The research I’m doing on the outlaws of the Old West has been a real education. If the bad man of the Old West reasoned or excused himself they usually said something like, “I am individual more important to myself than anyone else” or “Cattle, gold, and silver were created for man to use. I am a man. I must therefore provide for and protect myself with these things. I’ll look for the most practical means of doing it!” Their means weren’t always ethical. The bad man lived on the Western frontier, where personal safety depended upon the use of firearms, and where law and order did not really exist until he himself made them necessary. The Old West frowned indignantly upon shooting anyone who was unarmed. Clay Allison refused to kill his unarmed avowed enemy, Ground Owl! Marshal Wyatt Earp spared the main object of his vengeance, unarmed Ike Clanton in the famous O.K. Corral fight. According to the code of the West, a murderer was one who shot in the back or from ambush, who gave no warning, or who shot an unarmed man. A bushwhacker was a “murderer.” Of course, if a bad man “got the drop,” and the enemy instead of going for his weapons, signified his surrender by raising his hands, it would be downright murder to shoot him; but it was self-defense if the enemy reached for his gun. To violate this code would incur the wrath of witnesses and would usually lead to a hanging. There’s no doubt this was a brutal way to handle criminal and the general bad in the community, but it seems to me to be much more simple and trustworthy than the way things are handled today. The line between the good and the bad were much more clearly defined. That might have been going through Billy the Kid’s mind on this day more than 130 years ago. In 1880, Sheriff Pat Garrett ambushed Billy the Kid in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Tom O’Folliard was killed, Tom Pickett was wounded, and Dave Rudabaugh’s horse was killed but the Kid and his gang escaped.
