John Braden was a stagecoach driver for decades—and a hero in the last act of his life. Braden was living in Albuquerque in 1896. He was driving a...
A Hero on his Last Run
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Mark Boardman
A Dandy of a Man
Colorado Charlie Utter (right in above photo) is best known as Wild Bill Hickok’s friend, the man who made sure he was buried proper in Deadwood,...
Upping the Ante
The Cow-boy and Earp factions were already at loggerheads in the fall of 1881. A stagecoach robbery took things to another level. On the night of...
The Man who Brought Down the High Fives
Fred Higgins was an unsung US deputy marshal who helped bring down the High Five Gang, which roamed the Southwest in the 1890s. In November 1896,...
Should Have Stucky to Cowboying
Code Young went to outlawry in the mid-1890s, joining up with the High Fives Gang that roamed the Southwest. The former cowboy was involved in a...
Starr of a Publicity Photo
Blue Duck is famous for two reasons—Larry McMurtry had a character by that name in Lonesome Dove, and the real man was photographed with Belle...
A Blow to the Head
Buckskin Frank Leslie pleaded guilty to killing his girlfriend Mollie Edwards in January 1890. It seemed to be an open and shut case; Leslie killed...
More than a Barkeep
The movies portray Milt Joyce as your basic barkeep, a working owner of Tombstone’s Oriental Saloon. And that’s just one small slice of this...
Shooting the Silhouette
The story goes that Buckskin Frank Leslie used to stand his wife May against a wall and shoot bullets in an outline around her body—something that...
The Gang Lawyer
Jason Brevoort Brown was an opportunist, a lawyer and politician in Indiana during the last half of the 19th century. He represented the Jackson...
Land Grabbers
By 1865, the Wilkison Reno family owned more land than anyone else in Jackson County, IN. They got it the old fashioned way: crime. The acquired...
The Night of Blood
The night of December 12, 1868, about 50 men hijacked a train from Seymour to New Albany, IN. Once there, they took over the county jail (wounding...