Western Peace Officer

Virgil Earp, Western Peace Officer, by Don Chaput, is really the only go-to book specifically for Virgil Earp. Due to the fact that Virgil is widely overshadowed by his more renowned brother, Wyatt, Virgil just hasn’t had as much attention. Fortunately, the one book that we do have is written by the very capable and intelligent Mister Chaput. He is the Curator Emeritus of the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles and is a bit of an expert on many aspects of the Old West . Besides these impressive laurels, he is also great friends and research partner with my favorite Earp historian, Lee Silva. So we know the man runs in good company, if nothing else.

Western peace officer is a fantastic biography, but it’s also more than just a biography. Chaput does a tremendous job of giving more than just a timeline of moves and events. Along the way we get a great sense of character of both Virgil and his wife Allie, as well as a great understanding of their relationship. In the resulting output is a very human picture of who this man was.

Just as Chaput does with the character of Virgil, he does likewise with his environment and the world he interacted with. The author does a great job of conveying just what the times were like and the conditions in which Virgil operated. Often times he uses Allie as a juxtaposition too more deeply understand their current setting, and the reasons how and why they operated, wherever they were.

The only drawback I might cite in this book is that while the author does a great job in telling a respectable story of Virgil Earp’s life, he seems to hold a bit of disdain for Wyatt and often times that bleeds through a little bit in the reading. There are no cheap shots or unfair attacks, but it does sometimes seem unnecessary when he occasionally spotlights some of the differences between Virgil and Wyatt.

If you would like to learn more about Virgil Earp, and really know his story, then Western Peace Officer is the book you need to read.

Bat Masterson: The Man and the Legend

Bat Masterson: The Man and the Legend by Robert K. DeArment is one of only two primary biographies on the man; the first being by Richard O’Connor in 1957. DeArment offers approximately 130 pages over O’Connor, and gets more in depth to the details of Bat’s life. Including a pretty thorough portion on the drama of Bat and his writing career. In fact, I would think it’s safe to say that DeArments interest is more in the relational machinations of the man than his time as a frontier tough-guy.

The book is a fairly straightforward biography with a few little nuances to it. The author generally follows a straight timeline, but also does some chapter grouping by topic. This has its pluses and its minuses. On the positive, it help to paint a picture of given occurrences within whatever life-arena is being focused on, but on the flipside of that, there are occasions where the reader may need to cross check some of the items to make sure they’re tracking in the right time frame.

Some of the things I noticed in DeArments book is that he almost seems to consider Bat’s gun wielding as a bit of a bother. Perhaps my take is a bit more sensitive than the average reader, but I often got the impression that the author was very mindful to not give any undue attention to his exploits; almost working to retain a bit of dignity to this hardened killer.

Often times, and this is something I’ve never understood, some who study the old west do so with a bit of a look down their nose at their subjects. I wouldn’t say that DeArment goes this route, but there is a sense that his enthusiasm for his subject is not borne of Masterson’s frontier desperations, and somewhat leans more academic when talking about a man whose life was defined by his adventures on horse and with pistol.

The last note I would make on DeArments style is that he seems to have a dislike for Wyatt and therefore argues against certain claims regarding him as an aside in certain situations where the two are involved. The problem with this is that it creates a subtle vibe of Bat being better than Wyatt when such an offering or conclusion seems out of place.

To switch gears before it seems like I dislike the book, let me be clear that these are nuances in the book and not glaring problems. I also reiterate that my sensitivities may not be inline with the average reader, and may not stand out as they did to me. So please read for yourself. It really is a great book and quite thorough.

The primary value of this book is that you come away with a fairly complete picture of the man, and a great understanding of who he was and what he was probably like. So, in spite of my own previous words, DeArments varying emphases comes together to offer a well rounded look. From his early time on the frontier to his days in Dodge and Colorado as a dueling writer, and where he finally settled to his last days in New York City, this book covers it all.

Wild Bill Hickok – Gunfighter

If we want to be honest with ourselves, the reason we, the gunfighter-enthused, love westerns so much is often, if not now than at our point of beginning, all because of one hero or another gunning down some bad guys. In simple terms, it’s the excitement of the gun duel that really brings us to the show. And Joseph Rosa, in his final book on Wild Bill, really presents a fun volume in analyzing the most dangerous and celebrated moments in his life.

Rosa gives step-by-step, excruciating detail of each and every gunfight that we have recorded for the gunman known as Wild Bill. He gives floor plans and movement-by-movement accounts of where a particular person was standing and where they moved to. He shows you just where Wild Bill was positioned, and where his adversaries stood.

In addition, he gives you the background to each encounter and surrounds each account with context for the diagraming. Plus, beyond just the accounts of the fights, Rosa educates the reader with a complete background on what kinds of guns Hickok used, how he carried them, and how he used them. This volume is a very intentional effort at giving the reader a clear view of what it meant to say that Wild Bill Hickok was a gunfighter.

This one is also just over two-hundred pages, but utilizes a slightly larger font than the other books. It’s a pretty quick easy read, given the font combined with the pictures and diagrams, but certainly worth owning. Though it’s a quick read, there’s plenty to study over, and the time-value in this book is really in the time you’ll spend understanding the fights scenarios and feeling a little bit more what Hickok himself might have felt.

Though it’s the last of the four books Rosa wrote on Wild Bill, it’s probably my favorite follow up, simply based on the fun of breaking down the gunfights. Definitely get this one and enjoy going over the real-life exploits of a man who inspired so many wild west legends.

Wild Bill Hickok – The Man & His Myth

Author and researcher Joseph G. Rosa continues his descent into the understanding of historic lawman and all-around dangerous gun-hand Will Bill Hickok with his third book on the subject, titled The Man & His Myth. After following up his seminal work on Wild Bill (They Called Him Wild Bill) with the photographic collection that takes you into his world, he now takes on another angle by breaking down and examining all the stories about Wild Bill Hickok, and especially those that seem a bit too tall of tale to be believed.

But along the way he does more than just research and share his notes, he also takes a look at the practice of myth building and how it happens, and why it happens. The main purpose, or maybe effect, of this volume is to pull back the curtain a bit more after what had been written in his first. In that biography Rosa was careful to give a fair view of the different stories and claims that existed when studying Hickok, but in this effort he is able to spend more time, given that it is the singular focus of this book, to make sense of some of the seeming craziness that was a part of Wild Bill’s life and legend.

As always, Rosa delivers, and if you are a Hickok reader, fan, or student, then this one should also be in your collection. However, I will say, that of the four books on Hickok that Rosa put out, I would rank West Of and Gunfighter as slightly higher priority than this one.

Wild Bill Hickok – The West of Wild Bill

The West of Wild Bill Hickok is a fantastic resource for study of Wild Bill. Joseph Rosa has put together an intensely in-depth collection of pictures and references to give context to the world that Hickok roamed through. The majority of the book is old images, with enough narrative to set up each chapter. He includes just about every photo of Wild Bill that’s ever been taken (one has to assume), as well as just about every location he ever visited, or every person he ever associated with (again, one has to assume based the bevy of pictures.

Through Rosa’s spectacular pictorial essay it is easy to get a more intimate understanding of J.M. Hickok. We get to see his family and their likenesses to each other, his different moods in different settings, and we get to see the transition of a young man hunting the world transition in to the slowly aging gunfighter who was slowly going blind.

This was Rosa’s second book on Wild Bill and if you find, after reading his first volume, They Called Him Wild Bill, still wanting to know more about the man, then this is the book to take you deeper. Of the three follow up volumes Rosa scripted, one will give you a better picture of his gunfights, one will give you a better understanding of how the myth was formed and where it came from, and this one will give you a better understanding of Will Bill himself, and just what the world around him was actually like.

The West of…was first published in 1982 and is just a hair over two-hundred pages with introduction and notes; meaning there is probably well over 400 images (if I had to guess). All-in-all, a great book, and a must for a western history collection.

Wild Bill Hickok – They Called Him Wild Bill

Your first stop on your way to learning about Wild Bill Hickok should definitely be They Called Him Wild Bill, by Joseph G. Rosa. There are many writings on Hickok previous to Rosa’s book, but the benefit is that he has synthesized everything into a comprehensive, and well documented chronological biography. Rosa’s knowledge is vast, and he is the expert on all things Wild Bill, in much the same way that DeArment is for Bat Masterson or Gary Roberts is for Doc Holliday.

The qualities in Rosa’s book is that he doesn’t make assumptions, nor does he require it of the reader. He gives plausible statements for what he determines to be the most likely truth, and still leaves room for things to change were new evidence to be presented. In fact, his introduction states as much, and cites it as the reason why a second edition follow-up to the first was necessitated.

There were a lot of stories told about Wild Bill; he was a western celebrity while he was still alive, and journalists loved to tell stories about him. Unfortunately this makes for a murky quagmire when wishing to process the truth out of the swamp of lies, but Rosa handles it deftly and thoroughly. When one hears an anecdote, and due to it’s un-believability, Rosa consistently makes a fair case for both ways the conventional thought could. Regarding the claim that Hickok was made a U.S. Deputy Marshal at Fort Riley in the beginning of 1866, Rosa shows that the work he was doing would certainly fall under that title, and also shows why it could be plausible that there may be no documentation of his engagement. And, at the same time, Rosa also shows how the title may have been an exaggeration of what he was actually doing, which was classed as detective work. Almost without fail, when he reaches a conclusion, he will state that it is his belief, and not dismiss what he doesn’t believe.

The book goes, with introduction, almost exactly 350 pages, however, Rosa has written four different books on Wild Bill, and this one serves as the first volume, for all practical purposes. Together with the other three, he has done rather similarly what Lee Silva has done with Wyatt Earp; the prime difference being  that Silva published one very large volume, where as Rosa did four different books. But what results in the end is complete dissecting of James Butler and all the pertinent elements of his life as a gunman. He has covered him in a standard, and very well done, biography, followed by books that break down his gunfights, examine the world he lived in, giving context to his world, and a book solely devoted to examining the stories that made Hickok a legend.

To really study Wild Bill Hickok, a person should read all four of Rosa’s books covering the man, and They Called Him Wild Bill is definitely the starting point. And if you want to know about him, but don’t need to go deeper into follow-up books then this one will set you straight.

Mysterious Gunfighter

by Jack DeMattos

For a being such a mysterious character, Jack DeMattos does a good job of revealing to us enough to make the man feel somewhat familiar. The knowledge we have is too limited to produce the volumes that you could find on the likes of Wyatt Earp or Jesse James, but for anyone wanting to round out their knowledge of the western gunfighters, Mysterious Gunfighter suffices well.

In what I would consider to be a worthwhile trade-off, the limits of our information are off-set well enough by the excitement of what we do know. Mysterious Dave was an interesting fellow, and I don’t believe it’s just because of what we do know. I would be willing to bet that the more we know about him, the more intriguing he would become. And that’s really the value in this book, learning about the man’s exploits in many different places, with an assortment of different characters, all while filling various roles with regards to the law and legal standing. He really was a fascinating character of the west, and mysterious applies from several different ways.

DeMattos offers a fairly straight-forward telling, which allows for easy following as the reader tracks Mather’s life. Some might consider the first and last chapters to be filler, but I couldn’t agree. The first chapter gives a thorough background of the Mather family from the very early days of the colonies up to the time Dave Mather left for the frontier, and the last chapter enlightens the reader to the family line following the disappearance of Mather. Were  the first chapter to run on for four chapters, or some other significant measure of the book, then I might be inclined to side with the view of excess, but as it is, the bookend chapters work to almost make the man more mysterious. When we have such a clear understanding of where he came from and the family that surrounds him, and then we get a full picture of the surviving family line, it deepens the mystery as to where he went and just how is it that nobody knows anything?

There were probably only one or two points in the book where I felt I might disagree with the authors surmising (which, I think, a little difference of view is healthy), but I always felt that DeMattos was giving us as best a study as we could get, short of new revealing information. If you’re working to put together a complete library of the gunfighters, this is the book you should have when it comes to Dave Mather.

A Look at Leon Metz’ Dallas Stoudenmire

The Story of Dallas Stoudenmire

 

Leon Metz is a qualified western historian author, but even so, there still just hasn’t been much to say about Dallas Stoudenmire. Pretty much everything that’s known comes from his time as the Marshal of El Paso, and so, given our limits of information, this book is, understandably, not a very long read. Fortunately, Metz still gives us plenty of reason to pick it up and enjoy.

To the delight of some, and to the chagrin of others, one thing that Metz doesn’t do is load the book with pages and chapters of social and economic conditions of the areas relevant to the life of Stoudenmire. I hear complaints, sometimes, of authors filling in a book with too much information about the history of said valley, or context on how a certain town was built up, and who moved in first, and how they all voted to build a well, and then the well couldn’t be built because of a municipal issue, and then, fifteen years later, our subject gunman finally came riding into town. This is obviously facetious, but the point being that some love more and more context, and some find it tedious.

Metz goes the less-is-more route in this book, but still gives plenty of context. In fact, I’d say his historical summation of El Paso was just the right balance. The strongest points in this area are probably his looks at the various players of the time in El Paso. In only roughly 130 pages he gives a great snapshot of the current climate that Dallas walked into, and connects you to the man and his dilemma’s.

The biggest problem I had with this book is wishing that there was more to say about Dallas Stoudenmire, but there just isn’t much known. Given Metz’s wonderful telling, and the intriguing nature of Dallas Stoudenmire, I really wish we could have a book two or three times the page count, but in absence of that, thank goodness we have what we do.

If Dallas Stoudenmire is a character you don’t know much about you should really get familiar. And this is just the gunfighter that you can learn about with out the inevitable continuous heavy involvement of the world of Wyatt Earp or Billy the Kid.

Notorious Luke Short

Sporting Man of the Wild West

Jack DeMattos and Chuck Parsons working together is enough already to tell you that it’s going to be a worthwhile purchase. Notorious Luke Short is a book that was long overdue and it was great to see a pair of veteran old west researchers finally giving us what we needed. The book covers all the pertinent ground, and even goes deeper into certain elements of Luke’s life, such as the Dodge City War, and his relationship with Hattie Buck.

Through the overview of Luke’s life we get a better understanding of the man than we’ve been able to piece together before now. His time traveling, his penchant for boxing, his relationships with both the highbrow crowd, as well as laborers, really gives a picture of how versatile and active he was in life. But don’t worry, his moments as a man of action are covered also, and it’s interesting to see how Luke handled his business.

The subject of his gunfights does, however,  bring up one of two areas that I would cite as areas that I thought could have been stronger. As much as I enjoyed the book (a lot), I felt at times that some of the gunplay moments were almost treated as asides during the study of his business and sporting ventures. The worst of these moments was when an alleged fight took place and it was, honestly, glossed over. It was something to the effect of: …over here he was involved in a gun altercation, and then moved on to this place…I was left thinking “Well, what was it? Did it happen or not? What do we know, and what do we not know? And why?”

The other gripe (and this happens with most all authors) is when they have a lack of evidence of something, they conclude it didn’t happen, when in actuality, it should only lead them to the conclusion that a determination can not be had. Absolute statements in historical research should be made very carefully, and sometimes they get put forth a little too easily.

That said, this is a great book and I am so glad that Parsons and DeMattos set forth to getting it done. Given the plethora of books covering Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid, not to mention, even Doc Holliday, it’s nice to have one for Luke Short that can be the definitive go-to. Which, it should be pointed out, this is the third biography, so just to give some context, the first was Cox in 1961, and it had a lot of errors due to the fact that there just wasn’t as much info uncovered at the time, and then Wayne Short’s biography in 1997. Wayne Short receives, and deserves, a lot of credit for his efforts to bring Luke’s story to the masses, but with Notorious we get an advanced picture, as well as assurance that there is no bias from family descension.

Over fifty years since the first biography, and almost twenty since the last, as well as nearly a hundred pages more than the previous book, it’s great to finally have such a comprehensive look into the notorious gunman and gambler, Luke Short.