Dead horses and dead men can be a hard sell in 2014, but not when it comes to a Charlie Russell painting. So says eminent Russell scholar Brian...
The Gang Slayer
December 19, 1854 Three American prospectors are traversing a miner’s trail in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains (see map below). As Capt....
Treasures of the Old West
When the Spanish explored the West, they discovered numerous ruins clinging to cliff sides and mountain tops. Today, many of these ancient Puebloan...
A Man to Match the Land
John Wayne had incrementally risen from three-day pictures to six-day pictures to ten-day pictures, with corresponding increases in salary but very...
Did Doc Holliday Hunt Down Old Man Clanton?
No man is an island, isolated from his time and place, so exploring the world of a historical individual not only gives a sense of reality to his...
Custer Captured
Considering George Armstrong Custer died nearly 140 years ago, it’s remarkable that so many feel they know him today. Some think of him as the...
Beware of the Candied Cherries
Florence Mildred Campbell was desperate to be the wife of John Rathom, a star reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle since 1896, with whom she was...
Mark Lee Gardner
I know someone is into Billy the Kid as soon as they ask me what he was really like, as if I knew him personally. Some people are Kid Krazy,...
Happy 100th Birthday, Allan Houser
Ask anyone to name a Chiricahua Apache, and you will probably hear “Cochise” or “Geronimo.” But the first name coming to my mind is always Allan...
A Wild Western Zine
In the 1960s, James Warren and Forrest J. Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland was such a runaway success, covering old and new Horror movies, the...
The Myths of a Border Warrior
Reportedly born around 1886, Rafael “Red” López was a bad man. He killed six men—including five law officers—in late 1913 near Bingham, Utah. Then...
Life and Death of a Ranger
Who doesn’t like a mystery? And a saga of vengeance? Cynthia Leal Massey Death of a Texas Ranger (Globe Pequot, $16.95) combines these two genres...