The actual number is just one.

That’s right. Across the entire history of the Old West, exactly one person was legally hanged for horse theft. An ole boy over in California named Theodore Valenzuela. And even then, the horse theft was technically charged as grand larceny.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Plenty of people got strung up for stealing horses. But almost exclusively by lynch mobs, as opposed to a court-appointed executioner. And yes, that includes my own home state of Texas.

If you look at the Texas penal codes from the 1850s, horse theft only carried a sentence of two to seven years in the penitentiary. They bumped it up in 1879 to a maximum of fifteen years, but it was never punishable by death. I bring up Texas specifically because there’s still a lot of people walking around under the impression that you can hang someone in this state if you catch them stealing your horse. I’ve heard it my whole life and it is absolutely false.

Same applies to every other Western state and territory. At no point was there a law on the books in the Old West that made stealing horses a capital offense, with the lone exception of that grand larceny statute over in California. And that only resulted in the single execution I mentioned earlier.

So Where Does the Myth Come From?

Go back far enough to colonial America and it’s an entirely different. Back in those days, the colonies were operating under English common law, a particularly brutal form of justice that historians refer to as the bloody code. Between 1688 and 1820, the number of capital crimes in England shot up from around 50 to over 200.

And when I say crimes, I’m not necessarily talking about violence. The majority of these crimes that resulted in the death penalty were over stolen property. Grand larceny was a hanging offense. So were forgery, arson, pickpocketing, and counterfeiting. Hell, even falsely impersonating someone with the intent to defraud could get your neck stretched. And yes, stealing horses was on the list, too.

That said, the last person actually hanged for horse theft in Great Britain was a guy named John Hughes back in 1825. The law was outright abolished by 1832. We’ll get to why in a minute.

Either way, this is the system the American colonies inherited. So technically, if you go back far enough, there were laws in North America making horse theft a capital offense. But it really wasn’t used all that often. More people were executed for piracy and almost as many for witchcraft as for stealing horses.

My source on all this is something called the Espy File, which is considered the gold standard when it comes to legal executions in the United States between 1608 and 2002. All told, Espy and his colleagues identified over 15,000 legal executions across four centuries. Out of all those, only 51 were for stealing horses. And out of those 51, only one occurred out west.

So while there were laws at one point making horse theft punishable by death, by the time we get to the western cattle drives and the mining camps and famous outlaws like Billy the Kid or Butch Cassidy, those laws had been off the books for decades.

Pious Perjury

Now, just to circle back to Great Britain real quick. Under English common law, grand larceny was defined as theft of goods worth more than 12 pence, which, adjusted for inflation, comes out to about 20 bucks in modern American greenbacks. Not a perfect conversion, but either way you shake it, it was a small sum.

To put it in perspective, if we were still under the bloody code, you could be legally executed for stealing a case of beer or a bag of dog food. Pretty extreme, right?

English juries thought so, too. To the point that they just flat out refused to convict.

Imagine you’re a regular working stiff in 18th-century London, sitting on a jury. The prosecutor brings in some poor kid who got caught stealing a wheel of cheese from a bakery, or maybe a silver spoon from a wealthy household worth two shillings, twice the threshold for grand larceny. The judge tells you that if you find this kid guilty, he hangs.

So what do you do? What most English jurors did was straight up lie under oath. They’d huddle up, deliberate for a bit, then come back and announce that it was their considered opinion the spoon or the cheese was only worth 11 pence, just under the threshold. The kid would still get punished, usually a lashing or a one-way ticket to Australia, but he didn’t hang.

This was so common that historians have a name for it. Pious perjury. Lying under oath in the eyes of both God and the king because you believe telling the truth would be a worse sin than telling a lie.

Here’s where it gets interesting. This wasn’t just some sissified British concept. We find the exact same thing happening out west.

Not with horse theft, since there were no actual laws making it a capital offense out west. But there were similar laws around other forms of robbery. New Mexico and Arizona, for example, both made train robbery punishable by death. Those laws were on the books for over two decades, and they only hanged one person under them. A guy known as Blackjack Ketchum.

Now, you might think that proves being tough on crime works. After all, if they only hanged one guy, the rest must have gotten the message. Not quite. Trains were still getting robbed regularly in both territories. Men were still getting arrested for robbing them. The juries just flat out refused to convict.

Prosecutors caught on and started charging train robbers with lesser offenses. Highway robbery. Assault. Interfering with the US mail. The guilty parties still got punished, sometimes with years behind bars, sometimes even branded, but they didn’t get executed.

Power, Not Justice

The only question left is why. Why did Western juries refuse to convict even when they knew the defendant was guilty? And if horse theft really was such a heinous offense, why didn’t they push through actual legislation making it punishable by death?

I’ll be honest. I don’t have a clean answer. The history is complicated, and so are people, especially the kind of people who lived on the frontier in the 1800s.

What I will say is this. I think we’ve all, myself included, been greatly misled by Hollywood when it comes to how things really worked back in the Old West. When most people picture frontier justice, they see it as a righteous undertaking. The good guys win, the bad guys get put in the dirt, end of story.

These kinds of executions did happen, but they weren’t necessarily par for the course. Many western lynchings had a whole lot more to do with power than justice. The Johnson County War is a great example. Plenty of people got strung up during that conflict, but it rarely involved regular folks rising in righteous anger to stop evildoers. More often, it was wealthy cattle barons lynching innocent homesteaders.

Take Ella Watson. In July 1889, she was forcibly removed from her home and hanged from a pine tree. According to the cattle baron Albert Bothwell, Watson was a stock thief and a prostitute. Truth is, she just owned land Bothwell wanted. When she refused to sell, he had her killed and took the land. And no, Bothwell was never held responsible.

This stuff was extremely common. Might makes right. Whoever had the most money or the most guns or the most power, they decided who was guilty and who wasn’t. Plenty of innocent people got caught up in the mix. By most estimates, one out of every three lynching victims was innocent.

So just because mob justice happened in the Old West doesn’t mean the majority of westerners were in favor of it. All it proves is that powerful men, when left to their own devices, will operate outside the law whenever it suits them. It wasn’t just Johnson County either. You can find the same pattern across mining operations, railroad executives, and cattle associations. Almost never about justice.

Remember that Arizona law that made train robbery a capital offense? It wasn’t the citizens of Arizona who pushed that through. It was the railroads. Technically, a legislator who had formerly been employed by the Southern Pacific.

Wrapping Up

Best I can figure, even being generous with the numbers, there were only about 40 to 60 verified horse theft lynchings across roughly three decades of the Old West. And before anyone brings up Judge Roy Bean, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the so-called Law West of the Pecos, the man whose entire legend is built around stringing up horse thieves from the back of his saloon, never actually hanged anyone. Not for horse theft and not for any other offense.

Then there’s Doc Middleton, arguably the most prolific horse thief of all time. Dude stole thousands of horses. When he was finally caught, he got around five years behind bars. Then he became a deputy sheriff.

So to sum it all up. There was never a time in the Old West when stealing horses was legally punishable by death. When Western juries were confronted with similar laws, such as the one for train robbery, they overwhelmingly rejected them. Vigilantes took the law into their own hands, sometimes justifiably, but nowhere near as often as the movies make it out to be. And a whole lot of innocent people were strung up by wealthy landowners who knew nobody would come after them.

Turns out due process actually matters. Who would have thunk it?

To learn more, please check out the most recent edition of The Wild West Extravaganza.

Until next time, adios.

And the cattle he delivered to the troops of Fort Griffin? Larn stole every single one of them from his own neighbors.

Larn was born in Alabama in 1849. He drifted west as a teenager, ended up in Colorado, and killed his employer in an argument over a horse. He then fled to New Mexico, where he killed a local sheriff he believed was tracking him.

From there, he made his way to Fort Griffin, Texas, and hired on for a trail drive back to New Mexico. Along the way, he allegedly killed three men and threw their bodies into the Pecos River to, as he put it, feed the catfish. Whether he actually said that, or it was attached to him later on by a writer with an overactive imagination, is unclear.

When Larn got back to Fort Griffin, he had a falling out with the trail boss and led a few disgruntled drovers on a rampage throughout the camp. Two men were killed, and seven were wounded. Word got around that the dead men had been rustling cattle, so nobody pressed the issue.

Eventually, Larn began transforming himself into something resembling a respectable citizen. Or I guess I should say he attempted to transform himself. He hired on as foreman for rancher Bill Hays, but sadly, the violence continued. As evidenced by Larn allegedly killing three men (including a shepherd) during a cattle drive to Colorado.

I don’t know about you, but I think I’m starting to see a pattern. Even by frontier standards, the body count was really starting to add up. Still, though, Larn was either charming enough or capable enough that the killings weren’t pursued.

Skip ahead to 1872, and he was wed in holy matrimony to Mary Jane Matthews, the younger sister of cattleman John Alexander Matthews, and in doing so married right into the local establishment.

By 1873, the first allegations of cattle stealing surfaced. That same year, Larn rode with a posse and thirteen soldiers from Fort Griffin and ambushed Bill Hays’s entire cattle outfit near Bush Knob in Throckmorton County. Every member of the outfit was killed.

In 1874, he joined the Tin Hat Brigade, a local vigilance committee. Horse thieves all of a sudden began dangling from trees along the river, but Larn still somehow managed to get elected sheriff of Shackelford County in April of 1876.

Almost immediately, he secured a contract with the army garrison at Fort Griffin to deliver three steers a day. He brought in his old friend John Selman as a deputy (yikes!), and the two of them began fulfilling the contract. The only problem was where the cattle were coming from. You see, Larn had his own herd, but apparently, he preferred cows that belonged to his neighbors. Ranchers around Shackelford County started to notice that their cattle were disappearing while Larn’s weren’t. By March of 1877, the scheme was exposed, and Larn was forced to resign.

Surprisingly, no charges were filed.

What’s more, Larn and Selman were then appointed as deputy hide inspectors for the county. In other words, they were responsible for inspecting all cattle entering and leaving Shackelford and supervising local butchers. Putting these two in charge of the hide inspection was a little like asking the fox to guard the henhouse. The rustling continued, and so did the violence.

Finally, in February of 1878, a civilian posse got a warrant and searched the river behind Larn’s house. After pulling six stolen hides from the water, Larn was arrested, taken to Fort Griffin, and…

Released!

Guess what? The violence continued.

On June 22, 1878, Larn shot and wounded a local rancher named Treadwell, who had supposedly been the one to uncover the rustling. Later on that same day, Larn was arrested by his successor, Sheriff William R. Cruger. I reckon Cruger had no intention of letting Larn walk out of the jail he used to run, so he took him to the county seat at Albany and had the local blacksmith shackle him to the floor of the jail to prevent an escape.

And the shackles worked. Not only did they prevent Larn from escaping, but they also kept him put when the vigilantes arrived.

You see, at midnight on June 23, a mob of masked men overpowered the guard. They tried to drag Larn out for a proper hanging, but the blacksmith’s work held, so instead they shifted to Plan B: They formed a firing squad right there inside the cell and shot Larn where he sat.

He was twenty-nine years old.

Unfortunately for humanity, John Selman (Larn’s old partner) slipped away before the vigilantes could get their hands on him. He slinked west and eventually ended up in El Paso, where in 1895 he would shoot John Wesley Hardin in the back of the head at the Acme Saloon. Selman would meet the same fate himself less than a year later at the hands of Deputy Marshal George Scarborough.

I guess the good Lord meant it when he said that those who live by the sword die by the sword.

UPDATES

There will not be a new episode of The Wild West Extravaganza this week. Everything is going great, but I’m working on several different projects, and they still need a few finishing touches. It’s also my daughter’s pre-school graduation. Can you believe she’s almost 5 years old? She just passed her second martial arts belt test and had a dance recital, so we’ve been pretty busy!

I do have one thing you might enjoy, though, in lieu of new content. I’m calling it the Which Gunfighter Would You Be Personality Quiz.

So, if today’s story made you wonder which Old West character you’d have been (and hopefully not John Larn), I built a quiz for exactly that. Twelve questions, two minutes, and you’ll find out which gunfighter, lawman, or outlaw you most resemble.

Click here to take the quiz. It’s 100% free. And if you like your results, you even have the option to share on social media.

Alright, till next time,

Adios.

His first known fight occurred on July 27th, 1872, in an Ellsworth, Kansas, saloon. An unarmed Spike accused a Texas cattleman named Print Olive of cheating at poker. In turn, Olive told him in no uncertain terms to cash in his chips and clear out. Or else. Spike obliged, but his pride got the better of him. He came back later that evening, walked behind the bar, grabbed a revolver, and put four bullets into Print Olive before Olive’s loyal friend James Kelly returned fire and ended the fight.

Spike skipped town, and the law, as it so often did when wealthy Texas cattlemen’s sons were involved, just kinda let it go.

You see, Spike’s father was none other than Mifflin Kenedy, partners with Richard King of King Ranch. Mifflin would eventually start a large spread of his own down in South Texas, and to say that his son Spike was born with a silver spoon in his ass might just be an understatement.

Six years after that shooting at Ellsworth, Spike was back in Kansas and got crossways with a Dodge City saloon owner known as Mayor James “Dog” Kelley.

The two had gotten into a brawl over the affections of the Alhambra’s star attraction, a beautiful young singer named Dora Hand (Or Fannie Keenan, depending on the source).

Hand was something of a frontier legend in her own right. Boston-raised, opera-trained, she sang in the saloons by night, in the church on Sundays, and gave generously to the poor. Wyatt Earp’s biographer Stuart Lake later called her “the most graciously beautiful woman to reach the camp in the heyday of its iniquity.”

Mayor Kelley had apparently embarrassed Spike pretty good in their brawl, throwing him head-first into the muck of the thoroughfare. So Spike did what he always did. He waited.

On the night of October 4th, 1878, he crept up to Kelley’s two-room frame house and fired two shots through the front door, aiming for the bedroom where Kelley usually slept. The only thing is, Kelley wasn’t home. He was at Fort Dodge and had let Dora Hand and her friend Fannie Garretson stay at the house in his absence. The first bullet passed through Garretson’s nightgown without hitting her. The second went through a partition wall and instantly killed the 34-year-old Dora Hand.

Spike rode hard out of Dodge, but he hadn’t counted on the posse Sheriff Bat Masterson assembled to bring him in. Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Bill Tilghman, and Charlie Bassett, four of the most famous lawmen of the era, rode a hundred miles through a snowstorm and ran Spike down at Cimarron Crossing, near Meade City.

When he refused to surrender, a shot from Masterson’s rifle shattered his left shoulder, and Earp shot his horse out from underneath him. Spike’s first words to the lawmen as they were arresting him were, “Did I kill that bastard Kelley?” When they told him he’d killed Dora Hand instead, he reportedly said they should have made a better shot at him than they did.

Back in Dodge, doctors cut four inches of bone out of his shattered arm, leaving it permanently disabled. Sadly, that was the only price Spike Kenedy ever paid.

His father Mifflin boarded a train in Corpus Christi and headed straight for Dodge City. According to local rumors, he arrived with as much as twenty-five thousand dollars in a satchel. Spike’s “trial” was conducted three weeks later in a small room next to his jail cell, with Judge Rufus G. Cook presiding. The proceedings only lasted a few hours, and the Ford County Globe reported that Kenedy “was examined last week before Judge R. G. Cook and acquitted. His trial took place in the Sheriff’s office, which was too small to admit spectators. We do not know what the evidence was or upon what grounds he was acquitted.”

In the year that followed, several of the men who’d attended that closed-door meeting reportedly came into surprising amounts of money. Imagine that.

Spike went back to Texas to recover. In November of 1883, he married a young woman named Corina Balli Trevino, and the following August she gave birth to a son, George Mifflin Kenedy. But Spike’s luck, such as it was, had finally run out. He’d contracted a serious illness, variously reported as typhoid fever with severe lung congestion or simply consumption, traced back to an old wound he’d received in an Indian fight while driving cattle to Kansas years before.

Whatever it was, it took Kenedy’s life on December 29th, 1884. Interestingly enough, at the time of his death, he was under indictment for the so-called “accidental” shooting of a ranch hand he’d just fired.

The man who’d shot Print Olive over a poker game and killed Dodge City’s beloved Dora Hand never lived to see thirty. And as for Dora, she got the biggest funeral in Dodge City’s history. Over four hundred cowboys, hats on their saddle horns, rode behind the springboard wagon that carried her body to Boot Hill.

Bravin, unlike many of his contemporaries, was born across the pond in Devonshire, England, in March of 1860. Sadly, he lost his mother at a very early age, and by the time he was nine, he was forced to work various jobs to make ends meet. Tough childhood, to say the least.

It wasn’t until the age of 18 that George was able to make his way to the United States. He initially headed to Colorado, where he worked as a miner for a spell, before drifting south to Tombstone. Worth noting that this was in 1882, so Tombstone was still plenty wild. The gunfight at the OK Corral had taken place just a few months prior, so Bravin arrived right in the thick of it.

He spent the next several years working in the nearby mines until 1888, when he was nearly asphyxiated on the job. Around the same time, he married a 19-year-old local named Mary Ellen Butler, who was herself the daughter of a British immigrant. The pair would then go on to have ten children, the eldest of whom was still living as recently as 1992.

Following that mining incident, Bravin shifted gears. Ran a livery barn for a couple of years, started buying up mining claims as investments, and in 1891 was elected as county assessor. He also bought himself a saloon over on Allen Street called the Arcade.

His law enforcement career began in 1894 when he took a job as a deputy sheriff. By 1895, he was appointed U.S. Deputy Marshal, and by 1896, he became the very first elected constable of Pearce, Arizona. Not too shabby for a foreigner who had arrived with next to nothing.

It was while serving in Pearce that Bravin hired a young deputy named Burt Alvord. Although Alvord would eventually switch sides and start robbing trains, he actually had a pretty sterling reputation back in 1896.

Still, though, reputation or not, Alvord wouldn’t last long in the job. Bravin cut him loose after just a few months, at which point Burt moved on to Willcox. Little did either one of them know that they’d meet again in a few short years under entirely different circumstances.

You see, by 1900, Bravin had returned to Tombstone and taken employment as jailer at the Cochise County jail. And as luck would have it, his old deputy, Burt Alvord, had just been arrested for orchestrating a pair of train robberies along with a buddy of his by the name of Billy Stiles.

Stiles cut a deal with the law and turned snitch, but it was all a ruse. On April 8th, 1900, Stiles walked into the Tombstone jail with a hidden pistol, came face to face with Bravin, and demanded that he turn over the keys. When Bravin refused, Stiles shot him in the foot, taking off two of his toes. He then grabbed the keys and freed Alvord and several others.

Believe it or not, getting two toes shot off didn’t slow ole George down one bit. He went right back to work and continued serving as a lawman in Tombstone for nearly another decade. In June of 1908, he and another constable were involved in a wild gunfight with a man named Marcello Mendez, who had just shot a woman. The lawmen tracked Mendez to a house and found him hiding under a bed. As they crouched down to pull him out, Mendez opened fire. I guess Lady Luck was smiling, because Bravin and the other constable somehow came away unscathed, other than a few powder burns. Mendez wasn’t so lucky. By the time the smoke cleared, he had fresh bullet holes in both his heart and his noggin.

Bravin kept his badge until 1917, at which point he fell ill and had to be hospitalized in Douglas. Sadly, he never recovered, passing away at his daughter’s home on October 21st, 1918, at the age of 58. Legend has it that his funeral was one of the largest that Tombstone had ever seen. If you’d like to pay your respects, Bravin can be found resting at the Tombstone Cemetery (not Boot Hill).

Who Wants Swag?

I rarely mention it, but The Wild West Extravaganza merch store is very much alive and well. We’ve got everything from t-shirts to stickers, coasters, and even a variety of hats. And yes, that includes vintage Bloody Beaver Podcast gear for all you old-school listeners! Check it out and see if anything catches your eye.

PRESENTED to CITY MARSHALL

H.N. BROWN

for valuable services rendered

in behalf of the Citizens of

CALDWELL KAS

A.N. COLSON MAYOR

Dec 1882

Nobody in Caldwell knew they were gifting an engraved rifle to a man who, four years earlier, had ridden with Billy the Kid and fled New Mexico with a murder charge hanging over him. They thought they were rewarding a quiet, pious, teetotaling lawman who had taken their wild cowtown and made it livable. And by most measures, they were correct.

Brown didn’t drink, gamble, or smoke, and by most accounts didn’t say much of anything unless he had to. He also proved handy with a revolver, as evidenced by the May 1883 killing of a man known as Spotted Horse.

The Caldwell Post described Brown as “one of the quickest men on the trigger in the Southwest.” The Caldwell Commercial went further, describing him as “cool, courageous and gentlemanly, and free from vices.” Six months into his tenure, the town council reappointed him. Six months after that is when they handed him the rifle.

Brown used the rifle in the line of duty at least once, on December 16, 1883, when he killed an unruly gambler named Newt Boyce. As a result, the papers once again sang his praises, and the town raised his pay to $125 a month.

Things took a much darker turn on April 30, 1884, when Brown carried that same rifle into the bank in the neighboring town of Medicine Lodge and (allegedly) shot the bank president to death with it.

The robbery fell apart almost instantly. Cashier Geppert closed the vault while dying, a posse ran Brown and his accomplices into a box canyon a few miles south of town, and the would-be robbers were tossed behind bars.

Before Brown died at the hands of a lynch mob later that night, he penned a letter to his wife, Alice. The Caldwell Journal later printed it, and it’s about what you’d expect. Apologies, expressions of devotion, and a request that she come see him. He also mentioned the rifle:

“I will send you all of my things, and you can sell them. But keep the Winchester.”

Sell the furniture. Sell the house. Sell whatever you have to. But keep the rifle.

Alice may not have sold the rifle, but she did give it away to the Foster family. It remained in their care until October of 1976, when they sold it to Dr. M. B. Aynesworth. A year later, Aynesworth donated it to the Kansas Museum of History in Topeka, where it’s been on display ever since.

I’ll be discussing the life of Henry Newton Brown in much greater detail on The Wild West Extravaganza, including his time during the Lincoln County War and the reaction of Caldwell locals upon learning the news.

In case you missed it, I recently released a compilation covering some lesser-known figures from the Old West.

His subject was a Blackfoot scout named Dog Child, aka Winnipeg Jack, who was employed by the North West Mounted Police. Standing beside Dog Child was his wife, The Only Handsome Woman, draped in a fringed buffalo hide dress with a heavily beaded shawl. Behind them was a tipi, and off to one side, a horse waited patiently. Everything in the frame made sense except for the object held loosely in Dog Child’s right hand: a Japanese katana.

As an NWMP scout, Dog Child’s primary role was to locate horse thieves trafficking in stolen stock across the U.S.- Canada border. He shows up on Blackfoot Band Annuity pay lists from 1896 to 1898, but no birth date or biography accompanies the entries. Equally as mysterious is how exactly he got his hands on such a blade. There are theories, though.

By the mid-1800s, Japan had ended its long period of self-imposed isolation, largely at the insistence of Commodore Matthew Perry and his naval fleet. In the years that followed, Japanese diplomats began arriving in American cities, and the katana became a favored instrument of goodwill. As such, the swords were often gifted to everyone from Secretaries of War to heads of state, and even to the Smithsonian.

The Most Likely Explanation?

Historian Peter Bleed, writing in 1987, put forward the most plausible theory for how the sword reached Dog Child.

An Anglican missionary named Reverend Canon Stocken had been assigned to the Blackfoot community in Gleichen in 1895. Before taking up the post, Stocken traveled to Japan to marry his second wife, Gertrude Cox, who had herself been a missionary there. The couple returned to Alberta together, and it is entirely possible (albeit unconfirmed) that they brought the sword back with them, where it eventually made its way into Dog Child’s possession through gift or trade.

Then again, the photo was taken in 1894, and Stocken didn’t arrive in Gleichen until 1895. The plot thickens!

What about the photographer? Could the sword have just been a prop? Maybe, but then again, Caple was apparently known for his uncompromising realism and his habit of photographing his Indigenous subjects without staging or props. If a sword appears in Caple’s photo, it was almost certainly because the sword was genuinely there, in the hands of its owner.

Dog Child Was Not Alone

What makes the photograph all the more striking is that it’s not the only known instance of a Native American owning a katana. Researchers have identified at least one other documented case of a 19th-century Indigenous leader in possession of a Japanese blade: Oglala Lakota Chief Red Cloud, photographed in 1890 with a katana hanging on the wall of his home at Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota.

A 2019 academic paper examined both images together, concluding that the phenomenon was not a pure coincidence and that the diplomatic and trade networks of the era were more than capable of carrying Japanese steel deep into Indigenous North America.

This does actually make a lot of sense. If I’ve learned anything researching the Old West, it’s that the frontier was far more connected than we tend to imagine.

Unfortunately, Dog Child’s katana has never been located. No trail of provenance, no museum records, and no family accounts lead to its current whereabouts. The man himself fades from the record after 1898, and his wife, The Only Handsome Woman, is remembered only through Caple’s lens.

Either way, I thought it was pretty cool and thought I’d share it with you. Who knows, maybe the movie Shanghai Noon wasn’t entirely fictional…only, instead of Jackie Chan coming out on top, it was our man Dog Child.

What I didn’t get into was what happened to Nate’s brother.

Rufus Dudley Champion, known as Dud, was about eighteen months younger than Nate and apparently looked so much like him that people sometimes mistook them for twins. Dud had come up the cattle trail from Texas with Nate more than a dozen years earlier, and the two had been extremely close. So when word reached Dud that his brother had been killed at the KC Ranch, he saddled his horse and rode hell for leather to Wyoming. Whether he came looking for work or revenge depends on which account you believe.

On May 23, 1893, barely a year after Nate’s death, Dud arrived at a cow camp about twenty miles northeast of Lusk, Wyoming. And in one of those cruel coincidences the Old West seemed to specialize in, one of the men already sitting in that camp was Mike Shonsey. The same Mike Shonsey who had spied on Nate for the cattle barons and who had been part of the force that killed him at the KC Ranch.

According to a manuscript by Dr. William A. Hinrich of Douglas, Wyoming, the exchange was brief. Mike greeted Dud and told him he’d heard that Dud had threatened to kill him on sight. Dud denied it, and Mike reached for his gun. He saw Dud’s hand move toward his own revolver, and fired first. Dud fell from his horse, and Mike shot him twice more.

As Dud lay dying, he asked a bystander named David Mathews to take his six-shooter and tell everyone that Mike Shonsey had killed him. When Mathews asked why he hadn’t fired back, Dud’s last words were haunting: “I can’t cock it. I can’t cock it. I can’t cock it.” The boys later checked his pistol and discovered it was so clogged with dirt that the cylinder wouldn’t turn.

Mike rode into Lusk, turned himself in, and called it self-defense. A coroner’s jury soon cleared him, but the very next day, witnesses came forward claiming it had been a cold-blooded murder. Of course, by then Shonsey was already on a train headed south, out of Wyoming for good. Author Helena Huntington Smith would later observe that Dud’s dying words didn’t exactly sound like a man who had been planning a killing.

And that was it. Two Champion brothers were dead, and nobody was punished for either one.

Mike settled in Nebraska, married, raised a family, and became one of the most respected cattlemen in the region. When his first wife, Olive, died in 1905, he remarried a year later. He lost a son at Belleau Wood in 1918, but kept right on raising cattle.

He also kept his mouth shut about Wyoming.

When a magazine writer named Virginia Trenholm finally tracked him down for an interview in the 1950s, she found a small, erect old man with snow-white hair, a kerchief around his neck, and an uncanny memory for cattle brands. He told her the whole Johnson County War had been a “crazy-reckless thing.” He admitted he’d been a spy for the cattle owners, but he never expressed regret.

Mike Shonsey passed away on August 5, 1954, the last surviving participant of the Johnson County War. That’s the same year Bing Crosby starred in White Christmas, and Marlon Brando starred in On the Waterfront. If you’re currently over the age of seventy-two, you were alive at the same time as a man who helped invade Johnson County, killed a Champion brother in a cow camp, and lived long enough to see the atomic bomb and Eisenhower in the White House.

Like I always say, the Old West really wasn’t all that long ago.

One More Thing

Another question I got regarding the most recent episode on Nate Champion is what became of his journal? Did he really take it with him as he stormed out of the burning cabin and into a hail of gunfire?

Apparently, the answer is yes.

The journalist who got the diary was Sam T. Clover, a correspondent for the Chicago Herald. Clover had been invited by the WSGA to accompany the invaders, specifically to spin the story in their favor. After Champion was killed, the invaders found the blood-soaked diary in his vest pocket. They removed several pages (the ones where Champion had written the names of his attackers) and left the rest, figuring there was nothing incriminating in it. Clover then took possession of the diary and published Champion’s words on the front page of the Chicago Herald, where they became an immediate sensation.

Here’s the thing, though: When Billy Irvine, one of the leaders of the invasion, later demanded that Clover return the physical diary, Clover told him it had been destroyed.

Whether that’s true or not, nobody knows. The original diary has never been found. What survives today, the text on the historical marker in Buffalo and the words quoted in every book about the Johnson County War, all come from what Clover published in the Herald. The actual notebook, the little red tally book written in pencil with a bullet hole through it, is gone. Either destroyed by a journalist or hidden so well that it hasn’t surfaced in over a hundred and thirty years.

“The church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously. And each would have been horrified to think it was a different facet of the same thing. But surely they were both intended to accomplish the same thing: the singing, the devotion, the poetry of the churches took a man out of his bleakness for a time, and so did the brothels.”

Were the two institutions opposites, or were they parallel responses to the same ache? One has to wonder if the soiled doves had a similar refuge.

The Great Huckleberry Debate

Did Doc Holliday say, “I’m your huckleberry,” or did he say, “I’m your huckle bearer?”

People have been arguing about this ever since the release of Tombstone. But where exactly does the truth lie? And what did the real Doc Holliday say?

That’s what we tackled on the most recent edition of The Wild West Extravaganza. Click here to listen and let me know what ya think!

Exclusive Content????

Friendly reminder that you can find ad-free bonus content on The Wild West Extravaganza Patreon. Not only is the entire back catalogue available (even the really embarrassing early stuff), but there’s also exclusive content that you can’t find anywhere else.

Ever wonder what the Lincoln County War was like from a participant’s viewpoint? Well, you’re in luck, as I’ve been narrating George W. Coe’s Frontier Fighter on Patreon.

We’re up to chapter 18 so far, and we’ve covered everything from Coe’s early life, to his association with Clay Allison, and his actions during the Lincoln County War. Chapters 19 & 20 drop this Saturday, in which George describes the near-fatal shooting of Yginio Salazar and the fate of Susan McSween.

Check it out (along with additional bonus content) here!

In a Monday morning Facebook post, Robert’s wife Luciana wrote, “Yesterday we said goodbye to my beloved husband, cherished friend, and one of the greatest actors of our time. Bob passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by love and comfort. To the world, he was an Academy Award-winning actor, a director, a storyteller. To me, he was simply everything. His passion for his craft was matched only by his deep love for characters, a great meal, and holding court. For each of his many roles, Bob gave everything to his characters and to the truth of the human spirit they represented. In doing so, he leaves something lasting and unforgettable to us all. Thank you for the years of support you showed Bob and for giving us this time and privacy to celebrate the memories he leaves behind.”

By God…

Here’s to the the sunny slopes of long ago. Rest easy, Mr. Duvall. And many thanks for all you’ve given us.

The pair had never gotten along.

If you’ll recall, Doc had shot Joyce in the hand in Tomstone following an argument. They had another confrontation the following year that resulted in Holliday being arrested and fined for making “threats against life.”

Needless to say, there was little love lost between the two.

Interestingly enough, when they met in Denver, no words were spoken.

Milt would later recall seeing Doc after stepping outside a barbershop.

“He evidently had been waiting for me. As I reached the sidewalk, he came along the edge of the crowd and brushed against me.”

“Restraining my first impulse, I ignored what I thought was a challenge and kept on my way. When I got halfway to my hotel, a thought struck me that maybe he imagined I was afraid of him because I was in a strange city where he had all his friends and satellites about him. Turning on my heel, I walked back and looked for him until I found him in the saloon where he hung out. I deliberately brushed against him, the same as he had against me.”

“I looked at him and he looked at me, but neither of us spoke a word. Some old Arizona men who knew us both were in the place, but they didn’t have any remarks just then. I walked around him three times, just to give him a chance if he wanted it, and to remove any idea he might have that I wanted to run away. He didn’t look at all scared, but he wasn’t looking for any more trouble.”

Unbeknownst to either man (well, maybe Doc had an inkling), they’d both be dead in just another few years. Holliday passed in Glenwood Springs in 1887 and Joyce in California in 1889. As for Milt’s decision to follow Doc, he would later claim regret.

“I have thought of it lots of times since then, and I have thought how foolish I was to go back, but the impulse struck me to do it, and I couldn’t help it.”

If you’d like to learn more about Doc’s final days, I just released the 4th and final installment in the Holliday series. We discuss Doc’s showdown with Johnny Ringo, his participation in the Earp vendetta ride, his final gunfight in Colorado, and his untimely demise at Glenwood Springs. And yes, we also examine the theories regarding Holliday’s grave. The full episode is available now, wherever you consume audio.

We talked about everything from Billy the Kid to how I first decided to start a podcast about Old West history, and even Brushy Bill Roberts! Here’s that link one more time: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-56-beyond-the-six-shooter-with-josh-from-the/id1765622010?i=1000748006523

Robert H. “Bob” Paul is probably the most underrated Old West lawman you’ve never heard of.

Originally from Massachusetts, Paul spent several years at sea before joining the gold rush to California.

It’s there, in Calaveras County, that he first pinned on a badge, serving as both constable and deputy Sheriff. He’d be appointed as Undersheriff in 1857, and by the 1870s, he was riding shotgun for Wells Fargo.

In fact, the 6’4’’ tall Paul did such a good job thwarting holdups that his bosses sent him down to Arizona to deal with a series of robberies.

He’d eventually run for Sheriff of Pima County, but the incumbent, Sheriff Charles Shibell, used his criminal associates (Ike Clanton, Curly Bill Brocius, etc.) to stuff the ballots. With the election results contested, Paul returned to Wells Fargo, and it was during this period that he thwarted the holdup en route to Benson.

Now, I glossed over his actions on the most recent episode, but when the stagecoach driver, Bud Philpot, was shot, he fell from his seat between the horses, taking the reins with him. Paul was only able to regain control of the runaway team by literally jumping onto the coach tongue and snatching the reins. By that point, the robbers had already dispersed, and he was able to drive the stage to nearby Drew’s station.

Paul joined the posse (along with Wyatt Earp) the following day and helped apprehend Cowboy Luther King.

Eventually, the Arizona Territorial Supreme Court would rule in his favor in the election, and Paul officially became Sheriff of Pima County, a position he held for the next five years. At one point, in April of 1883, Paul even prevented the lynching of alleged murderer Joseph Casey.

He’d later work as a detective for the Southern Pacific Railroad and receive a Presidential appointment as U.S. Marshal over Arizona, before dying of cancer on March 26, 1901.

So, if he lived such an exciting life, why isn’t he more well-known?

Oftentimes, we only remember the people who had books and movies made about them. Both Billy the Kid and Wyatt Earp were made famous by author Walter Noble Burns. Jesse James had John Newman Edwards, and Wild Bill Hickok had George Ward Nicols.

Had Bob Paul not been overshadowed by Wyatt Earp and his feud with the Clantons, or had he been discovered by a dime novelist 100+ years ago, there’s a very good chance he’d be just as famous, if not more so, than many of your famous historical figures.

DID YOU KNOW…

For anyone stumbling upon this newsletter for the first time, greetings! My name’s Josh, and I host The Wild West Extravaganza, a history podcast featuring true tales from the Old West. Full episodes are available on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and pretty much everywhere else you consume audio.

Earp was employed by the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe Railroad and tasked with apprehending a slippery eel known as Dave Rudabaugh. Doc was simply an itinerant gambler and part-time dentist.

Although their interaction at Shannsey’s Saloon was brief, Doc and Earp would be reunited the following summer in Dodge City. It’s there, in the Queen of Cowtowns, where a friendship was formed that would last a lifetime.

According to Wyatt, he was surrounded by ne’er-do-wells one evening when Holliday came to his rescue, brandishing a revolver in each hand.

“It happened that Doc Holliday was seated at a monte table, and glancing through the window, he appraised the situation in an instant. Turning to Frank Loving, the dealer, he said, “Have you a six-shooter?” He handed his gun over to Holliday, who sprang without hesitation through the doorway into the sidewalk, and, throwing both guns down on the crowd, said, “Throw up your hands!” This rather startled them and averted their attention. In an instant, I had drawn my gun, and the arrest of the crowd followed. They were confined in jail overnight, fined, and released the following day. It was because of this episode that I became the friend of Doc Holliday ever after.”

If you’d like to learn more about Holliday’s adventures in Fort Griffin and Dodge City, as well as his and Wyatt’s continued friendship in Arizona, I discuss all of this and more on the most recent edition of The Wild West Extravaganza (including Doc’s alleged stabbing of Ed Bailey). This is Part 2 of an ongoing series on Doc Holliday. If you missed Part 1, you can check it out here. It’s also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Audible, YouTube, and pretty much everywhere else where audio is consumed.

And stick around because next week we’ll be discussing the famous Gunfight at the Ok Corral!

He worked for a dentist in Atlanta for a while before returning to his hometown of Griffin, Georgia, possibly with hopes of opening his own practice.

Fate, however, had other plans. By the following summer, Holliday was in Dallas, where, by his own admission, he “slipped from the path of rectitude.” In other words, he started drinking and hanging out in gambling joints.

But why? Why trade his family and burgeoning career for the smoke-filled saloons of Texas?

Nobody can say for certain, but there are three very plausible theories.

The first is that Doc came down with tuberculosis—the same disease that took his mother and adopted brother—and headed West for a drier climate. This could very well be the case, as Holliday was indeed diagnosed as a consumptive around the same time he was working in Atlanta.

That said, Dallas isn’t exactly known as a mecca for dry air. While not quite as humid as Georgia, Dallas does experience very muggy summers. So, if he really headed west for a dry climate, I’d say that Dallas was a poor choice.

Another theory is that Doc was spurned by his first cousin, Martha Anne “Mattie” Holliday.

Evidence suggests that the pair were very close, but Mattie’s family disapproved of their relationship. She was also a devout Catholic (she’d later become a nun), and canon law forbade marriage between first cousins. It’s thought by many that Doc pressed Mattie for her hand in marriage, she refused, and he left Georgia on account of a broken heart.

The third, and much more macabre theory, is that Holliday murdered two freedmen at a swimming hole outside of Valdosta, Georgia. He warned them away, but they ignored his commands, so he returned with a shotgun. After another warning went unheeded, Doc thumbed back both hammers and opened fire, killing two and wounding several.

While this is certainly a possibility, and even backed up by anecdotal stories from the Holliday family (some claiming that Doc simply fired over their heads without injuring anyone), there are no contemporary news articles or even legal documents to prove it.

Holliday biographer Gary L. Roberts opines that it was possibly a combination of all three events that drove Doc to the frontier:

“Perhaps the truth was some combination of all these issues. Perhaps John Henry learned he had tuberculosis, pressed Mattie for an answer, only to be turned down, returned to Valdosta, and was forced west by the shooting incident.”

Whatever the case, one thing’s for damn certain: John Henry, the promising young dental student, quickly morphed into Doc Holliday, the deadly shootist with “death gnawing at his lungs.”

If you’d like to learn more about Doc’s early life, I just released the first installment of the Holliday series. We not only examine Doc’s upbringing in Georgia, but also his adventures in Texas and his path to Dodge City. Also discussed is his first gunfight, his association with Big Nose Kate, and his initial contact with Wyatt Earp.

Here’s the link to part 1. Part 2 will be released next Wednesday (January 28, 2026), but if you’re the impatient sort, it’s already available on the Wild West Extravaganza Patreon (both audio and video).

Thanks for reading! There’s a pretty severe winter storm scheduled to hit a good portion of the U.S. this weekend, so please stay safe and warm if you’re in the target area. Till next time, adios!

Details are scarce, but what follows is an eyewitness account:

“Doc entered the saloon with a cocked revolver in his hand and began hostilities at once, without previously making his presence known. Wright was in the act of serving some thirsty customers, but recognizing his old enemy from Dodge City, he ducked behind the bar just in time, while the customers ducked on the floor. Wright quickly emerged with a six-shooter, and a duel began in dead earnest, many shots being exchanged at short distance without effect.”

“The meeting was so sudden that both participants were evidently somewhat off their accustomed good marksmanship, but finally Wright dropped to the floor. At first, it was thought that the shot had killed him, and Holliday, feeling that he had fulfilled his mission in Las Vegas, departed for the New Town to mingle with his old friends of Dodge City. A doctor was called at once for Wright, and it was found that while the bullet only grazed his skin, it had been so near the spine as to stun him temporarily. He was up and around in a couple of hours, as good as ever.”

The crazy part is, we don’t even know for sure why Doc had it out for Wright.

Apparently, they had known one another back in Dodge City. Holliday biographer Gary L. Roberts describes Wright as running “crooked faro games, commonly called ‘brace games,’ in Chicago” and that he had a “shady reputation in Dodge.”

Mr. Roberts also alleges that Wright was related to Dodge City businessman, Robert M. Wright, who, as fate would have it, is the same ole boy who tried to get Clay Allison to kill Wyatt Earp. And when money came up missing from Robert Wright’s store, Charlie Wright falsely accused Doc Holliday of being the culprit. I’m not sure how much evidence we have to support these claims, but if true, that could somewhat explain Holliday’s actions in Las Vegas.

Now, here’s where things get a little crazy. There’s not a lot known about Charles Wright, but he may have also participated in the 2nd Battle of Adobe Walls in 1874.

The aforementioned Robert M. Wright, although not present, was co-owner of Rath’s store, where many of the defenders holed up. The only thing I don’t know for certain is whether the Charles Wright at Adobe Walls was the same Charles Wright that Doc shot in Las Vegas.

Skip ahead to 1890, and Charles Wright narrowly avoided death at the hands of fellow gambler and noted gunman Luke Short.

Short and Wright had been feuding for some time before Luke entered Fort Worth’s Bank Saloon on December 23rd, 1890, and evicted the patrons with a six-shooter. That’s when Wright grabbed a shotgun and wounded Short in his left hip, leg, and hand.

Short’s shooting hand, however, remained unscathed. That being the case, he returned fire and shot Wright in his right wrist. Short would later be found guilty of assault and fined $150.

As for Wright, he appears to have passed away in 1907 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Maybe.

Here’s the thing: Much of what you just read is speculation. We don’t know for sure that the Las Vegas Charles Wright is the same Charles Wright who shot Luke Short. We also don’t know for certain that the Las Vegas Charles Wright was related to Robert Wright, or even if the Charles Wright who died in Fort Worth in 1907 is the same guy who fought at Adobe Walls.

HOWEVER…

If this really is the same guy, then he certainly appears to have had nine lives. Not only did he survive the Comanche, but also two of the deadliest gunmen to have ever drawn a six-shooter. He walked the dusty streets of Dodge City and Las Vegas when tipping your hat the wrong way could lead to death. And yet he somehow survived all the way until the 20th century.

History is fascinating, and it’s little unproven rabbit holes like these that often cause me to procrastinate for hours on end!

Happy New Year!

I hope you and yours had a wonderful Christmas and New Year. I’ve been largely silent, but I can assure you I’ve been a busy little beaver. In fact, I’ve been submerged in the world of Doc Holiday for the last several weeks and I’m very excited to share everything I’ve learned.

I just don’t know when.

The script is almost complete, but it needs several revisions before I’ll be ready to record. I’ll most likely end up releasing it in two separate installments. The first will focus on Holliday’s life up to his time in Tombstone, and the second will focus on his life following the storied Vendetta Ride. Once complete, we’ll dive into a series on Wyatt Earp.

Until then, I’ll probably be releasing an episode with my friend David Lambert, counting down the top 10 most authentic Western movies. I’m also hoping to release another episode detailing the attempts at exhuming his body.

That’s all I’ve got for today! Until next time…

ADIOS!

Turns out that’s only partially correct.

Shoutout to listener Mark, who brought this next little tidbit of information to my attention.

According to historian Jeff Morey, Kevin Jarre got the idea for the red sashes “from Tombstone resident John Pleasant Gray, as quoted by Paula Mitchell Marks, in And Die in the West: ‘Gray remembered [Billy] Leonard as ‘a man much above his fellow rustlers in intellect and education.’ Leonard performed a service for [Gray]…and received in payment a copy of a book chronicling the life of Wild Bill Hickok. The delighted Leonard gathered his fellow rustlers around and then spent the rest of the day reading to them, with the result that Hickok was ‘the hero, henceforth, of the rustlers.’”

Full disclosure, but I have not yet read And Die in the West. If this is true, however (and I have no reason to doubt that it is), then it would appear as if some of the Cowboys of Tombstone fame did indeed wear red sashes.

The more you know…

Red sashes were definitely period accurate, but not necesarily Tombstone accurate. I have no doubt that a few of the Cowboys may have donned sashes, but it certainly wasn’t a requirement or even the standard uniform.

Just in case you missed it, the most recent episode of The Wild West Extravaganza was all about Newman “Old Man” Clanton. We followed him from Texas to Tennessee, discussed his time as a soldier during the Civil War, his move to California and then Arizona, his association with other outlaws like John Kinney and Curly Bill Brocius, and finally, his untimely demise just two-and-a-half months prior to the gunfight at the Ok Corral.

Also discussed was the formation of the Oklahoma panhandle, the fate of Billy the Kid’s guns after his death, and why trusting a fart may not alwasys be the wisest of strategies!

The Holidays are upon us

Thank you all for sticking with me throughout 2025! I hope you and yours have a wonderful Christmas and a very happy New Year!

I’m keeping it simple this year and just going out to eat at a restaurant with my family. Hopefully, that will be followed by a nice turkey-and-dressing-induced nap. How about you?

Bendigo Shafter, The Shadow Riders, Flint, and Last of the Breed all hold a special place in my heart, as do Mr. L’Amour’s short stories. But, I think the book that has stuck with me the most over the years is L’Amour’s nonfiction (and semi-biographical) Education of a Wandering Man.

There’s a portion of the book where Mr. L’Amour was walking through Arizona’s Stein’s Pass, when he hitched a ride with an old man he described as “neatly dressed and wearing a white hat, a white mustache, and perhaps the sharpest eyes I had ever seen in years.”

The pair stopped at Bowie for breakfast, and a waitress asked the old man if he “had a prisoner,” to which he replied, “he’s a friend.” And when Louis inquired as to whether or not he was the law, the old man replied, “In a way.”

Later, as they continued their journey, the old man spoke of knowing both John Wesley Hardin and the man who killed him, stating that he had been a Texas Ranger and even the Chief of Police of El Paso.

It wasn’t until he let Louis off on a corner in Tucson that he finally introduced himself. “If you’re up this way again, son, look me up. I enjoyed the talk. You just ask for Jeff Milton. Folks will know me.”

Jefferson Davis Milton, described by his biographer as a “good man with a gun,” was born in Florida on November 7, 1861. He headed West as a teenager, started working cattle, and by the time he was 20, was already a Texas Ranger.

In the years to come, Milton would find work as a deputy U.S. Marshal, customs inspector, a Sheriff’s deputy under the legendary John Slaughter, and even the El Paso Chief of Police.

His most storied gunfight, however, occurred at an Arizona train station in February of 1900.

Several bandits attempted to rob the train, but Milton—now working as an Express Agent—put up a fierce resistance. Despite being shot in the arm, he held off the bandits and even managed to kill one of ‘em in the process.

I haven’t covered Mr. Milton on the podcast yet, but I’d like to in the future. He really was one of the last of the old-time gunfighters. Milton grew up brushing shoulders with the likes of John Wesley Hardin and John Selman, yet lived long enough to see the end of World War 2 and watch John Wayne on the big screen. And I will never cease to find that fascinating.

Odds & Ends

I don’t know about you, but these last few months have really flown by. I keep thinking it’s still August, so now I’m rushing to get my rifle sighted in for hunting season and stock up on candy for the trick-or-treaters!

In addition to posting new episodes of the podcast and developing new designs for the merch store, I’ve also been working on a special product I think you might find interesting. I’m calling it the Legends and Outlaws Calendar.

The Legends and Outlaws Calendar is an 11 x 8.5 in wall calendar that includes traditional holidays (Christmas, Fourth of July, etc) as well as notable dates from the Old West—everything from Billy the Kid’s escape from Lincoln, the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the death of Wild Bill Hickok, Chief Joseph’s surrender, and dozens more. Each month also includes a full-page historical photo. My favorite, pictured above, is Sitting Bull wearing sunglasses.

Not to toot my own horn, but I do think the vintage-inspired design really makes the calendar ideal for your home, office, ranch, or even classroom. It’s a unique, limited-edition gift for cowboys aficionados, frontier history buffs, or anyone looking to keep track of the date in style.

If you’re interested, the calendars can be purchased at https://wildwestcalendar.com/

That’s all I’ve got for today. Thank you so much for your continued support!

Until next time, adios.

During the Lincoln County War, Martín sided with Alexander McSween’s faction after Dolan’s men looted the village of San Patricio. In July 1878, he led a force of armed partisans into Lincoln under the cover of night, seizing key positions and giving McSween’s men the advantage for several days.

Martín narrowly survived gunfire, outmaneuvered opponents, and ultimately made the difficult decision to withdraw when the U.S. Army brought in a howitzer. His leadership was decisive, even if later overshadowed by more famous names.

After the war, Martín resumed ranching and became a pillar of his community. He maintained a close friendship with Billy the Kid, often defending his character. And over the following decades, Martín rose steadily in both business and politics.

He served as a road supervisor, county commissioner, postmaster, justice of the peace, and delegate to various Democratic conventions. His wool and mercantile businesses flourished, and by the early 20th century, he was one of New Mexico’s most respected entrepreneurs.

In 1923, Governor Hinkle appointed him to the New Mexico State Tax Commission, capping a lifetime of public service. When he died in Santa Fe on December 8, 1931, newspapers across the region honored him as a “valuable citizen.”

Yet despite his extraordinary life—shepherd, war leader, businessman, politician—Martín Chávez has been largely forgotten by history. His story reminds us that some of the most influential figures of the Old West never made it to the silver screen, even when they shaped history in ways that legends like Billy the Kid could not.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with author and historian James B. Mills. If you’re not familiar, James is the author of Billy the Kid: El Bandido Simpático. Which, in my opinion, is one of the more definitive biographies on William H. Bonney.

Mills’ new book, In the Days of Billy the Kid, examines the lives of lawman-turned-outlaw José Chávez y Chávez, intellectual prodigy Juan Patrón, the aforementioned Martín Chávez, and resilient vaquero Yginio Salazar.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with James, and we discussed everything from José Chávez y Chávez to the Los Gorras Blancas and the White Caps uprising, the infamous Vicente Silva, and the Society of Bandits. We also talked about Billy the Kid’s escape from Lincoln, the stand-off at White Oaks, and a TON more!

If you’d like to give it a listen, it’s now available WHEREVER you consume The Wild West Extravaganza. I hope you’ll check it out, as James is returning to the show soon for a listener Q&A. If you have any questions regarding Billy the Kid or his various friends and enemies, let me know, and I’ll make sure to ask!

Also, don’t forget to pick up a copy of In the Days of Billy the Kid. I just ordered mine and can’t wait to dive into the fascinating, yet nearly forgotten, history.

In case you missed it, I recently released an episode about Jack Hinson, the Civil War sniper who was said to have killed over a hundred Union troops throughout the course of the war. Here’s the link if you’d like to give it a listen.

Jack’s an interesting character. According to some, he was a peace-loving man pushed to violence by unbelievable cruelty. Others, however, maintain that he had a long history of violence and simply used the war as an outlet.

Tomorrow, I’ll continue with the theme of Confederates and discuss the deadly Archie Clement. If you’re not familiar, Clement was Bloody Bill Anderson’s pint-sized right-hand man. A young killer so tough that it took over thirty bullets to put him down. And even then, Archie was trying to cock his last revolver with his teeth. (That’s Clement in the image below with the number 1 over his head).

That said, sharing these recent episodes isn’t my only motivation in writing to you.

If you’re a fan of Old West history podcasts, there’s a good chance you also listen to (or have heard about) How the West Was F****ed.

I’ve mentioned these guys on the show before; we cover a lot of the same topics, and they’re highly entertaining.

Unfortunately, one of the hosts, Beau, was recently involved in an accident and received 2nd and 3rd degree burns to 70% of his body. From what I understand, he underwent surgery on Friday and remains heavily sedated.

That said, Beau’s loved ones have set up a GoFundMe. The money will be distributed to his family, and later, it will be used for medical and recovery efforts.

We all need a helping hand on occasion. Beau is a great guy, and I thought I’d share the news with all of you. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past five years, it’s that my audience is freakin’ amazing and willing to step up to help those in need. And if you’re able to give (I know things are tight, hence the word 'able'), I’d appreciate it if you could join me in donating to Beau’s recovery.

I’ve already given a few bucks, and in a few days, I plan on doing so again with the Wild West Extravaganza Patreon. I’d love it if we could help push that GoFundMe to 100%!

Here’s the link if you’d like to give: GoFundMe

And here’s another link with additional updates: CaringBridge

Thank you.