Journal Notes

“The Last Ride: Outlaw Laura Bullion and the Wild Bunch tells the true-crime story of outlaw Laura Bullion, the Wild Bunch’s only known female train robber, who rode with outlaws and became notorious for participating in a high-stakes robbery. Her name was renowned for decades until she disappeared.

Chris Enss embarks on a wild ride through the West to uncover Bullion’s story, life, motivations, and ultimate fate, bringing readers into a world documented not by the usual memoir, but through fragments of reports and contemporary accounts. From these, she reconstructs Bullion’s world with an eye toward vividly portraying the Wild Bunch in a different light, revealing Bullion and the other women whose lives swirled around uncommon choices.

Enss purposely shifts the timeline of events back and forth, opening with a 1949 Memphis seamstress and moving back to the Wild Bunch years, contrasting and profiling the lives of Bullion and the other women, their motivations and choices for becoming female bandits, and their return to more socially acceptable lives.

The first chapter outlines these women and Pinkerton Detective Agency records regarding them, while the second returns to 1887, when a great blizzard wreaks havoc on the Texas longhorn cattle industry and prompts changes in cattle roundups along with the emergence of rustlers and thieves in its wake. From these roots emerges the Ketchum Gang of train robbers, who find newfound success in something much easier than cattle rustling.

As the chapters fill in the myths, realities, and history of the Wild Bunch, they also create background on the men and women who pioneered the West in a very different manner, participating in outlaw activities that thwarted the Pinkertons in different ways.

Laura Bullion’s story intersects with these events, which are heavily footnoted and accented with vintage black-and-white photos and illustrations throughout. The exceptionally lively “you are there” form of reporting also provides general readers an inviting narrative of action and reaction that brings this world to life.

Especially notable is the critical thinking Enss applies to her subject. Not content with simply unearthing and reproducing newspaper accounts, she consistently peppers her findings with auxiliary research and points out inconsistencies in reporting and what most likely truly happened. This will especially satisfy history readers who know that not every newspaper account, even from that era, can be relied upon as intrinsically accurate.

The result is a vivid blend of mystery, history, women’s issues, and fact-based analysis that expands our understanding of the subjects, motivations, and choices these individuals made during this turbulent period of Western history.

Librarians seeking additions to their Western or women’s history holdings that encourage critical thinking about the American West, promote book club discussions, or support classroom study of women who chose nontraditional lives before eventually returning to conventional society will find The Last Ride: Outlaw Laura Bullion and the Wild Bunch unusually accessible to a wide audience.”

Midwest Book Review

Available everywhere August 15, 2026.  Enter now to win a copy of The Last Ride.

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The Last Ride: Outlaw Laura Bullion and the Wild Bunch

The worst winter in Texas history changed everything for Laura Bullion. The devastating Blizzard of 1887 destroyed cattle herds across the Great Plains, leaving thousands of cowboys without work. As ranches failed and honest opportunities disappeared, many desperate young men turned to robbery. Among them were Tom “Black Jack” Ketchum, Will Carver, and Ben Kilpatrick – the very outlaws who would soon change the course of Laura Bullion’s life forever.

Orphaned as a teenager and raised by her grandparents on a Texas ranch, Laura was drawn to the excitement of the cowboy life and fell deeply in love with Will Carver. Her story was never as simple as “outlaw girlfriend.” She was intelligent, well-educated for her time, fiercely independent, and caught between loyalty, love, and the dangerous choices made by the men around her. As the Wild Bunch’s train robberies grew bolder, Laura found herself riding ever closer to the center of one of the most notorious outlaw gangs in American history.

The Last Ride: Outlaw Laura Bullion and the Wild Bunch tells the remarkable true story of the woman history has too often overlooked, separating myth from fact through years of original research. The book arrives in bookstores everywhere August 15, and I can’t wait to share Laura’s extraordinary journey with readers.

Enter now to win a copy of The Last Ride

#LauraBullion #WildBunch #WesternHistory #TrueCrime #WomenOfTheWest #OutlawHistory

Sometimes the most rewarding part of writing history is watching a story find a new audience years after a book is published.

As excitement builds for the October premiere of the film According to Kate, readers have been discovering According to Kate: The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate, Love of Doc Holliday in growing numbers. This morning the book climbed to #47 on Amazon’s Best Sellers list in U.S. Immigrant History.

Here are just a few of the comments from readers:

“Excellent work. Easy read. Big Nose Kate’s account of her relationship with Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp. It’s very, very interesting. Highly recommended!”

“This is a very Good Read if you are a Wild West fan or more specifically a ‘Doc Holliday’ fan! I believe Kate was being truthful since she actually ‘Owned up to who she really was’! She has a very interesting take on relationships of the Earps and Doc! Enjoy.”

“We hear so much about the main Western figures, that the more obscure ones fall through the cracks. Found this a really interesting and informative book. From Kate’s perspective.”

And my favorite review comes from historian Garth Gould of the Wild West History Association:

“As the reader of the journal knows, Mary Katherine Harony, a.k.a. Big Nose Kate, was the paramour of Doc Holliday. She figures in all the literature about Tombstone and the Earps. In the early books, especially, she lends herself to caricature. She is the perfect dancehall girl who is mostly known for going on what is frequently termed, ‘a monumental drunk,’ and implicating Doc in an attempted stage robbery and murder. In short, she is a colorful subordinate character in the Tombstone saga. Author Chris Enss brings her to center stage in this first-book length biography.

Ms. Enss utilized a wide range of sources but primarily used Kate’s own recollections to put together her narrative. These include the Bork and Mazzanovich interviews as well as Kate’s handwritten notes compiled between 1935 and 1939. I was previously unaware of the last. Ms. Enss relates the story as Kate remembered it, inaccuracies and all. The author rightly does not appoint herself as a corrector of historical errors. After all, what is interesting is Kate’s take on her past.

Devotees of the Tombstone story should find much in this book to interest them. Few pages pass without a new twist on an old story. For instance, to pluck one from the canon, when Doc saves Wyatt’s life in Dodge City, the leader of the rowdy cowboys is James Kenedy, the later killer of Dora Hand. Also, a new suspect in the killing of Johnny Ringo is brought forth. It is certainly one I have never heard before.

Needless to say, when one encounters nuggets of this variety an immediate flip-through to the endnotes follows. The notes in this book are specific and you will learn the source. You might quibble with the source, but it will be there. I learned from the notes that an Indiana newspaper, The Fort Wayne Sentinel, retold the story of Doc’s evisceration of Ed Bailey and Kate’s subsequent rescue of Holliday. This article appeared in November of 1896, so they probably got it from Wyatt Earp’s San Francisco Examiner article published in August 1896. It was interesting to see the story had a wider circulation than I previously thought. Incidentally, Kate ridiculed this legend.

This book contains many photographs. The ones of the principal characters are all familiar ones. There are some good pictures of the towns Kate and Doc visited, as well as a map of Tombstone. The book reads well. Many times, I picked it up planning to read only ten pages but kept going. There have been many individual tales of outlaws, cowboys, and gamblers. Here now is one of the dancehall girl, and a famous one at that.”

If you haven’t yet read According to Kate, it’s available wherever books are sold.

And if you’d like to see Kate’s remarkable story come to life on the screen, join us for the world premiere of According to Kate on October 17 at the historic Tombstone Courthouse during Helldorado Days in Tombstone, Arizona.

Reserve your seat today:
https://azstateparks.com/tombstone/events/helldorado-days-film-screening-according-to-kate

Thank you for helping keep Kate’s extraordinary story alive.

Enter now to win a copy of

The Last Ride: Outlaw Laura Bullion and the Wild Bunch

The worst winter in Texas history changed everything for Laura Bullion. The devastating Blizzard of 1887 destroyed cattle herds across the Great Plains, leaving thousands of cowboys without work. As ranches failed and honest opportunities disappeared, many desperate young men turned to robbery. Among them were Tom “Black Jack” Ketchum, Will Carver, and Ben Kilpatrick—the very outlaws who would soon change the course of Laura Bullion’s life forever.

Orphaned as a teenager and raised by her grandparents on a Texas ranch, Laura was drawn to the excitement of the cowboy life and fell deeply in love with Will Carver. Her story was never as simple as “outlaw girlfriend.” She was intelligent, well-educated for her time, fiercely independent, and caught between loyalty, love, and the dangerous choices made by the men around her. As the Wild Bunch’s train robberies grew bolder, Laura found herself riding ever closer to the center of one of the most notorious outlaw gangs in American history.

The Last Ride: Outlaw Laura Bullion and the Wild Bunch tells the remarkable true story of the woman history has too often overlooked, separating myth from fact through years of original research. The book arrives in bookstores everywhere August 15, and I can’t wait to share Laura’s extraordinary journey with readers.

#LauraBullion #WildBunch #WesternHistory #TrueCrime #WomenOfTheWest #OutlawHistory

Enter now to win a copy of

The Last Ride: Outlaw Laura Bullion and the Wild Bunch

As the August 15 release of The Last Ride: Outlaw Laura Bullion and the Wild Bunch draws closer, I’ll be joining several outstanding podcasts and radio programs to talk about one of the most fascinating women of the Old West.

Here’s where you can listen:
• August 7 – Zone 7 with Sheryl “Mac” McCollum, Director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute. We’ll examine the life, crimes, and enduring mystery surrounding Wild Bunch outlaw Laura Bullion.

• August 11 – The Mike Thomas Show on Fox News Radio (KWRE, St. Louis), where we’ll discuss Laura’s remarkable transformation from train robber to respected Memphis businesswoman.

• September 25 – The Write Question with Lauren Korn, one of the West’s premier literary programs, featuring conversations with acclaimed authors from across the country.

• October 1 – The Great American Western with Matthew Pizzolato, where we’ll explore Laura Bullion’s place in Western history and the legacy of the Wild Bunch.

The Last Ride

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The Last Ride: Outlaw Laura Bullion and the Wild Bunch

Most Americans had no idea who Freda Lincoln was, but they certainly knew the name Laura Bullion.

While Laura quietly built a new life far from the headlines, the legend of the Wild Bunch outlaw took on a life of its own. Throughout the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, newspapers repeatedly resurrected her story whenever they revisited the exploits of Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, Ben Kilpatrick, and the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang. With each retelling, Laura became less a historical figure and more a larger-than-life Western legend.

By 1950, The Sunday Oregonian proclaimed her the “first woman to take part in a train robbery,” weaving a vivid account of Laura waiting on horseback as the Wild Bunch dynamited a Great Northern Railroad express car and vanished into the Montana hills with thousands of dollars in cash.

The stories only grew more sensational. By the early 1950s, Hollywood was developing a motion picture about her life, with Academy Award-nominated actress Marjorie Main attached to play the infamous outlaw. Studio publicity even claimed Laura had single-handedly held up a mail train, proving that the legend had grown well beyond the historical record.

Who was the real Laura Bullion? The answer is even more compelling than the myths.

The Last Ride: Outlaw Laura Bullion and the Wild Bunch separates fact from fiction through newspapers, court records, Pinkerton files, prison correspondence, and previously overlooked archival research.

Enter now for your chance to win a copy of

The Last Ride: Outlaw Laura Bullion and the Wild Bunch!

Enter now to win a copy of

The Last Ride: Outlaw Laura Bullion and the Wild Bunch

Why would someone spend more than thirty years hiding from a life most people would brag about?

Laura Bullion knew the answer.

The Last Ride tells her story.

Enter now to win a copy of the book.

Enter now to win a copy of the book

The Last Ride: Outlaw Laura Bullion and the Wild Bunch

What Was Laura Bullion’s Greatest Heist?

Most people would answer: A train.

They’d be wrong.

Laura Bullion rode with members of the Wild Bunch, helped carry out one of the gang’s train robberies, and became the only known woman to participate in such a crime alongside Butch Cassidy’s infamous outlaws.

But her greatest accomplishment came after the robberies ended.

She disappeared.

Not into another outlaw hideout, but into an ordinary life.

She adopted a new name, settled in Memphis, worked as a seamstress, paid her bills, made friends, and quietly left her past behind. For more than thirty years, she successfully concealed the fact that she had once been one of the most wanted women in the American West.

Most outlaws spent their lives trying to become legends.

Laura Bullion spent the rest of hers trying not to be one.

That’s one of the many surprising stories you’ll discover in

The Last Ride: Outlaw Laura Bullion and the Wild Bunch

Available August 15.

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The Last Ride: Outlaw Laura Bullion and the Wild Bunch

1. She was the only woman known to have worked directly with the Wild Bunch.
2. She could ride exceptionally well and was reputed to be an excellent shot.
3. She sometimes dressed in men’s clothing while traveling with the outlaws.
4. She was romantically involved with two Wild Bunch members, first Will Carver and later Ben “The Tall Texan” Kilpatrick.
5. She helped circulate banknotes stolen during the Wild Bunch’s Great Northern train robbery.
6. She used numerous aliases, including Della Rose, Clara Hays, Laura Dennison, and Freda Lincoln.
7. She was sentenced to five years in the Missouri State Penitentiary.
8. Her prison letters were intercepted and given to Pinkerton detectives searching for fugitive members of the gang.
9. After leaving her outlaw life behind, she supported herself for decades as a seamstress in Memphis.
10. 10.Her Memphis friends and customers had no idea the quiet woman they knew as Freda Lincoln had once been a nationally hunted outlaw.

Laura Bullion successfully traded notoriety for anonymity, but her remarkable true story is finally revealed in The Last Ride: Outlaw Laura Bullion and the Wild Bunch.

Enter now to win a copy of The Last Ride coming August 15