The story goes that Deputy U.S. Marshal Bill Tilghman was tracking the Doolin Gang in January 1895. He entered a dugout on the Dunn ranch, looking...
Tilghman’s Tall Tale
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true west blog
Gunfighter: Partly Truth and Partly Fiction
Gunfighters were partly man and partly myth. In legend and sometimes in real life they stood along as lone crusaders or knight-errants who fought...
A Blundered Billy Legend
The story goes that Catholic nun Sister Blandina Segale had a run-in with Billy the Kid back in the 1870s. He was angry when physicians in Trinidad,...
Old West Jails
Hollywood movie sets built their jails pretty similar. They always had a window in back because the script called for a crony to slip them a pistol...
A Short Storm at a Deadly Address
On February 25, 1881, after an earlier altercation inside, faro dealer Luke Short, shot and killed fellow gambler Charley Storms outside the ...
The Gentleman Train Robber
Eugene Bunch was a gentleman train robber, a former newspaper editor and teacher who turned to crime in 1888. He held up six trains in Texas,...
An Outlaw with a “Faultess” Figure
Arizona authorities in 1902 reported 22 train robberies in the territory. Lawmen, including the Arizona Rangers rounded up and shot down more than a...
Kitty LeRoy Was A Jig Dancer And Much More
It was said the voluptuous Kitty LeRoy had been to the altar twenty-seven times. That sounds like an exaggeration but one does get the idea she...
Baseball at the O.K. Corral
Thanks to Rev. Endicott Peabody, mere months after the so-called Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in October 1881, Tombstone formed a baseball team and...
Andrew “Buckshot” Roberts
Andrew Roberts is one of those legendary characters of the Old West, a tough as nails guy who took on Billy the Kid and some of the Regulators at a...
It Always Rains After A Dry Spell
Back in 1980 future Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, Sandra Day O’Connor, asked me to join her at the Lazy B over near the Arizona-New Mexico...
The Great Western and the Biggest Leg in Mexico
At six feet two and 200 pounds, red-headed camp follower Sarah Bowman was nicknamed the “Great Western,” after the largest steamship afloat in the...