The Imitation Desperado--_The Cheap "Long-Hair"_--_A Desperado in
Appearance, a Coward at Heart_--_Some Desperadoes Who Did Not "Stand the
Acid."_
The counterfeit bad man, in so far as he has a place in literature, was
largely produced by Western consumptives for Eastern consumption.
Sometimes he was in person manufactured in the East and sent West. It is
easy to see the philosophical difference between the actual bad man of
the West and the imitation article. The bad man was an evolution; the
imitation bad man was an instantaneous creation, a supply arising full
panoplied to fill a popular demand. Silently there arose, partly in the
West and partly in the East, men who gravely and calmly proceeded to
look the part. After looking the part for a time, to their own
satisfaction at least, and after taking themselves seriously as
befitted the situation, they, in very many instances, faded away and
disappeared in that Nowhere whence they came. Some of them took
themselves too seriously for their own good. Of course, there existed
for some years certain possibilities that any one of these bad men might
run against the real thing.
There always existed in the real, sober, level-headed West a contempt
for the West-struck man who was not really bad, but who wanted to seem
"bad." Singularly enough, men of this type were not so frequently local
products as immigrants. The "bootblack bad man" was a character
recognized on the frontier--the city tough gone West with ambitions to
achieve a bad eminence. Some of these men were partially bad for a
while. Some of them, no doubt, even left behind them, after their sudden
funerals, the impression that they had been wholly bad. You cannot
detect all the counterfeit currency in the world, severe as the test for
counterfeits was in the old West. There is, of course, no great amount
of difference between the West and the East. All America, as well as the
West, demanded of its citizens nothing so much as genuineness. Yet the
Western phrase, to "stand the acid," was not surpassed in graphic
descriptiveness. When an imitation bad man came into a town of the old
frontier, he had to "stand the acid" or get out. His hand would be
called by some one. "My friend," said old Bob Bobo, the famous
Mississippi bear hunter, to a man who was doing some pretty loud
talking, "I have always noticed that when a man goes out hunting for
trouble in these bottoms, he almost always finds it." Two weeks later,
this same loud talker threatened a calm man in simple jeans pants, who
took a shotgun and slew him impulsively. Now, the West got its hot blood
largely from the South, and the dogma of the Southern town was the same
in the Western mining town or cow camp--the bad man or the would-be bad
man had to declare himself before long, and the acid bottle was always
close at hand.
That there were grades in counterfeit bad men was accepted as a truth on
the frontier. A man might be known as dangerous, as a murderer at heart,
and yet be despised. The imitation bad man discovered that it is
comparatively easy to terrify a good part of the population of a
community. Sometimes a base imitation of a desperado is exalted in the
public eye as the real article. A few years ago four misled hoodlums of
Chicago held up a street-car barn, killed two men, stole a sum of money,
killed a policeman and another man, and took refuge in a dugout in the
sand hills below the city, comporting themselves according to the most
accepted dime-novel standards. Clumsily arrested by one hundred men or
so, instead of being tidily killed by three or four, as would have been
the case on the frontier, they were put in jail, given columns of
newspaper notice, and worshiped by large crowds of maudlin individuals.
These men probably died in the belief that they were "bad." They were
not bad men, but imitations, counterfeit, and, indeed, nothing more than
cheap and dirty little murderers.
Of course, we all feel able to detect the mere notoriety hunter, who
poses about in cheap pretentiousness; but now and then in the West there
turned up something more difficult to understand. Perhaps the most
typical case of imitation bad man ever known, at least in the Southwest,
was Bob Ollinger, who was killed by Billy the Kid in 1881, when the
latter escaped from jail at Lincoln, New Mexico. That Ollinger was a
killer had been proved beyond the possibility of a doubt. He had no
respect for human life, and those who knew him best knew that he was a
murderer at heart. His reputation was gained otherwise than through the
severe test of an "even break." Some say that he killed Chavez, a
Mexican, as he offered his own hand in greeting. He killed another man,
Hill, in a similarly treacherous way. Later, when, as a peace officer,
he was with a deputy, Pierce, serving a warrant on one Jones, he pulled
his gun and, without need or provocation, shot Jones through. The same
bullet, passing through Jones's body, struck Pierce in the leg and left
him a cripple for life. Again, Ollinger was out as a deputy with a noted
sheriff in pursuit of a Mexican criminal, who had taken refuge in a
ditch. Ollinger wanted only to get into a position where he could shoot
the man, but his superior officer crawled alone up the ditch, and,
rising suddenly, covered his man and ordered him to surrender. The
Mexican threw down his gun and said that he would surrender to the
sheriff, but that he was sure Ollinger would kill him. This fear was
justified. "When I brought out the man," said the sheriff, "Ollinger
came up on the run, with his cocked six-shooter in his hand. His long
hair was flying behind him as he ran, and I never in my life saw so
devilish a look on any human being's face. He simply wanted to shoot
that Mexican, and he chased him around me until I had to tell him I
would kill him if he did not stop." "Ollinger was a born murderer at
heart," the sheriff added later. "I never slept out with him that I did
not watch him. After I had more of a reputation, I think Ollinger would
have been glad to kill me for the notoriety of it. I never gave him a
chance to shoot me in the back or when I was asleep. Of course, you will
understand that we had to use for deputies such material as we could
get."
Ollinger was the sort of imitation desperado that looks the part. He
wore his hair long and affected the ultra-Western dress, which to-day is
despised in the West. He was one of the very few men at that
time--twenty-five years ago--who carried a knife at his belt. When he
was in such a town as Las Vegas or Sante Fé, he delighted to put on a
buckskin shirt, spread his hair out on his shoulders, and to walk
through the streets, picking his teeth with his knife, or once in a
while throwing it in such a way that it would stick up in a tree or a
board. He presented an eye-filling spectacle, and was indeed the ideal
imitation bad man. This being the case, there may be interest in
following out his life to its close, and in noting how the bearing of
the bad man's title sometimes exacted a very high price of the claimant.
Ollinger, who had made many threats against Billy the Kid, was very
cordially hated by the latter. Together with Deputy Bell, of White Oaks,
Ollinger had been appointed to guard the Kid for two weeks previous to
the execution of the death sentence which had been imposed upon the
latter. The Kid did not want to harm Bell, but he dearly hated Ollinger,
who never had lost an opportunity to taunt him. Watching his chance, the
Kid at length killed both Bell and Ollinger, shooting the latter with
Ollinger's own shotgun, with which Ollinger had often menaced his
prisoner.
Other than these two men, the Kid and Ollinger, I know of no better
types each of his own class. One was a genuine bad man, and the other
was the genuine imitation of a bad man. They were really as far apart as
the poles, and they are so held in the tradition of that bloody country
to-day. Throughout the West there are two sorts of wolves--the coyote
and the gray wolf. Either will kill, and both are lovers of blood. One
is yellow at heart, and the other is game all the way through. In
outward appearance both are wolves, and in appearance they sometimes
grade toward each other so closely that it is hard to determine the
species. The gray wolf is a warrior and is respected. The coyote is a
sneak and a murderer, and his name is a term of reproach throughout the
West.