Wagons West Chronicles October Issue 2016 October Issue | Page 13

Wagons West Chronicles

October 2016

13

STUDY OF
WESTERN BAD MEN

revolver as much articles of dress
as their hats and boots–more so,
indeed, for there are seasons when
a man might travel with safety
without boots, but he would hardly think it healthy to do so without
his customary pistol.
Since the revolutionary days the
people who settled along the
Appalachian range, particularly in
the Southern slave states, have
been distinguished for their lawlessness. It is only the other day
that the country was horrified by
the recital of the Hatfield-McCoy
feud, when scarcely a month went
by without the recital of a murder.
It was so with the Hatfield-Turner
feud in Kentucky, where judges
were murdered on the bench, and
sheriffs were made targets by the
men they tried to arrest. These
mountain desperadoes were so
strong as to set the authority of
governors at defiance, and the
story of their barbarities presents a
record as cruel and brutal as anything recited in the most lurid history of Indian massacres. As the
country becomes more settled,
schools will be established and law
and order will take the place of
that violence which has so long distinguished the sparsely settled portions of the south and west.
The western bad man is therefore not a new character, but an
old character, under a new name,
who finds the methods of murder
modified by his environment. A
quarter of a century ago, or immediately after the war, the western
desperado, who was invariably a
gambler, and at times a fighter,
was, physically, at least, a most picturesque character.
William
Haycock, or “Wild Bill” as he
delighted to be called, was a fine
type of this class. While connected
with the government survey in
1867, I met this man at Fort Riley,
Kansas, where he was then
employed as an Indian scout. He Ben Thompson.
was a most striking looking man, Black Hills.
It is a curious fact that no men
and at this time was, I think, about
twenty-seven years of age. He was who have become conspicuous on
dressed in a fanciful buckskin suit, the frontier and in the mining
with the regulation string edges, camps as outlaws and desperados
and was over six feet in height, are natives of New England.
straight as an Indian, with long, Indeed, we find more Irish,
dark hair, dark eyes, and easy tiger- French, Germans and even
like movement which denoted Englishmen, amongst this outlaw
great strength and activity. Wild class, than we do of New
Bill was regarded favorably by the Englanders. As might be expectofficers of the fort, who believed ed, a majority of them come from
him to be a brave, las abiding citi- the southern and western states,
zen, but at the same time one of where from childhood they have
the best horsemen and rifle shots been accustomed to carrying
to be found along the frontier. firearms, and whose early training
Women, whiskey and faro proved made them more familiar with tarthe ruin of Wild Bill. He drifted gets than with school books. In
out of the government service, the early 70’s there was no man
became a gambler and desperado, better known in Texas and along
a “bad western man,” in fact, and the Rio Grande as far as Colorado
died “with his boots on” in the than John Westley Harding.

Tv Show 1951-1958

Wild Bill Hickok.

An Old Character Dressed
up with a New Name
HE USUALLY HAILS
FROM THE SOUTH.
Some Noted Bad Men who
have Died With Their Boots on
The Careers of Wild Bill
and Ben Thompson
Bat Masterson and His Long
List of Victims.
April 30, 1894, Gazette, Fort
Worth, Texas — There is a general
impression, particularly in the
east, that the lawless frontiersman
is a comparatively recent addition
to our criminal classes. This is a
mistake. Ever since we have had a
frontier ever since there has been
any part of our country so sparsely settled as to be practically out
of the reach or control of officers
of the law, we have had this element with us, but its types have
varied with the improvement in
firearms and the nation’s general
advance.
It is a mistake to suppose that
the lawless desperado is a peculiar product of the fa