Western Gunmen

 

Bat Masterson

Bat Masterson knew better than most of his contemporaries that most of what was written about the Old West was little more than rattlesnake piss and bat guano.

In 1910, a reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune approached him to do an interview. Masterson told the reporter, “If there’s anything that makes me tired, it’s these young fellows who insist on writing a lot of trash about events that happened twenty years before they began yelling for their living. If they’d tell the truth, it wouldn’t be so bad, but they have to dress it up and tell the public that a peaceable man like me has twenty-seven notches on his gun. Now, don’t you say anything about those notches, and I’ll let you have a few unvarnished facts.”

What followed was an amazing look at some big-name gunfighters, their physical prowess, and how they fired so fast.

“Nerve was the quality that marked the great gunfighters.” Charlie Harrison was “the most brilliant performer with a pistol.” He could “shoot faster and straighter than many of the great fighters.” But when the shit hit the fan, and it was time for the real thing, he couldn’t muster up the nerve.

Harrison got in a gunfight with Jim Levy, someone he should have easily bested, but “he missed him with all six shots at close range before Levy could reach for his weapon.” 

“Harrison was brave, but he had no nerve.” He lay dead in the street while Jim Levy walked away.

Wild Bill telling his story to Henry M. Stanley

Wild Bill “made the average heavyweight prizefighter look like fun. There wasn’t a man in the west that could have touched him in a physical encounter.” He was as good with his guns as he was with his fists. The same was true for Wyatt Earp. He 

could handle himself with or without a gun. 

Perhaps more telling is what Masterson suggested was the “secret sauce” that made the big-name gunfighters fast.

“We used to file the notch of the hammer till the trigger would pull ‘sweet,’ which is another way of saying that the blame gun would pretty near go off if you looked at it.” But, “the real gunfighters didn’t file the notches off.” They carried one gun in their hip-holster, and another “swung under the armpit.” It let them “draw on an adversary while he was waiting for the familiar motion toward the hip.”

An article published in the Seattle Post Intelligencer on July 22, 1900, took things a step further, saying the gunfighters “all filed the sights from their guns and shot by instinct rather than by aim. Triggers were a superfluous piece of mechanism, and all were addicted to the process in a fight, technically known as fanning their guns. By this means, a man with a brace of Colt’s six-shooters becomes for the moment an animated machine gun,” or in the terms of another early reporter, “a walking Gatling gun.”

Billy the Kid

Some gunfighters resorted to dirty, underhanded tricks. Before Billy the Kid challenged Joe Grant, he snatched Grant’s gun and set it to an empty chamber. That bought him the precious few seconds he needed to draw down on his opponent. Some would call what Billy did cowardly, but in this case, it was just one more notch in his pistol.

Tom Horn

Some western aficionados talk about Tom Horn being a gunfighter, but he never faced his victims in a fair fight. Horn favored ambushing and back shooting his victims. Some folks say he placed very little value on human life, but one thing is certain, he took no chances with his life.

A few gunfighters were just that good. John Wesley Hardin was “lightning fast.” His landlady said Hardin was “quick as a flash. He would have a gun in each hand clicking so fast that the clicks sounded like a rattle machine.” The implication was that he fanned his pistols to produce that “machine-gun-like” effect. Some stories say he wore a magic vest with pistol holders on either side. So, it’s likely he practiced the old fake out—reaching for his hip-pocket pistol while drawing from his vest.

John Wesley Hardin

If a gunfighter expected to stay alive, practice was the name of the game. “The drop is what the gunfighter worked for and figured for from the moment he strapped on a pair of .44 caliber Colts until he was laid out with boots on,” said the Semi-Weekly Messenger. “Careful adjusting of boots and holster, the free, easy slide of the gun in and out, so that there was no possibility of a stick or, hand when in the act of drawing, were manners of constant care and study, and long practice enable the gunfighter to ‘pull his gun’ and bring it on the object with action almost quicker than the eye.”

Another certainty is that claimed and confirmed kills are totally different animals.

Wes Hardin took credit for forty-two kills in his autobiography. A more accurate count is under half that. Likewise, if you listen to stories about Doc Holliday, you’d think he left a trail of dead bodies everywhere he laid his hat. Not so. Doc’s confirmed body count is two, not the dozens usually laid at his feet.

Doc Holliday

Charles Siringo portrayed Billy the Kid as a crazed psycho-killer who made his first kill at age twelve. He blamed it on Billy’s violent temper. However, Sheriff Pat Garrett said just the opposite. People often talked about the look in Billy’s eye and his temper just before he killed, but the Kid wasn’t like that. Billy ate “and laughed, drank and laughed, talked and laughed, fought and laughed and killed and laughed.” 

Billy rode into Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory, in 1877 and began working for the Coe-Saunders ranch. That move placed him in the center of the Lincoln County War, a local battle that pitted the small ranchers against John Chisum, the Cattle King of New Mexico. The smaller ranchers accused Chisum of swallowing up their cattle and placing the Chisum brand on them. Chisum claimed just the opposite, saying that the small ranchers cut cattle out of his herds and sold them at the army posts for a quick profit. 

Billy allied himself with John Tunstall, a wealthy Englishman, who bought a ranch on the Rio Feliz and set up a store and bank in the town of Lincoln. 

Things blossomed out of control quickly, and pretty soon Billy was the most wanted outlaw in the territory.

Luke Short's shootout with Jim Courtwright

Luke Short got his start as a scout for General Crook’s cavalry in 1876 and 1877 during his Black Hills campaign. He was chased by fifteen Sioux on one mission and single-handedly killed five of them while escaping. 

That was the beginning of his legend.

In 1878, he killed two noted horse thieves over a game of Spanish Monte. After they lost all their money, they demanded Short give it back. When he refused, they pulled their guns. “Short was too quick for them,” reported the Omaha Daily Bee. Both men dropped to the ground—dead, without a chance to pull the trigger.

In February 1881, Luke got into a gunfight at the Oriental Saloon in Tombstone, Arizona.

Ben Thompson

Ben Thompson fought for the Confederacy as a teenager before drifting into gambling halls and saloons. He could be charming, funny, and generous. He could also be deadly. He survived many shootings and built a reputation as a man who never backed away from a fight.

By the early 1880s, he was one of the best-known gunfighters in Texas. His friendship with fellow gunman King Fisher made them a feared combination. 

In 1884, the pair walked into San Antonio’s Vaudeville Theatre and straight into an ambush. Hidden gunmen opened fire from above. Both men were killed within seconds.

King Fisher

King Fisher had already lived several lifetimes before that day. As a teenager, he ran with rustlers and border outlaws. Stories placed him in cattle thefts, smuggling operations, and gunfights from Texas to Mexico. 

Unlike many outlaws, Fisher decided he enjoyed making money more than dodging bullets. He built a successful ranching operation and became one of the wealthiest cattlemen in South Texas.

His transformation from outlaw to respected rancher appeared complete. Then, one trip to San Antonio brought it all to an end.

Buckshot Roberts never sought a reputation. He spent much of his life trying to avoid one.

He got caught up in New Mexico’s Lincoln County War, a conflict filled with rustlers, cattlemen, hired guns, and politicians. In April 1878, he faced several armed opponents at Blazer’s Mill. Already wounded, Roberts took cover and refused to surrender. He  killed one attacker, wounded several others, and held off an entire group before finally succumbing to his injuries. Even his enemies walked away impressed.

Johnny Ringo

Hollywood transformed Johnny Ringo into a larger-than-life figure. The actual story is more complicated.

Ringo arrived in Texas as a young man and got involved in the bloody Mason County War. The conflict left many men dead and introduced him to a life of violence. Eventually he drifted west into Arizona Territory where he fell in with the Cowboy faction that feuded with the Earps.

Heavy drinking and personal troubles followed him everywhere. In 1882, he was found dead beneath a tree with a bullet wound to the head. Whether he took his own life or was murdered remains one of the West’s enduring mysteries.

Bill Longley

Bill Longley grew up in the chaos of Reconstruction Texas. The Civil War had ended, but violence remained common, and grudges often ended with a gunshot.

Longley developed a reputation as one of the state’s most dangerous young killers. Like many gunfighters, he exaggerated his exploits, but he had left bodies behind him. Newspapers followed his career closely, turning him into a frontier celebrity.

Captured and sentenced to hang, Longley spent his last months presenting himself as a changed man. The rope ended his story in 1878 when he was only twenty-seven years old.

Deacon Jim Miller

If Bill Longley was reckless, Jim Miller was calculating.

Miller dressed well, attended church, and looked more like an undertaker than a gunfighter. Beneath the respectable appearance was a man widely suspected of being a professional killer. While other gunfighters settled disputes face-to-face, Miller preferred ambushes.

His weapon of choice was usually a shotgun. Victims often never saw him coming. Authorities suspected him in many murders across Texas and Oklahoma, but convictions proved difficult to get.

In 1909 an Oklahoma mob dragged Miller from jail and hanged before he could escape punishment again.

Mysterious Dave Mather

Mysterious Dave Mather may have had the best nickname in the Old West.

Stories about his early years contradicted one another, which only added to the legend. By the 1880s he appeared in Dodge City and other frontier towns alongside some of the West’s most famous gunfighters.

Mather possessed a reputation for cool nerves and quick reactions. He survived several dangerous encounters and gained a reputation as a man who remained calm when bullets started flying.

Then, almost as mysteriously as he appeared, he faded from the historical record.

Long before Billy the Kid became famous, Texans feared Cullen Baker.

The years after the Civil War were among the most violent in the state’s history. Baker thrived in the chaos. Robberies, murders, and acts of intimidation followed him wherever he went.

Unlike many outlaws who later became folk heroes, Baker inspired genuine fear. Even experienced lawmen approached him cautiously. Stories of his brutality spread across Texas and made him one of the most hated men in the region.

A determined group of pursuers finally tracked him down and killed him, ending a career built almost entirely on violence.

Jack Powers belonged to an earlier generation of frontier gunfighters.

An Irish immigrant, Powers arrived in the American West during the Gold Rush years. He quickly discovered gambling offered better odds than digging for gold. Tall, handsome, and charismatic, he became a fixture in California’s rough-and-tumble mining towns.

Political feuds and personal rivalries repeatedly pulled him into violence. He led armed groups, survived gunfights, and developed a reputation for courage that spread throughout the region.

Today he’s largely forgotten, but during his lifetime few men were better known along the Pacific frontier.

Dallas Charley Bryant never achieved the fame of Hardin or Hickok, but he earned plenty of respect from the men who knew him.

Bryant drifted through Texas and Indian Territory during an era when gambling halls, cattle drives, and outlaw camps often overlapped. He survived many dangerous encounters and built a reputation as a man who could handle himself in a fight.

Like many frontier gunfighters, much of his story survives through newspaper accounts and secondhand recollections. That’s often the case with the West’s deadliest men. The famous names became legends. The rest slipped into the shadows.

Many times, those forgotten gunfighters lived lives every bit as violent—and every bit as fascinating—as the men who became household names.

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