GUNSLINGERS OF THE OLD WEST

GUNSLING STORY AND

It all began, perhaps, with Jesse James, who raided the border states of Missouri in the '70's and whose relatives, the Youngers' helped him lay towns wide open and hold up the trains with rebel yells which came down from the lusty throat of Quantrill of Civil War days. One can not speak of gunfighting without admitting it was all tied together, with Jesse being a cousin of not only the Youngsters but the Dal-tons as well, and John Ringo of Tombstone thrown in. The gunfighter was a complex psychogenic from the backwash of the Civil War-one who would rub a sore to kick up a fight which might please the fast-draw complex or vanity. Thus we find Wes Hardin, a preacher's son, standing toe to toe with Wild Bill Hickok in Abilene and the surprised Hickok looking into the twin barrels of eternity.

No sir, you can't separate the gunfighters. They were a disunited brotherhood of blue-eyed killers. Wyatt Earp learned to handle a gun from Wild Bill Hickok, as did Bat Masterson, who sopped up private coaching. Earp made history in Arizona and gave us a little of Wild Bill's spirit.

Let us first say that Jesse James is the father of the gunfighter as we know him, the inventor, some say, of train robbery and bank stick-up and the wheat sack innovation to carry off the loot.

Whether he knew it or not, Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp gravitated toward Arizona in the 1860's by way of Lea Franklin McCarty was born April 9, 1905. From his father, a native of Texas and a Methodist minister, he acquired a great love for the history and lore of the West. His mother, who had been an art teacher in Chicago, encouraged him to become a painter. He attended Chouinard Art School in Los Angeles, when that school was in its infancy, and also studied under several noted California artists. For a time he became interested in sculpture and is responsible for the statue of Jack London in Jack London Square, Oakland, for the bronzes of the San Francisco Bridge Commissioner, Jack Doyle, a bust of Robert Louis Stevenson, and the Wyatt Earp plaque at Tombstone. He was placed in "Who's Who" in Western Art in 1956.

Portraiture became his specialty and after years of studying the history of the West, he decided to paint his Gunslingers series. He worked from old photographs and faded tintypes, and supplemented this with intense research as well as countless interviews with people all the way from Deadwood City to Tombstone and back.

Mr. McCarty says: "This is the procedure I have taken to paint the pictures. First, I get at the original photograph, as for instance, that of Billy the Kid standing in front of Smith's Saloon, in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

ERS OF THE OLD WEST ILLUSTRATIONS BY LEA FRANKLIN MCCARTY

Illinois when his Pa, who loved good statute books and had a hankering for the law, wanted to reach San Bernardino, California. Wyatt got law-and-order learning from his old man and learned to shoot straight when he hunted meat for the wagon train along the old Santa Fe, and he learned the art of pistoleering from Wild Bill Hickok when Wild Bill hunted buffalo for its hide along with Bat Masterson and other men who were to become famous. Wild Bill could put a bullet into a bumble-bee's flight or drop a winging sparrow with one of those pearlhandled Colts.

Wyatt quit his hunting in about '73 and began roaming through the roaring cowtowns of the Kansas frontier. In Ellsworth, he gained a reputation when the boisterous Texan, Ben Thompson, shot two loads of heavy buckshot into County Sheriff C. B. Whitney in the plaza and then strutted and swaggered with a mouthful of foul-sounding expletives, inviting anyone to come take him into custody. He had the town treed for sure. Wyatt Earp watched all this and told the mayor if he'd supply the weapons he'd shut the Texan up. And he did. He walked out slung with two .45'9 and called to Ben to throw his shotgun into the road or he'd kill him. Somehow Ben had a powerful hunch and didn't want to die just then. This act of Ben backing down made Wyatt famous.

Wyatt soon lit out for Tombstone with a sickly fellow named Doc Holliday, because Doc had saved his life in a fight, and he was mighty beholden to this killer dentist. Later, he was joined by his two brothers, Morgan and Virgil Earp.

A. M. King, Wyatt's old deputy, who gave advice on the painting of these pictures of the gunfighters, said Wyatt never claimed to have ever been a U. S. Deputy Marshall. King goes on to say that S. A. Andretta, Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department, has stated that the records do not disclose any official documents or papers indicating that Wyatt Earp ever held a regular commission as a United States Marshal or Deputy. King says many facts have become tangled in puzzling pages of literature.

ARTIST WITH A FLAIR FOR WESTERN HISTORY

Next, I make a careful documentary study of his clothing down to the most minute detail. Then I find somebody in Santa Rosa, California, where I live, who is his build and height, get them to pose while I paint the body, then go back to the old photograph of his head and paint that in according to likeness, bone structure, teeth, etc. I was particularly fortunate to have the enthusiastic cooperation of the late Marvin Hunter of Bandera, Texas, who, with N. H. Rose, was co-author of the 'Album of Gunfighters,' and I had access to the Hunter-Rose collection at the Bandera Museum, the finest collection of Old West photographs in the world.

"The paintings here are my effort to set the gunfighters down accurately as they actually appeared and dressed, to set them down for the first time. Perhaps in my small way I will help get history straight and influence those who guide the big show."

It took him three years and three heart attacks to finish his monumental work. Lea McCarty's Gunslingers of the Old West is not only a notable contribution to the history of the West but is great art, something never before attempted.

Knott's Berry Farm in Los Angeles has acquired this Gunslingers series. We appreciate being given the privilege to reproduce part of the series herein. R.C.

Anyhow, Wyatt did cradle a shotgun in his arm on the bullion stages and then was appointed a deputy sheriff of Tombstone by Charles Shibell. It seems that this fellow Wyatt Earp was a pivot in the history of Arizona gunfighters. His deputyship was a powder keg in the fire, what with the horizon looming up with Old Man Clanton, who came recklessly mavericking and stealing along the border from Laredo, Texas, and getting wind of an Ed Schieffelin's silver find in a place called Tombstone. The Old Man sold off the trail-weary stock at Fort Bowie and took this money to grease the palms of one Sheriff Behan and thus set the stage for the Earp-Clanton feud.

Wyatt was thirty-one years of age and had enough guts to run Curly Bill Brocius off the street when he found him drunk and standing in the blood of Tombstone's Marshal White. He buffaloed Curly and hauled his limp form off to the calaboose. Curly Bill was a six-foot gunman with a wrestler's build and had a sunny disposition which broke from seriousness into a wide, freckle-faced grin. He came up from Texas like the Clantons. He was soon to become the leader of all the rustlers around the Dragoon Mountains of Southern Arizona. Curly Bill is known to have slaughtered more than a dozen Mexicans who were bringing $75,000 in gold on a burro train through Skeleton Canyon. He was victorious in numerous gun battles and had many slugs embedded in his big body. He said he could feel them on cold nights when he slept under the stars.

Curly was released from jail by the anti-Earp faction who knew all the necessary legal claptrap to do so. So the stage was set for real commotion, along with trouble from Tom and Frank McLowery, Ike and Billy Clanton and Billy Claibourne. Old Man Članton managed to get himself ambushed by irate Mexicans while stealing cattle, and so now Curly Bill took command, which all gravitated to the one historic action in the OK Corral gun battle. It is true that Luke Short, famed Fort Worth gambler, along with Bat Masterson, did deal monte for Wyatt at his Oriental Saloon, but they left Tombstone by the time the OK Corral shooting took place.

Luke had met Wyatt in Dodge and was known as "the undertaker's friend." He had gambled up in Leadville, Colorado, and had learned to unlimber when in a tight spot and showed this when he cut down Charlie Storms. Luke was a dandy and often wore a silk hat and loud trousers and sparkling vests. He became the owner of the famed Long Branch Saloon and was being forced out of business when he called for help from Wyatt and Bat, who came on the double by stagecoach. They soon had Luke back in business with their credentials-the .45 equalizer. Luke later went on to Fort Worth, where he got into a gun battle with famed Jim Courtright and blew off Courtright's thumb and then put a hole in him while Jim was trying to border shift. Luke died peacefully in bed in Kansas City in 1893. He was 39.

His friend and Wyatt's Deputy Bat Masterson first met Wyatt at the Salt Forks of the Arkansas River in 1872. He was in the famous Battle of Adobe Walls, in which nineteen hunters, including Masterson, stood off a thousand Comanche, Cheyenne, Kiowa and Arapahoe warriors. Bat followed the life of a peace officer along the Chisholm Trail cow towns. He became a Deputy U.S. Marshal in New York and worked on the New York Morning Telegraph as a sports reporter. He died in New York in 1921.

Doc Holliday came along to Tombstone with Wyatt and followed the deputy about. Doc had studied dentistry in a medical college in Baltimore. And because the tubercular bug was eating him up, he went to packing a nickelplated .45 Colt and left dead men under gambling tables from Texas to Arizona. Doc had nothing at all to lose. He never felt good and would be thrown into fits of coughing and hacking. He loved Big-nosed Kate mostly when he felt in the pink, which was seldom. He almost worshipped Wyatt, which was about as close as he ever got to any religion. He was a magnificent tower of rage as is expressed when he grabbed the six-foot-two Ringo by the lapels and shouted into his face to come a-smokin' the next time he hit the street. This was because Ringo had challenged Earp to a duel in the street and Wyatt had to decline the challenge due to political reasons.

The artist had heard stated that the famed Texan Ben Thompson visited Arizona in the late '70's before he was killed at the Jack Harris Saloon in San Antonio, but there is nothing to substantiate this claim. Even if Ben did kill some thirty-eight men, Arizona had enough gunfighters of this same class.

Clay Allison for another did wander down into Arizona for a spell, to gamble and perhaps shoot up a man or two. He had killed some twenty-six souls, and had that rare insane courage to challenge a man to fight to the death with knives down in a grave. And Governor Miguel Otero of New Mexico writes that Clay went naked when roaring drunk in a dance hall with guns strapped about his waist and hurrahed the town and then killed the sheriff blue-coat. Clay was a northern hater, but his life ended by falling off a wagon and having his backbone snapped. Wyatt Earp made him back away in a showdown.

There is also definite proof that Billy the Kid stayed for some time in Arizona. He was born Henry McCarty, according to the late biographer Frazier Hunt, was known as William Bonney and left home when only twelve years of age after having killed his first man. He breezed about Mexico, where he shot and killed a couple of gamblers in Chihuahua. He finally arrived in Fort Bowie, where he also cut down three ambitious Indians and then a negro and a white man over a doubtful game of monte in Tucson. He joined company with a noted killer, Jesse Evans, and the two renegades then left a trail of blood across Arizona along with a strange act of heroism by fending off an Indian raid on a solitary wagon and thus saving the family. Billy finally got mixed up in the famed Lincoln County War of the McSween-Chisum-Murphy factions and the Santa Fe ring and was hunted down by Sheriff Pat Garrett, who shot him in Pete Maxwell's bedroom in Fort Sumner. He died at twenty-one, said to have killed a man for each year that he lived.

But to get back to Jesse James' kinfolks. As I have said, you cannot separate the gunfighters. John Ringo was Jesse's cousin and he swaggered about in Tombstone, the same type of action as was demonstrated by his cousins the Youngers and the Daltons yet to come.

Ringo was a brooding killer and a tragedian in his overt actions. He was handsome and came from the refined Ringold family of blue-blooded Kentucky stock. He drifted down through Missouri and Texas and finally into Arizona, where he made headquarters in Tombstone and fell under the lurid domination of Old Man Clanton. Ringo's grandfather, by the way, was Colonel Coleman Younger, who lived with John's three sisters in San Jose, California. Small world!

Ringo loved good books and culture. He often went to the old church in Tombstone. He was a ladies' man and a dandy dresser, and wore ladies' garters on his sleeves. He always wore two pistols on two separate gun belts, each of which was adjusted for fast action. He drank whiskey like Doc Holliday by the tumblerfull and often said he wanted to end his own miserable existence. He told Billy Breakenridge that his family were under the misconception that he was ranching along the San Pedro and in the Huachucas.

Not only did Ringo take to the notorious Frank Leslie, killer of Tombstone fame, but the Clantons and McLowerys as well. He towered above other men, being six feet-two inches tall, and wore matched ivory-handled Colts. He invited trouble and looked dangerous as his portrait shows.

On one occasion he offered to exchange gunsmoke and lead with Wyatt but Mayor Thomas quickly stopped the trouble. On still another occasion he held Wyatt, Virg and Morgan at gunpoint from crossing the San Pedro River to take Curly Bill Brocius into custody. He told them to come on if they wanted to feel the bite of his gun and die on a bridge to the dirge of frogs.

One day Ringo and Buckskin Leslie went on a drink-ing spree which led their horses up through the saguaro and palo verde and chaparral, stopping at every ranch. The next thing reported about Ringo was that he had been found sitting at the base of a giant oak tree staring into eternity with a hole in his head. His boots and coat were gone as was his horse and money. His undershirt was torn to ribbons. The horse was found cropping gamma grass in a draw, near Turkey Creek, with the boots mysteriously tied to the saddle.

Many were accused of this killing. Some hinted that "Johnny Behind-the-Deuce" did it and others made allusions to Wyatt. But there is doubt as to Wyatt throwing lead unless riled and he did not operate in this fashion, as is vouched for in his cutting down Curly Bill with a shotgun, or a fair shoot-out with Indian Charlie, or when he killed his brother's assassin Charlie Stillwell in Tucson.

The artist's attention has been focused on the fact that Buckskin Frank Leslie turned up in Oakland, California, in 1924, an old man past 80, sweeping up pool tables and racking balls and mopping the floors. He slept in the back room on a little dirty cot and suddenly disappeared forever after having stolen a pistol from the owner of the pool room.

There are a lot of folks who tell me to keep the women out of this bit of Arizona history. That cannot be done. Although they were not really gunfighters, they wore enough courage to be placed along with the men.

Pearl Hart, for instance, held up the last stage in America in the rutted roadbed just outside of Globe, dressed as a young man. She was really a pretty girl still in her 'teens with a .73 Winchester and bristling with pistols in her belt and a "get up and line up!" for the surprised stage driver, all for about $450. Sheriff William Truman ran her down and slapped her into the Florence calaboose where a huge crowd gathered to have a look at this daring bandit wench. Anyhow, Yuma Penitentiary was her next jailing place and held her for about a year while she reveled in her newly won fame and even signed autographs through the bars. In 1924 she was last seen a broken old woman when she visited the Court House in Pima County to proudly tell the clerk that she was Pearl Hart in person.

As for Pauline Cushman, here we have a glorious woman who originally hailed from Tennessee and worked as a Union spy for a spell. She set the boys on their ears and then they shouted until raw-throated and fired off their six-shooters. She married and settled down in Casa Grande, Arizona, and often refereed gun battles in the street when someone had to drop a dainty handkerchief which sent at least one man to his death. She performed this rite also in the streets of Tombstone, they tell us. She was last seen alive in San Francisco, where she died. The Grand Old Army of the Republic gave her a decent burial and her funeral procession stretched for blocks. Arizona is not proud of all the deeds of her gunfight-ers, nor their women, and yet what would her wild and turbulent history be without them? And strange, indeed, is the fact that so much pleasure now comes from books and from TV and the movies which reflect the proud and arrogant gunslingers almost nightly into millions of American homes, sometimes not following the actual facts but always reminding us of the gunfighter and his time, a tempestuous epoch in Western history.