In an earlier time Sitting Bull might have been a great and prosperous Indian chief.  But in the second half of the 19th century he was the last ruler of a dying breed.  His victory over General Custer at Little Big Horn in 1876 was but a glitch in the United States drive to corral read more…

America’s first woman doctor was admitted to New York’s Geneva College in 1847 as a joke, and was expected to flunk out within months.  Nevertheless, Blackwell prevailed and triumphed over taunts and bias while at medical school to earn her degree two years later.  While in her last year of medical training, she was cleaning read more…

James Gilbert Jenkins was a professional criminal having a long history of highway robberies and murders.  It was reported that he had killed eight white men and ten Indians throughout Missouri, Texas, Iowa, and California.  While living in Napa City, California, Jenkins became acquainted with Patrick O’Brien in order to establish a sexual liaison with read more…

Make no mistake about it.  It’s not revenge I’m after…it’s a reckoning.

I returned from Dodge City and other towns in Kansas yesterday.  I had been traveling around the state promoting two books, one of which was The Bedside Book of Bad Girls: Women Outlaws of the Midwest.  Outlaw Alice Ivers was one of many bad girls I had a chance to talk to readers about.  Alice read more…

Stampede!  This one word, more than the warning cry that Indians or outlaws were attacking, made any cowpuncher’s blood turn cold.  There was no way of foretelling it; the sudden bark of a coyote, a rumble of a summer storm, lightning, the rearing of a horse, or the scream of a panther could all start read more…

The prisoners where my brother lived called the seagull that got caught in the razor wire surrounding the compound Broken Wing. After a few hours of being trapped Broken Wing wriggled out of the wire and dropped onto the ground, hurt and exhausted. The bird survived on scraps of bread tossed to him by prisoners read more…

Lewis Holder was an outlaw.  After hearing the news from Judge Isaac Parker that he was going to die on the gallows, Lewis left forth a piteous scream then collapsed to the floor, paralyzed with fear.  There was an immediate concern that Holder had died from fright, but the defendant was still very much alive.  read more…

The most decorated American war hero in World War II, Audie Murphy returned home with no place to go but down.  What could top his spectacular battle feats?  After lying about his age to join the army at 17, he had been wounded three times and credited with killing 240 Germans.  Of 235 men in read more…