Dodge City by Tom Clavin

This review originally appeared at Macmillan's Criminal Element.

The Wyatt Earp myth is spent, taking its place alongside Bingham’s Washington crossing the Delaware and Paul Revere shouting “The British are coming!” Sure, there’s an element of truth to the timeworn renditions, but we’ve finally passed over a transom where the reality is now far more entertaining and gripping than the malarkey, in short, we’ve grown up. In the author’s note, Tom Clavin writes, “… most research sources revealed that legend and fact often overlapped and that the facts about the lives of Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson before, during, and after Dodge City were usually at least as satisfying as the fictions.”

Earp’s myth, via Hollywood mainly, has seen a lot of mileage out of the honorable-above-reproach-lawman song, who even at his worse (see, for example, Wyatt’s vendetta ride) appears merited in all that he did—that the ends justified the means. Even as I write this, you can bet your Buntline Special that a screenwriter is putting the finishing touches on yet another stagnant showdown at the O.K. Let’s hope the producers rip up that script and read Tom Clavin’s clear-headed novel. And the beauty is that in a gifted historian writer’s hands (ala David McCullough and Joseph Ellis), the fact sheet can still have a cinematic thrust. Observe this meeting between Old West titans: 

When Bat stepped off the train, he had an ivory-handled six-gun on each hip and a double-barreled shotgun in his hands. Wyatt waited for him, along with Bassett, Frank McLain, Neil Brown, and several other men wearing pistols. Bat was curious as to the whereabouts of Doc Holliday, who he knew had joined Wyatt in Kansas City, but with the men already here—and this was just the reception committee; likely there were more in town—there was plenty of firepower.

Wyatt and Bat greeted each other. Though different men physically—Wyatt tall and slender, Bat of average height and stocky—their grins were the same, indicating pleasure to see each other, even though the reunion was to settle a matter that might risk their lives. Then they set off, natural leaders, the rest of the men flanking them, starting down the dusty streets of Dodge City, ready for one last showdown to preserve the peace.

Damn, but didn’t that put me right there in the lawless, tumbleweed-strewn town. Another perk to perusing these pages was gaining a fuller picture of Bat Masterson, as Mr. Clavin writes “[he] was no one’s Walter Brennan, Andy Devine, or Slim Pickens.” He was opinionated, willing to back up beliefs with force if pushed, and widely known as a man who could put away drink after drink, remaining happy-go-lucky.

Bat and Wyatt shared a bond in that they both came from clans of tight-knit brothers, and both lawmen lost a sibling in the line of duty. Bat witnessed his brother Ed, who was trying to disarm a drunken cowboy, get shot down. The assassination happened at such close range that Ed’s vest lit on fire as he stumbled across the street before collapsing.

Ed lived in a room above the saloon, and Bat and a couple of men brought him there, blood leaving a trail up the boot-worn steps. Soon after a doctor arrived, he informed Bat that there was nothing to be done for Ed. In an anguished whisper, Bat said, “This will just about kill Mother,” recalling all the times he had been told to watch out for his mild-mannered brother. “She’ll never forgive me for letting him get killed in this town.” Bat was already certain he would never forgive himself.

… 

Bat sat beside his brother, holding Ed’s hand. During the next thirty minutes, what was left of the young marshal’s life ebbed away. Then, without regaining consciousness and thus unaware of his brother’s tears, Ed Masterson died.

Author Loren D. Estleman says, “Tom Clavin’s Dodge City is a lesson in historical reporting, exhaustively researched and enthusiastically written with all the page-turning drive of a modern thriller. He’s swept aside a century of cheesy myth to excavate the far more fascinating reality that lay beneath.”

Agreed. This reader enjoyed walking the streets of Dodge once again, and yet it felt like the first time.

---

David Cranmer is the editor of the BEAT to a PULP webzine and whose own body of work has appeared in such diverse publications as The Five-Two: Crime Poetry Weekly, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, LitReactor, Macmillan’s Criminal Element, and Chicken Soup for the Soul. Under the pen name Edward A. Grainger he created the Cash Laramie western series. He's a dedicated Whovian who enjoys jazz and backgammon. He can be found in scenic upstate New York where he lives with his wife and daughter.

Fair Fight or Foul - By Michael R. Ritt

(The following story originally appeared on my own blog and is about a controversial – but little-known incident in the life of an iconic western figure. I am a huge fan of Paul Harvey, and this story was written in the style of his The Rest of the Story radio program. My sincerest apologies to Mr. Harvey.)

It was a Wednesday afternoon, December 2^nd, 1896, and J.J. Groom and his associate, John Gibbs hurriedly walked across the busy San Francisco street, dodging horses and carriages as they made their way to the Baldwin Hotel. The two men were desperate and were hoping that one of the hotel’s guests would be able to help them out.

Groom and Gibbs were boxing promoters and had arranged for the Heavyweight Championship boxing match to take place that very night between Bob Fitzsimmons and Tom Sharkey. There hadn’t been a championship bout since the reigning champ, James Corbett, retired the previous year.

Bob Fitzsimmons

In the closing years of the nineteenth century, baseball was only about fifty years old; the first college football game between Rutgers and Princeton had been played only thirty years ago, and a new game that was being called “Basketball” was still in its infancy. Boxing, however, had been around as a sport for thousands of years. And this fight between Fitzsimmons and Sharkey was the most anticipated boxing match in the country.

The two boxing promoters had obtained San Francisco’s Mechanics’ Pavilion as the venue for the match, and nearly fifteen thousand tickets had been sold. The only problem – and the thing that had Groom and Gibbs so desperate – was that they still did not have a referee for the fight. They had made numerous attempts to obtain someone to judge the contest, but so far had been unable to get someone that both sides would agree to. After all, not only was there a ten thousand dollar purse on the line for the winner, but as was always the case with sporting events, there was considerable money being bet on the side on each of the two participants; Fitzsimmons being the heavy favorite, drawing three-to-one odds in the days leading up to the fight.

As the two men made their way to the lobby of the Baldwin, they spotted their man sitting in a chair reading the newspaper. They had heard that he was staying at the hotel and were feeling hopeful that they would be able to persuade him to lend a hand with their problem.

He was a forty-eight year old with the unusual name of “Berry” who was currently working as a private security consultant. He had in the past worked as a miner, a gambler, and had even done some work as a lawman. But most importantly, he had officiated at a number of other boxing matches, and he had a reputation as being fearless, cool-headed and honest.

The two boxing promoters laid out their predicament to Mr. Berry. Would he agree to referee the match that evening? After a few minutes of thought, Mr. Berry related that he really wasn’t interested in the job, but he did tell Groom and Gibbs that he would be dining that evening at Goodfellow’s Restaurant across the street from the pavilion, and if they couldn’t find anyone else, they should come and get him and he would referee the fight for them.

Groom and Gibbs did not find anyone else. So, only minutes before the opening bell was scheduled to ring, they retrieved Mr. Berry from his dinner.

As he parted the ropes and stepped in to take his place in the center of the ring, Mr. Berry removed his jacket to reveal a .45 caliber Colt Navy revolver sticking out of the pocket of his trousers.

San Francisco Police Captain, Charles Whitman, who was watching the fight from ringside, climbed into the ring and informed Mr. Berry that it was illegal to be carrying a weapon in town. Mr. Berry promptly turned over the weapon to Captain Whitman and the fight began.

It was pretty clear to most in attendance that evening that Fitzsimmons was dominating his opponent from the first round. He was taller and quicker than Sharkey, and he had a combination left-hook/right-uppercut that had proved devastating to his previous challengers.

By all accounts, Mr. Berry did a good job with his responsibilities as referee, making sure that each boxer adhered strictly to the Marquess of Queensberry rules.

Tom Sharkey

Suddenly, in the eighth round, the two boxers came at each other with vigor; exchanging blows so quickly, and with such fury, that it was difficult to see which boxer was prevailing. Then Fitzsimmons landed his combination left-hook/right-uppercut and Sharkey went down. Fitzsimmons stood over his opponent who was sprawled out on the canvas, “limp as a rag,” as some witnesses described him.

Then referee Berry did the unexpected. He called the fight. Reaching down and grabbing Sharkey’s arm, he raised it up into the air, declaring him the winner. He said that Fitzsimmons had landed an illegal punch below the belt which automatically disqualified him.

The spectators were in an uproar. For his own safety, Mr. Berry had to quickly exit the ring and leave the pavilion before the angry crowd fully realized what had taken place.

The uproar had not diminished by the next morning. If anything, it had increased in intensity and scope. Fitzsimmons’ manager got an injunction against distributing the prize money, and the papers were calling for an investigation to determine if the fight had been fixed. Within a week, Judge Sanderson from Oakland began hearing testimony in the incident. Mr. Berry, who a few days earlier had to appear in court and pay a fifty dollar fine for wearing his revolver into the ring, testified that he was never offered money to throw the fight and that had he been asked to do so, he would have refused. He added that anyone who knew him would not doubt his word.

Finally, on December 17^th, Judge Sanderson ruled that the evidence presented to show that the fight was fixed was insufficient and was all hearsay. Furthermore, as it turned out, boxing exhibitions were illegal within city limits and the city supervisors had no right to issue a license for the event. Therefore, because it wasn’t a properly sanctioned fight, it was not something worthy of the court's consideration. In the end, Sharkey was issued the prize money, but his title to Heavyweight Champion was disputed and would have to wait for some future date to be settled.

Although he was never officially found guilty of being involved in fixing the fight, Mr. Berry was never fully vindicated of any wrongdoing. Furthermore, the story had been reported not only throughout California but across the country by the Associated Press. He became a pariah and as much as thirty years later, his name became a synonym for “crooked referee.”

Not able to bear the ostracism that the un-forgetting and unforgiving public bestowed on him, Mr. Berry eventually moved to Alaska and only returned to California years later.

It’s funny which events history decides to hold onto, and which events slip into obscurity and out of the collective national conscience.

Although hurt and humiliated by the incident that first brought him into national scrutiny in 1896, most people today don’t remember the Heavyweight Boxing Championship fight of December 1896 or Mr. Berry’s part in the scandal that followed. Instead, they remember an earlier incident from his life; a rather insignificant incident of only local importance. It happened more than fifteen years earlier when Mr. Berry was working as a lawman in Arizona. It was a mere thirty seconds of history in the town of Tombstone when Wyatt Berry Earp got in a little scuffle behind the OK Corral.

Mike describes himself as Conservative, Christian, Pro-life, and Pro-gun. Drinker of copious amounts of coffee. Happily married to his redheaded sweetheart, Tami. They live in the mountains of western Montana. He is a writer of western short stories and humorous fiction and has been published in a number of anthologies and magazines. You can visit his blog at http://michaelrritt.blogspot.com and his Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/MichaelRRittAuthor. 

HIS LAST GAME OF POOL by Tom Rizzo

Morgan Seth Earp chalked the tip of his cue and scanned the table top looking for the best shot. Seconds later, on Saturday night, March 18, 1882, gunshots shattered the glass windows on the door at the rear of Campbell & Hatch’s Saloon and Billiard Parlor.

Morgan Earp

One of the bullets drilled into the right side of the 30-year old lawman’s  abdomen, ripped through his spinal column, and came out the left side and lodged in the thigh of a bystander, George A.B. Berry.  

A second bullet slammed into the wall above Wyatt Earp’s head where he sat watching the pool game. 

When Earp saw his younger brother collapse, he and two other men hurried across the room, picked Morgan up and carried him to the doorway of the adjoining card room

Three Tombstone doctors were summoned. After examining the younger Earp, they shook their heads, indicating the hopeless nature of the injury. 

A few minutes later, brothers Wyatt, Virgil, James, and Warren surrounded Morgan. When they tried to help him to his feet, he whispered, “Don’t, I can’t stand it. This is the last game of pool I’ll ever play.” He took his last breath around midnight. 

Eventually, Morgan’s body was transported home to Colton, California, where his parents buried him. 

The previous December, Virgil took a bullet when he was ambushed by unknown assailants while making his way home from a saloon. But he survived. 

Wyatt Earp

The attacks against the Earp were no doubt triggered by the shoot-out at the OK Corral, October 28, 1881, against members of an outlaw gang known as The Cowboys. 

During the confrontation, the Earps and Doc Holliday shot and killed Frank and Tom McLaury, and Billy Clanton. 

“I did not intend to fight unless it became necessary in self defense, and in the performance of official duty,” Earp said. “When Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury drew their pistols I knew it was a fight for life, and I drew and fired in defense of my own life and the lives of my brothers and Doc Holliday.”

On March 20, the day following Morgan Earp’s funeral, Deputy U.S. Marshal Wyatt Earp headed up a federal posse on what became known as the Earp Vendetta Ride. 

Certain that Cowboys would strike again, Earp, youngest brother Warren, Doc Holliday, and two other members of the posse escorted Virgil and his wife, Allie, from Tombstone to the train depot in Contention where they boarded a train to Benson and then to Tucson. 

The plan was to make sure Virgil and wife reach Colton, California, so they would be safe. 

Ike Clanton

Earp was tipped off that Ike Clanton and Frank Stilwell and others were waiting to take revenge. When his brother and his wife boarded the train, Earp saw two men hiding in the dark, armed with shotguns and headed their way. 

Spotting Earp, Clanton and Stilwell turned and ran. Stilwell, however, tripped. When he scrambled to his feet, Wyatt fired both barrels of his shotgun from a few feet away and killed him. 

A day or two later, Earp and his posse tracked Florentino Cruz into the Dragoon Mountains and killed him. Cruz had been identified as one of the men in the alley outside the billiard parlor where Morgan was gunned down. 

On March 24, the Earp posse engaged in a shootout with Curly Bill Brocius and Johnny Barnes at Iron Springs, where both men were killed. 

Curly Bill

When the posse returned to Tombstone, Sheriff Johnny Behan tried to arrest them on murder warrants but they refused and rode out. 

When Earp learned a large posse had been formed to pursue them, they disbanded and left Arizona Territory. 

Earp, his brother Warren, and Doc Holliday ended up in Colorado for a time. Holliday died from Tuberculosis at Glenwood Springs, Colorado.

The Earps eventually traveled to California. Wyatt and his wife, Josie, then headed for Nome, Alaska where he went prospecting for gold and worked as a gambler. 

# # # 

Western Trail Blazer -New (and Recent) Releases

Western Trail Blazer has prepared some exciting books for you in the last quarter of 2014 (and the first week of 2015)... with many more right around the corner. We've been blessed with some truly talented authors who have entrusted us with sharing their creative visions... and we're passing the blessings on to you. If you love westerns (and of course you do!) you'll want to check these out.

Click on the images to see a bigger (readable!) version of the description.

kindle: HERE

smashwords: HERE

paperback: HERE

kindle: HERE

smashwords: HERE

paperback: Coming Soon

kindle: HERE

smashwords: HERE

paperback: HERE

kindle: HERE

smashwords: HERE

paperback: Coming Soon

kindle: HERE

smashwords: HERE

paperback: Coming Soon

kindle: HERE

smashwords: HERE

paperback: Coming Soon

And some great short fiction...

kindle: HERE

smashwords: HERE

kindle: HERE

smashwords: HERE

Get 'em now, we're makin' more.

Outlaw Lawmen

By Kathleen Rice Adams

Life on the open range could be a discomforting experience, what with outlaws popping out of the woodwork without the slightest provocation, nesters “accidentally” mistaking some cattleman’s range for homesteading turf, steers stampeding wherever they pleased, and wild animals running amok in settlers’ vegetable gardens—not to mention all those Indians to keep track of.

Things weren’t much easier for townies. For one thing, outlaws didn’t confine themselves to the countryside. Drunks stumbled out of saloons with reckless abandon, ladies of questionable virtue roamed the streets at will, and barbers pulled teeth or performed surgery like they knew what they were doing. Even church socials sometimes got out of hand.

At least folks in town could count on the law to keep things somewhat under control, right?

Not always.

Finding a reliable lawman was anything but easy. El Paso, Texas, discovered that when it hired Dallas Stoudenmire as city marshal. Stoudenmire, a deadly gunman with a mean temper and a fondness for strong drink, insisted on starting fights and shooting people—some of them criminals. As a young man, famed lawman Wyatt Earp stole horses. Between gigs as a county sheriff, town marshal, and city policeman, Earp gambled, owned brothels, got arrested for a number of crimes, broke out of jail, led a vigilante group, and otherwise made a nuisance of himself. Pat Garrett may have been a straight arrow legally speaking, but he was unpleasant to be around. Even his fellow officers objected to his disposition: a refreshing mixture of arrogance and surliness.

Some men found a badge to be an excellent disguise for nefarious activities. Take these guys, for example:

Henry Plummer

Henry Plummer

In 1856, at the age of 24, Henry Plummer became the marshal of Nevada City, Calif., the third-largest settlement in the state. In 1859, the marshal killed the husband of a woman with whom he was having an affair. Sentenced to ten years in San Quentin, he received parole in six months and immediately joined a gang of stagecoach robbers.

In January 1862, Plummer formed his own gang and began hijacking wagons transporting gold out of mining camps. When that enterprise petered out in January 1863, Plummer relocated to the newest gold rush in Bannack, Montana. There, he formed the Innocents, a network of road agents that numbered more than 100 men within a few short months.

In May 1863, Plummer lost a sheriff election and subsequently threatened his rival until the man high-tailed it, fearing for his life. Plummer took over the sheriff’s job and right away appointed two of his Innocents cronies as deputies. Oddly, crime dramatically increased. In about nine months, more than 100 murders occurred and robberies, assaults, and assorted other crimes reached unprecedented levels. All the while, Plummer—under the guise of cracking down on lawlessness—hanged witnesses.

On January 10, 1864, having had enough law enforcement for a while, fifty to seventy-five vigilantes rounded up Plummer and his two deputies and hanged them in the basement of a local store.

Burt Alvord and Billy Stiles

Burt Alvord
Yuma Territorial Prison, 1904

In the 1890s, Burt Alvord and Billy Stiles served as deputy sheriffs in Willcox, Arizona. Unsatisfied with their salaries, the two began robbing Southern Pacific Railroad trains to supplement their income. Emboldened by pulling a number of successful jobs, they undertook their most daring escapade on September 9, 1899, in what came to be known as the Cochise Train Robbery. Instead of cleaving to tradition and stopping the train on a lonely stretch of track in the middle of nowhere, Alvord and Stiles had five members of their gang blow up the safe while the train was stopped in the town of Cochise. Alvord and Stiles, maintaining their law-enforcement decorum, were part of the posse that unsuccessfully attempted to apprehend the robbers in the Chiricahua Mountains.

About five months later, on February 15, 1900, the gang struck again, in broad daylight in the tiny town of Fairbank, Arizona. While the train was stopped at the station, the Alvord-Stiles gang approached the express car, guns drawn, only to find the messenger responsible for the safe unwilling to abide such rude behavior. During the gunfight that erupted, two of the five gang members were wounded and one ran away. The messenger, also wounded, hid the safe’s key before losing consciousness. Unable to find the key and without a single stick of dynamite between them, the rest of the gang scrammed.

Fairbank, Ariz., railroad
depot, circa 1900

Once again, Alvord and Stiles rode with a posse to track down the outlaws, one of whom was injured so badly he had to be left behind about six miles outside town. Despite Alvord’s and Stiles’s attempts to misdirect the pursuers, they stumbled across the wounded man, who fingered Alvord as the ringleader before he died. Stiles confessed and turned state’s evidence, allowing him to remain comfortably outside the bars while Alvord cooled his heels inside. A short while later, Stiles broke Alvord out of the pokey and the two of them lit out for Mexico.

The Arizona Rangers invaded Mexico and, in 1904, engaged the two now-expatriates in a gun battle. They captured Alvord, but Stiles got away. After a brief stint in the Rangers under an assumed name, Stiles was killed a few years later while working as a lawman in Nevada, also under an assumed name. Alvord did two years in Yuma Territorial Prison and beat it for Panama upon his release.

H.D. Grunnels

Steam train, 1898

In 1898, Fort Worth, Texas, Assistant Police Chief H.D. Grunnels talked a gang of Oklahoma bank robbers out of robbing a local diamond merchant and into robbing a train in Saginaw, Texas, instead. Grunnels masterminded the operation, planning to apprehend the bandits after they made off with the money, then collect the reward and keep the loot.

The Apple Dumpling Gang might have performed the train heist with more aplomb. While crawling across the top of the coal tender to reach the engine, the gang’s leader slipped and accidentally discharged his pistol. His minions mistook the misfire as their signal to hop on the train and commence whatever mischief their roles required. Chaos ensued.

Meanwhile, Grunnels and a cadre of Fort Worth police officers not in on the plan raced to the rescue of a train that had yet to be robbed. The discombobulated robbers vamoosed. The Fort Worth Police Department became suspicious when it discovered Grunnels reached the scene of the crime before the crime had been reported. Grunnels was fired and indicted, but he disappeared before trial.

SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND: Weapons as Characters-- by Marc Cameron

My bride and I were out to dinner not too long ago with another couple. My wife and my friend’s wife are both teachers so they soon fell into deep discussions about the dark arts of education. I’d rather be in a running gun battle than face a bunch of eighth graders every day so my friend and I looked at each other and started our own conversation about deadly weapons—a subject far less dangerous than teaching middle school.
We started talking about what kind of guns we should get our wives—a tried but often failed ploy used by men for decades to get a new gun. Both women hit us with their withering teacher-stares and we switched gears, talking instead about our own favorite weapons—and weapons in movies and books.
Wyatt Earp had his long-nosed Buntline revolver, Mathew Quigley his Shilo Sharps long-range rifle.  Zorro is known for his sword, Jim Bowie for his big honkin’ knife, and Indiana Jones for his bullwhip. Josh Randall might have been just another bounty hunter without his short-barreled Mare’s Leg carbine. Harry Callahan would have had far fewer cool lines if he hadn’t  carried “…a .44 magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world…” And who could forget the captive bolt gun, Anton Chigurh uses in No Country For Old Men?
I could go on and on… Okay, one more.
James Bond carried a diminutive Beretta .25 until a reader named Geoffrey Boothroyd wrote Ian Fleming a letter suggesting that this was a lady’s gun. Fleming was so happy with the criticism and advice that he created a new character named Q (AKA Major Boothroyd) who armed Bond with a Walther PPK.
My point is, a weapon can become as much of a character as the heroes or villains.
In some ways the same is true in real life.
Thirty years ago when I started with a small police department near Fort Worth, few lawdogs carried anything but a revolver—big honkin’ revolvers that could double as a club if the need arose, but more on that later.
Except for the Texas Rangers.  One of my early mentors, Ranger Billy Peterson from Palo Pinto County, was fond of two sayings about the .45. “I carry a .45 because they don’t make a .46.” and “God must have intended us to carry a 1911. Otherwise, he’d never have put that little hollow in the small of our backs.”
It was nothing less than mystifying to a green recruit like me to work alongside a  Ranger wearing the big Colt on his hip. Not to tread on Jim G’s Ranger expertise, because I only claim to have worked with a few, but the men I knew all tricked out their pistols with carved ivory grips or inlaid rubies and the like. You could tell the Ranger if all you saw was his belt rig and sidearm.
I was young and inexperienced, but I knew I wanted that kind of swagger someday.
When the US Marshals hired me, they issued a .357 revolver. They’ve since gone to a uniform pistol (Glock) for everyone, but then, we could carry what we wanted providing it met certain criteria. As soon as I got out of the academy, I put my new revolver in the safe and got me a .45—because, well, you know.
My partner at that time was a former Texas Highway Patrolman and Vietnam veteran of the 173rd Airborne. He could shoot aspirin out of the air with a BB gun and was an incredible shot with his sidearm—a .357 revolver he called Becky Sue.
And boy was she beautiful—deep blue frame with a nickel cylinder, gold plated hammer and trigger and carved metal grips he’d found in Mexico. Becky Sue had class—and so did my partner. He went on to be appointed the US Marshal for East Texas by President G.W. Bush—leaving the rest of us PODs (plain old deputies) in the dust.
My next partner, a former Army Ranger, carried a .45 and was also incredible shot. He was known for carrying three or four knives on his person at any given time, including a push dagger. We got along famously. I went through a series of sidearms and knives over the next few years, trying to settle into my own brand of swagger and style.

My friend Ty and I at a cabin in Alaska. I'm armed here with a .44 Mag revolver--my wilderness gun

A good time to check gun-style status was when we were transporting outlaws. Walla Walla State Prison, in Washington, used a system where they lowered a bucket on a long rope from the guard tower. We would deposit all our guns and knives then watch as they were hauled back up, to see which item the guards ogled over the most. My stainless Smith and Wesson round butt .44 special with silver badges inlaid on pearl grips often won—wish I still had that gun…
Bad guys in real life have their signature weapons as well. Machine Gun Kelly even earned himself a name from his choice. I worked a Dixie Mafia trial in Hattiesburg years ago where one of the defendants was said to have used an icepick on his victims. One of our fugitives was known for using the buckle end of his belt on prostitutes.
These propensities for a favorite weapon often leads investigators straight back to the culprit. Just like boots leave a distinct print on the ground on which they step, weapons leave distinct marks when they do their damage. Caliber, blade size, shape of the blunt object, can all tie the perpetrator to the crime.
I once chased a guy into a little stop and rob after he bailed out of a stolen car. We nearly bowled the poor night clerk over as he ran into the restroom. He made the mistake of shoving a hand down the front of his pants turning what had been a scuffle into me drawing my sidearm. The door swung shut behind me knocking us together, but thankfully I didn’t shoot him. During the ensuing scrap he got clunked on the head with the barrel of my gun, the front sight of which nearly scalped him. Turned out he had a butterfly knife but was really just trying to flush some meth before I got too him. Later, at the hospital while they stapled the wound closed, the doc showed me how it was a good thing I’d told the truth because there were little bits of the orange insert from my front sight embedded in the car thief’s head.
I spend a considerable amount of time assigning particular weapons to the characters in my books, leaning on experience and observation over the years. When I was writing Westerns one of my characters named his guns—and one of those guns was named Clarice after my .44 Special. In my Thrillers, Jericho Quinn carries a Kimber 10mm (looks like my .45) and, in the first three books, a Japanese blade called Gentle Hand. In subsequent books he carries a blade designed by friends of mine called the Severance.  To some, the array of weapons my heroes employ might seem like overkill. But, when your job pushes you to run toward the sound of gunfire, there is no faster reload than a second gun. And, as fan once pointed out, if you’re wearing pants, you really should have a knife—or two.
If we’re doing it right, the weapons we choose as writers should lend a new layer to our characters. A full-grown man with a derringer for instance is a dandy and gambler. A .22 fitted with a suppressor spells assassin, while a Colt Walker just cries out to whack a surely bartender.
And a woman who carries a big gun is, well, pretty darn sexy in my book.  Hear that, sweetheart? 

Marc Cameron is a retired Chief Deputy US Marshal and 29-year law enforcement veteran. His short stories have appeared in BOYS’ LIFE Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post. He's published ten novels, six of them Westerns (several as a ghost writer and two under his pen name, Mark Henry).   

TIME OF ATTACK fourth in his Jericho Quinn Thriller series, will be released from Kensington February of 2014. 

Marc lives in Alaska with his beautiful bride and BMW motorcycle.

Visit him at:

www.marccameronbooks.com http://www.facebook.com/MarcCameronAuthor