The true stories of Wild West’s last outlaws are better than fiction

We wish to mythologize our Western outlaws and their catchy nicknames, which regularly embody the designation of “Child” (Billy the Child, the Sundance Child or, if you happen to’re a fan of John Ford’s “Stagecoach,” the Ringo Child). Tom Clavin, the writer of a number of books concerning the Previous West, together with “Dodge Metropolis,” “Tombstone” and the brand new “Bandit Heaven,” is after one thing extra elusive: the info, or a minimum of one thing near them. He isn’t a revisionist historian within the vein of, say, Richard Slotkin, whose books, together with “Gunfighter Nation” and “Deadly Atmosphere,” look at the foundational, blood-drenched myths of the US. However the true tales Clavin recounts — and “Bandit Heaven” typically reads like a collection of enthralling yarns — are based mostly in deep analysis.

Which doesn’t imply they aren’t enjoyable. In telling the story of three late nineteenth century hideouts in Wyoming and Utah — Robbers Roost, Brown’s Gap and Gap-in-the-Wall — “Bandit Heaven” reminds us how colourful language was used to explain even essentially the most dire circumstances. As an illustration, the winter of 1886-87 was so brutal, killing off folks and an estimated 90% of cattle on the northern ranges of Wyoming, Montana and the Dakota Territory, that it got here to be generally known as the Massive Die-Up. For those who’re gonna go, you would possibly as effectively go in one thing known as that.

Typically a random place title is sufficient to tickle the flowery. I’m moderately a fan of the city of Chugwater, Wyo., residence of Two Bar Ranch. And naturally there are the names of the miscreants and varmints themselves. Cherokee Bangs. George “Massive Nostril” Parrott (that’s simply not good). George “Flatnose” Currie (is that any kinder?).

The press might get in on the act as effectively. When homesteaders Ella Watson and James Avrell had been lynched by the hands of avaricious ranchers who needed their land, one newspaper headline summed up the crime thus: “Blaspheming Border Magnificence Barbarously Boosted Branchward.”

As Clavin describes, the violence of the interval was typically perpetrated by consortiums of massive land homeowners intent on swallowing up their smaller competitors. The 12 months 1891 noticed the beginning of the Johnson County Conflict, during which Wyoming cattle barons employed an assassination squad to get rid of small ranchers who had the temerity to erect barbed-wire fences round their land and cattle. The barons typically had legislation enforcement of their pockets; as Clavin writes, “Even within the final days of the Wild West, there could possibly be a skinny line between lawman and outlaw.”

The Johnson County Conflict was the premise of the 1980 film “Heaven’s Gate,” a infamous flop that every one however bankrupted its studio, United Artists, however stays ripe for reconsideration. The apply of slicing ranchers’ barbed-wire fences is an instigating plot level within the nice 1940 Gary Cooper western “The Westerner.” However the true movie-stars-to-be in “Bandit Heaven” are Bob Parker and Harry Longabaugh, higher generally known as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Child. Right here, too, Clavin applies a little bit of myth-busting. Parker/Cassidy definitely rode with Lonabaugh/Sundance, however his “greatest good friend and chief sidekick in outlaw gangs he led” was a special man altogether, named Elzy Lay, who wasn’t blessed with a pithy moniker. The moderately glib 1969 film about Butch and Sundance (which got here out the identical 12 months as a far superior western concerning the finish of the frontier, “The Wild Bunch”), has ceaselessly cemented our conception of the duo as charming quipsters, an outline that appears to have a minimum of some foundation in actuality.

Within the phrases of Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” “When the legend turns into truth, print the legend.” However Clavin is usually extra within the truth, and if he doesn’t essentially render it with poetry or nice creativeness, he is aware of the right way to grind it out piece by piece, episode by episode. He does ultimately get to Butch and Sundance, the Gap-in-the-Wall Gang and their pursuers, together with Pinkerton detective Charlie Siringo, who infiltrated the gang (and was additionally on the scene of the 1886 Haymarket bombing and its aftermath in Chicago). When he wasn’t going after Western outlaws, Siringo was rounding up union members; at instances it was laborious to say which struck extra concern within the hearts of presidency and legislation enforcement.

Clavin makes clear that cattle rustling was a routine operation in these instances, typically seen as a type of skimming from huge ranchers by the cowboys employed to work the herds. Typically crime went unpunished in these late days of the frontier. And typically vengeance was taken with savage ferocity. “Bandit Heaven” is at its greatest when Clavin unleashes an anecdote of macabre element. Which brings us again to our good friend George “Massive Nostril” Parrott.

The unlucky outlaw was hanged from the crossbeam of a phone pole after he and his train-robbing gang gunned down a pair of lawmen and Parrott tried to flee from jail. Then issues bought bizarre. Two medical doctors determined to check his mind and its doable legal inclinations. Clavin writes: “A dying masks of Parrott’s face was created and pores and skin from his thighs and chest was eliminated. The pores and skin, together with the useless man’s nipples, was despatched to a tannery in Denver, the place it was made right into a medical bag and a pair of footwear.” One of many medical doctors, John Osborne, wore the footwear to his inaugural ball when he was sworn in as Wyoming’s first Democratic governor in 1893.

Who wants legend when the historic file affords such riches?

Chris Vognar is a contract tradition author.