Journal Notes

Many of the criminals in the Old West wanted to eliminate the law.  Their attitude was if there’s no law there’s no crime.  The frontier was a little too wild for my taste in the mid-1860s to late 1890s.  The rights of the outlaw should never supersede the rights of good, decent, hardworking people.  As far as I’m concerned, the rights of the criminal begin and end the moment the criminal is caught in the act; or it’s revealed they’ve lied and sent an innocent man to jail.  Everyone is such a victim now and cops have to be so politically correct that it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad.  Sometimes I yearn for the simpler days, when cops and judges didn’t have to be so politically correct and touchy-feely and compassionate.  Like Judge Isaac Parker, on the bench from 1875 to 1896.  He was just a strict, zero tolerance policy son of a gun who didn’t give a care about making the criminals, or the families of the criminals feel good.  Like when this couple from the Midwest whose daughter moved to the rowdy, Old West town of Griffith, Texas and she becomes a prostitute and gets murdered, and the parents are before Judge Parker and one of his best deputy marshals (probably Sam Sixkiller) sobbing and the tough Judge pounds his gavel and says:  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, she was Mom’s  apple pie, the Fourth of July…she was a PROSTITUTE!”  Judge Parker, we hardly knew ye.  Now we’ve gone to the other end of the spectrum, where the police have to drive alongside the armed fugitive, placing themselves and innocent civilians in harm’s way until PCP boy runs out of psycho gas.  They aren’t allowed to challenge the accusations of a young woman claiming she’s been violated.  Anyone remember the Duke University case where a stripper falsely accused several young men of raping her.   Those type of allegations are hurled about all the time.  It’s the perfect crime.  I think cops can be brutal sometimes, because it’s a brutal world we live in and make them work in.  There has to be some system in place to deal with outlaws – even if the system needs retooling now and again.  By the way, just like the bad guys of old who thought Bill Tilghman, Heck Thomas, or Sam Sixkiller wouldn’t come for them, there will be a day of reckoning for modern day criminals as well – especially those who lie about being abused as a child.  There’s a quote from one of my favorite song that goes:  “Throw your soul through every open door,  Count your blessings to find what you look for.  Turn the sorrow you caused into treasured gold,  You’ll pay back in kind and reap just what you’ve sown.”  I’ll write more when I return from Montana.  Until then….  Cue that Garryowen tune.

I’d planned to be in Colorado this past weekend for the Second Annual Tribute to Western Movie Days.  Books were shipped overnight to the Museum of the West in Montrose and I was sent an itinerary to follow during my visit.  The original True Grit was filmed there and I was looking forward to visiting the sight.  Delta cancelled the scheduled flight to the location and booked me on another flight going out the following morning at 6:20 a.m..  However, the flight was oversold and the chances of my getting an actual seat on the plane were slim to none.  The best the airlines could do was to fly me standby which entailed me sitting around the airport for a couple of days.  Once it was clear I wasn’t getting out of Sacramento I decided to forget the trip all together.  I couldn’t help but think that my time would be better spent back at my office working.  So, that’s where I ended up.  Maybe next year if the directors of the event will still have me.  After spending hour upon hour at the airport I learned a few things.  Flying in this country has turned into an amazingly arduous process, especially boarding the plane, which has now become this tedious Bataan death march with American Tourister overnight bags.   There’s a lot of terrorism in the air, but you know when you walk through the terminal and see the crack security people manning the perimeter, I think we all sleep the sleep of angels.  The woman working the X-ray machine had the attention span of Boo Radley.  She had a channel flicker and was watching baggage from other airports for crying out loud!  If all goes well this week I’m off to Montana Friday.  I’ll be at Billings, Garryowen, and Bozeman.  I hope I get a seat.  I’ll be attempting to fly out on Delta again.  If I don’t make it right away, you’ll find me waiting around the Sacramento airport eating my weight in Cinnabons.

On my way to Colorado today.  I won’t be too far from the sanitarium where Doc Holiday died.  I just might have to pay a visit to his grave site.  I noticed the usual suspects using a University of Missiouri server have been monitoring my site again.  Just want to remind them of the last note I received from them.  It read, “Don’t contact me again.  I am tired of trying to have a relationship with you.  Don’t contact me again, ever, for any reason.”  That note came from a family member who said they loved me – and of course the note came after I helped pay for her wedding.  Only a coward hides behind what they think is the anonymity of the internet.  Maybe that’s why I like people such as Doc Holiday.  He wasn’t a coward.

No element of America’s historical heritage has inspired more myth and legend that the opening of the American West – an epic of immense proportion.  The wild frontier days might be gone, but the lure of the West lives on in the form of personal freedom, and enduring bond between man and nature, and the restless yearning for a new and better way of life.  I like to remember important dates that help shape the West.  Somehow it keeps me tied into that time period and inspires me to strive for a new and better way of life.  I hope in a much more civilized way, but I’m not opposed to fighting for a dream or to preserve one.  On this day in 1876, the U.S. government was planning a large scale attack to remove the Indians fighting the settlement of their land by white invaders.   That slow, violent removal began way before 1876, but 1876 was a momentous year.  It started on the Rosebud River.  General Crook unexpectedly encountered the southern fringe of a huge Indian encampment.  He is attacked by almost 1500 Sioux, led by Crazy Horse.  The Indians were forced to retreat.  Crook suffers only nine soldiers killed but is forced to regroup southward at Goose Creek.  Jump ahead two years to 1878 – The Sam Bass Gang was surprised in their camp on Salt Creek in Wise County, Texas by a posse bed by Sheriff W.F. Eagan and some Texas Rangers.  The posse killed Arkansas Johnson and captured the gang’s horses.  But the rest of the gang got away on foot.  They soon stole other horses and made good their escape.  The West, it is said, never ends; both in myth and reality, it only changes.  And so it does.  I guess that’s what makes it so enticing.  Few of us want to stay the same.  We crave excitment and adventure and the changes those ambitions create.

With any luck and a firm understanding of the laws of 1888 as it applies to the Indian Nations, I’ll be finishing the last chapter of the Sam Sixkiller book today.  He was a remarkable man and I’m anxious for the world to know this brave deputy marshal.  There seems to be a theme that runs throughout the books I write about western lawmen – they stand up for family wrongly killed, track down the murderers who took their loved ones lives and make them pay for their misdeeds.  Punishment was sure.  I particular like it when the bad guys are living their lives as though there will never be a day they have to answer for what they’ve done and then someone like Sixkiller comes calling.  The bad guys didn’t always get what was coming to them, however, as the following example shows.  On this day in 1877, a man named Robinson accused John Good in Blanco City, Texas of being a horse thief, which was probably true.  Robinson angrily drew his gun but it caught in his clothing and Good put four shots into him.  Also on this day, but a few years later in 1881, Bill Leonard and Harry Head were killed by Ike and Jim Haslett in Eureka, New Mexico.  Leonard and Head were in a gang that tried to robe the Kinnear stage near Contention, Arizona on March 15, 1881.  The Haslett brothers owned a store in the same New Mexico town and they fought off Leonard and Head when they threatened to steal from the business.  Siblings looked out for one another in the Old West and the still do today.  Was looking at a few great houses on-line in the Tombstone area.  There’s one really fabulous house I’d like to have.  It sits on a hill overlooking Allen Street.  It’s a sweet dream.

I’m off again today to do another lecture series and signing.  The hardest part of this job is hauling the boxes of books around.  It was on this day in 1892, after back shooting Jesse James, Bob Ford became a saloon keeper in Creede, Colorado.  Ford was shotgunned by Ed Kelly ins a dispute over a missing diamond ring.  The shotgun blast drove a collar button through Ford’s throat.  Ford deserved nothing less for his cowardice act.  More information about Ford’s demise and the shot that killed Jesse James can be found in the book Tales Behind the Tombstones.  It’s one of my favorite titles in the Go West series of books that I’ve been fortunate enough to write.  I’m looking forward to working on a pictorial about Dodge City’s Front Street.  Any opportunity to return to Kansas is a plus.  The Roy Rogers/Dale Evans book The Cowboy and the Senorita might be adopted as a musical for Broadway.  I’ll have more news about that and the book I’m writing about my brother on Thursday.  Time to load up the truck now and be on my way.

If not for the persistent rain and cold, the time at Coloma and Placerville this weekend would have been perfect.  When you’re already feeling low in spirit, the constant rain seems to add to the blues.  So I’ll turn my attention to the west and the men and women who helped shape the frontier and lose myself in their daring.  At sunrise on this day in 1886, John Slaughter, the Sheriff of Cochise County, and posse jumped some Mexican bandits at a wood lot in the Whetstone Mountains.  Two of them, Manuel Robles and Nieves Deron, were survivors of Jack Taylor’s vicious gang of train robbers.  Guadalupe Robles, and innocent woodcutter, was Manuel’s brother.  When the smoke cleared Guadalupe lay dead and Nieves died of his wounds shortly thereafter.  Manuel was hit twice but escaped on foot.  Slaughter got part of his ear shot off.  Before becoming a sheriff, Slaughter had an interesting past.  He enlisted in the Confederate Army at the start of the Civil War as a private in Company E, 36th Woods Cavalry, Texas before moving on to another unit. He was mustered out May 15, 1865. Serving in the 3rd Frontier Division, Texas State Troops, he earned the reputation of a fearless fighter, skilled with firearms. After the war, he formed the San Antonio Ranch Company with his brothers and in the 1870s, bought a ranch in Charleston, Arizona. In 1886, he was elected Sheriff of Cochise County, served two terms and then helped the US Cavalry track Geronimo’s Apaches. He also was the inspiration for Walt Disney’s TV series, “Texas John Slaughter” in the 1950s. Can you imagine being so tough entertainment executives just have to do a series about your life?  Long live western legends.

You know, lately I find myself gripped by an overwhelming desire to smack some people upside the head.  The rude and the inconsiderate need a good beat down.  I’d start first with those people who treat bookstores like libraries.  Why are these individuals allowed to lay in the aisles reading novels without paying for the item?  How is that not theft?  And why do paying customers have to walk over these human speed bumps?  They never bother to make room for anyone to get where they need to go.  Common sense and common courtesy isn’t just dead, it’s been cremated and Willie Nelson is smoking his ashes in his lucky skull bong.  There is so little common sense that Thomas Paine is spinning over in his grave so rapidly that there is talk about hooking him up to a turbine to light up the Vegas strip.  You can’t get off an elevator anymore without colliding with some idiot who is trying to spawn upstream onto the elevator while everyone else is trying to get off.  You can’t get in your car and not run into another idiot who pulls into the gas station with her fuel tank on the wrong side and then has to get instructions from a NASA team at Houston Control to figure out how to maneuver her car so that the tank is on the correct side.  What happened?  It would seem a chalk outline is slowly being drawn around common decency and common sense and most people can’t even identify the victim.  Sure.  I know I’m coming across like a 90 year old man frustrated with the neighborhood kids who continue to throw their ball in my backyard, but I’ve had it!  I just heard another story on the news this morning about someone who sued a coffee shop because she spilled coffee on herself and was burned.  She said it wasn’t her fault, sued for $3 million and won!  She won!  We have trouble convicting people who actually confess to murder, but this woman is able to take three mil of a coffee shop.  If the judges had any common sense, the trial should have gone like “Will the plaintiff please rise?  Yeah, it is your fault.  You’re stupid.  Coffee is supposed to be hot.  Why didn’t you blow on it before you chugged it down like a pledge having his first beer?  Get out of my courtroom, you stupid, stupid woman and take your pin-striped parasite lawyer with you.  Next case.”  Where does common sense come from?  It’s slapped into the back of your head by your mother when you try and touch the hot stove.  It’s the Dodge Ram crest branded onto your forehead for all of eternity because you didn’t want the seat belt to wrinkle your new shirt.  Lack of common sense and common decency were easily dealt with in the Old West.  Repeatedly crossing the line in either area ended at the point of the gun.  As Humphrey Bogart’s character said to Herman Brix’s character in Treasure of Sierra Madre when Bogart learned Brix has been stealing water from his land.  “Next time you try that, I’ll let it out of your through little round holes.”  If bookstore owners took that approach to the thieves sprawled out in the middle of the aisles….  Who am I kidding?  I think I need coffee.

At 4 a.m. I abandoned the idea of being able to sleep and made my way to my office.  Waiting for me was the chapter I’ve been working on for the second edition of the Hearts West book and the last chapter of the Sam Sixkiller book.  I’m thankful every day that I get to write about the west for a living and I look forward to being able to do it for the rest of my life.  While I was working this morning my mind drifted to some classic film moments I thought were exceptionally well written.  The Godfather isn’t a western, but it could have been.  The story line would resonate just as well with a western setting as it did in the setting of New York.  The dialogue could have been dialogue any cowboy and outlaw might have had.  I let my mind settle on the opening scene from Godfather II.  Not only because I think the film is wonderful, but because the opening scene fits my mood this morning and best conveys the frustration I’m feeling.  My brother had a particularly hard weekend.  He suffers so and knowing that makes me deeply sad.  Which leads me to the Godfather II.  Little Vito Andolini, the boy who would grow up to be the Godfather, was born in Sicily.  In 1901 his father was murdered for an insult to the local Mafia Chieftain.  His older brother Paolo swore revenge and disappeared into the hills, leaving Vito, the only male heir to stand with his mother at the funeral.  His mother eventually takes him to see the Don Ciccio, the man who had killed her husband and son and the Godfather’s father and brother.  After recapping for the Don what he had done she pleads to him for the life of her one and only son.  The Don refuses her request.  He believes Vito will try to get revenge on him when he grows up.  Vito’s mother pulls a knife on the Don and holds it to the man’s neck, giving her son just enough time to run away from the scene.  When Vito turns and looks back he sees his mother being shot and killed by the Don.  Vitto does get away and escapes to the United States .  Decades pass.  Vito never forgot what was done to his family at the hand of the Don.  As the Don predicted, Vito does return to exact justice on the Don for his actions.  So much time had lapsed, the Don had forgotten about Vito.  That’s how I see the situation with my brother.  So much time has lapsed that the outlaws in this long tale have forgotten what they’ve done.  I remember every day.  I’m forced to.  I will not stop pursuing justice until the real criminals are behind bars and that will happen – sooner than they ever allowed themselves to imagine.  Until that day I’ll continue writing my western stories.  Ti amo, Rick.

Since I’ve returned home I’ve been working on completing the Sam Sixkiller book.  My focus in the last chapter has been on the men who shot and killed the Indian lawman, their character, or lack thereof.  Some historians hold to the belief that the two men who gunned down Captain Sixkiller were “victims of circumstance.”  There are many who believe no one is born bad – that he becomes that way because of environment or some traumatic experience.  I disagree.  In the research I’ve done I have found that many of the Western bad men came from fine, respectable families.  John Wesley Hardin’s mother was known as a good woman and his father a minister of the Gospel.  John Wesley himself was a schoolteacher for three months in Navarro County, Texas.  The degraded William Clarke Quantrill was also a schoolteacher before his more lurid career.  Joe Hill, notorious member of Curly Bill’s rustlers in Cochise County, Arizona, and the same man who shot Dick Lloyd off his horse for riding it into his poker game, was reputed to be a scion of a fine old aristocratic family.  Given the chance all of these men would lie about their upbringing to get out of having to answer for the crimes they perpatrated.  Nothing seems to have changed since that time period.  I’ve thought a lot about that with regards to the Casey Anthony trial in the news today.  I don’t know if she killed her daughter or not, but I think it’s despicable to blame your bad actions on your upbringing.  It’s something a coward would do and has done.  You shift the blame onto someone who in the majority of cases has done nothing wrong, but now find themselves in the unique position of defending their own life.  I feel for Casey Anthony’s father and brother who are now being accused of sexually molesting her.  False accusations such as that are the most heinous of crimes.  It comes down to a “he said – she said” situation and facts don’t matter much.  Father and son Anthony will never be able to reclaim their reputations.  It’s over for them and no one had to prove anything ever really happened.  There should be a special kind of hell for people who falsely accuse anyone of such an act.  Now that I think about it…there is – actually several I’m told.   No one gets away with that crime.  And as it was noted in the film True Grit, “punishment will come one way or another.”