“A man’s got to have a code, a creed to live by, no matter his job.” ~John Wayne

The Code of the West is alive and well today!

When I began writing western historical romances, I had to do some serious research on the old west. It became quickly apparent that every account of the men and women who came out to the new frontier during the westward expansion of the United States were bound by a special caveat that ruled their conduct … not by written laws. Being a native Texan, I grew up with these unspoken policies being pounded in my head, but never thought about them being anything but doing what is right whether you can legally get by with it or not.  I never thought about “The Lone Ranger” being a perfect example of a hero living by homespun laws and a gentleman’s agreement.

Almost every article about the Code of the West attributes the famous western writer, Zane Grey, as the first chronicler of the unwritten laws in his 1934 novel aptly titled The Code of the West. The resilient, heroic trailblazers who forged west and learned to live in the rough and tough country were bound by these understood rules that centered on integrity, fair play, loyalty, hospitality, and respect for the land. For these pioneers, their survival depended largely upon their ability to coexist with their neighbors, their rivals, and their peers.

A cowman might break every written law on the books if deemed necessary, but took pride in upholding his own code of ethics. Failure to abide by the unwritten law of the land didn’t necessarily bring formal punishment, but the man who broke it basically became a social outcast. Losing a man’s honor was considered a fate worse than being hanged.

I read a very technical, yet interesting, article where historians and social theorists explained the evolution of the Code of the West. How it was a result of centuries-old English common law. The paper explained the code’s elements which includes “no duty to retreat”, “the imperative of personal self-redress”, “homestead ethics”, and “ethic of individual enterprise.”

Although informative and logical, it sounded a little stiff, so here’s my explanation of the code as it applies today as it did in the Old West.

1. Mind your own business;
2. Keep your hands to yourself; if it isn’t yours, don’t touch it;
3. Be loyal, modest, courageous, friendly, and respectful; and
4. Live by the Golden Rule.

There are many practical, and some quite humorous, interpretations, I’ve come across.

Remove your guns before sitting at the dining table.

Always drink your whiskey with your gun hand, to show your friendly intentions.

Never try on another man’s hat.

Tend to your horse’s needs before your own, regardless of how weary and hungry you might be from a long day in the saddle.

Be loyal to your “brand,” your friends, and those you ride with.

Cuss all you want, but only around men, horses, and cows.

Defend yourself whenever necessary and look out for your own; but never shoot an unarmed or unwarned enemy. Known as “the rattlesnake code”, always warn before you strike.

And, never shoot a woman, no matter what.

Don’t inquire into a person’s past.

Take the measure of a man for what he is today.

Be pleasant even when out of sorts. Complaining is for quitters, and a cowboy hates quitters.

When approaching someone from behind, give a loud greeting (call to camp) before you get within shooting range.

After you pass someone on the trail, don’t look back…it implies you don’t trust him.

Be modest. A braggart who is “all gurgle and no guts” is intolerable.

Honest is absolute–your word is your bond, a handshake is more binding than a contract.

There are hundreds of “do’s and don’t” that the pioneers and cowboys honored because of the informal code they lived by. What are some of your favorites?

I’m giving away an autographed copy of your choice (either GIVE ME A TEXAN or GIVE ME A COWBOY) to one lucky commenter today. If you already have both, they make nice Christmas gifts for someone. Hint, hint!

Watch for our next anthology, GIVE ME A TEXAS RANGER, that releases July 2010! It features stories once again by Jodi Thomas, Linda Broday, DeWanna Pace, and myself.

With Thanksgiving behind me, I’m turning my thoughts toward Christmas. Nothing to me says the holidays quite like the Salvation Army red kettles outside the stores. I don’t know about you but I can’t pass one without dropping something in. But in these rough economic times I’m sure many organizations’ coffers will see a decline. By the way, I saw in the newspaper that the Salvation Army is installing debit and credit card machines at some of their kettles for those people who want to give but carry little cash with them. That may sound strange but I suppose they’re fighting tooth and nail to be able to keep their doors open to the homeless and less fortunate. Desperate times call for desperate measures I guess.

We’re all familiar with the generous hearts of Oprah, Bill and Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett. But there are thousands of ordinary people who do their part to touch lives.

I saw on T.V. the other day where a man in California is going around passing out money to homeless people. That’s a true American.

In the Old West there were notable people like Molly Brown who took up various causes and not only donated her own money but got others to do so as well to help the poor.

The giving wasn’t confined to society’s wealthy though. One story in particular that I read lately told of Molly Burdan (or Molly b’Dam as she came to be known,) a prostitute and madam who lived in Murray, Idaho in the 1870’s. Molly worked tirelessly for those who were destitute. The beautiful woman had a heart of gold and a penchant for giving. And when the town had an outbreak of smallpox, she rolled up her sleeves and treated the sick and dying. She even recruited her girls as nurses. When Molly died, thousands of people came from the surrounding area to bid her farewell. The entire town of Murray shut down for her funeral. They still celebrate Molly’s life every August and she remains their most illustrious personality.

Then there was a scarlet lady by the name of Silver Heels in Buckskin Joe, Colorado who carried food and candy to the orphanages. She also nursed the sick and was willing to grubstake miners. And when the Chicago fire happened in 1871, she held a benefit and raised almost two thousand dollars to provide food, money, and clothing for the victims.

Who says charity is limited to those whose lives are aboveboard?

I have favorite charities I give to every year without fail–Hospice, the Salvation Army, and the Children’s Home of Lubbock.

Will you give this year? Do you have your favorites or just give wherever your heart leads?

And don’t forget our Cowboy Under the Christmas Tree that ends December 6th.

The U.S. Camel Corps was an experiment by the United States Army using camels in the Southwest.

While the camels did the work well they were nasty and frightened horses, at least that’s the general explanation for why the program failed.

Secretary of War Jefferson Davis (this was pre-Civil War, how INTERESTING that Jefferson Davis was then Secretary of War, huh? He was encouraged to import camels to supply Western wagon routes. It was a dry, hot , hostile region, not unlike the camel’s natural habitat.

Davis, sold the idea to Congress. “For military purposes, and for reconnaissance, it is believed the dromedary would supply a want now seriously felt in our service.”

Congress agreed and appropriated $30,000.

33 camels were imported from the Middle East. They were loaded onto a Navy ship—and yeah, that was as hard as it sounds—and transported to Texas. There Lieutenant Edward Fitzgerald Beale took over.

Along with the camels came Hadji Ali to train soldiers in camel wrangling. The Americans slurred Hadji Ali’s name into Hi Jolly and the man became very well known in the west.

Beale set out in June, 1857, with Hi Jolly along, for California. Camels carried 600 to 800 pounds each and traveled 25 to 30 miles a day. After reaching California the expedition returned to Texas, a success — at least to Beale.

Beale wrote. “They pack water for days under a hot sun and never get a drop; they pack heavy burdens of corn and oats for months and never get a grain; and on the bitter greasewood and other worthless shrubs, not only subsist, but keep fat.”

He concluded, “I look forward to the day when every mail route across the continent will be conducted and worked altogether with this economical and noble brute.”

But perhaps he was too optimistic. What he didn’t say was that the camels didn’t take to the West’s rocky soil. It actually became a huge problem because, unlike the smooth sand of the Arabian dessert, American sand was more rocky. It got stuck between the camel’s toes. They experimented with many ways to solve this problem. Hi Jolly for a time wrapped their hooves with burlap and eventually an iron horseshoes, made camel shaped, came along but the cloven hoof was a problem.

And prospectors’ burros and mules — and even Army mules — were afraid of the odd-looking creatures and would sometimes panic at their sight.

Still, in 1858, then-Secretary of War John Floyd told Congress, “The entire adaptation of camels to military operations on the Plains may now be taken as demonstrated.”

He urged Congress to authorize the purchase of 1,000 more camels.

Congress didn’t act, however, as it was preoccupied with trouble brewing between the North and South. The government ended the experiement and Hi Jolly was grieved but stayed in America and lived until 1902. His burial place is beneath a pyramid shaped marker…with a camel on top.

In the meantime these camels were also being used privately on ranches. It was while moving some of these camels that the nation’s first and only “camel cavalry charge” took place. In 1849 they were trying to cross the Colorado River into California with camels when a large war party of Mojaves showed up and looked ready to attack. The civilian laborers mounted the camels and charged, routing the Mojaves.

In 1860, experiments were made with racing camels. It was hoped the camels could be used to carry “camel express” mail. The racing experiments proved unsuccessful. Camels excelled at heavy loads carried slowly.

After 1860, Siberian camels were imported to San Franscisco, and ended up in Canadian mining operations. Eventually these were turned loose and became wild herds.

The camel corp was abandoned and the camels either sold or, if they didn’t sell, set free in the desert. Generations of them survived. In the mid-1870s one wandered into Fort Selden, New Mexico Territory. The young son of the post commander saw it and ran, terrified, to hide behind his mother. The post commandant was COL Arthur MacArthur. The terrified child grew up to be General of the Army Douglas MacArthur.

The last camel sighting was in 1941.

This look at American Military History is brought to you in honor of Veteran’s Day. Go hug a vet. If you don’t know him, thought, make sure he’s not armed first. And by the way, that goes for hugging ANY stranger.

Mary Connealy

Have you ever imagined what it must have been like to pack up your most prized possessions and head off to start a new life in a place you’ve only heard or read about? I’m not sure I would have had the nerve to climb into a wagon, turn west and snap the reins, confident that over some distant hill, their version of a new life waited.

I just returned from a lovely vacation in Hawaii, where I spent some time learning about the history of the islands’ inhabitants and wondering about those who discovered and settled these lush piles of volcanic rock.

Just imagine it – they loaded canoes, tackled thousands of miles on the open ocean, finally found a safe harbor to land, climbed to the highest point and looked out over rolling hills of rich black—lava?

Since the earliest settlers came from the Polynesian Islands to the south, they left their beautiful, lush homeland, rich with all kinds of vegetation, and landed on a series of rocks that had less than 1000 native plant species. Still, they adapted, survived and flourished.

That ability to adapt is what, in my mind, makes those who settled the Hawaiian Islands much like those who settled the old West. For instance, on Hawaii, the big island, the teenagers have adapted. Because the lava is too rough and porous for spray paint, they use small water-smoothed white rocks to get their message across.

Even the animals have adapted (behind that sign, for as far as you can see, is lava and salt grass).

Whether in the old West, or the islands, the settlers took what they found in their new location and used it to make a home–a life. This resilience of the human spirit never ceases to amaze and humble me. I guess that’s why I write westerns.

Aloha, y’all.

Be sure to tweet us ~ http://twitter.com/Felicia_Filly

Hello, friends! It’s been a while since I’ve visited and I’m glad to be back to catch up with everyone.

One of the things that excites me about writing historicals is researching the occupations from way back when. Some of the jobs sound so adventurous.

In Wyoming Territory, women got the right to vote earlier than in most other places. In 1869, in fact. When the Territory debated whether to join the Union, the other states asked Wyoming to drop the right for women to vote as a precondition for joining. The men of Wyoming refused, and in 1890, Wyoming became the 44th state of the Union anyway. Hooray for those dashing Wyoming men! As a result of getting the right to vote, women of Wyoming got to serve on juries, be judges, lawyers, court bailiffs, and all sorts of fascinating occupations much sooner than their Eastern counterparts.

One of my earlier books involved a female gunsmith (THE SURGEON, 2003). That was fun to research. I discovered that not everyone in the Wild West could afford to own an expensive Smith & Wesson or Colt Revolver. Everyday guns (why does that sound odd?) were made by the local clockmaker because he owned some of the same intricate tools needed, and had an eye for detail. In my story, the heroine grew up with a father who held that occupation, and she and her brother picked up the trades. She tries to stick to clockmaking and shuns the weapons, but her expertise is needed in the climax of the book when she has to help the hero deliver several guns custom made (by her) to the villain, with her brother’s life in the balance.

Thinking about livelihoods is what sparked the idea for my current book, ALASKAN RENEGADE.

The heroine is Victoria Windhaven, a nurse stuck in the middle of nowhere who has to do more than what’s required of her since no doctors are around to help. Victoria sets off on a dangerous medical journey through the Alaskan wilderness and needs a bodyguard to protect her. Unfortunately, he’s a man from her past – Brant MacQuaid. Several years ago in St. Louis, he left her sister standing at the altar and Victoria has never forgiven him.

Brant is the son of a governor who has shunned his father’s political footsteps to become a bounty hunter. His family has disowned him for it – but he was traumatized by the murder of his best friend and figures this is his chance to bring criminals to justice in his way. Accompanying them on the trip is an inexperienced and scared young medical student who has a crush on Victoria and complicates everything – also provides some comic relief. The medical student is being pushed to become a doctor by his father, but is trying to decide if that’s who he really wants to be in life. The villain himself is in dire need of medical help for his own injured father, and it becomes a tense showdown for the three travelers to decide if they’re going to help the villain or do him in….and in the meantime battle who they’ve become in their young lives, and the occupations they’ve set out for themselves. And, of course, the wilderness is a very romantic backdrop for the love story!

Here’s a photo of the place I set the story. Isn’t it beautiful?

If you were living in those times, what would you have been?

A judge? A traveling photographer? Candy maker? Railroad worker? Tinsmith? Bootmaker? Explorer? Mapmaker? Casket-measurer (I just threw that one in for fun.) Inventor of fancy notions? Printing press owner? Bar-keep? Saloon girl? Dancer? Restaurant owner? Deputy Marshal? Tailor? Gold miner?

If I couldn’t choose writing, I would have liked to have been an apothecary. There would have been lots of research and thinking involved, plus I’d get to run my own business and help people in need. And I’d love to work with all those pretty bottles. Being a judge would’ve been interesting, too, although I’m not sure I could control my temper. I’d be like a Judge Judy giving all the criminals lectures. “Did your mama raise you to play with guns? Take your hands off your holsters and stand up straight when you’re talking to me!”

For anyone who leaves a comment or question today, you’ll get your name put into a drawing for a free autographed copy of ALASKAN RENEGADE.

To read an excerpt visit www.katebridges.com

Lily Mae backed into the corner of the saloon as the hulking villain lumbered toward her.  “Got you,” he snarled.  “Now hand over that deed to your father’s gold mine.”

            “Not on your life!”  Summoning her courage, she glared up at him.  “I’m going to see you hang for what you did!”

            He laughed, his belly shaking beneath his greasy vest.  “You and what army?   All I see between me and that gold is a purty little gal in a pink satin dress.  And by the time I finish with her she’s not gonna look so purty.  You’ve seen what I can do to a woman.  Now give me that deed, or you’ll be beggin’ me for mercy!”

            “All right.  You win.  I’ve got it right here in my stocking.”  Lily Mae raised her skirt a few inches.  “A gentleman would turn away.”

            “Well, I ain’t no gentleman, honey.  You got till the count of three.  One…two…”

            Lily Mae fumbled beneath her petticoats.  Tucked into her lace garter was a tiny derringer with a barrel no bigger than her thumb.  Drawing and cocking the pistol in one motion, she swung back to face her enemy.

            “Reach for the sky, you mangy varmint,” she snarled, “or I’ll plug you right between the eyes! 

            No, this  isn’t a scene from one of my books, although I did have fun writing it.  I just wanted a dramatic way to introduce one of the most notorious and popular weapons in the history of the west.

 In 1852 an American gunsmith named Henry Deringer invented a pistol so small that it could be easily concealed in a pocket, vest, boot, stocking or bodice.  The original Deringer Pistol was less than six inches long.  It used a cap lock mechanism to fire a single bullet from a barrel bored in calibers from .36 to .45, with .41 being the most common.  Easy to handle and accurate at close range, the tiny gun was an instant success.  Other gun manufacturers were swift to copy and improve on it (these copies were known generically as derringers, with an extra r)  but Deringer’s original design remained popular for decades.

            The gun was a favorite of women, who could hide it in their handbags or their clothes.  Gamblers and card dealers often kept one up their sleeves.  Even well known gunfighters, such as Wild Bill Hickock, used them as backup weapons.  One Arizona lawman was known to have carried upward of a half dozen petite pistols on his person.

            The scaled down size of these guns cost heavily in accuracy and range.  Mark Twain, who carried a pocket model Smith & Wesson .22 on his western travels wrote, “It was grand.  It only had one fault—you couldn’t hit anything with it.”

            Sadly, the little weapon became the preferred choice of hit men, who could hide it while they stole up behind their target.  The most famous hit carried out with a Deringer Pistol was the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth.  Booth shot Lincoln in the back of the head at point blank range while the President was watching a play.  This incident branded the Deringer as a “Hitman Special.”  Sales of the Deringer and its derringer clones went through the roof.  But Henry Deringer was troubled, knowing his weapon had been used to kill an American President.  Shortly afterwards, in 1868, he stopped production of the Deringer Pistol.  Other versions, however, continued to be made and are popular among shooters and gun collectors to this day.

This tough-looking gun moll is me, posing for a friend’s magazine article with an unloaded pistol I have no intention of firing.  Good for a laugh, at least.

            Do you know how to handle a gun?  Would you carry one for protection, or do you want nothing to do with them?  I’m looking forward to some interesting responses.

 Don’t forget to check out COWBOY CHRISTMAS, with stories by Pam Crooks, Carol Finch and myself. 

 And don’t forget to enter our new Christmas contest!

Thank you, Mary, and the P&P team, for having me here today. It surely is my pleasure. 

If I could travel back in time, would I?

You bet! I’d make a terrible pioneer, I know, since my idea of roughing it is to play all day at the lake, then head to the Holiday Inn for the night. I barely cook with the convenience of a microwave. I know buffalo chips and an open flame would be a disaster.

And yet, part of me longs to travel back in time to get a feel for what pioneers felt, see what they saw, wear the clothes of the time and really immerse myself in the time period, so I can accurately portray those times in my novels. All while being back at the Holiday Inn by supper time, of course!

Since I can’t go back in time for real, I do the next best thing. Museums!

In September, I began the research for a new historical series set at a US Cavalry Fort. I had the germ of an idea, loved the setting, and was eager to see what I could find by way of information.

Over a two week span while on family vacation, we visited the following forts:

Ft. Riley, Kansas (home of the US Cavalry Museum.) A house once thought to be General Custer’s has been preserved and is open for viewing, though they’ve later discovered that he actually lived up the street a bit on Officer’s Row.

Fort Harker in Kanopolis, Kansas. Only a few buildings survive, but the tour guide made our stop worth while. I love the copper-colored sandstone buildings and the amazing green lichen that grows on it.

Fort Larned, near Larned, Kansas. Oh, my, what a treat. The picture above is of two of the barracks at Ft. Larned, which is a National Historic Site and beautifully preserved and run. The buildings are in excellent shape, and the Santa Fe Trail runs only about thirty yards behind the commissary building. Also, as a bonus, just up the road from the Fort is the Santa Fe Trail Museum and Library where we also stopped. I got to go inside a real soddy. Ugh. I am so not pioneer material.

Fort Hays, Kansas. Not many of the buildings survive, but the blockhouse is unusual, and the place has a lively history.

Fort Laramie, Wyoming. A terrific tour with enthusiastic tour-guides. One of the great frontier forts with a rich history and interesting inhabitants.

My second favorite way of researching is reading books. While on this “Fort Loop” vacation, (No, not fruit loop!) I bought lots of books about the US Cavalry and each fort’s history. By the time I got home, I had twenty-one different books about forts and fort life in my possession. Of course, one of the books I was looking for eluded me on the trip, so I had to go on eBay when I got home and bid on a copy. J

 As you can see, I have an amazing and generous husband who pretty much lets me get what I think I need to do research (and a lot of just what I flat out want) and I kept my receipts so I could hand them over to my accountant at the end of the year.

I also got the name and address of the Fort Historian at Fort Laramie, and was encouraged to call any time with questions that cropped up during the writing. Very excited about this prospect. I love talking American West history with someone as passionate about it as I am.

Another way I researched—and  I do realize I should take this one with a big, old bucket of salt—is  I watched John Wayne in his Cavalry pictures, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Rio Grande, The Horse Soldiers, and Fort Apache. I realize the US Cavalry story is ‘Hollywood-ed Up’ for the big screen, but I love the movies, and they are inspirational. Since my Cavalry novels deal with honor, duty, and sacrifice, (and love J) I thought it fitting to revisit The Duke in all his blue and gold glory.

Of course, US Forts weren’t the only research topic on my agenda. I also visited a Colorado Gold Mine, a Pioneer History Museum, the Wyoming State Historical Society, and 1880’s Town of Murdo, SD. And I bought lots of books from those places, too.

I have found there’s nothing like actually seeing and experiencing the places you want to write about. Especially since the Holiday Inn isn’t too far away. J

Thank you, Mary, for inviting me to visit Petticoats & Pistols.

Erica’s debut novel, The Bartered Bride, is now available. Leave a comment to get your name in the drawing for a free copy.

You can order a copy by clicking HERE. Or by phoning (740) 922-7280.

 Jonathan Kennebrae is furious when his grandfather informs him that his future has been decided. He will marry Melissa Brooke or be disinherited. Jonathan has invested years of his life in Kennabrae Shipping, but heaven help him if Grandfather decides to take it all away for this.

Melissa, too, is devastated when her parents make their announcement. As little more than a bargaining chip in her father’s business maneuvers, she feels her secure world slipping away. Engaged to marry a man she has never met—someone “considerably older” than herself? What have her parents done?

Can Jonathan and Melissa find a way out of this loveless marriage, or must they find a way forward together?

ERICA VETSCH is married to Peter and keeps the company books for the family lumber business. A home-school mom to Heather and James, Erica loves history, romance, and storytelling. Her ideal vacation is taking her family to out-of-the-way history museums and chatting to curators about local history. She has a Bachelor’s degree from Calvary Bible College in Secondary Education: Social Studies. You can find her on the web at www.onthewritepath.blogspot.com  

To the left a picture of officer’s and enlisted barracks at Fort Larned, Kansas.

Until last year, when I thought of a mapmaker, I envisioned some fastidious fellow with a pencil and protractor sitting at a desk. And then I found a book called Maps of the Civil War, which is actually a book about the Civil War cartographers, and I discovered the lives of many cartographers were so much more than paper and measurements—to get those measurements many led the lives of explorers and adventurers.

During the Civil War skilled cartographers were highly sought after and pulled out of their offices and stationed on the front lines. They had the hair-raising task of sneaking onto proposed battle sites to survey the land, delivering vital tactical information to the officers commanding the troops. A captured cartographer was considered a real prize by the opposing side, in the hopes of gaining some helpful geographical tidbit to give them an advantage.

When the war ended cartographers were still in high demand, as focus shifted from battle fields to mining fields. In 1866 railroads all over the nation were in a race to reach the booming minefields in Wyoming and Montana and survey crews were deployed by a number of railroads and companies to find the best routes, everyone wanting to be first to tap into the quickest transport of those riches.

The series I’m currently writing follows one such survey crew marking a route through Montana. Their five man crew has a trained cartographer, a scout, and three field hands to haul gear and do the grunt work of assembling levels, leads and metal tape and calling out readings. Much like the cowboys on a long cattle drive, this entailed weeks or months of living in tents, traveling on horseback across treacherous, sometimes hostile, terrain while enduring rain, sleet, heat and snow. By day they’d take readings consisting of lines of numbers and symbols, and then by lantern light at night, use those readings to create topographical maps and charts. Some were also artists, drawing the beautiful landscapes along the route to accompany their readings.

Cartographers: another rough and tumble lot whose impact and influence certainly had a hand in taming and shaping the wild west. And really, once you have a map to something, it’s conquered in a sense, don’t you think?  Maps offer security, a certain liscence to explore.

Whether you’re reading a western romance or watching a western movie, you’ll find that jails play some part in most of the storylines. And for good reason. Law enforcement was so crucial in the settlement of the West. There were lots of lawbreakers who had to be made to see the light so to speak.

I wrote about jails in two of my single titles and my story in the upcoming Give Me a Texas Ranger anthology that’ll release July 2010 features a jail break. I didn’t really set out to put jails in my stories. It just happened, you know kinda like not intending to gain weight happens.

There are tons of original old jails here in Texas. Some have been turned into museums, but surprisingly others are still in use after more than a hundred years. Just think how big the spiders are in those lockups and how smelly! Here’s one still being used that’s only 35 miles from where I live at Dickens, Texas.

 Some of the hoosegows resembled huge fortresses with thick walls and consisted of several stories and the sheriff and his family lived in them. These had a gallows built in.

              McCullough Co. Jail 1909                                                                                                                                 Archer Co. Jail

 Ellis Co. Jail built 1888

Others gave the appearance of being added as an afterthought. In very poor counties lacking access to funds they only had what’s called as a strap-iron jail created by strips of metal and must’ve been fashioned by a blacksmith from the looks of things. Strap-iron hoosegows were usually outdoors with no protection from the elements. Those had to have been really miserable places. The first one of these pictures below is from Mobeetie, Texas (or Hide Town which was its name first.) It was a wild and wooly place that entertained Bat Masterson and Pat Garrett among others.

The website www.texasescapes.com is a great source of information on early Texas towns and jails if you’re interested.

One special tidbit I gleaned from that site was that in some counties prisoners were farmed out to willing citizens to keep in their homes for $3.00 a day. I’d never heard that before. Of course, as you well imagine, my mind started whirling, thinking of all sorts of scenerios I could put in a story sometime!

Here’s one that was at a lawless place called The Flat, a town that sat below Ft. Griffin. In the 1870’s the commanding officer declared martial law and tried to clean up the little town that harbored men like John Wesley Hardin, Pat Garrett, Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp. And women like Lottie Deno and Big Nose Kate. The Flat was a Butterfield Stage stop as well as a refuge for buffalo hunters and drovers since it sat smack in the middle of the cattle trails.

Do you have a favorite jail scene from a book or movie? Mine is the John Wayne movie El Dorado with James Caan and Robert Mitchum. Three-fourths of that movie took place in the calaboose.

The one thing I really admire about John Ford films is his eye for detail and authenticity. But like all film-makers, he tends to leave out some of the more mundane historical facts. I’ve done a lot of research on army life and army wives. Much of what I’ve read coincided with the films. Everything but the boredom and a few other little less than romantic facts. I thought I would mention a few today.

One of the most interesting aspects is that most western forts did not have the high outer walls we are so accustomed to seeing in films. Most frontier commanders agreed with the general in Dakota Territory who said “It is better for troop morale to depend on vigilance and breechloaders for protection than to hide behind palisades.”

The forts also seemed to run the gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous. According to “The Soldiers” (of the Time Life “Old West” series), some were the epitome of ramshackle misery and others approached opulence.” I had a hard time, though, finding the latter. Most, particularly the early forts, were definitely of the ramshackle persuasion.

Baths were especially big problem. The War Department had ordered that each man should take a bath once a week. The officers wanted it, the men wanted it, the company doctor wanted it. Yet one officer in 1878 remembered that in 30 years in the Army he had never seen a bathhouse at any post. And few southwestern posts had water to spare for weekly baths. “It wasn’t so bad after a while, one soldier said, “since everybody smelled they all got used to one another.”

The southwestern forts had other problems. They were afflicted with centipedes, scorpions, tarantulas and snakes. One veteran described Fort Grant in Arizona as “the place where everything that grows pricks and everything that breathes bites.”

One army wife was outraged. “This country itself is bad enough and the location of the post is most unfortunate, but to compel officers and men to live in these old huts of decaying, moldy wood, which are reeking with malaria and alive with bugs and perhaps snakes is wicked.”

The early forts on the northern Plains were worse, also according to “The Soldiers.”

“Many of them were infested with rats, mice and insects. Fine dust blew through the cracks in the log or adobe walls and log roofs of the buildings in the summer, and snow shifted through in winter.” At one ramshackle post in the Dakotas, an inspecting colonel found every structure hopeless with the possible exception of the flagstaff, and that was only “tolerable.”

The frontier soldier might spend up to half of any given year on campaign against the Indians, which meant he spent the rest of the time on post. Though it was home, it was rarely a pleasant place to live. Army posts by their very nature were located deep in the land of “hostiles,” as the Army called unfriendly Indians.

Boredom was the biggest problems through their time at the forts. Some soldiers actually expressed a wish for an Indian attack to break the monotony. Officers occupied private quarters, but enlisted men were crammed into barracks where rows of bunks or cots stood head-in the walls. They were too small, poorly ventilated, generally cold in winter, hot in summer and always overcrowded.

Conditions improved in the 1870’s, particularly when wives joined their husbands. But the routine of Army life never changed. At one post in the Dakotas, reveille blew at 5:30. First drill was held at 6:15. Fallout for fatigue duty (a variety of tedious work including building roads and bridges, repairing telegraph lines and woodcutting) was signaled at 7:30, guard mount took place at 8:30, afternoon fatigue commenced at 1 p.m., drill at 4:30 and taps sounded at 8:15 that evening. One lieutenant’s wife wrote, “We lived, ate, slept by the bugle calls.” She particularly liked the “beautiful stable call for the cavalry,” when the horses are groomed and watered, the “thrilling fire-call,” and the call to arms “when every soldier jumps for his rifle and every officer buckled on his sword, and a woman’s heart stands still.” Yet, she later called Army life “glittering misery.”

The pay for the often poorly trained recruits was $13 a month which was rarely received because they were constantly in debt to various sergeants and storekeepers who functioned informally as bankers and loan sharks.

Such was the life of the soldiers and their wives. The dances looked great in the films but the rest . . . well, I think I like being where I am, thank you.