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Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

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Speaker 2: You know, many of them, I have to say, are

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Speaker 2: given that their reason for fame is killing other people.

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Speaker 2: Are not exactly you know, people that you want babysitting

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Speaker 2: your thirteen year olds, you probably not want to have

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Speaker 2: them over to the barbecue.

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Speaker 3: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor

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Speaker 3: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the

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Speaker 3: podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,

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Speaker 3: research for my many audio and book projects has taken

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Speaker 3: me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down

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Speaker 3: with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,

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Speaker 3: and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true

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Speaker 3: crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both

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Speaker 3: good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the

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Speaker 3: unpublished details behind their stories. We've heard from my buddy

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Speaker 3: Brian Burrow before for one of his audible books based

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Speaker 3: on a true crime story. His new book is very different.

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Speaker 3: It's called The Gunfighters, How Texas Made the Wild West.

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Speaker 3: I remember when you were saying to me, I'm gonna

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Speaker 3: write this book with two other authors, which already I

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Speaker 3: was like, whoa, Okay, I.

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Speaker 1: Don't know that's gonna work out.

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Speaker 3: But then on top of that, you know, you said

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Speaker 3: with Forget the Alamo, this is just gonna be a

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Speaker 3: Father's Day coffee table book and that's it. Which it

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Speaker 3: turned into a huge thing because it was myth busting,

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Speaker 3: which is not dissimilar to what you did in this

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Speaker 3: latest book.

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Speaker 2: Everybody wants to say the latest book is myth busting.

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Speaker 2: I think it's more myth confirmation. But that's just me. Okay, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: Forget the Alamo was a strange one, you notice, just

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Speaker 2: to go off and write a book with two pals,

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Speaker 2: and it was supposed to be kind of something we

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Speaker 2: did in our spare time, kind of a fun, you know,

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Speaker 2: essay length you know, new look at the Birth of Texas,

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Speaker 2: which hereabouts is sacrosanct. And it obviously became a type

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Speaker 2: of book that kind of took over our lives for

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Speaker 2: a couple of years, and we put it out to

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Speaker 2: very nice notice. And then you may remember our big

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Speaker 2: publicity event was canceled by the Lieutenant Governor at the

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Speaker 2: State History Museum, and the controversy over that catapulted us

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Speaker 2: into the New York Times Top ten, So we got

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Speaker 2: very lucky there. You know, that was a kind of

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Speaker 2: a one off, interesting book for me. But Gunfighters just

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Speaker 2: kind of returning to as I can hear you say,

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Speaker 2: my brand meaning my books.

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Speaker 3: I think it does. So let's get started with that story.

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Speaker 3: You know, where do you begun? Because there's a lot

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Speaker 3: of ground to cover with what you're specifically talking about.

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Speaker 3: Did you pick a decade or an era to tackle this?

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Speaker 1: What was the initial pitch?

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Speaker 2: The initial pitch failed. This was twenty years ago. In

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Speaker 2: two thousand and four. I wrote a book called Public

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Speaker 2: Enemies that I think most people that they're aware of

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Speaker 2: it may remember it as a pretty decent Johnny Depp

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Speaker 2: Christian Bale movie in two thousand and nine or ten.

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Speaker 2: That book looked at depression, areat bank rubbers like baby

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Speaker 2: Face Nelson and John Dillinger and told all their story

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Speaker 2: as part of a single narrative. And when I got done,

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Speaker 2: the book was the success. And when I got done,

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Speaker 2: if you've already gone back one hundred some odd years

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Speaker 2: to look at the depression, the natural place for me

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Speaker 2: to go was to the one place in American history

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Speaker 2: before that, where people had gotten famous for being criminals

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Speaker 2: and for shooting people, and that was the Old West.

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Speaker 2: And I thought that the broadest possible way I could

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Speaker 2: do that would be to look at gunfighters as opposed

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Speaker 2: to outlaws or you know, some type of gunfighter. So

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Speaker 2: I went to my luckily I've had the same editor

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Speaker 2: now for twenty six and said, hey, this is what

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Speaker 2: I'm going to do next. He's like, yeah, I'm not

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Speaker 2: feeling it. And the problem was up until that point was,

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Speaker 2: you know, if you look at the realm of Old

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Speaker 2: West gunfighters, there is no single story. There's just a

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Speaker 2: bunch of guys with different careers, many of them are unrelated.

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Speaker 2: And he you know, books that had been written about

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Speaker 2: gunfighters back in the day were typically seventeen chapters about

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Speaker 2: seventeen gunfighters. And I can't do an episodic book, in

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Speaker 2: part because I mean, just to be honest, you're just

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Speaker 2: not going to get paid what I want to be

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Speaker 2: paid for that type of book. You need to find

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Speaker 2: a fresh way to tell this whole story of all

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Speaker 2: these gunfighters as one. Well, that seemed impossible, and in

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Speaker 2: the end I went off to do something else, and

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Speaker 2: it took me twelve years to stumble upon or to

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Speaker 2: work upon a theme that would allow me to tell

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Speaker 2: the story of this era as a single narrative.

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Speaker 1: So how did you do that? When as a writer,

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Speaker 1: where do you start? Do you pick? Well, like I'll

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Speaker 1: tell you.

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Speaker 3: For American Sherlock, which I was trying to cover, you know,

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Speaker 3: a ten year p period with one forensic investigator with

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Speaker 3: a bunch of crimes. I told the archivist because we

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Speaker 3: had a huge file, just a huge collection, and I said,

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Speaker 3: pick the nine most violent, thickest files because that would

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Speaker 3: have the most information for me.

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Speaker 1: So how do you narrow it down? Or am I

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Speaker 1: being naive? And there aren't that many gunfighters out there

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Speaker 1: in history?

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Speaker 2: No, there's hundreds. But yeah, we faced much the same situation.

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Speaker 2: You knew the subject, which was that guy, and and

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Speaker 2: so your problem was, well, how do I make it

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Speaker 2: into something that's a page turner as opposed to just

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Speaker 2: another biography and every twenty five pages is the new case.

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Speaker 2: And you succeeded. For me, it was a much bigger problem.

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Speaker 2: And that is all I knew was I had a subject, right,

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Speaker 2: but how do you make that into a single story?

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Speaker 2: First thing I did was I thought what are these

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Speaker 2: people have in common? The one thing they all have

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Speaker 2: in common, other than the fact that they got famous

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Speaker 2: for killing people, is the time period all of them

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Speaker 2: rose and fell, basically between eighteen sixty five and nineteen

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Speaker 2: oh one. Eighteen sixty five being the moment of the

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Speaker 2: first nationally recognized Old West style gunfight involving while Bill

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Speaker 2: Hiccock until nineteen oh one, when Butch and Sundance famously

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Speaker 2: got on the freighter that took them away from the

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Speaker 2: United States to South America, and everybody that I wanted

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Speaker 2: to write about, from John Wesley Harden to Billy the Kid,

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Speaker 2: to Why They're to you know, a dozen or more

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Speaker 2: guys you've never heard of Rosenfeld during that period. So

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Speaker 2: then the question became, Okay, now I'm going and I

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Speaker 2: named it the gunfighter era, and that sounded so important,

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Speaker 2: and it sounded like, Okay, now I've got a time period.

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Speaker 2: I'm going to tell the story of that time period.

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Speaker 2: So that next question naturally became, well, where did this

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Speaker 2: behavior come from? These people seemingly came out of nowhere.

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Speaker 2: We had no famous gunfighters before them. Where did this

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Speaker 2: whole phenomena come from? Well, revolvers which is what gunfighters

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Speaker 2: mostly use, had only been popularized in eighteen forty four years,

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Speaker 2: and not surprising that nobody got particularly famous in that

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Speaker 2: period up to the war. But I just felt sure

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Speaker 2: that the behavior had to come from someplace. And frankly,

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Speaker 2: when you look at American history, there's only one group

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Speaker 2: of people before the Old West who got famous for

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Speaker 2: shooting each other, and that was duellists, people who engaged

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Speaker 2: in duels, which was a phenomenon that was prominent between

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Speaker 2: the seventeen eighties and roughly the eighteen forties, and it famously,

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Speaker 2: you know, was most famous in the South. So I

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Speaker 2: began doing research on duellists in the Antebellum South and

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Speaker 2: realized I was onto something not so much in the

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Speaker 2: structure of things, because duels did not last until the

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Speaker 2: Old West. They were mostly gone by the eighteen fifties,

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Speaker 2: but in the reasons behind the duel, the reasons that

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Speaker 2: men got so mad at each other they had shoot

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Speaker 2: each other. And I found the roots of that in

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Speaker 2: what they call the old Southern honor system, the way

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Speaker 2: that Southerners kept score on themselves by kind of an

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Speaker 2: honor code, which basically, you know, said that you had

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Speaker 2: to be honest and fair. But if if your honor

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Speaker 2: was impugned, if I said, you know your ugly, your

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Speaker 2: wife is ugly, your kid is ugly, you had the

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Speaker 2: opportunity and in most cases, the obligation to respond with violence,

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Speaker 2: even deadly violence. And that seemed to be an awful

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Speaker 2: lot of what propelled the violence in the Old West.

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Speaker 3: So you have this time period down, so you're getting closer,

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Speaker 3: but you still have how many really or is it

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Speaker 3: a couple of hundred that you're considering?

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Speaker 1: And how do you narrow it down?

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Speaker 2: Let's say there's one hundred. Yeah. Once I determined that

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Speaker 2: Antebellum duelists and behavior male behaviors in the Animelum South

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Speaker 2: more important to something that happened twenty years later on

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Speaker 2: the frontier, the question becomes, how could that possibly be

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Speaker 2: pal You know, how does such behaviors move because they

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Speaker 2: didn't move into the North. What I came up with

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Speaker 2: that was the crucial fulcrim in all this, and that

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Speaker 2: ultimately informed the university of gunfighters that I would look

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Speaker 2: at was Texas that a lot of the behavior, in fact,

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Speaker 2: all the behaviors that I saw in the Annebellum South

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Speaker 2: gravitated to Texas, which was every inch a southern state,

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Speaker 2: you know, forty percent of its early settlers just from

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Speaker 2: Alabama and Tennessee. And what you saw and what kind

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Speaker 2: of supercharged this phenomena, what made it explosive was the

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Speaker 2: decade after the Civil War in Texas, which underwent a

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Speaker 2: spasm of civilian on civilian violence that some academics still

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Speaker 2: say was the single most violent period in American history.

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Speaker 2: And that violence came in two waves, the first wave

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Speaker 2: basically being a rebellion that the state and many of

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Speaker 2: its inhabitants all you know, rebelled against the occupation by

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Speaker 2: Union soldiers, especially those of color. And so for about

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Speaker 2: five years there, much of Texas, especially North and East Texas,

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Speaker 2: was engulfed in a series of the worst feuds in

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Speaker 2: American history, just impossibly violent stuff. And around eighteen seventy

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Speaker 2: a second wave of violence entirely unrelated developed around the

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Speaker 2: state's dominant industry, which was open range cattle ranching. And

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Speaker 2: if you know anything about cattle ranching, back in the

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Speaker 2: days when there were no fences, when there was no

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Speaker 2: barbed wire, the main thing that cattlemen were concerned with

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Speaker 2: was cattle. Theft, cattle rustling, and as that business grew

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Speaker 2: from its origins in South Texas below San Antonio up

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Speaker 2: into Central Texas where people didn't know not to mess

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Speaker 2: with cattleman, it became spectacularly violent, also breaking out in

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Speaker 2: a series of feuds in and around Austin, such that

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Speaker 2: you know, a lot of it was you know, seven

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Speaker 2: bodies on a tree, lamb, But a lot of it

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Speaker 2: was just this new cattle industry sense of justice. Some

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Speaker 2: people call it the Code of the West, where they

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Speaker 2: basically if you were suspected of stealing a cow, you

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Speaker 2: were dispatched with a single bullet, far from a courtroom.

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Speaker 2: And this type of behavior perhaps the most the most violent,

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Speaker 2: Central Texas being the most violent, among the most violent

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Speaker 2: places that we've seen in the lower forty eight, you know,

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Speaker 2: could have been chalked off of kind of interesting Texas history,

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Speaker 2: except the violence I argue in the book didn't stay there.

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Speaker 2: As the Texas cattle business erupted and spread across the

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Speaker 2: frontier in the mid seventies, it spread everywhere, first to Kansas,

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Speaker 2: then into New Mexico and Arizona. As Texas cattleman and

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Speaker 2: Texans all but colonized those territories we forget that, you know,

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Speaker 2: to the extent that cattle and cattle ranching spread all

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Speaker 2: across the old Western frontier, it all came from Texas,

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Speaker 2: I mean of it. We had all the cows, and

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Speaker 2: we certainly had all the cowboys. So that's what I argue,

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Speaker 2: you know, spread an awful lot of the extra traditional

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Speaker 2: violence was you know, a group of Texans several thousand

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Speaker 2: strong that fanned out across the West. Many were called cowboys,

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Speaker 2: but other were called outlaws and all sorts of things.

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Speaker 2: But I'm telling you, Kate, if you go back and

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Speaker 2: you look at kind of the most famous gunfights of

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Speaker 2: the Old West, let's say four hundred of them, I'm

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Speaker 2: telling you easily half of them, if not sixty percent,

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Speaker 2: featured to Texan, not just the ones in Texas, but everywhere.

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Speaker 1: Well, what do we start with.

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Speaker 3: You've mentioned some names that sound like real touchstones in

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Speaker 3: this history, and then you know when we start with

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Speaker 3: one and then tell me how you're making this connective

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Speaker 3: tissue to make this kind of one big narrative rather than,

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Speaker 3: like you said, chapter to chapter.

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Speaker 1: So who do you start with.

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Speaker 2: The first place that you started Texas? And what happened

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Speaker 2: in Texas during that spasm of violence. But if you're

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Speaker 2: going to then tackle the rest of the Old West,

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Speaker 2: as you have to, you have to talk about the

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Speaker 2: spread of that in the first place where this type

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Speaker 2: of new hyper violent ethos that I argue was born

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Speaker 2: in Texas, The first place where it really hit the

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Speaker 2: rest of the world was in Kansas, going up what

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Speaker 2: some people may remember dimly from high school, the Chisholm

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Speaker 2: Trail and a bunch of cattle trails. Texas had to

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Speaker 2: move their cattle north because they did not have at

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Speaker 2: the time railroads that were connected to the North. If

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Speaker 2: they wanted to sell their cattle to the new slaughterhouses

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Speaker 2: in Chicago and Omaha and New York, they had to

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Speaker 2: get them up to the railheads in Kansas. So that

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Speaker 2: began in like eighteen sixty eight, eighteen sixty nine, and

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Speaker 2: there were five cattle towns in Kansas, beginning with Abilene

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Speaker 2: famously in eighteen seventy one and ending with Dodge City

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Speaker 2: in the late eighteen seventies, and collectively these five cattle

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Speaker 2: towns became kind of the birth of the gunfighter era.

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Speaker 2: That really the first place where journalists, especially northern journals,

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Speaker 2: were just stunned at who are these Texans and why

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Speaker 2: are they coming up here and causing all their trouble

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Speaker 2: and getting into all these gunfights. You know, those five towns,

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Speaker 2: I argue, are kind of the Madison Square Garden of

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Speaker 2: the gunfighter era. That there really where the whole phenomena started.

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Speaker 2: They're really were the first marquee gunfights began.

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Speaker 1: I mean, just in its simplest form, what would start these?

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Speaker 1: Is it over cattle? Or is it over insults? Or

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Speaker 1: is it over women? Or are they guns for hire?

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Speaker 2: It's everything that men could get angry about. Oh gosh,

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Speaker 2: it's as bad as you envision a saloon full of

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Speaker 2: fraternity guys. Now you know, do that times twenty five.

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Speaker 2: A lot of the Texans, who were already climatized to

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Speaker 2: awful lot of violence went north with a chip on

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Speaker 2: their shoulder about Yankees and Yankee sheriffs. But a gunfight,

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Speaker 2: and let's, by the way, let's define our terms a

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Speaker 2: gunfight as it's used by those write about gunfighters is

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Speaker 2: we're talking specifically about extra judicial violence among civilians. So

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Speaker 2: nothing involving Native Americans, nothing involving soldiers. This has to

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Speaker 2: be private citizens on their own as it were, the

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Speaker 2: really the first theater of all this begins in Abilene

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Speaker 2: in eighteen seventy one. That these are the special conditions

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Speaker 2: that really got the rest of the country to go

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Speaker 2: what And you know, it's Abiliene in eighteen seventy one

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Speaker 2: that is uniformly preserved as kind of the first great theater.

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Speaker 2: And there's two specific reasons for one happened. The reason

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Speaker 2: it happened is because in eighteen seventy one, the marshall

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Speaker 2: of Abilene, Kansas was someone named wild Bill Hiccock, who

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Speaker 2: we mentioned a moment ago. While Bill Hiccock was made

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Speaker 2: famous by a single magazine article in eighteen sixty seven

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Speaker 2: in Harper's Weekly that wrote about that first gunfight that

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Speaker 2: I talked about in Springfilm, Missouri in eighteen sixty five,

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Speaker 2: and further went and positive that wild Bill Hiccock had

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Speaker 2: killed eave over one hundred white men over the course

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Speaker 2: of his career as a gunfighter. Didn't use the word.

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Speaker 2: The word didn't come into wide use until after eighteen

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Speaker 2: seventy four. The exact number appears not to be over

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Speaker 2: one hundred, but the exact number would seem to be two.

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Speaker 2: The magazine writer in the magazine article were wildly fanciful,

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Speaker 2: but overnight it created this notion of people running around

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Speaker 2: what people were realizing is the old West Frontier shooting people.

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Speaker 2: In other words, wild Kikcock made it a thing. So

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Speaker 2: when he shows up as a marshal of his first

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Speaker 2: major town in eighteen seventy one and starts getting into

294
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Speaker 2: gunfighters with Texans, Kansas newspapers first and then Northern newspapers

295
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Speaker 2: began to take notice. And the gunfighter who most personifies

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Speaker 2: this kind of homicidal, incredibly hyper sensitive, hyper violent young

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Speaker 2: cowboy is a young man named John Wesley Harden. And

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Speaker 2: it's the face off between Hickock and Harden in Abilene

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Speaker 2: in eighteen seventy one that really create the foundation of

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Speaker 2: this whole gunfighter era.

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Speaker 3: Now you say the face offs, you can survive one

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Speaker 3: of these, I mean, wouldn't you think one of these

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Speaker 3: guys would have been killed instead of being able to

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Speaker 3: see each other multiple times like this?

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Speaker 2: You would have thought. We know that Harden was in

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Speaker 2: Kansas on a cattle drive for about three and a

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Speaker 2: half four months. The most conservative, I would say, estimate

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Speaker 2: of the number of people he killed in those four

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Speaker 2: months would appear to be eight. He killed them in

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Speaker 2: a number of ways, including a big battle out in

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Speaker 2: the middle of the prairie with a bunch of Mexican

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Speaker 2: VAK heroes, and he appeared to have killed four or

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Speaker 2: five there, and then famously at the end. In fact,

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Speaker 2: it was the most famous shooting he was involved with,

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Speaker 2: killed another Texas cattleman through the wall of a hotel

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Speaker 2: at four in the morning. And the story that's always

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Speaker 2: gone down about that, which is nobody has ever believed,

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Speaker 2: is that he did it for snoring. And Kate, I'm sorry,

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Speaker 2: if you shoot somebody through a hotel room walle at

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Speaker 2: four in the morning, it's because they were making racket

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Speaker 2: or they disted you or something. And so I actually

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Speaker 2: kind of believe snoring. But Harden was kind of the

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Speaker 2: archetypal not only gunfighter of his ear because he wandered

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Speaker 2: around just getting into all these gunfighters. I mean, this

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Speaker 2: is a young man who killed between twenty six and

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Speaker 2: forty two people by the time he was twenty one,

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Speaker 2: and he killed most of them before he was eighteen,

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Speaker 2: when he made a ruckus in a bowling alley. Yes,

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Speaker 2: they had bowling alleys on the frontier there in Abilene

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Speaker 2: in June. Hickock, who knew he was in town and

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Speaker 2: knew that he was wanted by the law for some

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Speaker 2: killings in Texas, didn't do much about it. Let him

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Speaker 2: wear his guns. But when he started getting into a

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Speaker 2: ruckus in this bowling alley, he did come in, drew

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Speaker 2: a gun and said he called him Little Arkansas. That

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Speaker 2: was his nickname that summer for obscure reasons. And he

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Speaker 2: demanded Harden's gun. And Harden had two, and he pulled

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Speaker 2: them and he handed them toward Hiccock butt first, and

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Speaker 2: then as Hiccock went to take them, spun them in

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Speaker 2: a maneuver called the road agent's spin, so that the

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Speaker 2: barrels were now pointed directly at Hickock's chest, at which

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Speaker 2: Hiccock had to basically put up his hands and say

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Speaker 2: you got me, at which point Harden yelled to his buddies,

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Speaker 2: nobody draw. You know, if anybody's gonna shoot, I'm gonna

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Speaker 2: do it. And what you see here is John Wesley.

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Speaker 2: Harden was a young man about nineteen years old. He

347
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Speaker 2: was among the ultimate hotheads of American history. Hickock was older, quieter, smarter,

348
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Speaker 2: and he basically said, hey, dude, chill, we don't need

349
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Speaker 2: to be doing this. Let's just go talk it Let's

350
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Speaker 2: go talk it off, and you get this. Since Harden

351
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Speaker 2: was so startled, he didn't know how to escalate, and

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Speaker 2: so he did. And so it became one of the

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Speaker 2: great non gunfights of Old West history because here were

354
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Speaker 2: if you have a top five, a big five I

355
00:19:55,040 --> 00:19:58,640
Speaker 2: sometimes call them of Old West gunfighters. Here were two

356
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Speaker 2: of them, and yet they both walked away alive.

357
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Speaker 3: Did they talk or was it just like see you later,

358
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Speaker 3: just you stay in your corner, Eill, stay in mine.

359
00:20:06,680 --> 00:20:08,800
Speaker 2: It was that it was see you later. I mean,

360
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Speaker 2: we already know that Hickock was treating Harden with kid gloves.

361
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Speaker 2: You were not supposed to as in most Old West towns,

362
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Speaker 2: you were not supposed to wear your guns. There was

363
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Speaker 2: no open carry. Generally speaking, you were supposed to check them.

364
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Speaker 2: We believe from what from reading between the lines that though,

365
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Speaker 2: that even in places like Tombstone which had such raw laws,

366
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Speaker 2: they were seldom enforced until a sheriff or marshall thought

367
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Speaker 2: that somebody was getting in trouble. And so for the

368
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Speaker 2: rest of that summer, Hickock continued to allow Harden to

369
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Speaker 2: wear his guns. And he ended up and let me

370
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Speaker 2: see one, two, three more shooting scrapes, including the gentleman

371
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Speaker 2: that he shot, I believe for snoring.

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Speaker 3: Now I have just sort of fundamental questions of being

373
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Speaker 3: a gunfighter. How do you recruit? Are you paying these people?

374
00:21:02,040 --> 00:21:04,800
Speaker 3: Are you looting things? I mean, what is the motivation

375
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Speaker 3: for a young man? And I don't want to hear

376
00:21:06,960 --> 00:21:09,960
Speaker 3: the answer. Young men have pisson vinegar and are happy

377
00:21:09,960 --> 00:21:11,359
Speaker 3: to shoot other people for free?

378
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Speaker 1: Or is that it?

379
00:21:12,800 --> 00:21:16,560
Speaker 2: Well, there were many types of gunfighters, so, I mean,

380
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Speaker 2: a gunfighter could be a cattleman. He could be an outlaw,

381
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Speaker 2: he could be a lawman. He could be a feudest,

382
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Speaker 2: he could be that rarest a gun for hire. So

383
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Speaker 2: there are a lot of reasons why people shot each

384
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Speaker 2: other in the Old West. I've noticed in going through

385
00:21:31,640 --> 00:21:35,399
Speaker 2: all the old stuff that the dumbest reasons seem to

386
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Speaker 2: occur in the first half of this forty year period,

387
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Speaker 2: this thirty five year period, in other words, before the

388
00:21:40,880 --> 00:21:45,040
Speaker 2: West grows up, before law enforcement becomes more prevalent, a

389
00:21:45,080 --> 00:21:47,720
Speaker 2: period that really begins in the mid seventies with the

390
00:21:47,800 --> 00:21:50,359
Speaker 2: rise of the Texas Rangers. At people like whyat Earth

391
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Speaker 2: who are professional. You saw even more of kind of

392
00:21:54,280 --> 00:21:58,520
Speaker 2: knuckleheaded gun violence. One of the ones at Abilene, Harden

393
00:21:58,640 --> 00:22:02,200
Speaker 2: bumped into a guy who looked around him and cursed

394
00:22:02,280 --> 00:22:05,520
Speaker 2: him as a Texan, and the guy and Harden said

395
00:22:05,520 --> 00:22:08,639
Speaker 2: something back. The guy pulled his gun. He shot and missed,

396
00:22:08,680 --> 00:22:11,600
Speaker 2: Hardened fired and shot this guy in the face and

397
00:22:11,640 --> 00:22:14,760
Speaker 2: then ended up with teeth all over the sidewalk. That's

398
00:22:14,800 --> 00:22:17,439
Speaker 2: the type of idiocy that you see a lot before.

399
00:22:17,480 --> 00:22:20,760
Speaker 2: You see more widespread law enforcement in the latter half

400
00:22:20,800 --> 00:22:23,080
Speaker 2: of this period, from like eighteen eighty to nineteen hundred.

401
00:22:23,480 --> 00:22:26,280
Speaker 2: I note that more of the gunfights tend to be

402
00:22:26,320 --> 00:22:30,760
Speaker 2: about something as opposed to being about nothing, typically about resources,

403
00:22:31,520 --> 00:22:35,680
Speaker 2: whether about land or livestock, and you know, on a

404
00:22:35,720 --> 00:22:38,719
Speaker 2: frontier that had fewer and fewer resources to share. So

405
00:22:39,240 --> 00:22:42,080
Speaker 2: you know, I think that the things that drove a

406
00:22:42,080 --> 00:22:43,840
Speaker 2: lot of these gunfights were all over the map. But

407
00:22:43,880 --> 00:22:47,520
Speaker 2: the most common thing you see is, you know, young

408
00:22:47,680 --> 00:22:52,400
Speaker 2: men insulted in some way. Certainly, if you go back

409
00:22:52,440 --> 00:22:55,480
Speaker 2: and read the minute by minute accounts of the violence

410
00:22:55,480 --> 00:22:58,119
Speaker 2: that took place in Tombstone in the most famous gunfight

411
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Speaker 2: of them all, the gunfight beside the Okay corn Well,

412
00:23:01,080 --> 00:23:05,440
Speaker 2: you can see that insult to a man's honor explains

413
00:23:06,000 --> 00:23:09,159
Speaker 2: ninety nine percent of it. And I think to the

414
00:23:09,200 --> 00:23:12,720
Speaker 2: extent that Texans brought a lot of that into the

415
00:23:12,760 --> 00:23:18,160
Speaker 2: Old West. It's almost not surprising that their presence in

416
00:23:18,240 --> 00:23:21,520
Speaker 2: so many of the famous gunfights. It just it surprised

417
00:23:21,560 --> 00:23:23,960
Speaker 2: me so much when I realized I was going to

418
00:23:24,000 --> 00:23:26,119
Speaker 2: try to argue it in a book, because you know,

419
00:23:26,640 --> 00:23:28,520
Speaker 2: you feel like you're going on a limb when you

420
00:23:28,520 --> 00:23:30,720
Speaker 2: start saying crazy stuff like this, and I think I

421
00:23:30,800 --> 00:23:32,440
Speaker 2: defended it. I think I've made the case.

422
00:23:32,480 --> 00:23:33,880
Speaker 1: I can make the case now.

423
00:23:33,920 --> 00:23:37,399
Speaker 3: One of the reviews that I read about the book was,

424
00:23:37,880 --> 00:23:39,640
Speaker 3: which I found to be true, is you know, one

425
00:23:39,680 --> 00:23:41,639
Speaker 3: minute you've got a villain. In the next minute that

426
00:23:41,680 --> 00:23:45,360
Speaker 3: same gunfighter as a you know, our hero or a victim.

427
00:23:45,880 --> 00:23:48,120
Speaker 3: Did you have to I mean that must have been

428
00:23:48,280 --> 00:23:51,119
Speaker 3: actually nice to have somebody who is undefined and you

429
00:23:51,160 --> 00:23:55,240
Speaker 3: can kind of change things around depending on what role

430
00:23:55,240 --> 00:23:55,960
Speaker 3: they're playing.

431
00:23:56,200 --> 00:23:58,280
Speaker 1: Did that make it harder or easier for you?

432
00:23:58,560 --> 00:24:01,920
Speaker 2: Oh? No, it makes that because look, while I can

433
00:24:02,000 --> 00:24:05,199
Speaker 2: generalize about the types of behaviors that led to gunfights,

434
00:24:05,480 --> 00:24:09,880
Speaker 2: the individual gunfighters themselves are so different and so I mean,

435
00:24:10,119 --> 00:24:15,199
Speaker 2: each has his own fascinating story. There's no stereotypical gunfighter,

436
00:24:15,520 --> 00:24:18,280
Speaker 2: at least of of let's say, the Big twenty five.

437
00:24:18,560 --> 00:24:21,000
Speaker 2: Those that lasted, you know, many of them, I have

438
00:24:21,080 --> 00:24:24,480
Speaker 2: to say, are given that their reason for fame is

439
00:24:24,680 --> 00:24:27,800
Speaker 2: killing other people, are not exactly you know, people that

440
00:24:27,840 --> 00:24:30,760
Speaker 2: you want babysitting your thirteen year olds, you probably not

441
00:24:30,840 --> 00:24:32,919
Speaker 2: want to have them over to the barbecue. And so

442
00:24:32,960 --> 00:24:36,399
Speaker 2: when you find people like White Herb, who, to my mind,

443
00:24:36,960 --> 00:24:41,119
Speaker 2: is all that was right and good about the law

444
00:24:41,240 --> 00:24:45,240
Speaker 2: in those days until famously he decided to go outside

445
00:24:45,320 --> 00:24:47,439
Speaker 2: the law to find his own justice when his brothers

446
00:24:47,440 --> 00:24:51,280
Speaker 2: were attacked at Tombstone. You know, that's a great American story,

447
00:24:51,320 --> 00:24:53,959
Speaker 2: and he in some ways is kind of the moral

448
00:24:54,160 --> 00:24:58,240
Speaker 2: center of this universe because around him, you know, orbit

449
00:24:58,320 --> 00:25:00,679
Speaker 2: an awful lot of people like John Way Lesley Harden.

450
00:25:00,840 --> 00:25:03,639
Speaker 2: Who are I mean John Wesley Harden. There's an awful

451
00:25:03,680 --> 00:25:06,440
Speaker 2: lot of Texans who still kind of love his legend.

452
00:25:06,680 --> 00:25:10,040
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, the guy's a maniac. He wasn't a serial killer,

453
00:25:10,080 --> 00:25:12,760
Speaker 2: but he was a serial killer. If you know, there

454
00:25:12,800 --> 00:25:16,040
Speaker 2: were years where he shot or killed you know, one

455
00:25:16,080 --> 00:25:20,159
Speaker 2: person every month of the year, there's so many individuals

456
00:25:20,200 --> 00:25:25,200
Speaker 2: that I was fascinated with. One of the next tier gunfighters,

457
00:25:25,240 --> 00:25:26,879
Speaker 2: whose name will probably not ring a bell for a

458
00:25:26,920 --> 00:25:29,800
Speaker 2: lot of people, was a gambler, a Texas gambler named

459
00:25:29,800 --> 00:25:33,800
Speaker 2: Ben Thompson, who later became famous as the marshall in

460
00:25:33,840 --> 00:25:36,480
Speaker 2: the city where you and I are sitting, Austin, Texas.

461
00:25:36,920 --> 00:25:43,080
Speaker 2: And he had a particularly incredible flame out of drinking

462
00:25:43,119 --> 00:25:47,879
Speaker 2: too much, attacking people on trains, and picking fights. It

463
00:25:47,920 --> 00:25:51,359
Speaker 2: was just nuts. He had been a gentleman until that point,

464
00:25:51,480 --> 00:25:55,199
Speaker 2: and I wonder aloud in the book if some of

465
00:25:55,240 --> 00:25:59,480
Speaker 2: his behavior could be explained by PTSD, because like a

466
00:25:59,520 --> 00:26:03,080
Speaker 2: lot of these gentlemen, he had some tough times in

467
00:26:03,119 --> 00:26:07,679
Speaker 2: the war. However, as much historians have just started to

468
00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:11,520
Speaker 2: get into PTSD after the Civil War, and it's it's

469
00:26:11,640 --> 00:26:13,840
Speaker 2: kind of an obvious thing to speculate about. We don't

470
00:26:14,359 --> 00:26:16,879
Speaker 2: we don't have a lot of hard evidence that we

471
00:26:16,920 --> 00:26:19,080
Speaker 2: can put that on. The one thing where you can

472
00:26:19,160 --> 00:26:21,479
Speaker 2: say that the West that the war clearly had an

473
00:26:21,520 --> 00:26:24,800
Speaker 2: influence was in the one point three million sight arms

474
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:28,520
Speaker 2: that the federal government gave away or auctioned off in

475
00:26:28,560 --> 00:26:30,720
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty five and eighteen sixty six. I mean, you

476
00:26:30,760 --> 00:26:33,880
Speaker 2: can actually go back and find memoirs going, well, nobody's

477
00:26:33,920 --> 00:26:37,000
Speaker 2: fighting with their fists anymore. You know, these things are

478
00:26:37,040 --> 00:26:39,479
Speaker 2: much deadly and much faster than they ever used to be.

479
00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:43,680
Speaker 3: If we're going through wild Bill and John Wesley Harden

480
00:26:43,720 --> 00:26:47,440
Speaker 3: in their relationship, do you go to the very end

481
00:26:47,480 --> 00:26:49,440
Speaker 3: of it and kind of explain what happens to these

482
00:26:49,560 --> 00:26:51,720
Speaker 3: guys or are they a through line that go throughout

483
00:26:51,760 --> 00:26:52,120
Speaker 3: your book?

484
00:26:52,640 --> 00:26:56,119
Speaker 2: There are through lines Hardened, I think I tell history

485
00:26:56,160 --> 00:26:58,800
Speaker 2: in three places, because he does have a long career

486
00:26:59,040 --> 00:27:03,080
Speaker 2: wider of course, rose in Kansas and ultimately ends in Arizona,

487
00:27:03,160 --> 00:27:06,400
Speaker 2: so he is also through line. But hiccock, you're right,

488
00:27:06,520 --> 00:27:09,240
Speaker 2: ends up because the rest of his career is not

489
00:27:09,359 --> 00:27:11,760
Speaker 2: nearly as interesting as it's the first five or six years,

490
00:27:11,840 --> 00:27:14,320
Speaker 2: I go ahead and wrap him up right there. So

491
00:27:14,359 --> 00:27:18,879
Speaker 2: the story as I tell it proceeds chronologically from Kansas.

492
00:27:18,960 --> 00:27:23,320
Speaker 2: And then once Kansas begins to calm, as Texans and

493
00:27:23,359 --> 00:27:28,199
Speaker 2: Texas cattleman move on to other states, a lot of

494
00:27:28,960 --> 00:27:31,399
Speaker 2: the people who had been involved in gun violence in

495
00:27:31,480 --> 00:27:35,000
Speaker 2: Kansas begin to There is a mass movement of them

496
00:27:35,040 --> 00:27:39,399
Speaker 2: into New Mexico and Arizona, which is where you know,

497
00:27:39,960 --> 00:27:43,639
Speaker 2: you know, both of these territories are all but colonized

498
00:27:43,640 --> 00:27:47,520
Speaker 2: by Texas cattleman, and so that type of behavior that

499
00:27:47,560 --> 00:27:51,440
Speaker 2: we saw most prevalent in Kansas, it continues to spread

500
00:27:51,560 --> 00:27:54,440
Speaker 2: across New Mexico and Arizona into the eighteen eighties.

501
00:27:54,560 --> 00:27:56,840
Speaker 1: It was interesting I was doing on my other show.

502
00:27:56,920 --> 00:27:59,760
Speaker 3: We were doing a story about brothers who were serial

503
00:27:59,800 --> 00:28:03,480
Speaker 3: ki Espinoza's were very famous. We were talking about the

504
00:28:03,560 --> 00:28:07,679
Speaker 3: racial dynamics of changing boundaries, state boundaries, and it was,

505
00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:10,840
Speaker 3: you know, they were in the eighteen hundreds where you

506
00:28:10,920 --> 00:28:14,200
Speaker 3: had in New Mexico all of these you know, people

507
00:28:14,240 --> 00:28:18,080
Speaker 3: from Mexico who were settled in the white people around

508
00:28:18,119 --> 00:28:21,879
Speaker 3: them were relatively supportive. They had their villages together, and

509
00:28:21,920 --> 00:28:25,679
Speaker 3: then the United States changes the boundary and they become Colorado,

510
00:28:25,800 --> 00:28:29,480
Speaker 3: and it's a completely different dynamic where you know, they

511
00:28:29,480 --> 00:28:32,680
Speaker 3: are disenfranchised and you have like these gold diggers coming

512
00:28:32,720 --> 00:28:34,760
Speaker 3: in who are white, and it's just it's a really

513
00:28:34,800 --> 00:28:38,280
Speaker 3: interesting just by changing this boundary and the state government,

514
00:28:38,320 --> 00:28:41,760
Speaker 3: it really it really changed the dynamic of the racial

515
00:28:41,760 --> 00:28:45,480
Speaker 3: tension between So I'm picturing like, as the United States

516
00:28:45,560 --> 00:28:48,640
Speaker 3: moves further to the west, the gunfighters just sort of

517
00:28:48,680 --> 00:28:51,480
Speaker 3: follow behind and take advantage of whatever is happening.

518
00:28:51,800 --> 00:28:54,560
Speaker 2: That's exactly what happened, and in this case it was

519
00:28:54,640 --> 00:28:59,000
Speaker 2: Texas cattleman moving into New Mexico. When you look at

520
00:28:58,480 --> 00:29:02,880
Speaker 2: the first great moments of extra judicial to violence in

521
00:29:02,920 --> 00:29:05,640
Speaker 2: New Mexico killings of five and seven and nine people,

522
00:29:05,840 --> 00:29:09,120
Speaker 2: it's all involving these incoming Texas cattlemen and you're right

523
00:29:09,400 --> 00:29:13,040
Speaker 2: on the other side, all too oftener latinos. That was

524
00:29:13,120 --> 00:29:16,480
Speaker 2: the backdrop on which any number of kind of Texas

525
00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:19,600
Speaker 2: families and groups moved in and experienced that. And it's

526
00:29:19,640 --> 00:29:23,479
Speaker 2: the backdrop very much of Billy the Kid, whose career

527
00:29:23,560 --> 00:29:27,280
Speaker 2: is built around two stages. One is a fight for

528
00:29:27,360 --> 00:29:31,800
Speaker 2: control of New Mexico's largest county, Lincoln County, and that's

529
00:29:31,920 --> 00:29:35,000
Speaker 2: all about who's going to control the legitimate and the

530
00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:38,440
Speaker 2: illegitimate business of cattle. And then after he was on

531
00:29:38,480 --> 00:29:40,800
Speaker 2: the losing side of that feud, Billy the Kid goes

532
00:29:40,800 --> 00:29:43,960
Speaker 2: out to become an outlaw, which is a high falutin

533
00:29:44,400 --> 00:29:46,320
Speaker 2: word for what he actually was, which was a cattle

534
00:29:46,320 --> 00:29:50,880
Speaker 2: wrestler stealing cattle out of the Texas Panhandle and selling

535
00:29:50,880 --> 00:29:54,200
Speaker 2: them across New Mexico and it's only then as a

536
00:29:54,240 --> 00:29:57,600
Speaker 2: cattle thief, a thief of Texas cattle, that Billy the

537
00:29:57,680 --> 00:30:02,840
Speaker 2: Kid became famous. His the narrative is thronged with Texans,

538
00:30:02,880 --> 00:30:05,160
Speaker 2: including he, his right hand man, and all three of

539
00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:07,720
Speaker 2: the guys who ultimately brought him in, including Pat Garrett,

540
00:30:07,880 --> 00:30:11,440
Speaker 2: had all come out of Texas. So I mean New Mexico.

541
00:30:11,480 --> 00:30:13,080
Speaker 2: Everything you read about in New Mexico in the eighteen

542
00:30:13,080 --> 00:30:16,280
Speaker 2: seventies and eighties, in terms of extra judicial violence, it

543
00:30:16,320 --> 00:30:18,200
Speaker 2: has a very strong Texas dynamic.

544
00:30:18,440 --> 00:30:21,440
Speaker 3: Now when we talk about, you know, the violence is

545
00:30:21,480 --> 00:30:26,200
Speaker 3: this generally men versus men. Are women ever drawn into

546
00:30:26,240 --> 00:30:28,880
Speaker 3: this in any way as collateral damage?

547
00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:31,560
Speaker 2: Almost never? I get That's the one story I've gotten

548
00:30:31,560 --> 00:30:34,920
Speaker 2: off after ever appearance. Was any such thing as a

549
00:30:34,960 --> 00:30:38,800
Speaker 2: female gunfighter? Not really. The closest you could probably come

550
00:30:39,360 --> 00:30:43,360
Speaker 2: is an Oklahoma horse thief named Bell Star. But no,

551
00:30:43,520 --> 00:30:46,200
Speaker 2: women with guns pretty much was not a thing.

552
00:30:46,720 --> 00:30:49,160
Speaker 1: Were they collateral damage at any point?

553
00:30:49,360 --> 00:30:50,960
Speaker 2: You know, I'm trying to think of one where I

554
00:30:50,960 --> 00:30:53,880
Speaker 2: could say a woman was killed. Certainly there were a

555
00:30:53,920 --> 00:30:57,840
Speaker 2: lot of women, especially women of color, killed during the

556
00:30:57,880 --> 00:31:00,400
Speaker 2: feuds in Texas. But when you look at kind of

557
00:31:00,440 --> 00:31:04,560
Speaker 2: the classic old West stuff. The one dead woman that

558
00:31:04,640 --> 00:31:07,960
Speaker 2: I can remember was in Dodge City, where a drunken,

559
00:31:08,600 --> 00:31:12,360
Speaker 2: a rich drunken Texas cowboy got in a fight with

560
00:31:12,520 --> 00:31:14,920
Speaker 2: the mayor of Dodge City, and so at two thirty

561
00:31:14,920 --> 00:31:17,960
Speaker 2: one morning, he appeared outside the guy's house and opened

562
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:20,400
Speaker 2: fire shot into the bedroom. Turn out, the mayor wasn't

563
00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:23,160
Speaker 2: at home, but two show girls from downtown were, and

564
00:31:23,200 --> 00:31:25,479
Speaker 2: one of them ended up dead. And that ended up

565
00:31:25,520 --> 00:31:29,280
Speaker 2: being one of wide Eerp's storied manhunts to bring this

566
00:31:29,320 --> 00:31:29,760
Speaker 2: guy in.

567
00:31:30,240 --> 00:31:33,760
Speaker 3: So I am not an expert on gunfights. I have

568
00:31:33,920 --> 00:31:37,680
Speaker 3: not dealt very much into Texas history in relative to

569
00:31:37,760 --> 00:31:41,160
Speaker 3: true crime. Maybe because I'm here and I'm supposed I

570
00:31:41,200 --> 00:31:43,320
Speaker 3: feel like I'm surrounded by Texas history, and I want

571
00:31:43,320 --> 00:31:46,800
Speaker 3: to branch out the one name besides of course, Billy

572
00:31:46,840 --> 00:31:49,480
Speaker 3: the kid that I really do recognize as Jesse James.

573
00:31:49,560 --> 00:31:51,720
Speaker 3: So does Jesse James show up in this book?

574
00:31:51,720 --> 00:31:55,320
Speaker 2: He must, yes, And this is my unhappy voice, Oh no,

575
00:31:55,400 --> 00:31:59,320
Speaker 2: because I didn't want to write about Jesse James. Jesse James,

576
00:31:59,320 --> 00:32:01,160
Speaker 2: if you know any thing about him, you know he

577
00:32:01,320 --> 00:32:04,560
Speaker 2: was not an Old West gunfighter. He was a Midwestern

578
00:32:04,920 --> 00:32:08,200
Speaker 2: bank and train robber. He never committed a single crime,

579
00:32:08,280 --> 00:32:10,000
Speaker 2: much less kill de man. So far as we know

580
00:32:10,400 --> 00:32:14,240
Speaker 2: west of the Missouri Kansas line. When he went into hiding,

581
00:32:14,320 --> 00:32:18,400
Speaker 2: he didn't go hide in some canyon or you know, mesa.

582
00:32:18,520 --> 00:32:21,560
Speaker 2: He went to a horse farm in Tennessee. But I

583
00:32:21,640 --> 00:32:24,160
Speaker 2: end up telling Jesse James story because I kind of

584
00:32:24,160 --> 00:32:27,200
Speaker 2: feel like that's a technicality because his career is at

585
00:32:27,280 --> 00:32:32,440
Speaker 2: least gunfighter adjacent and candidly because readers are expecting it.

586
00:32:32,560 --> 00:32:35,400
Speaker 2: Like if you pick up a book that purports to

587
00:32:35,440 --> 00:32:39,840
Speaker 2: be the definitive new History of Gunfighters and it's Jesse

588
00:32:39,960 --> 00:32:42,960
Speaker 2: James is in it. I can hear phone calls, I

589
00:32:42,960 --> 00:32:46,080
Speaker 2: can hear you know, guy's going Jimmy. Jesse James isn't

590
00:32:46,080 --> 00:32:48,400
Speaker 2: even in this book. How reputable can this guy Burrow be?

591
00:32:48,840 --> 00:32:53,000
Speaker 2: So it's in there. But kind of, let's just say

592
00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:56,120
Speaker 2: I was deeply ambivalent about Jesse James, although he does

593
00:32:56,160 --> 00:32:59,719
Speaker 2: have a great he does have a great narrative, and

594
00:32:59,800 --> 00:33:02,760
Speaker 2: I do end up at the end kind of saying,

595
00:33:03,080 --> 00:33:05,640
Speaker 2: you know, he did kill five or six people, and

596
00:33:05,680 --> 00:33:07,440
Speaker 2: not a single one of them was in anything like

597
00:33:07,480 --> 00:33:10,959
Speaker 2: a gunfight. Most of them were killed by placing his

598
00:33:11,080 --> 00:33:13,880
Speaker 2: gun against their head because they hadn't done what he

599
00:33:13,920 --> 00:33:16,680
Speaker 2: wanted during a robbery. I mean, you cannot call Jesse

600
00:33:16,800 --> 00:33:18,640
Speaker 2: James a gunfighter. He was just a.

601
00:33:18,640 --> 00:33:22,520
Speaker 1: Murderer, slash bank robber, slash train robber and all of that.

602
00:33:22,840 --> 00:33:26,480
Speaker 3: Yes, all right, So we know that Texas was hell

603
00:33:26,520 --> 00:33:30,880
Speaker 3: on wheels for gunfighters, and it sounded like a really

604
00:33:30,960 --> 00:33:31,880
Speaker 3: dangerous place.

605
00:33:32,400 --> 00:33:34,520
Speaker 1: So do we have these gunfighters.

606
00:33:34,640 --> 00:33:37,560
Speaker 3: I know we'd have him traveling, but there are a

607
00:33:37,560 --> 00:33:38,720
Speaker 3: lot of famous incidents.

608
00:33:38,760 --> 00:33:41,200
Speaker 1: It sounds like outside of Texas. Do you have a

609
00:33:41,200 --> 00:33:42,480
Speaker 1: couple of those in those stories?

610
00:33:42,520 --> 00:33:45,240
Speaker 2: Well, I mean Texas were so prevalent on the rest

611
00:33:45,240 --> 00:33:50,440
Speaker 2: of the frontier in those years. Just to pick one example,

612
00:33:50,800 --> 00:33:54,959
Speaker 2: Whyder did battle against what was probably the Old West's

613
00:33:55,040 --> 00:33:59,840
Speaker 2: largest single outlaw gang there in southeast Arizona around Tombstone

614
00:34:00,480 --> 00:34:04,520
Speaker 2: and above the border, that gang was known as the Cowboys,

615
00:34:04,960 --> 00:34:07,240
Speaker 2: But below the border, where they did much of their

616
00:34:07,280 --> 00:34:10,920
Speaker 2: theft from Mexican ranchers, they were known as the Tehanos.

617
00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:14,560
Speaker 2: Because so many of them were from Texas. The type

618
00:34:14,560 --> 00:34:18,120
Speaker 2: of story that you get about these kind of roaming

619
00:34:18,160 --> 00:34:22,120
Speaker 2: Texans or as part of this Texas diaspora, some of

620
00:34:22,160 --> 00:34:24,920
Speaker 2: them are so batshit crazy. I will give you my

621
00:34:24,960 --> 00:34:29,200
Speaker 2: favorite one, which is it happened in October eighteen eighty

622
00:34:29,200 --> 00:34:33,120
Speaker 2: four in what's today the town of Reserve, New Mexico,

623
00:34:33,200 --> 00:34:35,480
Speaker 2: over on the Arizona border, and it was at it's

624
00:34:35,520 --> 00:34:38,359
Speaker 2: at altitude, it's pretty high up. I've been there. It's

625
00:34:38,400 --> 00:34:40,960
Speaker 2: pretty small these days. Latinos had moved in in the

626
00:34:41,000 --> 00:34:43,279
Speaker 2: eighteen sixties and had moved into the area. And then

627
00:34:43,320 --> 00:34:46,000
Speaker 2: after then Texas cattleman came in and least all the

628
00:34:46,080 --> 00:34:49,440
Speaker 2: land outside the towns for cattle, and they were rambunctious.

629
00:34:49,440 --> 00:34:51,680
Speaker 2: And there was a kid in one of those towns

630
00:34:51,800 --> 00:34:57,840
Speaker 2: named El Fago Baca Baca, and he fancied himself a

631
00:34:57,960 --> 00:35:01,399
Speaker 2: law and order advocate. He ordered a a badge from

632
00:35:01,440 --> 00:35:04,880
Speaker 2: a mail order company. And one night he saw one

633
00:35:04,920 --> 00:35:07,799
Speaker 2: of these Texas cowboys riding around in the streets of

634
00:35:07,840 --> 00:35:11,319
Speaker 2: the town, firing his gun in the air, and he

635
00:35:11,320 --> 00:35:14,799
Speaker 2: said to somebody, why is it. Anybody do anything about it?

636
00:35:14,840 --> 00:35:18,399
Speaker 2: And the elderly Mexican gentleman said, because we're too scared

637
00:35:18,400 --> 00:35:20,839
Speaker 2: of the Texans. They'll they'll kill somebody. And El fag

638
00:35:20,880 --> 00:35:23,719
Speaker 2: Obaco famously said, well, I'll show him that one. There's

639
00:35:23,719 --> 00:35:25,680
Speaker 2: at least one Mexican in this town that's not scared

640
00:35:25,680 --> 00:35:27,640
Speaker 2: of him. So he went up to the cowboy and

641
00:35:27,920 --> 00:35:30,640
Speaker 2: put his gun in his ear and put him under arrest.

642
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:32,520
Speaker 2: The jail was closed, so he took him to a

643
00:35:33,200 --> 00:35:35,680
Speaker 2: house and held him overnight. In the middle of the night,

644
00:35:35,719 --> 00:35:38,480
Speaker 2: several of his Texas friends show up and demand that

645
00:35:38,520 --> 00:35:41,480
Speaker 2: they turned the Texas Cowboy over. El Fay go Obaco

646
00:35:41,560 --> 00:35:43,640
Speaker 2: walks out and he says, I won't be doing that

647
00:35:44,040 --> 00:35:46,560
Speaker 2: at the but I'll give you till the account of three,

648
00:35:46,640 --> 00:35:49,000
Speaker 2: and then I'm opening fire. And so he yells, and

649
00:35:49,040 --> 00:35:51,880
Speaker 2: there's four cowboys and he yells one, and they all

650
00:35:51,960 --> 00:35:54,319
Speaker 2: kind of look each other, like really and after and

651
00:35:54,360 --> 00:35:56,960
Speaker 2: then he goes two and they're like he wouldn't really,

652
00:35:56,960 --> 00:35:59,560
Speaker 2: And at three he opened fire. He kills one of

653
00:35:59,600 --> 00:36:02,680
Speaker 2: them's another one through the knee. The next morning he

654
00:36:02,800 --> 00:36:05,400
Speaker 2: takes his cowboy in to the Justice of the Peace,

655
00:36:05,560 --> 00:36:09,359
Speaker 2: where the cowboys find all of five dollars, at which

656
00:36:09,400 --> 00:36:12,640
Speaker 2: point El Fa go Obaca comes out of the courthouse

657
00:36:13,040 --> 00:36:16,879
Speaker 2: and there in the town square are eighty eight zero

658
00:36:17,320 --> 00:36:21,200
Speaker 2: angry Texas cowboys. We know this from court testimony. Somebody

659
00:36:21,280 --> 00:36:24,600
Speaker 2: began yelling unfortunate ethnic names. As you can imagine El

660
00:36:24,640 --> 00:36:27,799
Speaker 2: Fa go Oobaco lights out down a lane and at

661
00:36:27,800 --> 00:36:30,520
Speaker 2: the edge of town. It's a tiny town. He spies

662
00:36:31,080 --> 00:36:34,000
Speaker 2: a lonely little adobe hut and he goes up and

663
00:36:34,040 --> 00:36:36,239
Speaker 2: he yells, vamos to the lady and the two kids

664
00:36:36,280 --> 00:36:37,560
Speaker 2: that are in there. You've got to get out. They'll

665
00:36:37,600 --> 00:36:41,200
Speaker 2: kill you. He runs in. The Texans are right after him.

666
00:36:41,200 --> 00:36:44,120
Speaker 2: They bang on the door and yell for him to

667
00:36:44,200 --> 00:36:47,440
Speaker 2: come out, and he responds with a gunshot, killing another one,

668
00:36:47,880 --> 00:36:51,960
Speaker 2: at which point the eighty cowboys surround this little adobe hut.

669
00:36:52,200 --> 00:36:55,439
Speaker 2: And this was on the morning of October tenth, eighteen

670
00:36:55,480 --> 00:36:58,400
Speaker 2: eighty four, around ten am. They open fire. It's like

671
00:36:58,480 --> 00:37:00,759
Speaker 2: Bonnie and Clyde, like the last shot bound Clyde. Just

672
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:03,279
Speaker 2: finally after following they shoot it. They shoot this house

673
00:37:03,280 --> 00:37:06,000
Speaker 2: full of holds for five minutes and then they stop

674
00:37:06,520 --> 00:37:08,560
Speaker 2: and El fay go Obaca opens fire at them again

675
00:37:08,760 --> 00:37:11,160
Speaker 2: and he kills another one, so they fire again and

676
00:37:11,200 --> 00:37:15,040
Speaker 2: fire again. Five more minutes of this and he's still alive.

677
00:37:15,080 --> 00:37:19,000
Speaker 2: It's still shooting. This goes on until six thirty at night,

678
00:37:19,080 --> 00:37:23,520
Speaker 2: eight and a half hours. The kid somehow survives. The

679
00:37:23,600 --> 00:37:26,920
Speaker 2: next morning they show up to begin firing again, and

680
00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:29,640
Speaker 2: they smell the odor of coffee and bacon. He's not

681
00:37:29,760 --> 00:37:32,960
Speaker 2: only still alive, but he's making he's making breakfast. So

682
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:36,279
Speaker 2: they open fire again for another eight hours, and one

683
00:37:36,320 --> 00:37:39,919
Speaker 2: more Texan dies and El fay Obaca. When the law

684
00:37:40,000 --> 00:37:41,800
Speaker 2: finally shows up with some of his pals at the

685
00:37:41,880 --> 00:37:43,600
Speaker 2: end of the day to say, okay, enough of this.

686
00:37:43,640 --> 00:37:46,000
Speaker 2: It's been going on for thirty eight six hours, you know,

687
00:37:46,040 --> 00:37:49,200
Speaker 2: he comes out in his underwear, covered with dust, unhit,

688
00:37:49,480 --> 00:37:53,000
Speaker 2: and it's only then does everybody realize that he survived

689
00:37:53,400 --> 00:37:56,800
Speaker 2: because the floor of the adobe was eighteen inches below

690
00:37:56,840 --> 00:38:01,319
Speaker 2: ground and he survived. He survived, was declared innocent at

691
00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:04,359
Speaker 2: two different murder trials, one of which the front door

692
00:38:04,560 --> 00:38:06,680
Speaker 2: was offered his evidence, and there was something like four

693
00:38:06,719 --> 00:38:09,640
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty bullet holes in the front door. This

694
00:38:09,640 --> 00:38:12,240
Speaker 2: guy went on to a long career. He killed four Texans.

695
00:38:12,600 --> 00:38:16,799
Speaker 2: He lived Kate until nineteen forty five, which is just

696
00:38:16,880 --> 00:38:19,880
Speaker 2: amazing to me that a gun some famous gunfighter at

697
00:38:19,920 --> 00:38:22,840
Speaker 2: least in New Mexico lived, you know, and died just

698
00:38:22,920 --> 00:38:26,120
Speaker 2: within days after the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

699
00:38:26,560 --> 00:38:28,520
Speaker 3: I was wondering if there was a false floor or

700
00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:30,800
Speaker 3: something like that. I was just thinking, what, how was

701
00:38:30,840 --> 00:38:32,320
Speaker 3: he able to do? That's amazing?

702
00:38:32,600 --> 00:38:34,840
Speaker 2: So when I tell the story, I've been holding all

703
00:38:34,920 --> 00:38:37,160
Speaker 2: false floor till the end because I feel like if

704
00:38:37,160 --> 00:38:39,080
Speaker 2: I give it away too soon, the story doesn't work.

705
00:38:39,480 --> 00:38:43,160
Speaker 1: What about the ending of all this is that Butch Cassidy.

706
00:38:43,760 --> 00:38:46,279
Speaker 2: Yep, it is, you know, the ear I end the

707
00:38:46,320 --> 00:38:49,680
Speaker 2: era And this is necessarily arbitrary, but it feels right

708
00:38:49,880 --> 00:38:53,760
Speaker 2: ending it when the last two Marquee outlaws, Butch Cassidy

709
00:38:53,840 --> 00:38:56,759
Speaker 2: and the Sundance Kid, you know, basically say there's no

710
00:38:56,760 --> 00:38:58,400
Speaker 2: way to be an outlaw anymore. So we're going to

711
00:38:58,440 --> 00:39:01,880
Speaker 2: South America. And you know, Castidy somewhat like Jesse Jesse James.

712
00:39:02,040 --> 00:39:03,960
Speaker 2: You can't really call him a gunfighter. He was just

713
00:39:04,040 --> 00:39:06,359
Speaker 2: a bank robber who shot at people when they shot

714
00:39:06,360 --> 00:39:08,560
Speaker 2: at him. And there's no record that he ever killed

715
00:39:08,600 --> 00:39:11,800
Speaker 2: anyone to begin with. But again, at that point, he

716
00:39:12,160 --> 00:39:15,680
Speaker 2: clearly belongs in this book. That group does. But yeah,

717
00:39:15,719 --> 00:39:19,080
Speaker 2: the sunset of all of this is the eighteen nineties,

718
00:39:19,600 --> 00:39:24,799
Speaker 2: and that's narratively dominated by several different disparate stories. Butch

719
00:39:24,880 --> 00:39:28,120
Speaker 2: Castiy and the Sundance Kid and then the story of

720
00:39:28,120 --> 00:39:32,040
Speaker 2: the Dalton gang in Oklahoma, which is another you know,

721
00:39:32,080 --> 00:39:34,360
Speaker 2: it's kind of the story of the smartest outlaw gang

722
00:39:35,120 --> 00:39:36,920
Speaker 2: in the Old West, that would be Butch Casty, and

723
00:39:36,960 --> 00:39:40,080
Speaker 2: the stupidest, which would be the Daltons. Dultons were just

724
00:39:40,120 --> 00:39:43,600
Speaker 2: not terribly smart. They were ultimately well, in fact, the

725
00:39:44,160 --> 00:39:47,960
Speaker 2: deadliest robbery, and keep in mind, robberies aren't supposed to

726
00:39:48,000 --> 00:39:50,200
Speaker 2: be deadly at all when they go, well, they aren't.

727
00:39:50,640 --> 00:39:53,920
Speaker 2: Was the end of the Daltons, which in some ways

728
00:39:54,040 --> 00:39:57,440
Speaker 2: is kind of the end of the Great Era of gunfights.

729
00:39:57,480 --> 00:40:00,279
Speaker 2: It's when they famously, in a bid to be more

730
00:40:00,320 --> 00:40:04,040
Speaker 2: famous than Jesse James, who they worshiped. This was what

731
00:40:04,239 --> 00:40:07,479
Speaker 2: twenty five years, fifteen years after Jesse Jame was killed,

732
00:40:07,840 --> 00:40:12,880
Speaker 2: they went to rob two banks simultaneously in their hometown

733
00:40:13,360 --> 00:40:17,440
Speaker 2: in Coffeeville, Kansas, right in the Oklahoma border. And the Daltons,

734
00:40:17,440 --> 00:40:19,640
Speaker 2: I think there were eight of them that day, three

735
00:40:19,640 --> 00:40:22,120
Speaker 2: of whom were the brothers, as well as five random

736
00:40:22,200 --> 00:40:26,040
Speaker 2: kind of henchmen, and two of whom were Texans. And they,

737
00:40:26,480 --> 00:40:29,120
Speaker 2: you know, of all the things to get killed for,

738
00:40:30,080 --> 00:40:32,239
Speaker 2: you know, of all the stupid things to get killed for,

739
00:40:33,040 --> 00:40:35,279
Speaker 2: Like I'd never wanted to die by falling in a

740
00:40:35,360 --> 00:40:38,040
Speaker 2: vat of molasses or something. Right, You know, nobody wants

741
00:40:38,080 --> 00:40:39,080
Speaker 2: to die in a funny way.

742
00:40:39,239 --> 00:40:40,240
Speaker 1: Who would say so?

743
00:40:40,239 --> 00:40:44,680
Speaker 2: So the Daltons basically were all killed because of fake

744
00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:48,839
Speaker 2: beards and fake mustaches. They thought, because they were known

745
00:40:48,880 --> 00:40:52,759
Speaker 2: in their hometown, they put fake beards and mustaches on.

746
00:40:53,239 --> 00:40:56,880
Speaker 2: It appears that they weren't made of hair but of paper,

747
00:40:57,760 --> 00:41:04,800
Speaker 2: And amazingly some noticed and open fire, and the gang

748
00:41:04,880 --> 00:41:07,879
Speaker 2: actually managed to rob the two banks, but so many

749
00:41:08,000 --> 00:41:11,200
Speaker 2: people came out and started shooting that they were, you know,

750
00:41:11,400 --> 00:41:15,000
Speaker 2: all all but one in it. The youngest ultimately lived,

751
00:41:15,320 --> 00:41:17,720
Speaker 2: but all but one were killed there in the streets

752
00:41:17,719 --> 00:41:20,040
Speaker 2: that day, most of them in this alley that you

753
00:41:20,040 --> 00:41:23,120
Speaker 2: can still visit, Bloody Alley. I don't end the story there,

754
00:41:23,120 --> 00:41:24,359
Speaker 2: but it's pretty near the end.

755
00:41:24,960 --> 00:41:27,840
Speaker 3: And I guess bandanas weren't available for some reason.

756
00:41:28,600 --> 00:41:30,160
Speaker 1: I mean, isn't that what everybody used?

757
00:41:30,760 --> 00:41:32,880
Speaker 2: You know, I never did a study on kind of

758
00:41:32,920 --> 00:41:37,799
Speaker 2: the prevalence of bandito facial covering. You're leading me to

759
00:41:37,800 --> 00:41:40,279
Speaker 2: believe that I wasn't as thorough as I thought I was.

760
00:41:41,000 --> 00:41:43,240
Speaker 2: I was at a gathering the other night somebody asked,

761
00:41:43,239 --> 00:41:46,080
Speaker 2: what's the deal with bounty hunters, and I was like, wow,

762
00:41:46,160 --> 00:41:48,880
Speaker 2: I didn't answer that either. I have some assassin, some

763
00:41:49,160 --> 00:41:52,080
Speaker 2: you know, guns for hire, but bounty hunters and bandanas.

764
00:41:52,120 --> 00:41:53,560
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess I'll have to do that in

765
00:41:53,600 --> 00:41:54,160
Speaker 2: the next book.

766
00:41:54,280 --> 00:41:56,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have a word limit. I'm pretty sure from

767
00:41:56,280 --> 00:41:57,880
Speaker 1: your publisher. Maybe not.

768
00:41:58,120 --> 00:42:00,239
Speaker 2: I was. I was worried. I don't know about you.

769
00:42:00,400 --> 00:42:02,319
Speaker 2: What's the most number of words you've ever cut from

770
00:42:02,360 --> 00:42:05,719
Speaker 2: a book? I've had two on Public Enemies twenty years ago.

771
00:42:05,760 --> 00:42:08,880
Speaker 2: I turned it in and the cuts that he ordered

772
00:42:09,560 --> 00:42:12,640
Speaker 2: I ultimately tied it up as twenty three percent of

773
00:42:12,680 --> 00:42:15,319
Speaker 2: all the words I'd written I ended up cutting. And

774
00:42:15,360 --> 00:42:17,640
Speaker 2: when you think about your time, I figured that was

775
00:42:17,680 --> 00:42:20,399
Speaker 2: a year and two months of my life. But hey,

776
00:42:20,400 --> 00:42:22,239
Speaker 2: it was a much better book shorter. This was the

777
00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:25,640
Speaker 2: rare book that I didn't go along. My editor really

778
00:42:25,680 --> 00:42:26,880
Speaker 2: candidly loved it as it was.

779
00:42:27,640 --> 00:42:32,359
Speaker 3: Okay, so you end with Butch Cassidy Sundan's kid, you know,

780
00:42:32,440 --> 00:42:35,480
Speaker 3: and I know that you publishers are a lot of times,

781
00:42:35,520 --> 00:42:38,560
Speaker 3: I think are looking for that. How does this resonate

782
00:42:38,640 --> 00:42:41,919
Speaker 3: with a today audience? And I think you might be

783
00:42:42,080 --> 00:42:44,319
Speaker 3: one of my friends who said, you know, I don't

784
00:42:44,320 --> 00:42:45,960
Speaker 3: really care about that. I just want to tell a

785
00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:47,880
Speaker 3: really good story and a little bit about history.

786
00:42:48,360 --> 00:42:52,280
Speaker 2: You know, maybe I would be a bigger name author

787
00:42:52,400 --> 00:42:55,879
Speaker 2: if I did care, but I don't. I really am

788
00:42:55,960 --> 00:42:59,160
Speaker 2: interested in the nineteenth century frontier, you know. I think

789
00:42:59,200 --> 00:43:02,120
Speaker 2: there are probably some lessons here that one, you know,

790
00:43:02,440 --> 00:43:05,640
Speaker 2: one could draw. But I mean, look, the one thing

791
00:43:05,640 --> 00:43:07,839
Speaker 2: that I always say is I don't know about where

792
00:43:07,880 --> 00:43:10,960
Speaker 2: you comed in on this, but I always say my primary,

793
00:43:11,080 --> 00:43:15,280
Speaker 2: if not exclusive, goal is to entertain my reader. If

794
00:43:15,560 --> 00:43:18,720
Speaker 2: he or she ends up at the end learning something,

795
00:43:18,960 --> 00:43:21,480
Speaker 2: and god forbid they learn a lesson, the one thing

796
00:43:21,520 --> 00:43:23,200
Speaker 2: you can be sure is I will not tell you

797
00:43:23,239 --> 00:43:26,080
Speaker 2: what that is. I just I just don't want to

798
00:43:26,080 --> 00:43:28,080
Speaker 2: go there. I don't want to be I want to

799
00:43:28,080 --> 00:43:31,000
Speaker 2: tell a good story. That is pretty much it well,

800
00:43:31,040 --> 00:43:34,200
Speaker 2: and in almost every case, my definition of a good

801
00:43:34,239 --> 00:43:36,840
Speaker 2: story is a story, or at least a version of

802
00:43:36,880 --> 00:43:39,759
Speaker 2: the story that hasn't been told before. You know, on

803
00:43:39,800 --> 00:43:44,279
Speaker 2: this one, if I can't lay a claim to reinventing

804
00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:47,920
Speaker 2: the study of the field of gunfighters, I really can't publish.

805
00:43:48,000 --> 00:43:51,200
Speaker 2: And it's up to the reader to see whether I've

806
00:43:51,239 --> 00:43:53,960
Speaker 2: done that. But I will say, so far this is

807
00:43:54,000 --> 00:43:56,239
Speaker 2: me breaking my arm, patting myself on the back. The

808
00:43:56,680 --> 00:43:57,399
Speaker 2: reviews have been.

809
00:43:57,320 --> 00:43:59,560
Speaker 3: Generous, well good, and I don't want to make a

810
00:43:59,560 --> 00:44:02,799
Speaker 3: big calment on mail fragility, but you seem to be

811
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:05,400
Speaker 3: heading down that road too with this book. I mean

812
00:44:05,440 --> 00:44:08,719
Speaker 3: a little bit about how these sort of these these

813
00:44:08,719 --> 00:44:12,960
Speaker 3: gunfights still continued, even though they're not duelists continue to

814
00:44:13,040 --> 00:44:17,600
Speaker 3: evolve from just men not figuring out how to communicate

815
00:44:17,880 --> 00:44:21,120
Speaker 3: or move on or get over whatever is happening. And

816
00:44:21,200 --> 00:44:23,440
Speaker 3: I know that we don't need a contemporary pull for this,

817
00:44:23,640 --> 00:44:26,000
Speaker 3: but that was the first thing I thought of. I

818
00:44:26,040 --> 00:44:29,680
Speaker 3: did a story to Virginia, stories both involving kind of

819
00:44:29,680 --> 00:44:34,160
Speaker 3: ego and including women actually trying to get over ego

820
00:44:34,200 --> 00:44:35,200
Speaker 3: that ends in death.

821
00:44:35,840 --> 00:44:37,040
Speaker 1: And you know, I.

822
00:44:36,960 --> 00:44:39,600
Speaker 3: Spoke to somebody at William and Mary who was an

823
00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:43,040
Speaker 3: expert at that, at the duels and what it means,

824
00:44:43,560 --> 00:44:46,359
Speaker 3: and she said, can you imagine if we had that now?

825
00:44:46,440 --> 00:44:49,319
Speaker 3: And with everything that happens on Twitter and Instagram and

826
00:44:49,360 --> 00:44:51,840
Speaker 3: all of this, you know, there has to be there had.

827
00:44:51,719 --> 00:44:54,000
Speaker 1: To have been some kind of evolution between then and now.

828
00:44:54,640 --> 00:44:57,239
Speaker 2: You know, there must have been. I'm just happy to

829
00:44:57,280 --> 00:44:59,759
Speaker 2: say that that felt like another book, yeah, rather than

830
00:44:59,800 --> 00:45:04,160
Speaker 2: the one I was writing, but clearly kind of while honor,

831
00:45:04,480 --> 00:45:07,239
Speaker 2: you know, still exists in the world, and I don't

832
00:45:07,280 --> 00:45:09,839
Speaker 2: think anybody, at least in the West, sees it as

833
00:45:10,400 --> 00:45:13,600
Speaker 2: any type of pressing policy challenge. But you're exactly right.

834
00:45:13,640 --> 00:45:17,440
Speaker 2: Can you imagine if people today were as touchy as

835
00:45:17,480 --> 00:45:19,960
Speaker 2: they were in the Old West and believed that deadly

836
00:45:20,040 --> 00:45:24,319
Speaker 2: violence was justified for everything that was said online? I mean,

837
00:45:24,320 --> 00:45:27,200
Speaker 2: think about these people only kill How many people would

838
00:45:27,200 --> 00:45:30,080
Speaker 2: you even know or meet in eighteen seventy five in

839
00:45:30,120 --> 00:45:33,000
Speaker 2: your life? I don't know three hundred people, because you know,

840
00:45:33,280 --> 00:45:36,000
Speaker 2: there's no telephone, there's no computer. I mean, you could

841
00:45:36,040 --> 00:45:38,960
Speaker 2: interface with three hundred people in Twitter or on Facebook

842
00:45:38,960 --> 00:45:42,000
Speaker 2: in a single night. That's and be insulted, you know,

843
00:45:42,200 --> 00:45:45,120
Speaker 2: myriad times. I mean, so, yes, one is glad that

844
00:45:45,160 --> 00:45:47,840
Speaker 2: there has been some evolution of the human condition in

845
00:45:47,880 --> 00:45:48,440
Speaker 2: those terms.

846
00:45:48,800 --> 00:45:52,000
Speaker 3: But I also think with people in that time period,

847
00:45:52,040 --> 00:45:54,880
Speaker 3: in the eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds, they depended so

848
00:45:55,040 --> 00:45:58,520
Speaker 3: much on each other. You still somebody's cattle and they

849
00:45:58,640 --> 00:46:01,239
Speaker 3: might starve to death their family, might you know, be

850
00:46:01,440 --> 00:46:04,040
Speaker 3: sick if you're doing one or two things like what

851
00:46:04,200 --> 00:46:06,960
Speaker 3: was it the theft of a pig is what led

852
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:08,520
Speaker 3: to the Hatfields and the McCoys.

853
00:46:08,760 --> 00:46:09,680
Speaker 2: That's one of the legends.

854
00:46:09,719 --> 00:46:11,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So I don't know.

855
00:46:11,640 --> 00:46:13,880
Speaker 3: There's a lot at stake now, obviously with honor, but

856
00:46:14,360 --> 00:46:17,319
Speaker 3: then I think there was just so much when you

857
00:46:17,320 --> 00:46:22,040
Speaker 3: have someone else outside interference in your family or you know,

858
00:46:22,120 --> 00:46:26,520
Speaker 3: in your livelihood or in your identity as being a Texan,

859
00:46:26,640 --> 00:46:29,640
Speaker 3: I see it all sort of being built up and exploding.

860
00:46:30,160 --> 00:46:32,160
Speaker 2: That's a great point, and it immediately it makes me

861
00:46:32,200 --> 00:46:36,840
Speaker 2: think of one famous gunfight involving a guy named Harvey Logan,

862
00:46:37,040 --> 00:46:39,799
Speaker 2: who was Butch Cassidy's kind of right hand man and

863
00:46:39,840 --> 00:46:44,200
Speaker 2: the nastiest gunfighter in that group. Harvey Logan got into

864
00:46:44,239 --> 00:46:47,840
Speaker 2: his first gunfight, it said, because he had a ranch

865
00:46:47,880 --> 00:46:52,080
Speaker 2: there in Montana, and his neighbor borrowed a plow and

866
00:46:52,480 --> 00:46:56,319
Speaker 2: returned it bent or broken or something, and they ended

867
00:46:56,400 --> 00:46:59,960
Speaker 2: up in a gunfight in the saloon, in which Harvey

868
00:47:00,000 --> 00:47:03,240
Speaker 2: I can kill the guy over essentially a bit plow,

869
00:47:03,400 --> 00:47:05,080
Speaker 2: and then a bunch of yelling at each other about

870
00:47:05,120 --> 00:47:05,920
Speaker 2: whose fault it was.

871
00:47:06,280 --> 00:47:08,239
Speaker 3: I'm sure I've brought this up several times for my

872
00:47:08,320 --> 00:47:11,400
Speaker 3: listeners on both shows, but I am a fan of

873
00:47:11,480 --> 00:47:14,200
Speaker 3: fear Thy Neighbor, which is a TV series, and it

874
00:47:14,280 --> 00:47:18,960
Speaker 3: is insane to me what people will kill each other over.

875
00:47:19,320 --> 00:47:22,040
Speaker 3: I mean property lines and dogs going poop on the

876
00:47:22,040 --> 00:47:25,040
Speaker 3: wrong side, and I literally this is what occurs, and

877
00:47:25,080 --> 00:47:28,560
Speaker 3: it's built up over time, and it's resentment that you

878
00:47:28,600 --> 00:47:31,520
Speaker 3: can't really work out because they're not your family, you're

879
00:47:31,560 --> 00:47:34,719
Speaker 3: not married to them, and there's a distance, but it

880
00:47:34,840 --> 00:47:38,080
Speaker 3: is so important to you for whatever reason that people

881
00:47:38,200 --> 00:47:40,360
Speaker 3: just snap in twenty twenty five.

882
00:47:40,560 --> 00:47:42,560
Speaker 1: So that's also what it reminds me of.

883
00:47:42,760 --> 00:47:45,040
Speaker 2: There's a lot of that in this book.

884
00:47:44,840 --> 00:47:47,080
Speaker 3: Fear Thy Neighbor. So if you're a fan of fear

885
00:47:47,120 --> 00:47:49,920
Speaker 3: Thy Neighbor listeners, you should pick up this book because

886
00:47:49,960 --> 00:47:52,520
Speaker 3: you'll see I mean, you know, aren't you amazed? I

887
00:47:52,600 --> 00:47:54,839
Speaker 3: talked to Paul Holes on my other show about when

888
00:47:54,880 --> 00:47:57,760
Speaker 3: people say, oh, he would have never killed her over

889
00:47:58,120 --> 00:48:01,560
Speaker 3: three phone calls from a random guy. Well, it doesn't

890
00:48:01,560 --> 00:48:03,960
Speaker 3: matter what we think, it matters what the guy thinks

891
00:48:04,200 --> 00:48:07,640
Speaker 3: who's pulling the trigger. It's all about perspectives. So these

892
00:48:07,880 --> 00:48:11,600
Speaker 3: gunfights were worth dying over for whatever reason. And that's

893
00:48:11,640 --> 00:48:13,680
Speaker 3: one of the things I think is fascinating about your book.

894
00:48:14,200 --> 00:48:17,160
Speaker 2: You know, we can you can say honor shouldn't matter.

895
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:19,960
Speaker 2: You know that that was silly, But the fact is,

896
00:48:19,960 --> 00:48:23,160
Speaker 2: if everybody is living in that same system, as silly

897
00:48:23,200 --> 00:48:27,120
Speaker 2: as it may sound, for Wider not to have killed

898
00:48:27,160 --> 00:48:30,120
Speaker 2: the guy Tombstone, you know in the middle of that fight.

899
00:48:30,760 --> 00:48:33,600
Speaker 2: You know if he had not, if he had walked away,

900
00:48:33,800 --> 00:48:39,120
Speaker 2: his societal standing, perhaps even his employment would have fallen precipitously.

901
00:48:39,239 --> 00:48:42,600
Speaker 2: I mean, look, there were a lot of these gunfights

902
00:48:42,880 --> 00:48:45,880
Speaker 2: where yes, you can say bent plow, this is just ridiculous,

903
00:48:46,160 --> 00:48:50,240
Speaker 2: but there's others when you really realize how important honor

904
00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:54,000
Speaker 2: was to those people, and how ignoring it or walking

905
00:48:54,040 --> 00:48:56,719
Speaker 2: away from it you pay the price. There were reasons

906
00:48:56,760 --> 00:49:00,720
Speaker 2: people fired guns at each other over these things because mattered.

907
00:49:12,239 --> 00:49:15,120
Speaker 3: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the

908
00:49:15,160 --> 00:49:18,239
Speaker 3: audio versions of my books The Sinners All Bow, The

909
00:49:18,280 --> 00:49:21,440
Speaker 3: Ghost Club, All That Is Wicked, and American Sherlock, and

910
00:49:21,520 --> 00:49:24,759
Speaker 3: Don't Forget There are twelve seasons of my historical true

911
00:49:24,760 --> 00:49:29,280
Speaker 3: crime podcast Tenfold More Wicked right here in this podcast feed,

912
00:49:29,560 --> 00:49:32,280
Speaker 3: scroll back and give them a listen if you haven't already.

913
00:49:32,680 --> 00:49:36,200
Speaker 3: This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer

914
00:49:36,280 --> 00:49:40,680
Speaker 3: is Alexis a Morosi Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.

915
00:49:41,080 --> 00:49:44,680
Speaker 3: This episode was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is

916
00:49:44,680 --> 00:49:49,680
Speaker 3: our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark,

917
00:49:49,840 --> 00:49:53,880
Speaker 3: Karen Kilgariff and Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram

918
00:49:53,920 --> 00:49:57,480
Speaker 3: and Facebook at tenfold more Wicked and on Twitter at

919
00:49:57,520 --> 00:50:00,200
Speaker 3: tenfold More and if you know of a historical crime

920
00:50:00,200 --> 00:50:02,720
Speaker 3: that could use some attention from the crew at tenfold

921
00:50:02,800 --> 00:50:07,480
Speaker 3: more Wicked, email us at info at tenfoldmore wicked dot com.

922
00:50:07,480 --> 00:50:10,560
Speaker 3: We'll also take your suggestions for true crime authors for

923
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Speaker 3: Wicked Words