PLENTY of six-shooter play is to be found in most of the books about
old-time cowboys; yet hardly one of the professional bad men was a
representative cowboy. Bad men of the West and cowboys alike wore
six-shooters and spurs; they drank each other's coffee; they had a
fanatical passion for liberty--for themselves. But the representative
cowboy was a reliable hand, hanging through drought, blizzard, and high
water to his herd, whereas the bona fide bad man lived on the dodge.
Between the killer and the cowboy standing up for his rights or merely
shooting out the lights for fun, there was as much difference as between
Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill. Of course, the elements were mixed
in the worst of the bad men, as they are in the best of all good men. No
matter what deductions analysis may lead to, the fact remains that the
western bad men of open range days have become a part of the American
tradition. They represent six-shooter culture at its zenith--the wild
and woolly side of the West--a stage between receding bowie knife
individualism of the backwoods and blackguard, machine-gun gangsterism
of the city.
The songs about Sam Bass, Jesse James, and Billy the Kid reflect popular
attitude toward the hard-riding outlaws. Sam Bass, Jesse James, Billy
the Kid, the Daltons, Cole Younger, Joaquin Murrieta, John Wesley
Hardin, Al Jennings, Belle Starr, and other "long riders" with their
guns in their hands have had their biographies written over and over.
They were not nearly as immoral as certain newspaper columnists lying
under the cloak of piety. As time goes on, they, like antique
Robin Hood and the late Pancho Villa, recede from all realistic
judgment. If the picture show finds in them models for generosity,
gallantry, and fidelity to a code of liberty, and if the public finds
them picturesque, then philosophers may well be thankful that they
lived, rode, and shot.
{illust. caption = Tom Lea: Pancho Villa, in _Southwest Review_ (1951)}
"The long-tailed heroes of the revolver," to pick a phrase from Mark
Twain's unreverential treatment of them in _Roughing It_, often
did society a service in shooting each other--aside from providing
entertainment to future generations. As "The Old Cattleman" of Alfred
Henry Lewis' _Wolfville_ stories says, "A heap of people need a heap
of killing." Nor can the bad men be logically segregated from the
long-haired killers on the side of the law like Wild Bill Hickok and
Wyatt Earp. W. H. Hudson once advanced the theory that bloodshed and
morality go together. If American civilization proceeds, the rage for
collecting books on bad men will probably subside until a copy of Miguel
Antonio Otero's _The Real Billy the Kid_ will bring no higher price
than a first edition of A. Edward Newton's _The Amenities of
Book-Collecting_.
See "Fighting Texians," "Texas Rangers," "Range Life," "Cowboy Songs and
Other Ballads."
AIKMAN, DUNCAN. _Calamity Jane and the Lady Wildcats_, 1927. OP.
Patronizing in the H. L. Mencken style.
BILLY THE KID. We ve got to take him seriously, not so much for what he
was--
There are twenty-one men I have put bullets through,
And Sheriff Pat Garrett must make twenty-two--
as for his provocations. Popular imagination, represented by writers of
all degrees, goes on playing on him with cumulative effect. As a figure
in literature the Kid has come to lead the whole field of western
bad men. The _Saturday Review_, for October 11, 1952, features a
philosophical essay entitled "Billy the Kid: Faust in America--The
Making of a Legend." The growth of this legend is minutely traced
through a period of seventy-one years (1881-1952) by J. C. Dykes in
_Billy the Kid: The Bibliography of a Legend_, University of New Mexico
Press, Albuquerque, 1952 (186 pages). It lists 437 titles, including
magazine pieces, mimeographed plays, motion pictures, verses, pamphlets,
fiction. In a blend of casualness and scholarship, it gives the
substance and character of each item. Indeed, this bibliography reads
like a continued story, with constant references to both antecedent
and subsequent action. Pat Garrett, John Chisum, and other related
characters weave all through it. A first-class bibliography that is also
readable is almost a new genre.
Pat F. Garrett, sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico, killed the Kid
about midnight, July 14, 1881. The next spring his _Authentic Life
of Billy the Kid_ was published at Santa Fe, at least partly written,
according to good evidence, by a newspaperman named Ash Upton. This
biography is one of the rarities in Western Americana. In 1927 it was
republished by Macmillan, New York, under title of _Pat F. Garrett's
Authentic Life of Billy the Kid_, edited by Maurice G. Fulton. This is
now OP but remains basic. The most widely circulated biography has been
_The Saga of Billy the Kid_ by Walter Noble Burns, New York, 1926.
It contains a deal of fictional conversation and it has no doubt
contributed to the Robin-Hoodizing of the lethal character baptized as
William H. Bonney, who was born in New York in 1859 and now lives with
undiminished vigor as Billy the Kid. Walter Noble Burns was not so
successful with _The Robin Hood of El Dorado: The Saga of Joaquin
Murrieta_ (1932), or, despite hogsheads of blood, with _Tombstone_
(1927).
CANTON, FRANK M. _Frontier Trails_, Boston, 1930.
COE, GEORGE W. _Frontier Fighter_, Boston, 1934; reprinted by University
of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. The autobiography of one of Billy the
Kid's men as recorded by Nan Hillary Harrison.
COOLIDGE, DANE. _Fighting Men of the West_, New York, 1932. Biographical
sketches. OP.
CUNNINGHAM, EUGENE. _Triggernometry_, 1934; reprinted by Caxton,
Caldwell, Idaho. Excellent survey of codes and characters. Written by a
man of intelligence and knowledge. Bibliography.
FORREST, E. R. _Arizona's Dark and Bloody Ground_, Caxton, Caldwell,
Idaho, 1936.
GARD, WAYNE. _Sam Bass_, Boston, 1936. Most of the whole truth. OP.
HALEY, J. EVETTS. _Jeff Milton--A Good Man with a Gun_, University of
Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1949. Jeff Milton the whole man as well as the
queller of bad men.
HENDRICKS, GEORGE. _The Bad Man of the West_, Naylor, San Antonio, 1941.
Analyses and classifications go far toward making this treatment of old
subjects original. Excellent bibliographical guide.
HOUGH, EMERSON. _The Story of the Outlaw_, 1907. OP. An omnibus
carelessly put together with many holes in it.
LAKE, STUART. _Wyatt Earp_, Boston, 1931. Best written of all gunmen
biographies. Earp happened to be on the side of the law.
LANKFORD, N. P. _Vigilante Days and Ways_, 1890, 1912. OP. Full
treatment of lawlessness in the Northwest.
LOVE, ROBERTUS. _The Rise and Fall of Jesse James_, New York, 1926.
Excellently written. OP.
RAINE, WILLIAM MCLEOD. _Famous s and Western Outlaws_, Doubleday, Garden
City, N. Y., 1929. A rogues' gallery. _Guns of the Frontier_, Boston,
1940. Another miscellany. OP.
RASCOE, BURTON. _Belle Starr_, New York, 1941. OP.
RIPLEY, THOMAS. _They Died with Their Boots On_, 1935. Mostly about John
Wesley Hardin. OP.
SABIN, EDWIN L. _Wild Men of the Wild West_, New York, 1929. Biographic
survey of killers from the Mississippi to the Pacific. OP.
WILD BILL HICKOK. The subject of various biographies, among them
those by Frank J. Wilstach (1926) and William E. Connelley (1933). The
_Nebraska History Magazine_ (Volume X) for April-June 1927 is devoted to
Wild Bill and contains a "descriptive bibliography" on him by Addison E.
Sheldon.
WOODHULL, FROST. Folk-Lore Shooting, in _Southwestern Lore_, Publication
IX of the Texas Folklore Society, 1931. Rich. Humor.