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- Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
Das E-Book The Story of the Outlaw wird angeboten von Charles River Editors und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:
wyoming; billy the kid; desperado; wild west
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THE STORY OF THE OUTLAW
Emerson Hough
LACONIA PUBLISHERS
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Copyright © 2016 by Emerson Hough
Interior design by Pronoun
Distribution by Pronoun
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface to The Story of the Outlaw
The Desperado
The Land of the Desperado
The Early Outlaw
The Vigilantes Of California
Outlaws of the Mountains
Henry Plummer in The Story of the Outlaw
Death Scenes of Desperadoes
Joseph Slade-Hanged By Vigilantes
The Desperado of the Plains
Wild Bill Hickok by Emerson Hough
Frontier Wars
Lincoln County War by Emerson Hough
The Stevens County War—The Bloodiest County Seat War of the West
Desert Outlaws
The Fight Of Buckshot Roberts by Emerson Hough
Pat Garrett and the Man Hunt
Bad Men of Texas
Modern Bad Men
Bad Men of the Indian Nations
Desperados Of The Cities
OLD WEST LEGENDS
Story of the Outlaw - Study of the Western Desperado
By Emerson Hough in 1905
PREFACE TO THE STORY OF THE OUTLAW
IN OFFERING THIS STUDY OF the American desperado, the author constitutes himself no apologist for the acts of any desperado; yet neither does he feel that apology is needed for the theme itself. The outlaw, the desperado—that somewhat distinct and easily recognizable figure generally known in the West as the “bad man"—is a character unique in our in national history, and one whose like scarcely has been produced in any land other than this. It is not necessary to promote absurd and melodramatic impressions regarding a type properly to be called historic, and properly to be handled as such. The truth itself is thrilling enough, and difficult as that frequently has been of discovery, it is the truth which has been sought herein.
A thesis on the text of disregard for law might well be put to better use than to serve merely as exciting reading, fit to pass away an idle hour. It might, and indeed it may — if the reader so shall choose — offer a foundation for wider arguments than those suggested in these pages, which deal rather with premises than conclusions. The lesson of our dealings with our bad men of the past can teach us, if we like, the best method of dealing with our bad men today.
There are other lessons which we might take from an acquaintance with frontier methods of enforcing respect for the law; and the first of these is a practical method of handling criminals in the initial executive acts of the law. Never were American laws so strong as today, and never were our executive officers so weak. Our cities frequently are ridden with criminals or rioters. We set hundreds of policemen to restore order, but order is not restored. What is the average policeman as a criminal-taker? Cloddy and coarse of fiber, rarely with personal heredity of mental or bodily vigor, with no training at arms, with no sharp, incisive quality of nerve action, fat, unwieldy, unable to run a hundred yards and keep his breath, not skilled enough to kill his man even when he has him cornered, he is the archetype of all unseemliness as the agent of a law which today needs a sterner unfolding than ever was the case in all our national life. We use this sort of tools in handling criminals, when each of us knows, or ought to know, that the city which would select twenty Western peace officers of the old type and set them to work without restrictions as to the size of their imminent graveyards, would free itself of criminals in three months’ time, and would remain free so long as its methods remained in force.
As for the subject-matter of the following work, it may be stated that, while attention has been paid to the great and well-known instances and epochs of outlawry, many of the facts given have not previously found their way into print. The story of the Lincoln County Warr of the Southwest is given truthfully for the first time, and after full acquaintance with sources of information now inaccessible or passing away. The Stevens County War of Kansas, which took place, as it were, but yesterday and directly at our doors, has had no history but a garbled one; and as much might be said of many border encounters whose chief use heretofore has been to curdle the blood in penny-dreadfuls. Accuracy has been sought among the confusing statements purporting to constitute the record in such historic movements as those of the “vigilantes” of California and Montana mining days, and of the later cattle days when “wars” were common between thieves and outlaws, and the representatives of law and order, —themselves not always duly authenticated officers of the law.
No one man can have lived through the entire time of the American frontier; and any work of this kind must be in part a matter of compilation in so far as it refers to matters of the past. In all cases where practicable, however, the author has made up the records from stories of actual participants, survivors and eyewitnesses; and he is able in some measure to write of things and men personally known during twenty-five years of Western life. Captain Patrick F. Garrett, of New Mexico, central figure of the border fighting in that district in the early railroad days, has been of much service in extending the author’s information on that region and time. Mr. Herbert M. Tonney, now of Illinois, tells his own story as a survivor of the typical county-seat war of Kansas, in which he was shot and left for dead. Many other men have offered valuable narratives.
In dealing with any subject of early American history, there is no authority more incontestable than Mr. Alexander Hynds, of Dandridge, Tennessee, whose acquaintance with singular and forgotten bits of early frontier history borders upon the unique in its way. Neither does better authority exist than Hon. N. P. Langford, of Minnesota, upon all matters having to do with life in the Rocky Mountain region in the decade of 1860-1870. He was an Argonaut of the Rockies and a citizen of Montana and of other Western territories before the coming of the days of law. Free quotations are made from his graphic work, “ Vigilante Days and Ways,” which is both interesting of itself and valuable as a historical record.
The stories of modern train-robbing bandits and outlaw gangs are taken partly from personal narratives, partly from judicial records, and partly from works frequently more sensational than accurate, and requiring much sifting and verifying in detail. Naturally, very many volumes of Western history and adventure have been consulted. Much of this labor has been one of love for the days and places concerned, which exist no longer as they once did. The total result, it is hoped, will aid in telling at least a portion of the story of the vivid and significant life of the West, and of that frontier whose van, if ever marked by human lawlessness, has, none the less, ever been led by the banner of human liberty. May that banner still wave today, and though blood be again the price, may it never permanently be replaced by that of license and injustice in our America.
THE DESPERADO
ENERGY AND ACTION MAY BE of two sorts, good or bad; this being as well as we can phrase it in human affairs. The live wires that net our streets are more dangerous than all the bad men the country ever knew, but we call electricity on the whole good in its action. We lay it under law, but sometimes it breaks out and has its own way. These outbreaks will occur until the end of time, in live wires and vital men. Each land in the world produces its own men individually bad—and, in time, other bad men who kill them for the general good.
There are bad Chinamen, bad Filipinos, bad Mexicans, and Indians, bad black men, and bad white men. The white bad man is the worst bad man of the world, and the prize-taking bad man of the lot is the Western white bad man. Turn the white man loose in a land free of restraint—such as was always that Golden Fleece land, vague, shifting and transitory, known as the American West—and he simply reverts to the ways of Teutonic and Gothic forests.
The civilized empire of the West has grown in spite of this, because of that other strange germ, the love of law, anciently implanted in the soul of the Anglo-Saxon. That there was little difference between the bad man and the good man who went out after him was frequently demonstrated in the early roaring days of the West. The religion of progress and civilization meant very little to the Western town marshal, who sometimes, or often, was a peace officer chiefly because he was a good fighting man.
We band together and “elect” political representatives who do not represent us at all. We “elect” executive officers who execute nothing but their own wishes. We pay innumerable policemen to take from our shoulders the burden of self-protection; and the policemen do not do this thing. Back of all the law is the undelegated personal right, that vague thing which, none the less, is recognized in all the laws and charters of the world; as England and France of old, and Russia today, may show. This undelegated personal right is in each of us, or ought to be. If there is in you no hot blood to break into flame and set you arbiter for yourself in some sharp, crucial moment, then God pity you, for no woman ever loved you if she could find anything else to love, and you are fit neither as man nor citizen.
As the individual retains an undelegated right, so does the body social. We employ politicians, but at heart most of us despise politicians and love fighting men. Society and law are not absolutely wise nor absolutely right, but only as a compromise relatively wise and right. The bad man, so called, may have been in large part relatively bad. This much we may say scientifically, and without the slightest cheapness. It does not mean that we shall waste any maudlin sentiment over a desperado; and certainly it does not mean that we shall have anything but contempt for the pretender at desperadoism.
Who and what was the bad man? Scientifically and historically he was even as you and I. From where did he come? From any and all places. What did he look like? He came in all sorts and shapes, all colors and sizes—just as cowards do. As to knowing him, the only way was by trying him. His reputation, true or false, just or unjust, became, of course, the herald of the bad man in due time. The “killer” of a Western town might be known throughout the state or in several states. His reputation might long outlast that of able statesmen and public benefactors.
What distinguished the bad man in peculiarity from his fellowman? Why was he better with weapons? What is courage, in the last analysis? We ought to be able to answer these questions in a purely scientific way. We have machines for photographing relative quickness of thought and muscular action. We are able to record the varying speeds of impulse transmission in the nerves of different individuals. If you were picking out a bad man, would you select one who, on the machine, showed a dilatory nerve response? Hardly. The relative fitness for a man to be “bad,” to become extraordinarily quick and skillful with weapons, could, without doubt, be predetermined largely by these scientific measurements. Of course, having no thought-machines in the early West, they got at the matter by experimenting, and so, very often, by a graveyard route. You could not always stop to feel the pulse of a suspected killer.
The use of firearms with swiftness and accuracy was necessary in the calling of the desperado, after fate had marked him and set him apart for the inevitable, though possibly long-deferred, end. This skill with weapons was a natural gift in the case of nearly every man who attained great reputation whether as killer of victims or as killer of killers. Practice assisted in proficiency, but a Wild Bill Hickok,a Joseph A. Sladeor a Billy the Kid was born and not made.
Quickness in nerve action is usually backed with good digestion, and hard life in the open is good medicine for the latter. This, however, does not wholly cover the case. A slow man also might be a brave man. Sooner or later, if he went into the desperado business on either side of the game, he would fall before the man who was brave as himself and a fraction faster with the gun.
There were unknown numbers of potential bad men who died mute and inglorious after a life spent at a desk or a plow. They might have been bad if matters had shaped right for that. Each war brings out its own heroes from unsuspected places; each sudden emergency summons its own fit man. Say that a man took to the use of weapons, and found himself arbiter of life and death with lesser animals, and able to grant them either at a distance. He went on, pleased with his growing skill with firearms. He discovered that as the sword had in one age of the world lengthened the human arm, so did the six-shooter—that epochal instrument, invented at precisely that time of the American life when the human arm needed lengthening—extend and strengthen his arm, and make him and all men equal. The user of weapons felt his powers increased. So now, in time, there came to him a moment of danger. There was his enemy. There was the affront, the challenge. Perhaps it was male against male, a matter of sex, prolific always in bloodshed. It might be a matter of property, or perhaps it was some taunt as to his own personal courage. Perhaps alcohol came into the question, as was often the case. For one reason or the other, it came to the ordeal of combat. It was the un-delegated right of one individual against that of another. The law was not invoked—the law would not serve. Even as the quicker set of nerves flashed into action, the arm shot forward, and there smote the point of flame as did once the point of steel. The victim fell, his own weapon clutched in his hand, a fraction too late. The law cleared the killer. It was “self-defense.” “It was an even break,” his fellowmen said; although thereafter they were more reticent with him and sought him out less frequently.
“It was an even break,” said the killer to himself—"an even break, him or me.” But, perhaps, the repetition of this did not serve to blot out a certain mental picture. I have had a bad man tell me that he killed his second man to get rid of the mental image of his first victim.
But this exigency might arise again; indeed, most frequently did arise. Again the embryo bad man was the quicker. His self-approbation now, perhaps, began to grow. This was the crucial time of his life. He might go on now and become a bad man, or he might cheapen and become an imitation desperado. In either event, his third man left him still more confident. His courage and his skill in weapons gave him assuredness and ease at the time of an encounter. He was now becoming a specialist. Time did the rest, until at length they buried him.
THE IMITATION DESPERADO
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 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, levelheaded 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 someone. “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.
