 1864, this gold-bearing dry wash was discovered by a man known only as Adams, along with a party of prospectors.  They were led by an Apache half-breed.  Soon after the colorful discovery, a war party descended and killed many of the men and ran the others off.  For ten frustrating years, Adams tried to get back to the findings, but was always held off by the Indians.  Finally, after the Apache Indians had been moved, Adams went back in search but was never able to find the correct spot.            This discovery is also known as the “Lost Adams Diggins” and has been made into a movie called Mackenna’s Gold. Status: still lost.
As you now see, there is still gold in them thar hills! You just have to be lucky enough to find and keep it.  Have you ever been gold panning?

Have you visited a haunted mine or discovered something special?  We’d love to hear about it…
 
Today, in celebration of the release of MONTANA DAWN, I’m offering a signed copy to a commenter.  Also, if you go to my website (www.carolinefyffe.com) and sign up for my News Letter on the contact page, you will be entered in the drawing for a basket filled with candies, chocolates, muffin mix,  a handsome coffee mug (filled with even more chocolate!) and a jar of scrumptious jam, all made from the Big Sky State’s coveted huckleberry.  

Also included is an autographed copy of both MONTANA DAWN and WHERE THE WIND BLOWS.  It’s as easy as pie. The winner will be drawn on December 10th, 2010–just in time for Christmas.
 It’s wonderful to be here again at Petticoats & Pistols.  

Thank you to all the Fillies for having me.  It seems like only yesterday when we were talking about Pioneer Teachers and how they helped shape the West.  Don’t know about the rest of you, but time seems to have jumped its bank…and there’s no holding it back.

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I just finished writing my story for  “Give Me a Texas Outlaw”, so of course what else do I have on my mind but outlaws?  I recently blogged about Mobeetie, Texas, and  Bat Masterson; so today, let’s talk about the notorious outlaw Billy the Kid and his time in the second town established in the Texas Panhandle, Tascosa.

I set my story in our newest anthology, “Give Me a Texas Ranger”, in Buffalo Springs. The town was geographically and historical situated in Tascosa, but I took my share of creative freedom. Like Tascosa, Buffalo Springs is divided into two parts — upper and lower.  As the name might indicate, the uppity folks lived on the upper side of the creek while the low life lived in the part of town frequently referred to as Buffalo Wallow.  

Tascosa as a whole was known as the toughest, wildest and most lawless town in this part of the wild frontier.  But no matter what the citizens of Upper Tascosa said about it, the town deserved its reputation in many ways. Before there was any law and order, or formal government, the newest settlement in the area attracted all types of seedy characters. Among them was celebrity desperado William H. Bonney a/k/a Henry McCarty and best known as “Billy the Kid.” Many stories exist about his two aliases, but the simple truth is that his mother was married to a man named McCarty for a brief time, and Billy took that name.

Coming into the Panhandle from his home turf of Lincoln County, New Mexico, in the fall of 1878, the Kid and his four friends trailed 125 stolen horses which they planned to sell to Panhandle ranchers. The group spent money freely and were even well-behaved during their stay in Tascosa.  At first, the citizens were awed by the Kid’s reputation. Once they had observed his exceptional behavior, a number of residents welcomed the beardless, easygoing, blond youth with open arms. It seemed they felt he was too meek and mild to be an outlaw.

Eventually the Kid befriended, Dr. Henry F. Hoyt, an ambitious young doctor who had come to the Panhandle to set up his practice.  As the story goes, John Chisum, infamous cattle baron of New Mexico, had advised him that they needed a doctor at Tascosa.  During a smallpox epidemic in the town, Hoyt had saved the life of the beautiful daughter of one of the area founders, by improvising a poultice of gunpowder and water–and had become an immediate hero. However, once the epidemic was under control, Dr.Hoyt found that the small settlement couldn’t support a doctor, so he began work as a mail carrier between Tascosa and Fort Bascom, which led to his meeting Billy the Kid in a Tascosa saloon.  

  Equity Saloon, Tascosa, Texas

The two became good friends, and at one time Hoyt gave the Kid a lady’s watch he had won in a poker game for the outlaw to give it as a gift to his sweetheart.  Hum, I wonder where I got the idea of a pocket watch for my new story in “Give Me a Texas Outlaw”?

Soon afterward, Dr. Hoyt announced his plans to move and set up practice in Las Vegas, NM. Coincidentally, the day before the fine doctor was to leave, Billy the Kid rode into Tascosa from his camp where the stolen horses were being held by his gang. The Kid presented his friend with a beautiful chestnut sorrel race horse, Dandy Dick.  The doc hesitated to accept the gift possibly because rumor had it that the stolen horses in the Kid’s possession had been taken from the same part of New Mexico he was relocating to.

The Kid good-naturedly walked into the store of Howard and McMasters, tore off a scrap of paper, wrote a bill of sale, witnessed and signed by the owners of the store, and gave it to Hoyt as proof the horse (branded B.B. on the left hip) wasn’t stolen.   Many years later, it was determined that the sorrel belong to Lincoln County’s late Sheriff, James Brady.  Bonney had shot his way out of Brady’s jail against fearful odds, then shot and killed the sheriff, making off with his horse.

 By the end of 1878, Billy the Kid and his gang left Tascosa, having sold most of the stolen horses. There had been a shake-up in his group, since Henry Brown, Fred Waite, and John Middleton decided to forsake the life of outlaws. They elected to stay in Tascosa and go legit.  Bonney didn’t take long to recruit replacements for them. After his departure, it was discovered that he also rustled enough head of cattle to cause considerable concern among the Panhandle ranchers.

As their first act after organizing in 1880, the Panhandle Cattlemen’s Association sent an expedition to join lawman Pat Garrett in scouting for Billy the Kid and the cattleman’s livestock. With the help of Panhandle men, Garrett found the Kid in Fort Sumner, and shot him to death on the night of July 14, 1881. 

Of interest, in 1962, Lincoln County, New Mexico, filed suit to have the Kid’s body exhumed and reburied in his home county, but lost the case and his gravesite remains in Ft. Sumner, New Mexico, near where he was killed.

A number of legends persist concerning the Kid’s escapades in Tascosa. Most of them involved well-known folks who were not even in the Panhandle during Bonney’s tenure. Among the alleged participants are Temple Houston (who Linda Broday told you all about a week or so back), Bat Masterson, Pat Garrett and Frenchy McCormick, all of who came to Tascosa after Billy the Kid left. 

Over the years, I’ve read some conflicting historical accounts on famous outlaws, among them, William Bonney.  I’ve seen wanted posters with his name spelled Bonny and Bonney and rewards from $500 to $5,000.  He’s been reported as being 5’ 3” and 120 lbs to 5’ 10” and 140 lbs., but the truth, there was never any “Wanted” posters on Billy the Kid.  The closest thing to a poster was a reward notice posted in the Las Vegas Gazette in the late 1800’s and even at that his last name was misspelled.

Another historical inaccuracy that has been challenged is whether he was a handsome honyock with two prominent and slightly protruding front teeth or a cold-stone murderer with icy blue eyes.  I must agree with the historian who wrote that if the Kid had teeth protruding like squirrel’s teeth he’d be pretty plug-ugly, so why would he have so many well documented female admirers? 

One thing for certain, the short life and significance of Billy the Kid is disproportionate to the legendary standing his name has achieved.

My question today, do you think the ladies of the new frontier liked his bad boy image or did they prefer the fine lookin’ lad they swooned over?

Link to order at Amazon.com  Give Me A Texas Ranger

Not in my wildest imagination would I ever have thought I’d be adding an update on the 130 year old shoot out between Billy the Kid and Sheriff Pat Garrett!  Just as I posted my blog, Fox News broke the story that there is a modern day showdown brewing between the decedents of Sheriff Garrett and the governor of New Mexico. Now the story has taken on a life of its own on the Internet. From what I can sort out, Billy the Kid was offered a pardon for his Lincoln County jail escapade by then territorial governor, Lew Wallace, if he’d testify in a bloody range war.  Wallace reneged and eventually Billy the Kid was shot and killed by Sheriff Garrett.  Now Governor Richardson has to decide whether to keep Wallace’s promise to pardon Billy the Kid or not.  Garrett’s family is up in arms, excuse the pun, and the issue is hangin’ over everyone’s head.

I had such fun in my last post with the Chicago Palm Pistol, I decided to introduce another small weapon today – the PEPPERBOX.

The four-shot, breech loading, version of this pistol is considered “a true gun of the Old West, used by gamblers, ladies of the evening, and as a hide-out gun for both outlaws and lawmen alike.”   

Named Pepperbox, or Pepperpot, because it resembles a household pepper grinder, this multi-shot revolver boasted three or more barrels grouped around a central axis. Though one enterprising gunmaker created a shotgun version, the pepperbox was most often a handheld firearm.     

The concept made an appearance as early as the fifteenth century, when several single-shot barrels were attached to a stock, then fired individually by lighting each one with a match. Talk about dangerous!   

Pepperboxes were manufactured in all ammunition systems: matchlock, wheellock, flintlock, percussion, pinfire, rimfire and centerfire. [I won’t go into how all those work--at least not in this post.] They were made with three, four, six, or seven barrels. The earliest ones were rotated by hand; the later versions worked much like a standard revolver, where each chamber rotated into position as the previous one was discharged.     

The invention of the percussion cap by Joshua Shaw, and the onset of the industrial revolution, allowed pepperbox revolvers to be mass-produced, making them more affordable than the early handmade guns previously only seen in the hands of the rich.   

Gilles Mariette, an arms manufacturer in Cheratte, Belgium, patented the ‘cluster revolver (pepperbox) with double action’ in 1837.  Pepperboxes were popular in North America from 1830 through the Civil War. The pepperbox experienced a kind of “revival” in the late 1800s as an easy-to-conceal pocket weapon. The French came up with the “Apache revolver,” which was popular among Paris street gangs and came fitted with a folding blade and knuckle-duster. [Those are knuckle-dusters on the left.]   

The Christian Sharps 4-barrel derringer was manufactured and used into the last half of the 19^th century. This pistol had a sheath trigger that appeared when the hammer was cocked. Cartridges were loaded into this 4-shot gun by sliding the barrels forward. Thousands of these little guns were made between 1859 and 1874. After the war it became popular in the Old West among lawmen, outlaws and gamblers as its small size allowed it to be concealed in a waistcoat pocket. One thing to remember when giving a Pepperbox to your character: they aren’t accurate. In fact, Mark Twain was quoted as saying “the safest place to be when facing a Pepperbox wielding antagonist was standing directly in front of him.”

It was said, “There is no Sunday west of St. Louis–no God west of Ft. Smith.”
Indian Territory.  A perfect haven for outlaws of every kind. They could run west of Ft. Smith where lawlessness reigned, where there were no consequences for any crime–until Judge Isaac Parker and his U.S. Deputy Marshals took charge.
By 1870, the Indian Territory had become a hellhole not fit for honest citizens. The last civilized gateway into the territory was in Arkansas–Ft. Smith.
The Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole) who had been relocated to Indian Territory, had their own judicial system for the Indians of the Nations. But their courts had no jurisdiction over intruders who found their way into the Territory.

In 1875, President Grant appointed Judge Isaac Parker to what later became the Western Judicial District of Arkansas, including not only several counties in Arkansas and a strip along the Kansas border, but all of Indian Territory as well. The total area of the court’s jurisdiction was nearly 74,000 square miles, with Indian Territory accounting for over 70,000 square miles of that area.  Marshal Bill Tilghman (above left) was one of the most famous marshals of this era.

The lawmen, or the “Men Who Rode for Parker,” numbered less than 200 at the outset. Only one carried the title, “U.S. Marshal.” The rest were deputies. The marshal’s salary was $90 per month. the deputies received no salary at all. They could arrest for any crime committed in the 74,000 mile area–with or without a warrant. They earned usually no more than $500 per year. Up until 1898, a fee system was in place that allowed a deputy to collect $2 for each arrest he made. In addition, he could receive 6 cents per mile for going to the location of the arrest, and 10 cents per mile for himself and his prisoner to return to court.
No arrest meant no payment, and if he should happen to kill a suspect in attempting the arrest, the deputy was expected to pay for the suspect’s burial.  Judge Parker (above) ruled with an iron fist, and was known as “The Hanging Judge.”

After all the deputy’s expenses were tallied, the U.S. Marshal deducted 25 percent from the total before he paid the deputy the remainder.
During the 21 years of Judge Parker’s tenure, over 65 deputy marshals were killed in the line of duty. Some references list the number as high as 100.

Being a U.S. Deputy Marshal was even tougher in real life than Hollywood could ever portray. Christian Madsen (left), Bill Tilghman, and Heck Thomas were known as “The Three Guardsmen” throughout the Territory for their unending fight to bring lawfulness to the rough borderlands and the unsettled lands beyond.

 The lonely existence these men led, riding out in search of desperate criminals over vast areas of land for a $2 arrest fee, is unimaginable today. The turnover rate was high due to the danger, the low pay, and the enormous amount of territory they had to cover. Weeks of separation from their families was also a deterrent.

But the facts show what those deputy marshals did to bring Indian Territory back under the law again. Judge Parker tried over 17,000 cases during his time at the Western Judicial District of Arkansas–and there were never more than 200 men on the payroll to accomplish these arrests. Order could not have been restored without these men, willing to risk their lives to bring justice back to the wild borderlands of Arkansas, Kansas and Indian Territory.