Ode to the Cowboys

Former Cochise County ranch wife Joyce Aros was, she writes, “exposed for a time to some old-time cowboys.” From there she makes a leap of faith that the Clantons and McLaurys were ranchers, not rustlers, in defiance of all evidence (including the opinions of Sheriff John Behan and his deputy William Breckenridge). We can understand them, she writes, “if we understand the ‘code of the west,’” which unfortunately for the rest of us was never written down. Her conclusion in Murdere