Lethal Passage_ The Story of a Gun - Erik Larson [21]
Strip away the legends enshrouding the famous outlaws and what you find are pathological killers. Billy the Kid, far from being the glamorous James Dean–like character of popular imagination, was once described as an “adenoidal moron.” In a rare act of clear-eyed journalism, the Silver City New Southwest and Grant Herald observed: “Despite the glamour of romance thrown about his dare-devil life by sensational writers, the fact is, he was a low-down vulgar cut-throat, with probably not one redeeming quality.”
Clay Allison, one of the most feared outlaws, was by all appearances a psychopath. He was discharged from the Tennessee Light Artillery after being judged “incapable of performing the duties of a soldier because of a blow received many years ago.” This head injury apparently caused wild swings in his moods, “from mania to intense despondency.” He was alleged to have killed fifteen men in his career as a “shootist,” and to have cut the head off one of them and brought it with him to a bar. Fabled gunfighter John Wesley Hardin killed forty-four men, perhaps as many as seventy-seven, yet the power of outlaw myth was such that in 1968 Bob Dylan still felt able to describe him in the title song of his album John Wesley Hardin as a Robin Hood–like character who “was always known to lend a helping hand.”
The national myth-werkes reserved its greatest distortions for the lawmen of the West. Contrary to popular belief, in many frontier counties and towns, sheriffs and marshals often went unarmed. Rather than shooting it out all day with itinerant gunmen, they confronted the mundane duties familiar to any city policeman today. In Leadville, Colorado, in 1880, the twenty-two-man police force made 4,320 arrests, most for intoxication and disturbance of the peace. The real marshal of Dodge City was responsible for street repair and killing stray dogs, but we never heard a word about this on “Gunsmoke.” In that mythic realm, Matt Dillon courted Miss Kitty; the real marshal of Dodge had to contend with Big Nose Kate, Noseless Lou, and Squirrel Tooth Alice. Wyatt Earp and his friend Bat Master-son were adept con men and gamblers who also happened to be lawmen. They were known around Dodge as “the Fighting Pimps.” Earp abandoned his common-law wife, Mattie, who later committed suicide. In a letter to her surviving family, the attending coroner called Earp “a gambler, blackleg, and coward.”
In the mythic West even homicide became a clean, honorable affair that adhered to the Code of the West. In fact, frontier homicide was just as mean and gritty as urban murder is today. Ambush was often the tactic of choice, preferably when the target was stone-cold drunk. Morgan Earp, one of Wyatt’s brothers, was assassinated by a rifle fired at him through a window. A thief named Robert Ford murdered Jesse James by shooting him in the back of the head. The police officer who crept up behind John Wesley Hardin in an El Paso bar and shot him dead no doubt believed he was merely being prudent, given Hardin’s reputation. In one notorious attack, members of the John Daly gang in Aurora, Nevada, set out to kill William Johnson, the operator of a way station whose employee had killed a horse-thief friend of Daly’s. After running an errand in town, Johnson went to a bar where a member of Daly’s gang pretended all was forgiven and bought him a few drinks. When the bar closed, they moved to another saloon, where Daly and other members of the gang were waiting. The good fellowship continued until about four-thirty A.M., when Johnson left. Daly and three other gang members, including a man named William Buckley, ambushed him. Buckley knocked Johnson down. Daly shot him through the head. Then Buckley slashed his throat.
The strategy for such attacks may have been dictated