Received my author's copies for my latest book!

A big box of books came to my door this week, my own books! Here's yours truly in need of a haircut holding a copy of the second edition of It Happened in Missouri. This is a collection of tales about interesting and odd events in the state's history.

This edition has a new cover showing Vice President John Garner playing around with a pair of Jesse James' pistols while Harry Truman looks on. The book also includes two new chapters. One covers a champion bicycle race in 1887 where the racers used those strange old bikes with one giant tire and one small one, except for one plucky cyclist who did the race with a tricycle! The other new chapter is about the various hucksters who impersonated Jesse James after his death. One guy was even so bold as to do this as late as 1950.

The book is available for preorder now. If you'd like a free signed copy I'll be happy to send one along, although I'll have to ask you to pay for the international shipping.

Book Review: The Story of Texas Jack Vermillion

When writing my book Tombstone - Wyatt Earp, the O.K. Corral, and the Vendetta Ride 1881-82, I sadly didn't have much room for some of Wyatt's colorful friends like Turkey Creek Jack Johnson and Texas Jack Vermillion. I only had 25,000 words to play with!

Luckily Australian researcher Peter Brand has been hard at work researching the lives of these lesser-known Vendetta Riders and has come out with a great book on Texas Jack Vermillion. For many years it was thought that this little-known friend of Wyatt Earp was Confederate veteran John Wilson Vermillion. Brand proves conclusively that the real "Texas Jack" was John Oberland Vermillion, a Union veteran. Brand goes into detail about both men's lives so you're really getting two biographies here.

Of course Texas Jack is the focus and he's an interesting character. He ran away from home in 1864 to join the Union army, serving in the 122nd Ohio Infantry. He saw action in some of the toughest battles of the Overland Campaign such as the Battle of the Wilderness and Cold Harbor and was left traumatized by his wartime experience, unable to speak above a whisper for two years.

After the war he got restless and headed west. Like many people seeking to reinvent themselves, Vermillion left his relatives and never wrote home. He worked as a carpenter in various spots and also earned a reputation as a gunman. At some point he earned the nickname "Shoot-your-eye-out" Vermillion.

In Tombstone he was squarly on the side of the law and order Earp faction, but he did his share of nefarious deeds as well, such as hooking up with the famous gang of conmen run by “Soapy” Smith. All these coming and going are hard to document because Vermillion occasionally used aliases. Even as careful a researcher as Brand has to admit that he simply doesn't know where Vemillion was or what he was doing for large periods of his life.

What we do know, however, is fascinating, and Brand plugs in the gaps with details about Tombstone, the Arizona War, and Soapy Smith. While the book's subject may seem obscure and only of interest to specialists, Brand tells some fascinating tales that anyone interested in the Old West will enjoy.

My only complaint with this seemingly self-published volume is its poor distribution. I had to order direct from the author's American representative. These days it's quite easy to get onto all major online outlets by simply uploading your book to Amazon and Smashword's Premium Catalog. I hope Mr. Brand does this with this and any future books. I think he'll get the wider readership he deserves.

Reader News for October 6, 2013

A couple of new books from blogger buddies this time around! Have some news you want to share? Drop me a line!

The Maze of Mist, the latest fantasy novel from A.J. Walker, is for sale in the Kindle store. For the first month he's priced it at only $3.99, and it's free for Prime members.

Here's the blurb:

When the heir to the throne is treated as an outcast, he has to prove himself before he can rule.

Prince Metis Itxaron is the son of a human father and a goblin mother. As heir to the Twin Thrones, he will some day bear the responsibility of ruling two peoples while protecting the kingdom from the vicious armies of the Bandit Queen and the Elves of the Great Forest.

Instead he spends his time getting drunk and sleeping with the few women willing to look beyond his mixed heritage.

In a desperate attempt to make a man out of him, his parents send him on a secret diplomatic mission to prepare for an upcoming war. What they don't expect is that he will come upon visitors from an unknown land beyond the Sea of Mist, a strange labyrinth of fog that has baffled navigators for all of recorded history.

Metis sees a visit to these new lands as an opportunity to escape his responsibilities and prove himself on his own terms.

Then he discovers that representatives from his kingdom's enemies are coming along for the voyage. . .

This is the second book in the Chronicles of the House of Itxaron series. The first volume is Roots Run Deep. While set in the same world, each title is a standalone novel.

Missouri historian Larry Wood also has a new book out. Murder and Mayhem in Missouri tells the story of some of Missouri's toughest outlaws.

Desperadoes like Frank and Jesse James earned Missouri the nickname of the "Outlaw State" after the Civil War, and that reputation followed the region into the Prohibition era through the feverish criminal activity of Bonnie and Clyde, the Barkers and Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd.

Duck into the Slicker War of the 1840s, a vigilante movement that devolved into a lingering feud in which the two sides sometimes meted out whippings, called slickings, on each other. Or witness the Kansas City Massacre of 1933, a shootout between law enforcement officers and criminal gang members who were trying to free Frank Nash, a notorious gang leader being escorted to federal prison.

Wild West Photo Friday: Mexican Rurales

These tough looking hombres are Mexican rurales from the late 19th century. The rurales were officially called Guardia Rural (Rural Guard) and were founded in 1861 to fight the numerous bandits that infested the Mexican countryside.

They were a cavalry force that chased criminals across the land and quickly gained a reputation for brutal efficiency. They were trained like soldiers but acted like gunslingers. In fact, many bandits, once caught, were given the choice between prison or joining the rurales!

During the wild days in Arizona in the 1880s, when places like Tombstone were getting shot up on a regular basis, the rurales had their work cut out for them. The Cowboys, a loose-knit group of rustlers living in southern Arizona, often went south of the border to steal cattle, bring them north over the border, rebrand them, and then sell them.

Mexican ranchers, of course, resisted, and often got killed. The rurales stepped in and started fighting the Cowboys. They took some tough hits (which we'll talk about in a later post) but eventually put enough pressure on the Cowboys that they started rustling American ranches instead, as well as robbing stagecoaches. This escalation of crime north of the border heightened tensions in Tombstone with the law enforcement faction led by Wyatt and Virgil Earp and eventually led to the Gunfight at the OK Corral.

The rurales still exist and still fight bandits, although mostly they work to eradicate marijuana crops.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Wild Bill Hickok in the Civil War

When we think of Wild Bill Hickok, we usually think of him as an Old West gunfighter and scout on the Plains. Here he is, second from left, with some of his scout buddies. Like many of his kind, however, he was involved in the American Civil War.

His war service got off to a humble start when he signed on to the Union army as a civilian scout. He was at the Battle of Wilson's Creek, where the noise of the cannon fire so frightened him that he was momentarily paralyzed.

Later he served as a wagonmaster, once having to make a quick escape when his wagon train was attacked by rebel bushwhackers. By early 1862 Hickok had become a scout again. He probably figured that if he was going to be involved in the fighting anyway, he might as well have a more impressive title! He saw action at the Battle of Pea Ridge and probably numerous smaller engagements.

He did so well at the battle that the Union command made him a spy, riding around the Missouri countryside without a uniform while trying to learn about rebel troop and guerrilla movements. When Confederate General Sterling Price invaded Missouri in 1864, a campaign that serves as the background to my novel A Fine Likeness, Hickok was sent to infiltrate Price's camp.

This he did, and according to his own account he was able to hang out in Price's headquarters and gather useful information. But that information would be of no use if he couldn't get back to his own lines. So one day when pickets from the opposing armies were lined up on opposite sides of a river, Hickok dared a boastful Confederate sergeant into riding out into the river with him to see who would get closest to the Yankees.

The Union soldiers recognized Hickok and held their fire. One of them was dumb enough to cheer, "Bully for Wild Bill!" The sergeant became suspicious, and so Hickok blasted him out of his saddle. Then he urged his horse through the water as the rebels opened fire after him. He returned safe and deliver the information to the Union command.

Book Review: Wild Bill Hickok, The Man and His Myth

Wild Bill Hickok: The Man and His Myth by Joseph G. Rosa
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Wild Bill Hickok is one of those Old West icons whose real personality has been shrouded in generations of fiction. The reality, as is often the case, is far more interesting. Hickok was a scout, Indian fighter, Civil War spy, lawman, gunfighter, gambler, actor, and much more.

In this book Joseph Rosa, the leading authority on Wild Bill, tries to separate the man from his myth and nail down just how various untruths and exaggerations about him got started. What really launched his fame was his 1865 shootout with David Tutt, one of the few standup, Western-style gunfights that really happened. The national magazine Harper's sent a hack out to Missouri to interview Hickok, and the result was a blood and thunder tale in the dime novel tradition. The article is reproduced in full in this book.

While Rosa does a good job separating fact from fiction, this book is terribly organized. It jumps around in time and place and never gives a full overview of the man's life, instead looking at a few key incidents. Even these aren't in chronological order. This makes the book confusing and frustrating.

For those looking for a standard biography, I recommend Rosa's earlier book, They Called Him Wild Bill. While written 30 years earlier and not as fully researched, it's much more readable.

View all my reviews

Wild West Photo Friday: Wild Bill Hickok

 

You don't get much more Wild West than Wild Bill Hickok. A scout, Indian fighter, lawman, gunfighter, gold prospector, and during the Civil War a Union spy, Hickok lived a life of adventure. I'll be talking about his Civil War record next week, but let's just admire this photo today.

Here he is clad in buckskins, as he would have been when scouting for the U.S. Cavalry on the Plains or fighting Indians. He preferred to dress this way, which is probably one of the reasons he became a legend in his own lifetime. The fact that he kept getting in gunfights and winning also helped. After his famous 1865 gunfight in Springfield, Missouri, the first real stand-up, face-to-face gunfight in the Old West, he launched into national fame.

As you can see here, he's carrying his famous pair of ivory-handled Colt .36-caliber Navy pistols in his belt as well as a large knife. Several people who knew him said he carried a pair of .41-caliber Williamson derringers as holdout weapons. These tiny pistols that were nevertheless deadly at short ranges, such as across a poker table.

Reading an old Jesse James dime novel

While preparing my talk for the book launch of the Italian edition of my Jesse James book I read through a bunch of Jesse James material. The theme of my talk was the outlaw's transformation into a legend.

One of the books I read was the oldest Jesse James book in my collection: Jesse James' Mid-Winter Lark, or The Plundering of the Iron Mountain Train, by William Ward. This dime novel dates from 1909, when Frank James and several gang members were still alive.

Dime novels were cheaply produced magazines or paperback books that were the popular literature of their day. There were countless titles from their beginning in the 1860s to their demise in favor of pulp magazines in the 1920s.

This one, number 27 of a series about Jesse, portrays the outlaw as a strange hybrid. He's neither the noble Robin Hood some dime novels made him out to be nor the evil crook from the newspapers. He's both at the same time.

James is hiding out in the Kentucky hills when he hears a beautiful girl has been arrested for selling moonshine. Of course Jesse doesn't like government men harassing the rural poor, so he sets off to save her, leaving a trail of dead government agents wherever he goes. While he's doing this Robin Hood impersonation he's also taking vengeance out on any of the hill folk who don't stand by her side. When one man who volunteered to fight the police shows a bit of fear, Jesse shoots his ear off! Then Jesse discovers one of the hill folk had reported on the girl, and Jesse takes gruesome vengeance.

It's an odd book and I wonder what audiences 104 years ago thought of it. Perhaps they just wanted a thrill and didn't think about it much at all. Dime novels weren't exactly high literature. It does make an interesting curio, though, and an unusual landmark in the reputation of America's most famous outlaw.

If you want to get a copy, there's one for sale on Ebay.

My book on Tombstone is out now!

I've just received the author's copies for my latest book, Tombstone - Wyatt Earp, the O.K. Corral, and the Vendetta Ride 1881-82. This is published by Osprey Publishing and as usual they did a bang up job on the layout and artwork.

This book looks at the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral as well as the lead up to the confrontation between the Earp brothers and the Cowboys and the vendetta that lasted for some months afterwards.

As the back cover blurb states:

The Gunfight at the OK Corral on 26 October 1881 is one of the most enduring stories of the Old West. It led to a series of violent incidents that culminated in the Vendetta Ride, in which Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and several other gunslingers went after their rivals the Cowboys.
Like most tales of the Wild West, the facts are buried under layers of myth, and the line between good guys and bad guys is blurry. Wyatt Earp, leader of the so-called “good guys”, was charged with stealing horses in the Indian Territory in 1870 and jumped bail. Becoming a buffalo hunter and gambler, he got into several scrapes and earned a reputation as a gunfighter.
Several times he helped lawmen arrest outlaws, but usually his assistance came more because of a personal grudge against the criminal than any real respect for law and order. He even got fired from a police job in Wichita for beating up a political rival.

This is my sixth book for Osprey and my fourteenth overall. I'm currently talking with the editors about more projects. Stay tuned!

Vigilantes after the Civil War: The Baldknobbers of the Ozarks

The Civil War hit the Ozarks in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas especially hard. While the region was underpopulated, that made it a good home for guerrillas from both sides as well as simple bandits. Taney County in Missouri went from a prewar population of 3,500 to fewer than 1,000 by war's end.

Peace didn't come quickly to the Ozarks. When Confederate veterans returned home, many found their land occupied by Union men, confiscated for failure to pay taxes during the war. They couldn’t even vote thanks to a new state constitution that disenfranchised anyone who had supported the rebellion.

The local government became dominated by Union men, many of them newcomers who arrived to snap up cheap land. While some ex-Confederates did manage to get farms again, they had become an underclass. Some turned to lawlessness, usually targeting the wealthier Unionists.

The violence came to a head in the 1880s when a Union veteran named Nat Kinney formed the Baldknobbers, a vigilante group named after their practice of meeting on bald knobs, treeless hills where they could spot anyone coming to spy on their meetings. The Baldknobbers soon took to terrorizing the lawless element at night, wearing masks and whipping people. They soon graduated to lynching. In defense, the former rebels formed the Anti-Baldknobbers.

Soon the Civil War was being reenacted in the Ozarks. Many Baldknobbers were newcomers, Republicans, and ex-Union soldiers. Only a few kept farms, the main occupation of the general population, instead working in county government, law, or owning their own businesses. They looked on the native hill men as backward. The Anti-Baldknnobbers tended to be ex-Confederates and longtime residents, and most farmed for a living.

It's unclear how many died in the fighting. Estimates range from a dozen to more than thirty, with countless more beaten and driven from their land.

The lynchings, night riding, and shootouts were finally stamped out by Governor Marmaduke who, strangely enough, was a former Confederate general who came into power after the restrictions on ex-rebels holding public office was lifted. He didn't care who had fought for whom, he just wanted the killing to stop.

You can read more about the Baldknobbers in my book Outlaw Tales of Missouri.

This Wikimedia Commons photo is from the 1919 film, The Shepherd of the Hills and accurately depicts surviving Baldknobber masks.

Ned Kelly meets Tupac Shakur

You're getting a double dose of my A to Z Challenge contributions today. Yesterday I was too busy with an article about English castles that's now live on Gadling. Researching it took up way more time and energy than expected!

I did play hookey for part of yesterday, however, in order to watch The Story of the Kelly Gang on Archive.org. Ned Kelly was an outlaw in late-nineteenth-century Australia and was most famous for his gunfight against the police while wearing homemade armor. The law saw him as a brutal killer and thief, while many regular folk saw him as a hero who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. He became the Australian equivalent of Jesse James, larger than life.

This film was made in 1906 in Australia and at 60 minutes, was the longest film yet made. It proved hugely successful in Australia and played in theaters for 20 years. Sadly, most of the film has been lost. Back then people thought of films as disposable and most films from the first three decades of motion pictures are gone. It's only by luck that 20 minutes of the film have survived.

The guy who posted the film on Archive.org did a good job splicing the various surviving bits together. He didn't add a soundtrack, though, and not liking my silent films to be totally silent I decided to put on some music. Hmmm. . .what would go with a bandit movie? Tupac Shakur, of course! His music is about gangsters defying the police, after all.

As strange as it sounds, the music fit perfectly. Just goes to show that once art is in the public space, it can take on some strange and unanticipated forms. I bet Tupac never dreamed his music would be used to accompany a hundred-year-old movie, and I'm sure Ned Kelly never anticipated someone like Tupac!

Photos courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

William S. Hart: the first Western film star

I've always been a fan of silent films. Like most people, I loved the old Chaplin and Keaton slapstick shorts as a kid. Unlike most people, I soon became entranced with the silent dramas and adventures. Back in the 80s when I was growing up, you could still see these pictures on late night TV and in New York City revival houses. Now I watch them on the Internet or at rare showings at arthouse cinemas.

I've recently been getting into silent Westerns. The first silent Western star was William S. Hart. He starred in more than 70 Westerns from 1914 to 1925 and helped establish many of the tropes still used in Westerns to this day.

Hart had a stony face and dominating manner that was perfect to play heavies. In fact, he often portrayed villains. Sometimes he'd be saved by a good woman, sometimes not. Every Hart film contained a gunfight, sometimes several, and they were always quick, brutal affairs that looked very realistic.

In The Return of Draw Egan (1916) Hart favors a slight grimace and a cigarillo that looks like it inspired Clint Eastwood's The Man With No Name. I wouldn't be surprised. Hart inspired many Western actors and helped establish the genre. He was hugely successful in his day but sadly all but forgotten now. His films are full of Victorian moralizing that come off as dated. For me at least, they retain a primal power that makes them worth watching.

In preparation for this post, last night I watched what's considered one of Hart's best films: Hell's Hinges (1916). That link will take you to Youtube where you can watch this public domain film. The rest of this post contains spoilers.

Wild West Photo Friday: Pinal, Arizona, a lost boom town

I've been working on the maps for a book on Wyatt Earp and the Arizona War for Osprey Publishing. One place I couldn't put on the map with any exactitude was this town--Pinal, Arizona.

Pinal was established in the 1870s to mill the ore for the nearby Silver King mine. Pinal's post office opened in April 10, 1878. The mine was a rich one and the town quickly grew to about 2,000 residents. It even had its own newspaper called the Pinal Drill. The town benefited from its good location about halfway between Tucson and Phoenix, making it more accessible than some other mining towns.

The town had all the usual miners, prospectors, gamblers, and ladies of the evening. One of them was Mattie Blaylock, Wyatt Earp's common-law wife. In Tombstone, Wyatt had fallen in love with the beautiful actress Sadie Marcus and left her. The jilted Mattie moved to Pinal and --> went into a quick spiral of decline as a drug-addicted prostitute. She killed herself on July 3, 1888.

Unfortunately, silver prices slumped and by 1890 there were only ten people left in Pinal. The post office closed November 28, 1891. Now nothing remains of this old boom town. Even the exact location is in dispute. Imagine that--an entire town that nobody alive remembers. Probably there's nobody alive who even once met someone who remembers it. It's gone.

The top photo shows ore wagons from the Silver King mine at the Pinal mills, circa 1885. The bottom shot is a southeast view of the mill and town of Pinal, circa 1880.

For another shot of Pinal, check out my post on creative foraging in the Civil War. That blacksmith shop is in Pinal.


Photos courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

My latest Wild West book out now!

While I was traveling in Iraq my latest book was published by Osprey Publishing. The Last Ride of the James-Younger Gang: Jesse James and the Northfield Raid 1876 came out on October 20, while I was somewhere in the Sunni Triangle. This book detailed the ill-fated raid that destroyed the James-Younger gang. It's is my fifth book for Osprey and twelfth book in total. To see my other Osprey titles, click on my Osprey author's page. You can see some interior images here.

A Russian hussar in the Wild West

Wait, what's a picture of a Russian hussar doing on a Civil War/Wild West blog? Well, there is a Wild West connection.

I've been researching a book on Tombstone for Osprey Publishing and have come across lots of little stories that can't make it into the text. One of them is about Russian Bill, who passed through Tombstone claiming to be an aristocratic lieutenant of the Imperial White Hussars of the czar. He had asked for leave in 1880 to go explore the American frontier. Another story has him coming to the Arizona Territory earlier after having been court marshaled for punching a superior officer.

Russian Bill strutted around town dressed in Western gear and claiming to be a hardened outlaw. He certainly kept company with them. In 1881 he and Sandy King, another Tombstone hoodlum, were caught in the little town of Shakespeare, New Mexico, with some stolen cattle. Vigilantes hanged the both of them.

There is no record of this lynching causing an international incident. Was Russian Bill really one of the czar's elite cavalry? It's hard to say. There were lots of Europeans wandering around the Old West claiming to be what they weren't. If all of them had been telling the truth, every castle, manorial estate, and general's headquarters in Europe would have been depopulated!

Without doing some serious research in Moscow, I guess we'll never know.

There's another Old West connection to this painting. It was done by none other than Frederic Remington.

Book Review: John Ringo: The Gunfighter Who Never Was

John Ringo: The Gunfighter Who Never Was by Jack Burrows
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm giving this book three stars as an average. At times it merits five stars; at others it sinks down to one.

This is the story of John Ringo, a mysterious figure in the Tombstone, Arizona, Cowboy-Earp feud. The author, Jack Burrows, rightly points out that very little is known for certain about this outlaw and that most of what has been written about him is supposition or simple fabrication. Yet Burrows oversteps it when he says, "There have been more extravagant claims made for John Ringo than for Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, Wild Bill Hickok, Jesse James, and Buffalo Bill combined." Anyone who has read deeply into Old West literature knows this isn't true. Ringo simply isn't famous enough to compete with the mythology built up around these greater figures.

The shrill tone continues throughout this book, in which Burrows lambasts earlier writers for their inaccuracies and inventions. While they deserve it, it begins to get repetitive. I know a lot was made up, that's why I bought this book! These lesser writers could have been dismissed in much shorter order, leaving more room to talk about the real John Ringo.

The problem is, Burrows hasn't discovered enough new material to fill a book. What he has found is groundbreaking--a family diary, family stories about Ringo, and some important details about his life such as his participation in the Texas Hoodoo War. These paint a much clearer picture of the outlaw than what we had before. He also gives an even-handed, well-cited account of events in Tombstone and makes a convincing case that Ringo's mysterious death was a suicide and not murder.

Too often Burrows fills the blank spaces in our knowledge with amateur psychology. In one passage he states that his sisters couldn't have developed "strong or realistic feelings" about him before he left the family and went to the frontier (p. 139). His sisters were twelves, nine, and seven. Children of this age can't have strong feelings for an elder sibling? In another passage he actually made me laugh out loud when he described the tree Ringo sat by when he killed himself as having a "deep, all-embracing tree bole with its spreading trunks as beckoning womb", reminding him of the mother he abandoned (p. 196).

Ridiculous pop psychology and time-wasting complaints about other writers aside, this is still the only book that comes close to a serious biography of an understudied outlaw. Perhaps some day someone will write a better one.

View all my reviews