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As much as the “Gunfighter Era” of the Old West was characterized by shoot-outs in the streets, so too was it known for tall tales and quick quips.
Consider the case of Pink Higgins. Higgins stumbled upon a cattle rustler who had just killed and butchered one of his herd, so he shot the man dead and stuffed him inside the steer.
As Bryan Burroughs recounts in “The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild” (Penguin Press, June 3), “then [Higgins] rode into town to tell the sheriff he should come see a miracle, a cow giving birth to a man.”
The first nationally known gunfighter was “Wild Bill” Hickok, whose fame was cemented by a Harper’s Weekly profile in 1867 that claimed he’d killed “hundreds” of men. While that number was laughably exaggerated, Wild Bill killed plenty.
The first was at a Nebraska stagecoach station in 1861, when Hickok was told to butt out of a loud dispute because it was none of his business.
“Perhaps ’tis,” he was said to nonchalantly reply, “Or ’tain’t.” Then he drew his pistol, killing one man and wounding two others.
But to live by the “Gunfighter’s Code” of the Old West was to die by it, too. As a Kansas marshal in 1871, Hickok shot dead a cowboy who’d unexpectedly fired on him, but then when his own deputy came racing around a corner with guns drawn “Wild Bill” accidentally killed him, too.
Then in 1875 in Deadwood, SD, a man Hickok had beaten at poker executed America’s most famous gunfighter with a cowardly shot to the back of his head.
When gunfighters weren’t killing or being killed though, a lot of time they were cracking wise.
Clay Allison was a fearsome “shootist” likely suffering from Civil War PTSD, who once rode his horse through a frontier town wearing only a gun-belt.
Before shooting one of his victims, Allison first invited him to dinner — the two eventually exchanging bullets right at the table. Asked why he would invite his victim to share a meal before killing him, Burroughs writes that Allison just shrugged.
“Because I didn’t want to send a man to hell on an empty stomach.”
There’s Mysterious Dave, who announced, “You have lived long enough,” to a cowboy he then shot dead. And professional gambler Ben Thompson, who was told by a threatening gunfighter to avoid a certain city because men were waiting for him there. But the card shark was hardly scared, Burroughs writes. “I’m Ben Thompson,” he purred. “If I should go up there, I would serve the boys just so.”
Ditto Doc Holliday at the O.K. Corral, who replied to an opponent’s threat that he would shoot him down with a laconic “you’re a daisy if you do.”
And at the end of that gunfight, it was the infamous Wyatt Earp who had the last word. Looking down at the dead men Earp and his brothers had just defeated in a dispute over carrying their weapons in town, Wyatt joked they no longer “have to disarm that party.”
Even local newspapers could kid about gunplay in the streets, with an 1872 story in Kansas noting the lack of shootings that summer with a headline announcing “No One Killed Yet.”
Another notable characteristic of the Old West’s “Gunfighter Era” was its exaggerated exploits.
William “Wild Bill” Longley claimed to have killed more than 30 men, but the more likely number was four or five.
And though Johnny Ringo was once considered the most fearsome gunfighter in the country, it was only confirmed that he’d fired his pistol twice. Once he wounded a man in a bar room argument, Burrough writes, with the other incident even less impressive.
“The only other time we’re certain Ringo fired… he shot himself in the foot.”
There were plenty of real gunfights in those days, though, over slights big and small, whether rustling a man’s cattle or cutting in on his dance. One siege at a homestead went on so long that the farm’s hogs eventually began devouring the bodies of dead combatants.
Maybe the most incredible gunfight of them all occurred in New Mexico in 1884, when a sole, 19-year-old wannabe lawman named Elfego Baca took on 80 angry Texas cowboys. Wearing an unofficial, mail-order badge, Baca arrested and jailed one Texan for misbehaving in the town’s streets. When a handful of the captive’s friends demanded his release, Baca squared off with them and told them he would begin to shoot.
The Texans laughed, but Baca began to fire. He killed one as the others fled, at least until they returned 80 strong. All alone, Baca then engaged the Texans in a gun battle, ultimately being chased into an abandoned home.
The Texans unloaded so many bullets that eventually the house collapsed onto itself. Four hundred bullet holes were later counted in its front door alone, but when law enforcement eventually intervened, Baca had killed four and walked away unscathed.
Writes Burroughs: “Covered with dust, Baca emerged in his underwear, a revolver in each hand.”
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