Meet with the ignorant killer cowboys that made Texas legendary and old West ‘Wild’

As much as the “weapon era” of the Old West was characterized by filming on the street, it was also known for high stories and rapid extinction.

Review the case of pink higgins. Higgins stumbled upon a cattle rustler who had just killed and buttoned one of his herds, so he shot the man dead and filled him inside the driver.

While Bryan Burroughs confesses to “The Gunfighters: How Texas did West West Wild” (Penguin Press, June 3), then [Higgins] Rode Intown to tell the Sheriff that he must come to see a miracle, a cow that gives birth to a man. “

Gunfighter’s well -known national first was “Wild Bill” Hickok, whose fame was cemented by the weekly profile of a Harper in 1867 claiming he would kill “hundreds” men. While that number was laughing, Wild Bill killed a lot.

The first was at a Nebraska Stagecoach station in 1861, when Hickok was told to make a loud dispute because it was not any of his business.

“Maybe ‘Tis,” he was told to respond vaguely, “or’ won’t be.” Then he withdrew his pistol, killing one man and wounding two others.

But living with the “Code of Weapons” of the Old West had to die of him too. As a marshal in Kansas in 1871, Hickok shot dead a cowboy who suddenly shot them, but then when his MP came competing around a “Wild Bill” gun corner accidentally killed.

Then in 1875 in Deadwood, SD, a man Hickok had beaten in the poker executed America’s most famous firearms with a cowardly kick in the back of his head.

When weapons were not killing or killed, they were long struck wise.

Clay Allison was a savage “friend” who was likely to suffer from the PTSD of the Civil War, which once rode a horse through a border town dressed in a strong wind.

Before shooting one of his victims, Allison first invited him to dinner – both eventually exchanged bullets on the table. Asked why he would invite his victim to share a meal before he killed him, Burroughs writes that Allison had just retired.

“Because I didn’t want to send a man to hell on an empty stomach.”

There is a mysterious Dave, who announced, “You have lived long enough”, in a cowboy that he then shot dead. And professional players Ben Thompson, who was told a threatening striker to avoid a certain city because the men were waiting for him there. But the card shark was not scared, writes Burroughs. “I’m Ben Thompson,” he cleaned. “If I went there up there I would serve the boys like that.”

Ditto Doc Holiday in eight Corral, who responded to the three opponent that he would shoot him with a laconic “you are a daisy if you do.”

And at the end of that weapon clash, it was the notorious Wyatt Earp who had the last word. Looking down at the dead men Earp and his brothers had just defeated in a dispute over their weapons in the city, Wyatt jokes that they do not “should not disarm that party”.

Even local newspapers can be children for gun games, with an 1872 history in Kansas, citing the lack of shooting that summer with a title announcing “No one is killed yet”.

Another visible characteristic of the “era of weapons” of the Old West was its exaggerated exploits.

William “Wild Bill” Longley claimed to have killed more than 30 men, but the most likely number was four or five.

And though Johnny Ring was once considered the most beloved fire in the country, it was only confirmed that he would shoot his handgun twice. After injuring a man in an argument in the bar room, writes Burrough, with the other less impressive incident.

“The only time that we are sure he was shot with a ring … he shot himself.”

There were completely real clashes with guns in those days, though, over great and small eases, whether rustling a man’s cattle or cutting into his dance. A siege in a hometown continued as long as the farm pigs eventually began to devour the bodies of dead warriors.

Perhaps the most incredible weapon clash from everyone happened in New Mexico in 1884, when only a 19-year-old Wannabe lawyer, named Elfego Baca, received 80 angry cowboy in Texas. Wearing an unofficial, custom symbol, Baca arrested and imprisoned a Texan for wrongdoing on the streets of the city. When a small part of the slave’s friends asked his release, Baca split with them and told them he would start shooting.

Texans laughed, but the tax starts to light. He killed one while others fled, at least until 80 strong returned. All alone, Baca then engaged Texans in a battle with weapons, finishing in an abandoned house.

Texans dismissed so many bullets that eventually the house crashed into itself. Four hundred bullet holes were later counted only on its front door, but when law enforcement eventually intervened, the tax had killed four and left unsafe.

Writes Burroughs: “Covered with dust, the tax came out in the interior, a revolver in each hand.”