How Wild Was the West?

by Bill Russo

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https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/646224

Dusty Main Street in any Wild West town was dampened not by rain, but by blood spilling from the losers of daily gun battles.  Ladies and cowpokes alike had their nostrils seared by the lingering smell of gunsmoke hanging in the air like cobwebs in a forgotten attic.

That’s the image most people have of the American West of the 1800s.  Losers in poker games, feeling cheated, would ‘plug’ the card sharp rather than leave town broke.

“Hoss Thieves” were escorted to hell at the end of a rope dangling from a Cottonwood Tree. If the beer wasn’t cold enough, even a sod buster would backhand the bartender and slap him silly unless he got a colder one.

There was no law.  The sheriff would be ‘gone fishing’ every time a gunhand turned up, with a face that matched a wanted poster tacked up on the wall at the General Store. 

Take this quick quiz. 

How many people were gunned down in a typical year in the Wild West towns of Abilene, Dodge, Laredo et al?

A: 100

B: 1000

C: 2000

D: 5

If you answered “C” you are off by 1995.  If you said “B” you missed it by 995.  If your reply is “A” you’re off the mark by 95. 

Yes M’am or Sir.  The answer is five!  That’s it.  The average murder rate in the years around 1875 was 1.5 per year. 

How about the most famous gun battle in the history of the cowboy days?  The Gunfight at the OK Corral.  It was the most bloody shootout in the history of Tombstone, Arizona and in fact all of the West.  A total of three ‘hombres’ were killed. 

The fame, or should we say ‘infamy’ of the Wild West is due in large part to the novels of Ned Buntline.  Writing in the 1870s he made “Buffalo Bill” a national hero and glamorized the seedier side of the frontier.  Boston and New York newspaper men ran reams of copy sensationalizing the life West of the Mississippi.

That being said, the Old West did have its moments as illustrated in my new novella. Churning facts with fiction, I’ve concocted a story of Dodge City, its first sheriff, and an itinerant boy named Chalky Jones, who narrates the tale, “I Grew Up in Dodge City in 1875”

 The Who's Who of Sheriffs in Dodge City: Charlie Bassett was first, then along came Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, and others nearly as famous. Read about them all for FREE in "I Grew Up in Dodge City" 

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