Arnold Darby is in a great mood the day I arrive in Huntsville, Texas, to talk about his custom bootmaking business...with good reason. After serving 37 years in the Texas penal system, Darby has just learned that he’s being paroled. “This is the shoes I’m gonna wear when I go home,” says Darby, while standing in the Goree Unit’s craft shop, pointing to a pair of handsome alligator dress shoes. “I feel good.” In 1974, Darby was convicted of robbing a drug store. “I’d be

November/December 2011
In This Issue:
Features
Western Books & Movies
More In This Issue
- Keeping New Mexico’s Pueblo Culture Alive
- Butch & Sundance—and Rolla
- Mountain Man Grub vs the Forts’
- Not-So-True True Grit
- Ponchos Ride Again
- In one C.S. Fly photograph, Geronimo holds two long sticks in his left hand. Would these be tamping rods for the rifle he’s holding?
- I own an Old West poker chip with the imprint of a crescent and star. Is it true that was the mark for the Acme Saloon in El Paso, where John Wesley Hardin was killed?
- Why is Arizona’s Zane Grey Highway also called the General Crook Trail?
- During our recent trip to Wyoming’s Fort Laramie, our tour guide told us that when Union troops left Indian Territory forts to serve in the Civil War, the Union sent more than 6,000 Confederate captives to man the forts. Is that correct?
- Ellensburg, Washington
- Learning Their Trade…In Stir
- Miranda Lambert
- Saddle Up for the Holidays
- How long would it have taken a wagon train to go from Mississippi to California in the 1800s?
- Artists We Love—Ed Mell
- Did Old West lynch mobs ever remove the boots of the man about to swing?
- Following New Mexico’s Road to Statehood
- Nampeyo’s Legacy
- Ugly Ducklings, No More
- Cave Creek Ambush
- Juni Fisher