Part 18 (1/2)

WENTWORTH, LADY. _The Authentic Arabian Horse and His Descendants_, London, 1945. Rich in knowledge and both magnificent and munificent in ill.u.s.trations. Almost immediately after publication, this n.o.ble volume entered the rare book cla.s.s.

WYMAN, WALKER D. _The Wild Horse of the West_, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1945. A scholarly sifting of virtually all available material on mustangs. Readable. Only thorough bibliography on subject so far published.

24. The Bad Man Tradition

PLENTY of six-shooter play is to be found in most of the books about old-time cowboys; yet hardly one of the professional bad men was a representative cowboy. Bad men of the West and cowboys alike wore six-shooters and spurs; they drank each other's coffee; they had a fanatical pa.s.sion for liberty--for themselves. But the representative cowboy was a reliable hand, hanging through drought, blizzard, and high water to his herd, whereas the bona fide bad man lived on the dodge.

Between the killer and the cowboy standing up for his rights or merely shooting out the lights for fun, there was as much difference as between Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill. Of course, the elements were mixed in the worst of the bad men, as they are in the best of all good men. No matter what deductions a.n.a.lysis may lead to, the fact remains that the western bad men of open range days have become a part of the American tradition. They represent six-shooter culture at its zenith--the wild and woolly side of the West--a stage between receding bowie knife individualism of the backwoods and blackguard, machine-gun gangsterism of the city.

The songs about Sam Ba.s.s, Jesse James, and Billy the Kid reflect popular att.i.tude toward the hard-riding outlaws. Sam Ba.s.s, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, the Daltons, Cole Younger, Joaquin Murrieta, John Wesley Hardin, Al Jennings, Belle Starr, and other ”long riders” with their guns in their hands have had their biographies written over and over.

They were not nearly as immoral as certain newspaper columnists lying under the cloak of piety. As time goes on, they, like antique Robin Hood and the late Pancho Villa, recede from all realistic judgment. If the picture show finds in them models for generosity, gallantry, and fidelity to a code of liberty, and if the public finds them picturesque, then philosophers may well be thankful that they lived, rode, and shot.

{ill.u.s.t. caption = Tom Lea: Pancho Villa, in _Southwest Review_ (1951)}

”The long-tailed heroes of the revolver,” to pick a phrase from Mark Twain's unreverential treatment of them in _Roughing It_, often did society a service in shooting each other--aside from providing entertainment to future generations. As ”The Old Cattleman” of Alfred Henry Lewis' _Wolfville_ stories says, ”A heap of people need a heap of killing.” Nor can the bad men be logically segregated from the long-haired killers on the side of the law like Wild Bill Hickok and Wyatt Earp. W. H. Hudson once advanced the theory that bloodshed and morality go together. If American civilization proceeds, the rage for collecting books on bad men will probably subside until a copy of Miguel Antonio Otero's _The Real Billy the Kid_ will bring no higher price than a first edition of A. Edward Newton's _The Amenities of Book-Collecting_.

See ”Fighting Texians,” ”Texas Rangers,” ”Range Life,” ”Cowboy Songs and Other Ballads.”

AIKMAN, DUNCAN. _Calamity Jane and the Lady Wildcats_, 1927. OP.

Patronizing in the H. L. Mencken style.

BILLY THE KID. We ve got to take him seriously, not so much for what he was--

There are twenty-one men I have put bullets through, And Sheriff Pat Garrett must make twenty-two--

as for his provocations. Popular imagination, represented by writers of all degrees, goes on playing on him with c.u.mulative effect. As a figure in literature the Kid has come to lead the whole field of western bad men. The _Sat.u.r.day Review_, for October 11, 1952, features a philosophical essay ent.i.tled ”Billy the Kid: Faust in America--The Making of a Legend.” The growth of this legend is minutely traced through a period of seventy-one years (1881-1952) by J. C. d.y.k.es in _Billy the Kid: The Bibliography of a Legend_, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1952 (186 pages). It lists 437 t.i.tles, including magazine pieces, mimeographed plays, motion pictures, verses, pamphlets, fiction. In a blend of casualness and scholars.h.i.+p, it gives the substance and character of each item. Indeed, this bibliography reads like a continued story, with constant references to both antecedent and subsequent action. Pat Garrett, John Chisum, and other related characters weave all through it. A first-cla.s.s bibliography that is also readable is almost a new genre.

Pat F. Garrett, sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico, killed the Kid about midnight, July 14, 1881. The next spring his _Authentic Life of Billy the Kid_ was published at Santa Fe, at least partly written, according to good evidence, by a newspaperman named Ash Upton. This biography is one of the rarities in Western Americana. In 1927 it was republished by Macmillan, New York, under t.i.tle of _Pat F. Garrett's Authentic Life of Billy the Kid_, edited by Maurice G. Fulton. This is now OP but remains basic. The most widely circulated biography has been _The Saga of Billy the Kid_ by Walter n.o.ble Burns, New York, 1926.

It contains a deal of fictional conversation and it has no doubt contributed to the Robin-Hoodizing of the lethal character baptized as William H. Bonney, who was born in New York in 1859 and now lives with undiminished vigor as Billy the Kid. Walter n.o.ble Burns was not so successful with _The Robin Hood of El Dorado: The Saga of Joaquin Murrieta_ (1932), or, despite hogsheads of blood, with _Tombstone_ (1927).

CANTON, FRANK M. _Frontier Trails_, Boston, 1930.

COE, GEORGE W. _Frontier Fighter_, Boston, 1934; reprinted by University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. The autobiography of one of Billy the Kid's men as recorded by Nan Hillary Harrison.

COOLIDGE, DANE. _Fighting Men of the West_, New York, 1932. Biographical sketches. OP.

CUNNINGHAM, EUGENE. _Triggernometry_, 1934; reprinted by Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho. Excellent survey of codes and characters. Written by a man of intelligence and knowledge. Bibliography.

FORREST, E. R. _Arizona's Dark and b.l.o.o.d.y Ground_, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1936.

GARD, WAYNE. _Sam Ba.s.s_, Boston, 1936. Most of the whole truth. OP.

HALEY, J. EVETTS. _Jeff Milton--A Good Man with a Gun_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1949. Jeff Milton the whole man as well as the queller of bad men.

HENDRICKS, GEORGE. _The Bad Man of the West_, Naylor, San Antonio, 1941.

a.n.a.lyses and cla.s.sifications go far toward making this treatment of old subjects original. Excellent bibliographical guide.