August 7, 1871
Charles Couger is sitting on a bed reading a newspaper in the American House in Abilene, Kansas.
Four shots are fired from outside his room, with the bullets coming through a “board partition,” one of which strikes him “in the fleshy part of the left arm, passing through the third rib and entering the heart, cutting a piece of it entirely off, and killing Couger almost instantly,” the Abilene Chronicle reports on August 10.
The newspaper also reports that the murd

September 2011
In This Issue:
More In This Issue
- What did Old West towns do with the carcasses of dead horses?
- Who was Urilla Sutherland, the first wife of Wyatt Earp?
- Why didn’t Winchester chamber any of its rifles in .45 Colt?
- What happened to Maj. Marcus Reno’s command during the Battle of Little Big Horn in June 1876?
- What is forty-rod whiskey?
- Did cowboys place their rifle scabbards in the front or back of the saddle?
- I’m intrigued by the story of Dora Hand, the Dodge City saloon singer. Do any photos of her exist?
- Hot Springs, South Dakota
- Mark Hall-Patton
- Confronting the Fiddle Player: Did Rex Rideout Make it Out of Cowboys & Aliens Alive?
- 1961’s The Comancheros
- The Legend of Hell’s Gate
- Tarantino’s “Southern” Western
- The Warrior’s Way
- Rango
- The “Heart” of Cowboys & Aliens
- National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum’s Wrangler Winners
- Killed by Indians 1871
- Payback at Morning Peak
- The First Dance
- Olivia Wilde
- The Sierra Packers
- A Screaming Session at Cowboys & Aliens
- Conflict on the Range
- Galveston’s Guardian Angel
- Survivors of an Old West Shoot-Out
- Shot for Snoring?
- Eating Along the Oregon Trail
- TB Havens in the Old West
- Face-Off on Facebook
- Boot Scoot & Boogie
- Cowboys and Monsters
- Get Along, Little Buffalo!
- The Bandit Queen’s Treasures
- Top 10 Western Museums of 2011
- Billy the Kid Stays in the States!