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 Murdered on the Street of Tombstone (Goose Flats Publishing, $26.99) that the cowboys were murdered in the street fight is reached by disregarding all testimony to the contrary. Aros is very talented, and her drawings of the participants, particularly the cowboys in period outfits, are superb. –Allen Barra, author of Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends