Tales of the Wild West: Gunflighers
By Rick Steber
2/5
()
About this ebook
"The names of the gunfighters are legendary: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Doc Holliday, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, Henry Plummer, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok.... These men, and others like them, epitomize the image of the Wild West.
The gunfighting era was born in the late 1830s when Samuel Colt patented his single-barreled pistol with a revolving bullet chamber.
But the gunfighter was not common on the frontier until after the Civil War when renegade bands of Confederate soldiers refused to surrender. Their lawless ways spread as they stole from the hated Union bankers and the monopolistic railroads, rustled from wealthy ranchers and killed anyone who dared stand in their way. Railhead towns, where the great Texas cattle drives ended, generated more than their fair share of gunfights. In these towns the distinction between the law and the outlaw was a fine line and many times the men who wore badges worked both sides of the fence.
It generally fell to the individual to uphold the law and nearly every western man strapped a six-shooter to his hip. If a man's cattle or horses were stolen, if his home was ransacked or his family attacked, it was up to that man to track down the guilty party and administer swift justice.
Around the turn of the 20th century the free-roaming gunfighters found the wild country could no longer hide them as technology, in the form of telegraphs and telephones, cut off escape routes. Even though the era of the gunfighter had drawn to a close, writers and movie makers, using the colorful backdrop of the Old West, turned the frontier gunfighters into larger-than-life folk heros, folk heros who will never die.
"
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- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5A lot more accuracy would have improved this book immensely.
Book preview
Tales of the Wild West - Rick Steber
Introduction
The names of the gunfighters are legendary: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Doc Holiday, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, Henry Plummer, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok .... These men, and others like them, epitomize the image of the Wild West.
The gunfighting era was born in the late 1830s when Samuel Colt patented his single-barrel pistol with a revolving bullet chamber. But the gunfighter was not common on the frontier until after the Civil War when renegade bands of Confederate soldiers refused to surrender. Their lawless ways spread as they stole from the hated Union bankers and the monopolistic railroads, rustled from wealthy ranchers and killed anyone who dared stand in their way.
Railhead towns, where the great Texas cattle drives ended, generated more than their fair share of gunfights. In these towns the distinction between the law and the outlaw was a fine line and many times the men who wore badges worked both sides of the fence.
It generally fell to the individual to uphold the law and nearly every western man strapped a six-shooter to his hip. If a man’s cattle or horses were stolen, if his home was ransacked or his family attacked, it was up to that man to track down the guilty party and administer swift justice.
Around the turn of the 19th century the free-roaming gunfighters found the wild country could no longer hide them as technology, in the form of telegraphs and telephones, cut off escape routes. Even though the era of the gunfighter had drawn to a close, writers and movie makers, using the colorful backdrop of the Old West, turned the frontier gunfighters into larger-than-life folk heroes, folk heroes who will never die.
Life of Crime
A couple weeks before Christmas 1896 a local man came into the sheriff’s office in Blackwell, Oklahoma Territory with exciting news.
There’s two men out at the old Benjamin place and they’re plannin’ on holdin’ up the bank. I overheard ‘em talkin’. An’ one of the men is missin’ three fingers.
That got the sheriff’s attention because Dynamite Dick Clifton, a notorious bank and train robber, had lost three fingers on his left hand. The sheriff wanted to know, Which hand?
Left,
said the local and he followed it up with, I’ll get the reward, won’t I?
You might have to split it,
the sheriff told him. He jumped to his feet, threw open the door and called into the street, I’m organizing a posse to bring in Dynamite Dick Clifton. If you’re the one that get’s him, you’ll be entitled to half the $3,500 reward. Any takers?
Six men quickly volunteered and the sheriff led them out of town toward the Benjamin ranch where they found two horses, saddled and ready to ride, hitched to a post in front of the house. The sheriff directed the men to surround the house and when they were in place he hollered, We know you’re in there! Come out with your hands up!
At the sound of his voice two men rushed through the open door, firing as they came. Three members of the posse turned tail and ran but the other three and the sheriff stood their ground and returned fire, wounding one of the men and killing the other.
The dead man was not Dynamite Dick, but a petty criminal named Buck McGregg. The wounded man turned out to be the real catch when he was identified as Ben Cravens, a cattle rustler and killer. He was jailed temporarily but escaped and returned to his life of crime.
Butch & Sundown
There was no way to foresee from his strict religious upbringing — his father had come to Utah with the original Mormon handcart brigade — that Robert Parker would turn to lawless ways.
But Parker was befriended by a small-time criminal named Mike Cassidy and at age 16 the boy left home to ride the outlaw trail using the alias George Cassidy
. Parker traveled to Colorado robbing trains and holding up banks and, for a time, worked in a butcher shop. After that he became known as Butch Cassidy.
Butch was arrested for cattle rustling in 1892 and sentenced to a two-year stretch in the Wyoming State Penitentiary. After his release he formed the notorious Wild Bunch to rob trains and banks.
By the turn of the century the law was closing in. Butch and his outlaw friends, Harry Longabaugh (better known as the Sundance Kid) and Etta Place (Sundance’s girlfriend), fled to South America. For a while the trio operated a cattle ranch in Argentina. Early in 1908 Butch and Sundance were in a gunfight with Bolivian soldiers and Sundance was killed.
Butch returned to the United States and lived under the name William Phillips. In 1910 he