Gunfighters

Why does Billy the Kid generate such fascination, passionate feeling?

Of all the outlaws and lawmen, villains and heroes, few generate such passionate feelings and fascination as Billy the Kid. Why do you suppose that’s the case?

Was it because the Kid was a rowdy young gunslinger with a chip on his shoulder and fire in his eyes?

Billy the Kid washing dishes? Different image for famous desperado

Billy the Kid washing dishes? Really? That certainly provides a different image of the Kid from that of the famous desperado of popular Western history, film, and TV lore.

In fact, I ran onto at least two sources that spoke of the Kid doing such routine, common labor to make his way as a teenager-young man in a tough world.

Facts you probably didn’t know about Wyatt Earp

Here are a few fascinating facts you probably didn’t know about Wyatt Earp:

He was never a town marshal or sheriff. Nope, you never could technically have called the infamous Old West lawman/gunfighter/gambler Marshal Earp or Sheriff Earp. In point of fact, he served as the assistant marshal in Dodge City, Kansas, and was for awhile a deputy U.S. marshal in Arizona. (Sure, it’s “nitpicking,” but it’s interesting anyhow, I thought.)

Toughest Idaho lawman may have been ‘Rube’ Robbins

Arguably, the toughest lawman in Idaho in the latter days of the Old West may have been “Rube” Robbins.

Robbins, actual name Orlando Robbins, came to the Boise Basin gold fields about a year after the rush started there. He was in his mid-20s and looking for adventure. Adventure found Rube — or he found it? — in 1864 when he became deputy sheriff in Boise. The small town of Boise and the surrounding region was polarized between the North and South as the Civil War ragged to a close, mostly to the East.

Did Buffalo Bill Cody and Wyatt Earp ever meet?

For all you Old West “history buffs,” students, and Western writers out there who have been at this longer than I, can anyone answer the question I’ve posed in the title of this article? Did Buffalo Bill Cody and Wyatt Earp ever meet? If so, can you point me toward information about any meeting(s) or relationship between the two? If not, how or why do you think such a meeting would NOT take place?

What do you call the guys with the pistols?

Most sources I’ve read suggest that “gunfighter,” and “gunman” were terms used in the later days of the Old West (probably after the 1870s or ’80s) for someone who was also known as a “shootist,” or in our post-Western movie times, the guy who had the pistol and wasn’t afraid or hesitant to use it.

Economic downturn? Don’t ‘Panic’ — take a closer look at U.S. history

“There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate: when he can’t afford it, and when he can.” — Mark Twain

Pardon my absence from the blog in recent weeks. I’ve been just too caught up in, first, the big presidential election, and, secondly, the horrendous economic contraction/melt-down we’re currently going through.

There really was a ‘Long Branch’ in Dodge City, but no Miss Kitty

In the fabled “Gunsmoke” television series, the Long Branch Saloon was the favored hangout and chief watering hole of Marshal Dillon, Chester, Festus, Doc, and most of the other main characters. It was owned by the dazzling but business savvy “Miss Kitty” — Kitty Russell, as I recall. It was, depending on the mood of the moment and the plot of the show, a convivial place filled with music, fun, card players, lovely ladies, and hard working trail hands, town merchants, and company.

Truth about gunfighters: It was hard to tell ‘good guys’ from ‘bad guys’

One of the most respected lawmen of the Old West was Wild Bill Hickock. He and his faithful sidekick, Jingles, adventured throughout the west, settling into various jobs as deputies and marshalls, foiling the occasional stagecoach robbery or bank holdup.

Real life in the American Old West — join me on the journey

Real life in that time and those places we know as the American West was mostly not like the movie and television fiction we learn about the Old West. Real life was generally much harder, much duller, hotter, dustier, and had little of the glamor we learn from the movies.

Life in the Old West

True stories, tall tales, and memorabilia of the American West

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