Bob Boze Bell
Stinking Badges!

Stinking Badges!

One of the most well-known lines from a Western is widely misquoted: “Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!” Actually, in the 1948 classic “The...

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Loser Mountain

Loser Mountain

During the Civil War, Gen. Irvin McDowell lost the First Battle of Bull Run and then, defying all odds, lost the second Bull Run (although he was...

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A Long Shot

A Long Shot

June 27, 1874 The Comanches and their Kiowa and Southern Cheyenne allies are hell bent on driving buffalo hunters off their land. The hunters have...

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Bean Belly Egged On

Bean Belly Egged On

In 1879, Ross Woods got the last breakfast eggs at the Stratford Hotel restaurant in Shakespeare, New Mexico. This didn’t sit well with Bean Belly...

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Legendary Dishwasher

Legendary Dishwasher

In the spring of 1876, Henry Antrim worked as a bus boy at the Hotel de Luna at the edge of Camp Grant, Arizona Territory. Later he would change his...

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Deadlines Missed

Deadlines Missed

On July 8, 1859, in Tubac, silver capitalist Sylvester Mowry and newspaper editor Edward Cross squared off with Burnside rifles at 40 paces. Cross...

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Cowboy Lingo

Cowboy Lingo

To the Arizona cowboy, language has always meant imaginative mangling. Something isn’t just loud, it’s noisy as a fog horn in a funeral parlor. A...

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Drunk As Skunks

Drunk As Skunks

Drinking too much alcohol in the Old West was a year-round sporting event and, of course, had its own slang. If someone was drunk they were “in...

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