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Show p n r Vkr n ? km h w I " A 0 J'$f?, tr&ji 3 ' 4, 1 w 1 C- NA i " : ! 'r pr v (t- ' a As 4- 'J ' i "A ""S a t ' " i ' ' I ? M r A . m x n 4 & 4 S) tSfTJ,i? ' y fi & 3Z?OLrpc5F 'QZD-TjrKC? COKSOKf 7 By ELMO SCOTT WATSON t.N'CE upon a time a historian his-torian of the American frontier set about bis task by listing and describing the "instruments of civili-. civili-. zation." Me named the ax, the rille, the boat and the horse, ami then, having put these In.'-'triimenls in the hands of a restless race of men, he started the protagonists protag-onists of his tale on their epic of wilderness-breaking. That historian was Kinerson Hough, and the hook was "The way to the West," published by the liohhs-Merrill company of Indianapolis. Indian-apolis. A quarter of a century has passed and another historian of I he frontier bus added one more to t lie "instru-ni'.'iits "instru-ni'.'iits of civilization," which a later race of restless men used in winning the West, after their fathers had found the way to it. This was the six-shooter and it seems particularly appropriate that Bobbs-Merrill are aho the publishers of "Hands Up ! Stories of the Six-Gun Fighters of the Old Wild West," as told by Fred K. Sutton and written down by A. B MacDonald. As the title Indicates, this book deals with the final phase il' Hie frontier era, the days when civilization, as exemplified by the westward-pushing white man, had ' delinitely dispossessed the red man. csuiblished a home of sorts in the recently-conquered Wilderness and .et about putting its own honse in onler. Insofar as some members' of that household found it difficult to break away from certain lawless habits acquired ac-quired while what Theodore Itoose vt'lt has characterized as the "rough work of conquering a continent" was going on, the task of law-bringing was done in a primitive fashion. Su p.'rlluons forms were dispensed with legal technicalities ignored and the aling out of justice was, in the 1 :'hl of present-day procedure, appal I'ngly simple and direct. For in most cases Old Judge Colt was the final arbiter, and from his decisions there was rarely an appeal. Mention the word "gunman" and ;ie naturally thinks of the gangsters . j--t ujIT ,u"' t''l"?s t today. But as t-vJ-i-i'"yA pointed out Vv Outlaw"). Vhe gun Ipare the I The one f- a war '(he other lid Hough nature of v-rfmitted by the 4 gunman" "would desperado of the fr shame." And in l Sutton, who knew old-time desperadoes us to concur. In his ie Border Code" is an xposition of "the un-if un-if the 'Old West, which t-v ' 1,11111 n chance." One ins-u'ivpical : In a freighters' camp at Wajyon-Bed Fnrinfrs two men quarreled, and after they were separated and all of u? thought the fuss was over, one of them. Arizona Jack, shot and killed The ether without warning We formed what was called a iack-rnbbit court. Arizona was put on trial for his lifp rnd found molty. He beirued for his Mfe hut the executioner, iust before he pulled the triErsrer. rebuked him -a- i r h "You're not as decent, even, as a rattlesnake, for it warns before it Ftrikes." It was this same code which caused Sutton one night at a dance to save the life of the notorious Billy the Kid. "not solely for the reason that I knew him well but simply that 1 could not see a man murdered from behind," us he explains it. But for all that he saved Billy from being shot in the hack, the author of "Hands Up!" has no illusions about that young outlaw. "If ever a man deserved de-served killing, it was Billy the Kid he says, "He was a human tiger, the most pitiless killer of that period. In bis short life of twenty-one years he killed twenty-one men, and the most of those killings were murders done in cold blood." Thus this old-timer shows a refresn ing luck of maudlin sentimentality for those killers which colors the writings of others who have chron icled their dark deeds, the same type of misplaced sympathy which saves the necks of so many murderers today. to-day. He knew many of them Jesse James, Cherokee Bill, Bill Doolin Cres-cent Sam, Belle Starr, the Dalton boys, the Jennings gang, Henry Starr Blacked-faced Charley and Arkansas Tom and, knowing them and the environment en-vironment which shaped their destinies, desti-nies, he can account for what they were and what they did. But he tloes not glorify their crimes. He may have admired them for what good qualities they did possess, but he ad mires more the type of gunman who drew his six-shooter in the cause of law and order. "Nearly all those peace officers of the old frontier were likable men, but there was nothing maudlin or irresolute about them . They knew that death was the onh penalty that would curb those wild men of the border, and when it was necessary to indict it they did noi hesitate," says Sutton. Such were Wild Bill Hickok, whom he character izes as "unquestionably the fastest and surest man with a six-shooter that the West ever knew." Rat Mas terson, Pat Garrett and Billy Tilgh man. It was men of this type who used the six-shooter as an "instrument "instru-ment of civilization." "Fill your hand !" was the remark that Wild Bill made when he "got the drop on" a had man from Texas who bad come up the trail to Hays City. Kan., where Bill was marshal, with the announced intention of spilling the Ilickok blood. For the border code extended to these exponents ol law and order when they set ahou: arresting a desperado and made them "give the other fellow a chance, even when it was exceedingly dangerous to do so." One of the reasons they were willing to do so was explained to President Roosevelt on one of his visits vis-its to Oklahoma City by the veteran Billy Tilghmnn, as follows: "There's one thing that always counts in a light of that kind (between a peace officer and a bad man, equally skillful on the 'draw') the man who knows he is right always has a shade on the man who knows be Is wrong." But that was not all, according to Sutton, who explains just how these peace officers handled their six-guns, six-guns, and in doing so he does a lot of much-needed debunking of the Wild West, as it is presented by the movies. mo-vies. Sutton got his - information first-hand, for he once saw Wild Bill demonstrate the secret of his lightning-like draw and various other matters mat-ters of Colt technique were explained to him by such masters as Bat Mas-terson, Mas-terson, Billy Tilghman, Al Jennings, and others. He learned about this when, as a boy, he first arrived in Dodge City, Kan., in the old days when "there was no Sunday west of Kansas City and no God, west of Fort Smith," and was taken under the wing of such frontier notables as Masterson, Luke Short, Wyatt Earp. Chalk Beeson and Robert M. Wright, and he added to his knowledge in that turbulent period when Isaac C. Parker was the "hanging judge" at Fort Smith, Ark., and the outlaw gangs, such as the Daltons, the Doolins and others, were making their last stand in what is now the state of Oklahoma. The sum total of Sutton's observations, observa-tions, as set down in the pages of his book, is a paraphrase of the old saying that "they who take the sword shall perish by the sword." For, as be puts it, "The six-shooter ended the lives of nine-tenths of all the outlaws of the Wild West." And it was almost al-most equally true of those others wl'.o took up the six-shooter in defense de-fense of the law. Of the four most famous peace officers whom Sutton knew, three went down before a smoking six-shooter. Wild Bill's brief career as "prince of pistol-eers" pistol-eers" ended abruptly in 1S7G, when he was shot down from behind In Deadwood, S. D. Nearly a quarter quar-ter of a century after Pat Garrett had killed Billy the Kid, he himselfwas shot and killed. After fifty-one years us a peace officer Billy Tilghman "went out" as he had hoped to do "in smoke and with his boots on." He was shot in un Oklahoma oil boom town in 1024 by a man whom he had arrested and was taking to the police station. Only Bat Masterson, who left the Wikl West years ago to he come a New York newspaper man died peacefully "with his boots off." |