Western Fictioneers: outlaws

Showing posts with label outlaws. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 25, 2021

IF IT'S IN THE PAPER - IT HAS TO BE TRUE

Post by Doris McCraw

writing fiction as Angela Raines

Those who know me, know I enjoy research and reading old news publications. Some of the pieces I read make me wonder if the 'reporter' was a frustrated fiction writer. And as we all know 'If it's in the paper - it has to be true."

Photo property of the author

In reading one of the publications from the town of Tin Cup from 1882, I knew I had to share it with you. If anyone knows the history of Tin Cup, especially their propensity to go through local 'lawmen' over short periods of time, this story is even more fun. Since I cannot copy and paste, for it is too long, I will share by re-typing. So from the 'Tin Cup Banner' of May 27, 1882, Volume I Number 38, I give you the story "The Man Who Smiles" from that publication, via the Detroit Free Press.

The man who smiles — a road agent with the record.

There is in the Detroit Work–house today a prisoner whose smile is as soft and sweet as a woman's, and the stranger who meets him is instinctively drawn toward him by his clear, blue eyes, soft voice and gentle smile. And yet that very man is accounted the shrewdest, sharpest and most "nervy" prisoner of the lot. The fact that two officers rode over 1000 miles with him, handcuffed and shackled and constantly watched, is proof of the above assertion. When they turn him over at last to the custody of the superintendent they left the following record on the books:

"Prisoner has been engaged in one train robbery at least, and in half a dozen stage and highway robberies. Has broken jail three times and bears the scars of several wounds. Has the reputation of being a shooter and a fighter; has killed at least three men; was a pal of Wild Bill; is supposed to know all the leading outlaws in the far West. Is sharp and crafty and has great nerve. Look out for him. Offense, highway robbery."

The "Smiller" has not yet exhibited the slightest desire to see the world outside the walls of the Work–house, but is reported to be one of the most orderly and quiet prisoners in the institution.

The first deadwood line stage robbed was the work of a single man, and if That man was not the prisoner we write of, then he has a twin brother. The robbery occurred just at sunset, 6 miles from

Deadwood. The stage contained seven men, all well armed. It was just rounding a thicket when a man stepped in front of the horses, halted them, and quietly said to the driver:

"If you pull the line until I am through I'll send you a bullet through your head!"

This was accompanied by such a soft, bland smile that the astonished driver yelled back:

"Stop your fooling, or I'll run over you."

But the smile was deceiving. Up came a navy revolver on line with the driver's eye, and his teeth chattered as he loosened the reins and soothed the horses. Yells and shouts were heard inside the stage, none of the passengers suspected what was happening until the road–agent pulled open one of the doors and called out:

"Now, then, gentlemen, please climb down!"

"Who the dickens are you?" was shouted at him by three or four in chorus, and his smile was honey itself he answered:

"I'll introduce myself directly. Come, gents — these shooters are in a hurry to hurt some one!"

He backed off a few feet, a revolver in either hand, and the passengers began climbing down.

"Leave your arms in the stage!" shouted "Smiller." "I'll pop the man who brings out any sort of weapon with him!,, Now — suns going down fast!"

There were seven revolvers and three Winchester rifles among the passengers, but that one man had the bulge on the crowd. Men are half disarmed when surprised. Coop them up in addition to the surprise, and pluck is gone. The road – agent knows this, and the fact is as good as a half a dozen men behind him.And as the last man left the coach the "Smiler" confronted the line and softly remarked:

"I will now trouble you to deposit your watches and money on the ground!"

With many a grown and curse and sigh the request was complied with. Those who had wallets lost all; those who had divided their money in different pockets save. Two of the seven had no watches to lose. After the last man had "deposited" the robber pointed to the open door of the stage and said:

"It's a tough country, and I won't take your weapons. Please climb in."

As the last man mounted the step the robber slipped behind the coach and called to the driver to go on at a gallop, at the same time firing three bullets over the coach to start things with the rush. Half a mile away the coach halted and the seven victims jumped Down with their arms, but the smiler" had disappeared with his booty.

Less than a month after the robbery related above, "smiler" was half asleep in a Custer City saloon, when in came a sharp known as "grizzly," accompanied by three or four men, whose admiration for his Bragg and bluster made them his backers. "Grizzly" wanted to fight some one, but he wanted to pick his man. When he saw the "smiler" dozing away in his chair he thought he had discovered a "tenderfoot" whom he could wallop. Without a word of warning he advanced and pulled the sleeper's nose. The soft smile came to the little man's face as he slowly rose up, and his voice was no more than a whisper as he inquired:

"Stranger, did ye mean that?"

"You bet!"

"Then sich of this crowd as don't like bullets had better git!"

Three or four men rushed out just as the revolvers commenced to speak. The "Smiler" was alone — the bully had three backers. For three or four minutes there was a constant pop! pop! of revolvers, and then two of "Grizzly's" friends rushed out and ran away, both wounded. Those who rushed in found the bully down and severely wounded and the other one stone dead, while they "smiler" was sitting on a bench reloading one of his revolvers. Thirty shots had been fired at him from a distance of 12 feet, and yet he had received only one slight flesh wound.

One day as for men rode out from Julesburg, Colo., they encountered a smiling stranger, who made several inquiries regarding the mines. They were giving him all possible information, when he suddenly interrupted the conversation with:

"Gentlemen, dismount and hold up!"

At the same time he covered the crowd with his shooters, and there was no alternative but to yield. The crowd Left him over $1,600, but it was his last robbery a large party were soon on his trail, and after dodging them for two or three days he was captured and given a sentence of ten years.

Photo property of the author

I hope you enjoyed this 'little piece' I shared. I did my best to copy it the way it appeared in the paper. I also confess, with my background in 'criminology' my eyes tend to go the articles about criminals and their exploits. Until next time, happy reading and writing and researching.

Doris Gardner-McCraw -

Author, Speaker, Historian-specializing in
Colorado and Women's History

Author of 'The Agate Gulch' Novellas and "The Kiowa Wells" Novels

Angela Raines - author: Telling Stories Where Love & History Meet

Books: Angela Raines Books

Website: Angela Raines - author

Angela Raines FaceBook: Click Here

Monday, January 28, 2019

The Strange Journey of Elmer McCurdy – The Outlaw Who Wouldn’t Give Up

Elmer McCurdy

What do an Oklahoma bandit, a traveling carnival, Skeletor, and the Six Million Dollar Man have in common? To find out, you need to know the story of Elmer McCurdy, the bungling outlaw who wouldn’t be taken alive, and who had more success in death than he ever did in life.

Elmer McCurdy was born on New Year’s Day in 1880 in the town of Washington in the southern part of Maine. He was the son of an unwed 17-year-old by the name of Sadie. The father was rumored to be Sadie’s cousin, Charles Smith, a name that McCurdy would use as one of his aliases during his later years. The baby was raised by Sadie’s brother George, and his wife Helen as their own. Ten years later, George died of tuberculosis, and Helen, Sadie, and Elmer moved sixty miles away to Bangor, Maine. Sometime during his teen years, Sadie confessed to Elmer that she was his real mother, not Helen, and that she wasn’t sure who his biological father was. During his mid-teen years, McCurdy worked with his grandfather as an apprentice plumber. He began drinking during this time, but was, by all accounts, a good worker.

In 1898, McCurdy lost his job, and in 1900 Sadie passed away, followed one month later by his grandfather. McCurdy left Maine after the death of his mother and grandfather and, over the course of the next few years, worked as a lead miner and as a plumber. His drinking continued and made it difficult for him to keep a steady job. On at least one occasion, in 1905, he was arrested for public intoxication.

Then in 1907, McCurdy joined the Army. He served as a machine gun operator at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He was honorably discharged from the Army in 1910. While in the Army, he gained some (little) knowledge of explosive ordinance, in particular, he learned how to work with nitroglycerin.

By 1911, McCurdy was living in Lenapah, Oklahoma where his short-lived career as a bungling bandit began. In March, he and three other men decided to rob the Iron Mountain-Missouri Pacific train. They stopped the train and located the safe, but McCurdy used too much nitro to blow the safe open and wound up destroying most of the money that was inside. Instead of making off with the four-thousand dollars that were inside the safe, they only managed to salvage four-hundred and fifty dollars, including silver coins that were melted and fused together.

Later that same year, in September, McCurdy and two of his gang attempted to rob the Citizens Bank in Chautauqua, Kansas with pretty much the same results. McCurdy, using nitroglycerin to blow open the door of the bank’s outer vault, wound up blasting the door of the vault through the bank, destroying the interior of the bank, but leaving the safe inside the vault untouched. Before they were able to successfully blow open the safe, their lookout man was scared off, so the remaining bandits grabbed one-hundred and fifty dollars in coins and fled.

The Guthrie Daily Leader October 09, 1911

The final entry in his criminal log took place on October 4, 1911, near Okesa, Oklahoma. McCurdy and his accomplices had heard that a particular train was carrying four-hundred thousand dollars that was on its way to the Osage Nation. However, in his usual bungling style, McCurdy and his gang stopped the wrong train. This was a passenger train with no big payday for the bandits. Instead of the four hundred thousand dollars they were expecting, they made off with forty-six dollars, a pocket watch, a coat, a revolver, and two jugs of whiskey.

McCurdy fled to a ranch belonging to a friend of his named Charlie Revard near Bartlesville, Oklahoma. He spent the next couple of days hiding out in a hay shed, drinking the stolen whiskey. On the morning of October 7^th, a posse, which had trailed him to the ranch, surrounded the hay shed and a gunfight ensued which lasted about an hour before McCurdy was killed by a single shot to the chest.

McCurdy’s body was taken to nearby Pawhuska, Oklahoma, to the Johnson Funeral Home where his body was embalmed with an arsenic-based embalming fluid that was in common use at the time. This type of embalming fluid was used, particularly when they weren’t sure if the body would be claimed by anyone within a reasonable amount of time because it helped preserve the features of the body for a longer period.

It’s probably a good thing that the undertaker, Joseph L. Johnson, used this method because McCurdy’s body went unclaimed for the next five years. Sometime during this five years, the enterprising undertaker decided that he might as well make some of his money back while he was waiting for someone to come and claim the body, so he propped McCurdy up in a coffin and charged onlookers five cents apiece to see “The Bandit Who Wouldn’t Give Up.” People would drop their nickels into McCurdy’s open mouth where they would later be retrieved by Johnson, who wound up making quite a substantial side income from McCurdy’s corpse.

Finally, in October of 1916, two men showed up claiming to be McCurdy’s brothers. After convincing Johnson and the Osage County Sheriff of their rightful claim to the body, they took possession and hauled McCurdy away to give him a proper burial. As it turned out, the two men weren’t McCurdy’s brothers at all. Instead, they were two carnival promoters named James and Charles Patterson, owners of the Great Patterson Carnival Show. After hearing of the success of Johnson in exhibiting McCurdy’s body to the public, they concocted the scheme to get McCurdy for their own use. For the next six years, “The Outlaw Who Would Never Be Captured Alive” traveled the country with the Patterson carnival. This was just the beginning of McCurdy’s strange journey.

In 1922, James Patterson sold his carnival to a man named Louis Sonney who operated the traveling “Museum of Crime” which featured wax figures of famous outlaws. In 1933, Sonney loaned the body out to director Dwain Esper who used it to promote his film "Narcotic." Esper would prop McCurdy’s body up in the lobby of movie theaters as an example of what drug addiction would do to a person.

Sonney died in 1949, and McCurdy’s body was placed in storage in Los Angeles for fifteen years. Then in 1964, Louis’s son Dan lent the body to another filmmaker, David F. Friedman, where it played a part in his 1967 film "She Freak."

In 1968, Dan Sonney sold the body, along with some wax figures, to the Hollywood Wax Museum. The owner, Spoony Singh, allowed the body to be exhibited in a show at Mount Rushmore. By now, the corpse had deteriorated quite a bit, the body shrinking in size and the skin hardening and tightening. To add insult to injury, while at Mount Rushmore, McCurdy sustained some damage, losing the tips of his ears and some fingers and toes in a windstorm. By now, he was probably already thought to be an actual wax figure. Singh retired poor old McCurdy until 1976 when he sold him to Ed Liersch who was part owner of an amusement park in Long Beach, California, where McCurdy found a place hanging from a gallows in the “Laff in the Dark” funhouse.

The amusement park, called the Pike, was in a rough part of town with tattoo parlors and bars, and it provided a rather seedy atmosphere that attracted several television shows including Columbo and The Six Million Dollar Man. It was on December 8^th, 1976, when the production crew for The Six Million Dollar Man was preparing to film a scene in the funhouse at the Pike when a crew member went to move the body of Elmer McCurdy. The body had a waxy complexion and had been painted orange and looked out of place in the scene. When the crew member picked up the body, an arm fell off revealing human bone and tissue.

The authorities were called and over the next few days, a number of clues helped them to identify the body as that of the Oklahoma bandit, Elmer McCurdy. Among these clues were a 1924 penny and ticket stubs to Louis Sonney’s Museum of Crime that were lodged inside the throat of the corpse.

The Chief Medical Examiner for Los Angeles County allowed the body to be turned over to officials from Oklahoma, and on April 22, 1977, Elmer McCurdy reached his final destination in the Boot Hill section of the Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma. Two feet of concrete was poured over the casket before the grave was filled in – just to make sure that McCurdy stayed put. As fate would have it, Elmer McCurdy, the bungling bandit who never pulled off a successful heist, was laid to rest next to one of the most successful outlaws in the history of the American west – Bill Doolin, founder of the Wild Bunch. Whether McCurdy has picked up any pointers from Doolin since being interred next to him is a matter of speculation.

Final resting place - Doolin and McCurdy

Although McCurdy was finally laid to rest, his influence continues. He has been the subject of several documentaries and television shows. He was the inspiration for a 2009 song entitled, “Body of an Outlaw” by the group Rotary Downs. He was the inspiration for the mystery book, “The Castlemaine Murders” by Kerry Greenwood. He even has a pizza named after him in the Washington General Store in his hometown of Washington, Maine. He is also suspected of being the inspiration behind the highly popular Jonah Hex comics and film franchise, as well as the inspiration of the Mattel toy, Skeletor, who was created by a Mattel toy engineer after recalling a scary afternoon in the Laff-In-The-Dark Funhouse in Long Beach as a child.

SDG

About the Author

Mike Ritt describes himself as Conservative, Christian, Pro-life, and Pro-gun. He is a 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, poetry, and humorous fiction and has been published in a number of anthologies and magazines. He has finished his first western fiction novel and is patiently waiting for publication. You can visit his blog and his Facebook page by clicking on the following links: http://michaelrritt.blogspot.com
https://www.facebook.com/MichaelRRittAuthor

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

COLORADO'S UNCOMFORTABLE HISTORY - LYNCHING

When you think of Colorado, you think skiing, mountains, and hiking or driving some remarkably beautiful scenery. However, as I work on my paper for the PPLD Annual History Symposium, this years topic, 'Remarkable Rascals, Despicable Dudes, & Hidden Heroes of the Pikes Peak Region', I ran across the need to research lynching for my despicable dude. While an uncomfortable subject, it became important to the story. You see, the 'Despicable Dude' I'm researching was allegedly almost lynched twice.

It is said that lynching as we know it took its name from from Lynch Law, usually attributed to Charles Lynch of Virginia. There are also those who claim it was William Lynch, also of Virginia, that should be accredited. Either way, there seems to be no evidence that either were responsible for the death of any person they sentenced. Lynch law was considered as imposing extrajudicial punishment.

In Colorado, lynching usually resulted in the death by hanging. In the book "Lynching in Colorado, 1859-1919" by Stephen J. Leonard, the author states there were 175 documented cases where a lynching occurred, although most agree there were more that were not documented.

As seen by this article from the Fairplay Flume Aug 30 1888, lynching was a much used word in the papers and for certain areas of Colorado, a not unusual, although not frequent, occurrence.

"The following special appeared in the Leadville Journal : Glenwood Springs, Aug . 24 .James Riland Sr., well known throughout Colorado, especially in Leadville, was shot through the breast by C . A . Babcock. The cause of the shooting is unknown. Babcock has given himself up . Jamea Riland Jr. has gone to his father's ranch to look after tbe old gentleman . It is said that lynching may follow if the wounds prove fatal."

Or this short notice in the Ft, Collins Courier from April 19, 1888

"A lynching took place at Cheyenne Wells, on Monday, a man named Franklin Baker being the victim. Baker had the day before killed two young men, named J . B . McConnell and John C . Morrison because in looking for land they bad crossed Baker's field contrary to his orders. Baker was hung to a coal chute a short distance from the depot."

A more complete story of lynching appeared in the Colorado Springs Gazette on July 28, 1877

"LYNCHING AT LA VETA . A dispatch from La Veta , dated last Tuesday, says: The jail guard at this place was overpowered last night by a vigilance committee, and Marcus Gonzales, the murderer of the Browns, taken from custody and lynched to a telegraph pole in the public square. The murder, which occurred near this place in November last, was one of the most brutal recorded in the annals of crime, an aged couple being the victims and money the incentive. Gonzales went to the house of the unfortunate family and asked to stay over night, and killed Mr. Brown while he was caring for his horse . Returning to the house the wretch killed Mrs. Brown and left their daughter, Mrs . Rice, for-dead, obtaining the paltry sum of four dollars for his butchery; The murderer escaped to New Mexico, but was hunted down by detectives and brought back here for trial, and upon a preliminary examination was positively identified by Mrs. Rice, who, pointing to Gonzales, said : You are the man who murdered my father and mother and nearly killed me. He was also suspected of several other murders. The lynching took place at 11 pm . About seventy five men participated. They were quiet and orderly but determined ."

The idea of lynching was not wholly accepted by the populace as evidenced by this piece in the Colorado Daily Chieftain from January 22, 1884.

:"The saddest thing about the Ouray lynching is the fact that it made an orphan of a little two year old girl. It is said that the people of Ouray endorse the action of the mob, but we predict that they will soon regret it. That act has placed a stigma upon Ouray which will require many years to outlive and wipe from the memories of law abiding people."

Yet, searching the early newspapers during the time my 'despicable dude' was suppose to be active show no reports of his being threatened with a lynching in the regions he was active in. Colorado has a history of extrajudicial punishment. An author friend had a relative who was 'lynched' in Canon City, Colorado. She has researched and written about the event, including the writing of a song.

As Colorado went from birth to statehood and beyond, it was paved with many events including lynching. Not pretty, not necessarily something you talk about, but a part of the history.

For those who want to find out more about Lynching in Colorado, the book mentioned above is a place to start. There is also those searchable resources such as 19th Century Newspapers, Newspaper Archives and Colorado Historic Newspapers.

Doris Gardner-McCraw -

Author, Speaker, Historian-specializing in
Colorado and Women's History

Member of National League of American Pen Women,

Women Writing the West,

Pikes Peak Posse of the Westerners

Angela Raines - author: Where Love & History Meet

For a list of Angela Raines Books: Here

Photo and Poem: Click Here

Angela Raines FaceBook: Click Here

Monday, December 14, 2015

‘You Take that Back!’ — Texas Feuds

By Kathleen Rice Adams

The notorious Hatfield clan, 1897

Although lesser known than the notorious Hatfield-McCoy fracas that claimed about a dozen lives along the West Virginia-Kentucky state line between 1865 and 1888, six and a half of the ten bloodiest American feuds took place in Texas.

Yes, six and a half. Just hold your horses and I’ll explain.

Two of Texas’s feuds were deadlier than the quarrel between the Hatfields and McCoys, and most of them erupted over a bigger insult than laying claim to a wayward pig.

In ascending order of body count, the feuds were…

Early vs. Hasley, 1865-69

Sam Hasley did not take it well when he returned from fighting for the Confederacy to discover his elderly father had been roughed up by a member of the Union occupation force sent to keep order in Texas during Reconstruction. Hasley vowed vengeance not only upon the culprit, John Early, but also on every other Federal in Bell County. He and the friends and family who gathered around him openly defied the authorities, leading the Early faction to accuse Hasley’s group of any crime of any kind anywhere in the vicinity. Yankee soldiers ambushed and killed one of the Hasley contingent in mid-1869, effectively disbanding the gang. One rogue member, however, pursued one of Early’s friends into Arkansas and killed him later that year. Sam Hasley went on to become a deputy sheriff. In 1889, drunk on duty, he was shot and killed by a deputy city marshal while resisting arrest in Temple, Texas. Body count: two.

Reese vs. Townsend, 1898-1907

A plantation house in Columbus, Texas, ca. 1840

The Reeses and the Townsends got crossways over politics. U.S. Senator Mark Townsend, the Boss Tweed of Columbus, Texas, withdrew his support from incumbent sheriff Sam Reese and threw his considerable political clout behind former deputy Larkin Hope instead. When Hope ended up on the wrong end of a broad daylight assassination in downtown Columbus, Reese was the most likely suspect, though no evidence surfaced. Townsend’s handpicked replacement won the election. Perturbed by the unanticipated turn of events, Reese picked a gunfight with a Townsend supporter, thereby moving out of politics and into a casket. The former sheriff’s family vowed to avenge him, provoking five shootouts in Columbus over the following six years. Four combatants died, including Sam Reese’s brother Dick. Body count: six.

Horrell vs. Higgins, 1874-1877

Lampasas, Texas, ca. 1882

When the five Horrell brothers—Ben, Mart, Tom, Merritt, and Sam—took it on the lam to Lincoln County, New Mexico, in order to avoid a murder rap in Texas, they probably didn’t plan to leave one of their number under six feet of dirt before scrambling back to Lampasas barely ahead of a posse. They fared no better in their hometown, running afoul of former friend and neighbor John “Pink” Higgins right away. Higgins accused the high-spirited Horrell boys of rustling cattle…and that’s when the trouble started. A jury acquitted the Horrells of all charges, but continuing ill will led to Merritt Horrell’s death at Higgins’s hand during a saloon fight. Folks lined up behind both families, swore to wipe the opposing faction from the face of the planet, and set about their task with admirable devotion. By the time the Texas Rangers put an end to the running gun battles in June 1877, four men were dead, dozens more were injured, and the three remaining Horrell brothers were behind bars. Although they were released in short order, two of the three were arrested on suspicion of murdering a shopkeeper less than a year later. A vigilante gang shot them to death in their jail cells. The feud ended when both sides signed a written promise to leave one another alone. Amazingly, they kept their word. Body count: seven.

Boyce vs. Sneed, 1911-1912

1912 New York Times report
about the Boyce-Sneed
disagreement. (Click to read.)

Wealthy ranchers John Beal Sneed and Albert Boyce, Jr. came to blows over Sneed’s wife. After more than a decade of marriage and two children, in 1911 Lena Sneed admitted to having an affair with Boyce and asked for a divorce. Sneed straightaway had her committed to an asylum. Boyce rescued the damsel in distress, and the couple ran off to Canada. Incensed when kidnapping charges were dropped, Sneed upped the ante: In early 1912, he murdered Boyce’s unarmed father in the lobby of a Fort Worth hotel. Widely publicized court proceedings ended in a mistrial, spurring a mob of Boyce supporters to storm the courthouse and kill four men. Sneed’s father was the next to go, in an alleged murder-suicide. Although John and Lena Sneed reconciled in mid-1912, he could not let the insult go: Wearing a disguise, he shot and killed Boyce in broad daylight on a Fort Worth street and then surrendered at the county courthouse. Juries later acquitted Sneed of all charges, calling the killings justifiable homicide. Body count: eight.

Sutton vs. Taylor, 1866-1877

former Texas Ranger Creed Taylor, ca. 1880

Dewitt County Deputy Sheriff William Sutton set off the longest-lasting and most widespread feud in Texas history when, in three separate 1866 incidents, he shot and killed three members of former Texas Ranger Creed Taylor’s family. In 1867, two more Taylors died while Sutton was attempting to arrest them on a minor charge. After adopting the motto “Who sheds a Taylor’s blood, by a Taylor’s hand must fall,” the Taylors retaliated by killing two Sutton allies. Mob violence, ambushes, prison breaks, and lynchings ensued. Sutton himself was gunned down while attempting to board a steamboat and high-tail it out of the area. After numerous attempts at peacemaking failed, Texas Ranger Captain Leander McNelly and his Special Force put a stop to the violence. Body count: at least 35.

Lee vs. Peacock, 1866-1871

Fighting Over a Stolen Herd, Frederic Remington, 1895

Only Arizona’s Pleasant Valley War, which took the lives of twenty to fifty men between 1887 and 1892, outstripped the Lee-Peacock feud of northeast Texas. Like the Early-Hasley dustup, the Lee-Peacock fandango grew out of lingering animosity over the Civil War. Confederate veteran Bob Lee butted heads with an organization of Union supporters, leading Lewis Peacock, the leader of the Union bunch, to round up a posse and arrest Lee for alleged war crimes. To “settle the charges,” Peacock seized Lee’s valuables and exacted a promissory note for $2,000. Lee won a subsequent lawsuit, earning an assassination attempt along with the money. His doctor was murdered while Lee convalesced in the medic’s home. Thereafter, Northeast Texas fractured along Union-Confederacy lines and bands of armed men proceeded to track down and do away with their ideological opponents. The Fourth United States Cavalry’s arrival to end the fracas only made things worse: Although a house-to-house search failed to turn up Lee, it sparked several more gun battles. Lee was betrayed by one of his own men in 1869 and died during the cavalry’s attempt to arrest him. Fighting continued until Peacock’s shooting death in 1871. Body count: about fifty.

And now for the one-half Texas feud…

Brooks vs. McFarland, 1896-1902

Although most of the violence took place on Oklahoma land belonging the Creek Nation, a fatal attempt to rob a former Texas Ranger started the fight. After would-be robber Thomas Brooks was killed, family patriarch Willis Brooks accused neighbor Jim McFarland of planning the unsuccessful crime and then tipping off the Ranger. Not disposed to sit idly by and watch the family name besmirched, the McFarlands lined up behind Jim and faced off with the Brooks clan. Both sides vowed to shoot members of the other on sight. The conflict came to a head in a Spokogee, Oklahoma, gunfight in September 1902, when Willis Brooks and his son Clifton were killed along with a McFarland family ally. The survivors were arrested, but allowing them to make bail may have been a mistake: One month later, Jim McFarland died in an ambush at his home. McFarland’s death put an end to the feud.

A Texan to the bone, Kathleen Rice Adams spends her days chasing news stories and her nights and weekends shooting it out with Wild West desperados. Leave the upstanding, law-abiding heroes to other folks. In Kathleen’s stories, even the good guys wear black hats.

Her short story “The Second-Best Ranger in Texas” won the coveted 2015 Peacemaker Award for Best Western Short Fiction. Her novel Prodigal Gun received a 2015 Peacemaker nomination for Best First Western Novel.

Visit her hideout on the web at KathleenRiceAdams.com.

Monday, April 13, 2015

Wild West Words: Outside the Law

Thomas Mitchell, Jack Buetel, and Walter Huston in
The Outlaw (HowardHughesProductions, 1941)

By Kathleen Rice Adams

The American West provided fertile ground for mangling the English language. I suppose that shouldn’t surprise anyone. After all, when folks weren’t shooting it out, rounding up ornery cattle, protecting their scalps, or gambling, they had to fill the empty hours somehow.

Some Old West words and phrases represented modifications to the meaning of existing terms. Others arose from mispronunciation. Quite a few someone simply made up. Many remain in use today, though sometimes only in regional dialect.

Some of the following terms applied to outlaws and outlawry are older than one might imagine. Western authors may be dismayed to find others are newer than they hoped.

Buscadero: gunfighter. From the Spanish buscadero, literally a searcher. The origin of the slang usage is obscure; possibly “seeking trouble.”

Bushwhacker: cowardly enemy who strikes from ambush. Americanism; arose c. 1809. Oddly, the verb “bushwhack” arose later, c. 1837. During the American Civil War (at least from 1862-1865), “bushwhacker” acquired a less-pejorative connotation, meaning any irregular who took to the woods to strike from cover and then vanish. The term was applied in equal measure to both friend and foe.

Release flier for The Law
and the Outlaw, 1913

Cabrón: an outlaw of low breeding and even lower principles. In Spanish, the word means “goat.” Origin of the slang usage is obscure.

Cold-blooded: unfeeling, dispassionate, cruel. Arose c. 1828 from the old (1600s) notion that excitement increased human blood temperature. Reptiles have been called cold-blooded since about 1600, and the reptilian image also played into the description as applied to killers and other reprehensible sorts who acted without apparent regret.

Cold lead: from the mid-1800s until the 1920s, a bullet. About 1920, usage changed and “hot lead” became slang for bullets. The reason is unclear.

Cowboy of the Pecos: rustler, based on the notion safety could be found in the lawless area around Texas’ Pecos River.

Dressed to kill: double entendre meaning not only that a man wearing two guns most likely was a killer, but also that wearing a double rig (a holstered pistol on each hip) made it difficult for a gunman to do anything with either hand without implying a threat; therefor, dudes who adopted the practice were likely to be killed.

Dry-gulch: to ambush someone, particularly in a cowardly manner.

Get the drop on: to obtain a marked advantage, especially with the help of a gun. Probably dates to the California gold rush of 1849, when claim-jumpers sometimes seemed to materialize from the ether before hijacking a profitable claim at gunpoint. First documented appearance in print 1869 in Alexander K. McClure’s Three Thousand Miles through the Rocky Mountains: “So expert is he with his faithful pistol, that the most scientific of rogues have repeatedly attempted in vain to get ‘the drop’ on him.”

GTT: on the wrong side of the law. Short for "gone to Texas," this usage dates at least to the Civil War, when deserters and other former soldiers from both armies — suddenly unemployed and inured to violence — migrated to still-wild, wide-open Texas, “lost” their names, and took up outlawry. (Originally, “Gone to Texas” was the phrase families ruined by the financial panic of 1819 painted on doors and fence signs before lighting out to begin anew in greener pastures south of the Mexican border.) In his 1857 book Journey through Texas, Frederick Law Olmstead noted that many newcomers to the state were suspected of having skipped out on something “discreditable” back home. Thomas Hughes, in his 1884 book G.T.T., wrote “When we want to say that it is all up with some fellow, we just say, ‘G.T.T.’ as you’d say, ‘gone to the devil,’ or ‘gone to the dogs.’”

Days on the Range (Hands Up!)
by Frederic Remington

Gun: until the early 20th Century, cannon or long guns like shotguns and rifles. Handguns were called pistols or — after Samuel Colt introduced his first patented repeating revolver in 1836 — six-guns or six-shooters.

Gunman: shootist; gunfighter. First recorded use 1903 in a New York newspaper. (Gunsman, with an S in the middle, arose on the American frontier during the Revolutionary period.)

Gun shark: gunfighter. Arose mid-1800s from the earlier (1700s) use of “shark” to indicate a voracious or predatory person, based on the reputation of the fish.

Heeled up: armed. Arose ca. 1866 from the 1560s usage of “heel” to mean attaching spurs to a gamecock’s feet.

Hogleg: large revolver. Originally referred to the Bisley single-action Colt (first manufactured 1894), but later generalized to any big pistol.

Holdup: a robbery. American English colloquialism, 1851. The verb “to hold up,” meaning “to stop by force and rob,” didn’t arise until 1887, apparently from the robbers’ command to raise hands. “Hold up,” meaning to delay, dates to 1837.

Hustler: thief, especially one who roughs up his victims. Arose 1825. Sense of “energetic worker” is from 1884; sense of “prostitute” dates from 1924.

Lam: to run off. U.S. slang dating to 1886; of uncertain origin. “On the lam,” meaning flight to avoid prosecution or consequences, arose c. 1897.

On the cuidado: running from the law. From the Spanish warning ten cuidado, which means “be careful.”

Owlhoot: outlaw. “Riding the owlhoot trail” referred to a man who had left the straight and narrow to become an outlaw. One explanation of origin came from a man living in the Indian Territory of eastern Oklahoma around 1870. He claimed the name came about from the Indians in the area using owl hoots to signal danger or someone’s approach. Another tale indicates outlaws were called “owlhoots” because, when they were getting ready to ambush somebody in the dark, they would imitate the hooting of owls to signal one another.

Jesse James' Oath, or Tracked to Death by W.B.
Lawson (Street & Smith Publishers, Dec. 1897)

Pecos swap: theft. Again, based on the reputation of Texas’s Pecos River area.

Pistolero: expert with a handgun. Adopted from Mexican Spanish, in which the word has the same meaning.

Rattlesnaked: ambushed (literally or figuratively) in a particularly devious or cunning way. Dates at least to 1818.

Safecracker (also safe-cracker): individual with a talent for liberating money from locked vaults. Arose ca. 1897, as a reference to robbers who used dynamite to thwart security boxes.

Shootist: expert marksman. Arose 1864.

Sidewinder: dangerously cunning or devious person. Arose American West ca. 1875 as a reference to some species of rattlesnakes’ “peculiar lateral movement.”

Stickup: robbery at gunpoint. Arose 1887 from the earlier (1846) verb “stick up,” meaning to rob someone at gunpoint. The phrase “stick up for,” meaning defend, is from 1823. The archaic noun “stick-up” arose ca. 1857 as a colloquial term for a stand-up collar.

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

WESTERN TRAIL BLAZER New Releases

Troy D. Smith

We have several treats for you this month at Western Trail Blazer. In addition to our new novels and short stories, we have a special anthology edited by Jeremy L. C. Jones called Fathers, featuring three stories each by Wayne Dundee, John Duncklee, John Nesbitt, and Troy D. Smith. We also have a short story collection by Phil Dunlap, Diablo Smith, and four ebook singles that are previews of the collection Tie One to That! by Lynn Veach Sadler, due out later this month.

You won't want to miss any of them.

I've also tagged on a couple of new releases from our sister imprint, Windigo Books, for those who like their fiction on the eerie side.