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THE WEST AND THE GUN

BY JIM FORAL

After the Civil War, America moved westward across the continent. In the two decades to follow, civilization gradually but steadily stretched from ocean to ocean. The old emigrant trail had given way to the iron horse and the settler made certain that the savage made room for him. Cattle grazed where the buffalo once roamed, and regions formerly devoid of humanity were how inhabited.

In 1890, the Director of the Census announced that an unbroken frontier line in the West no longer existed. Lawless territories were tamed and granted statehood. The times were changing. By 1900, the Indian had been overpowered and his threat eliminated. The days of the open range were a far-gone memory and distances were abridged by the railway and the trolley. All of this had happened during the short lifetime of many individuals, and these were sad times for older men. That the West and its times had finally faded was a crushing and unpleasant thought. Their West, a unique period of about 40 years, the likes of which men never saw before and will never see again, was vanishing into history and folklore just as the bison and plains grizzly had vanished.

Against this backdrop of vanishing frontier and fading memories, a fanciful image of the old West had arisen. The wild misconception was that every mining or cow town, every lumber or farming community west of Omaha was afoul with rustlers, cutthroats, assorted thieves and bunko artists, saturated with sixgun and sawed-off shotgun-toters, were enveloped in a perpetual smog of black powder smoke, and were thoroughly dangerous places to be. This appears, in the minds of many, to be the popular image of the West just before WWI. Hollywood capitalizes on this erroneous notion still. Even though old timers aplenty stepped forward and insisted on setting folks straight, for the most part they were not successful in dispelling the myths.

There was, early in the twentieth century, a new generation of Outdoor Life readers who had formulated the misguided opinion concerning conditions of the old frontier West. The media played a major role. Sensationalistic newspaper accounts of the tabloid variety were especially to blame. Publishers relied on this twaddle and other literary garbage to increase sales and circulation. The young were also heavily influenced by the popular Western dime novel hair-raiser directed at them, many of which had been authored by writers who had never ventured west of Akron. The timing of the public unleashing of these sort of things could not have been better. The popular idea of the Old West, constructed in the press, was that the men – all of them – were armed and drunken gamblers who shot one another at the slightest provocation. Each woman was a dance hall girl with a public nickname. Each tree and boulder hid a lurking grizzly. Horses, even the plow mules, were unbreakable bucking broncos.

Chauncey Thomas did his best to straighten out the record and was instrumental in pooh-poohing the rampant misconceptions surrounding the Old West that were implanted firmly in the minds of the latter-day tenderfeet. Thomas knew whereof he spoke. Born on the banks of Cherry Creek, Colorado, in 1872, as a boy he saw Leadville in its heyday, Cripple Creek from the beginning, and herds of bison and the Indian, all free on the plains. Young Chauncey was trained as a journalist by his father, a veteran newspaperman. Later, he drifted from one eastern editorial office to another, finally returning to Denver in 1908. In demand as a lecturer, he was regarded as an authority on frontier history.

Chauncey Thomas (1872-1941) at age 39. Talented, cultured and articulate, he self-eulogized: “Whether my writing will live I do not know. Time is my sole critic so it is idle to speculate. Anyway, I have had a good time doing the work I had to do.” His name lives on in Mt. Chauncey, a 9500-ft. peak located a hundred miles west of Denver and named for him by the U.S. government.

Some of the absurdity generated by this loose type of journalism, especially as it pertained to the extent of the use of guns on the frontier, unavoidably found its way into the various departments of Outdoor Life magazine. A fair percentage of the readership was convinced that the gun was the only tool that figured prominently in opening the West, subduing the Indian, and wiping out the wolf and buffalo. Thomas endured these opinions for a while before he spoke out. He had been an eyewitness, he pointed out, and this is not what he saw.

Contrary to romance and what the tabloid media would have people believe, Thomas maintained that the gun had little to do with the West’s settlement. He spelled out the drab and disillusioning reality: “If not a pioneer after 1860 had had a gun, the West would have been settled just the same, neither better nor worse, as guns did not cut much figure either way. But the stamp mill and the irrigation ditch did – and therein lies the real romance of the West.” The real winners of the West, he wrote, were the pick and the shovel: the pick in the mountains, the irrigation shovel in the valleys. To these we might ad the ore cart, the spike driving sledge, the ox-yoke, the twin bladed axe, the branding iron and other mundane implements symbolic of exertion.

Occasionally the old-timers would even bang out a poem or two. Charles N. Easton contributed this one to the September of 1916 issue of Outers Book.

Despite Thomas’ qualified insistence that the proper function of the firearm of the West was grossly overplayed, the mainstream of Outdoor Life’s readership refused to accept the apparent heresy. Guns, after all, had been fixed in the minds of so many as being as closely associated with the true old-time Westerner as the cowboy was to the horse. Journalists, armed with their creative licenses, had seen to that. None of the readers of the outdoor magazines appeared to have an interest in hearing tales of the instruments of farming, ranching, railroading, mining or any of the truly genuine components of Western history, but they were entranced by the notion of the guns and had a special fascination with the rifles and revolvers that certainly must have seen use on the plains and in the mountains.

By about the year 1908, the real Old West was a not-too-distant memory in the hearts of the men who had lived it. Even at this late date, some gloomy die-hards rejected the thought that their West was gone, and refused to let it be relegated to the past. They embraced the futile hope that the old West hadn’t been buried just yet.

About this time, a distinct and unique episode in the history of sporting journalism began to unfold. Some of the gray-haired men sent to magazine editors descriptions of their old guns. In many cases they provided anecdotes that shed a genuine and captivating light on weapons that had been to points West under a variety of circumstances. Reminiscent Western gentlemen recalled past nineteenth century experiences and described the guns that had tagged along. Many submitted photographs. This habit, apparently encouraged by the publishers, marched to the dreaded drumbeat of progress throughout the Edwardian era. It lasted through the outbreak and duration of the War in Europe and a little beyond, until the old geezers eventually died out, or belatedly stepped into the twentieth century.

Taken as a whole, the contributors were not spinning rambling yarns. Most accounts were concise and direct treatments describing a weapon or artifact. An overview of this trend, and a sampling of a few examples, may be as useful and entertaining to modern day readers of the New Millennium as our gun crank predecessors found it a hundred years ago.

Most likely, this old Westerner did not write his own caption. A sharp-eyed reader of Recreation magazine noted that the rifle was not a Ballard, but a Maynard.

In the Spring of 1911, the editor of Outdoor Life allowed 10 valuable pages for a feature article that author and artifact accumulator Don Maquire was pleased to title “Frontier Weapons.” Mr. Maquire, incidentally, seems to have initiated the popular, but far too infrequent, mass exhibitions of Old West guns and relics. His presentation is the first of its type that I have noticed. Other collections may have varying levels of appeal, but they paled to Maquire’s 50-item display.

Don Maguire’s collection of western artifacts and weapons as profiled in the June, 1911 issue of Outdoor Life.

In the years that went by between 1870 and 1900, Don Maquire spent his time in various places in the West. His collection of Indian artifacts was extensive and important. The assembly included an assortment of lances, scalping knives, peace pipes and claw necklaces – and, of course, guns of all sorts.

Maquire’s collection of long guns included a representative gathering of pioneer and immigrant guns of the common sort. Some of these had seen their first service in foreign lands. One such was a matchlock brought over by a naïve Chinese merchant who must have had no idea what to expect on the plains but recognized the need for a gun of some type. A Swiss Army rifle, the .41 caliber Vetterli, and other out of date European military weapons were also included.

There were others. American guns were represented by the Jennings, the rare Colt Model 1855 revolving rifle, the proven and ever-present Remington Rolling Blocks and the .45 caliber Springfields which were cheap, plentiful and frequently seen in the company of a pioneer family. No worthwhile collection of Western items is complete without a Sharps rifle, and Maquire’s was an early conversion to fire metallic cartridges. Confederate and Union rifles that had made their way westward with discharged or deserted veterans were reminders of these guns in the overall picture of the American West’s settling. Maquire didn’t consider the shotgun to be deadly enough for “men of our class,” but one specimen merited a place in is collection. This was a double barreled hammer gun carried by Niel House, who used it to ride Express guardsman for Wells Fargo to Virginia City from Sacramento in the early days.

Several other accumulations of Western artifacts were profiled during this period. One of the more significant was the 47-year weapon collection of George Shull. In 1873, Shull’s collection started as an innocent gathering of working guns and wound up as an assemblage of remnants of the Western tradition. His guns included Civil War battlefield pick-ups, brass framed Winchesters, Spencers, even Evans rifles and the rest, totaling nearly 50 reminders of better times. A white-goateed Mr. Shull posed with his assortment of mementos for a picture taken at his Iowa home, and it was published in the January, 1920 number of the Magazine of the West.

Jas. N. Sterling submitted a photo and brief descriptions of his 30-year gatherings in December of 1917. In the collection were three Sharps rifles, the first a bona-fide killer of bison. Chambered for the massive .45-120-550 case, it tipped the scales two ounces over 17 pounds. The aristocratic brother of the Sharps buffalo gun and champion at the thousand-yard line was the Sharps Creedmoor. Mr. Sterling’s elegant example sported a wind gauge front sight, and two vernier rears, one of which was mounted on the rifle’s heel for use in the supine, or back position.

Among the quality relics of buffalo days were two Remington percussion revolvers and a pair of .44 caliber cap and ball Colts. There were a couple of Spencers, one of which was a dazzling long-barreled factory sporting rifle. The lever action was represented by the 1866 Model Winchester, and a Henry nice enough to command six figures on today’s market.

An entire page of the January 1916 Outer’s Book was devoted to a stunning photograph of the Colt collection of Charles W. Parker of Concord, California. Nearly every model and every variation of sixgun and revolving rifle that was ever assembled at a Colt plant was represented. Sadly, only the photo was published. For the Western history buff, missing were the details of individual pieces and how they might have figured in the struggle to win the West.

The muzzle loader of the Kentucky class got its fair share of attention and exposure. A fair number of readers furnished reports on the gunsmith crafted flintlock and cap lock arms they had manage to retain, inherit, or acquire. During this era, many guns made by artisans such as Jas. Golcher, Simon Miller, John Shell, Isaac Palm, all famous in their time, were brought to the attention of the readers across the pages of Outdoor Life and the other outdoor magazines. Mark Woodmansee, as one example, submitted a delightful photo of his five Kentuckys, together with their accouterments for his fellow enthusiasts to enjoy. One of these was retrieved from where it was dropped by one of Pickett’s Virginia rebels at the Battle of Gettysburg, July 3, 1865.

However, all the wishing in the world wouldn’t bring back the frontier conditions of the early West or its spirit. A Missourian who chose to sign his namee “L ‘Encuerado” shed some interesting light on the use of the Henry rifle, both in the Civil War and on the plains of the West. In April of 1908, he furnished Outdoor Life readers with an anecdote involving a tiny band of steely-nerved Rebel veterans and a larger group of Indians being exposed for the first time to the repeating rifle. The incident took place somewhere in the Northwest.

At one of their camps, they were attacked by a band of hostile savages who feigned a charge, hoping to draw the fire of the white men. The Indians intended to rush them before their guns could be reloaded. They succeeded in drawing the anticipated fire, and charged the defenders furiously, only to be met by a murderous and rapidly successive fire at a range close enough to see the flabber-gasted expressions on the faces of the red men. The few survivors retreated at full speed. L ‘Encuerado was later given one of the Henrys associated with the lopsided battle as a memento.

A sketch of three seldom-seen pistols was presented in Outdoor Life for March of 1917. Don Maquire provided the opportunity as well as a couple of photographic cuts. Of the three, he seemed to be the most proud of a pristine Sharps single shot breechloading pistol patterned after the Sharps side-hammer rifle principle. Its inventors had hopes that this arm would fall into favor of the military when it was brought out in the mid-1850s. The Colt revolver was a formidable competitor, however.

Don Maguire’s three relic pistols pictured and described in the March, 1917 issue of Outdoor Life. From top: Sharps 44-caliber single-shot breechloading percusssion pistol; 58-caliber Remington rolling block pistol; Walsh Firearms Co. five-chambered, 10-shot revolver. The loads were superimposed in each chamber. The right hammer fired the front charge through a tube in the cylinder wall. The left hammer fired the rear load. Needless to say, the Walsh never really caught on.

The second was a particularly well preserved specimen of a Remington 58-caliber rolling block pistol that Mr. Maquire had acquired at a sale of government surplus items. Maquire told how this model was issued to cavalrymen who discovered that it was just the thing for “riding close to buffalo.” Galloping alongside a bison and shooting it from atop a fast mount was considered to be grand sport for a horse soldier stationed on the range.

The third rarity was a dual-hammered Walsh ten-shot revolver of 1859 vintage. The inventor of this gimmick must have had visions of superseding the Colt sixshooter. There were a few bugs in the design and the gun wasn’t a success, although a few made their way into the holsters of Confederate troopers during the Civil War. Maquire’s example was retrieved on the battlefield of Corrinth in October of ‘62, from the person of a Rebel captain who, as war trophy seekers have remarked throughout history, “no longer had a need for it.”

Dr. B.J. Ochsner was one of the great surgeons of the West and one of its most devoted handgun cranks. His pistol collection was profiled in the December 1916 issue of Outdoor Life. There were pistols of all descriptions, from French duelers to the ultra-modern Luger. Included were two scarce Pope-barreled handguns, a Smith and Wesson .38 and a Stevens. The high point of the collection to the Old West buffs certainly, was the brace of Colt Navies, presented by a former superintendent of the Mesa Verde National Park, and were known to have killed several men on the frontier. A. H. Hardy, Peters exhibition shooter and author of the piece, failed to mention whether the dead men were good guys or bad guys.

Correspondent Don Wiggins showed up in 1914 with a primitive-looking North and Savage revolving rifle of 1852 vintage that was a genuine Indian weapon. Harry Bennet, the rifle’s proud owner in 1914, had secured it from the Hood River Indians 10 years previously. The buck who sold it to him passed along that his father had carried the gun while fighting under Chief Joseph. A number of brass tacks, about fifty, ornamented the stock in typical red man fashion. Hood River legend had it that each tack represented the scalp of a white man.

As the metallic cartridge came into common usage in the late 1870s, the percussion system was effectively obsoleted. The cartridge revolvers replaced the cap and balls, and some of their owners neglected their old sixshooters, allowing them to decay like a pair of old shoes. Sometimes the old guns were simply discarded and considered good riddance. It was maintained that the old system was an untrustworthy and dangerous one, and there was some risk associated in shooting them. In an improperly managed cap and ball, wayward sparks at discharge would jump from cylinder to cylinder, detonating some or all of the chambers with a single pull of the trigger. If the Colt revolving rifle was said to have been particularly bad in this respect, the Remington percussion revolver was the worst offender. Modern black powder enthusiasts are aware of this threat, and take steps to prevent an occurrence. It could be that the tough frontier sorts didn’t put much stock in the danger, and tended to dismiss the phenomena as rumor – until it happened to them.

An eyewitness account which appeared in the February 4, 1905 issue of Forest and Stream gave some credence to the hearsay. Shortly after the Civil War, there was a small military encampment just north of new Orleans. A dozen soldiers, including our correspondent Cabio Blanco, took the afternoon off for a bit of pistol practice. When it came his turn to fire, a young trumpeter shooting one of the infernal Remingtons had three or four cylinders go off simultaneously. With a still stinging hand, the boy flung the gun into the canal where it doubtlessly still remains. (He wound up compensating Uncle Sam for the government issue pistol; $13 was deducted from his pay.)

Mr. E.C. Phillips of Trinidad, Colorado, wrote in the December, 1912 issue of Outers Book that he had one of the personal weapons of famous scout and frontiersman Kit Carson. This was an over/under double-barreled percussion rifle. There were two hammers, one on either side of the arm. Evidently, Carson saw the merit in having the extra shot at his command. Carlos Gove of Denver made the rifle entirely by hand for Carson in 1858. Reportedly, Gove made two such rifles. The other was for noted scout and Indian fighter Tom Tobin. Tobin, incidentally, is reported to have captured the infamous Esponisa band of outlaws for the price on their heads. Tobin camped with the gang, and while they slept, killed them and cut off their heads. He then gathered the heads in a gunny sack and carried the grisly baggage to the authorities and claimed the rewards.

Phillips pointed out that the Carson rifle was a choice and rare specimen, and marked a step forward in the development of firearms. Also noted was the fact that the rifle was for sale. One has to wonder if the Carson story was not a scheme to enhance the price tag.

F.J. Carnes burst into the gun department of the period Field and Stream magazine and expounded on the subject of Colt revolvers. Although the Arms and Ammunition column editor Bob Nichols may not have approved of intruders in his magazine space, he allowed Carnes some ink to clarify a few inaccuracies. Responding to some misinformation spread through previous statements made in the column regarding the earliest of Colt revolvers, Carnes very ably proceeded to set a lot of people straight. Along with the text, Carnes published a photo of his Patterson Colt, as well as a Walker model Dragoon from his own collection. The latter was a well-worn example, with the company number of “D” co. 189. For the sole benefit of the reader, we must presume, Carnes appraised his rare Colt, assigning to it a value of $500. Nickols opined that the topic was an interesting one, and perhaps a bit more devotion to the old guns might induce folks to rummage through their attics and turn up more scarce Colts.

With old guns under such discussion during this period, the public’s fascination and interest in the outlaw and other notable gunmen of the frontier grew exponentially, which sparked a fairly widespread side discussion on gunslinger topics. This seems to have peaked in the early 1920s. “Could the Bad Men of the West Really Shoot?” and “The Truth About Wild Bill” were among the juicy titles.

The bad man was the seldom seen but perpetually perceived image of the Wild Frontier. His willingness to use the gun and his alleged proficiency with it were a big part of the mystique. Most of us are able to relate to an attraction to and a fixation with the outlaw, though we may not be able to put our fingers on the reasons. Each of us as youngsters played cowboys and Indians. I can’t recall any of my boyhood chums volunteering to be the village dolt that groomed horses at the livery. Not one wanted to clerk at the dry goods store or perform coolie labor with the railroad gang. All of them wanted to be the good guy or the bad guy (depending). We all wanted to be the players who got to carry and shoot the guns.

Many gray-haired eyewitnesses, and some who would have liked to be so regarded, took up a pen and offered first hand accounts of their acquaintances, friendships, chance meetings, or narrow escapes with one of the West’s celebrated desperados. Some of this must simply be taken with a grain or two of salt, but a percentage of the narratives are certainly to be considered reliable. Sifting fact from fiction is impossible. Nevertheless, this material makes mighty interesting reading.

A description of one person’s relationship with Calamity Jane, as a good example, appeared in a Hunter-Trader-Trapper magazine in 1925. Regrettably, there is no mention of her guns. Old men who remembered well not being shot by Billy the Kid wrote with questionable authority during the same time. Wild Bill Hickok seems to have left an endless string of human beings that knew him well, judging from the printed evidence.

Not everyone was entranced by the common guns of the immigrant or pioneer farmer, the guns that really won the West. Everyone was, it seems, interested in the guns of the gunman. I daresay we still are. A few of these firearms that once were used by the infamous made their way into the hands of an individual or a family, where they had been closely held for two or three decades before they were presented to readers of an outdoor magazine. Collectors had a few of them too.

The Saunders collection contained at least three guns used by Jesse James: a .36 Colt Navy, a Starr, and a Colt M1873. From Outdoor Life of October of 1923.

Belle Starr’s ‘73 Winchester .44-40 came to light in the July of 1920 Outdoor Life. Belle was the daughter of a Methodist minister, a good girl gone astray. One of the West’s great outlaw leaders, she ran with the James gang and Jim Cummings, and generally terrorized Oklahoma when it was known as Indian Territory.

Missourian Fred E. Sutton wrote in his brief note that Belle was killed at Younger’s Bend in the I.T. (Indian Territory) on February 3, 1889. Edgar Watson was credited with the deed. After Belle hit the ground, her saddle mare Venus swam the river and was intercepted by U.S. Marshal James Boles, who lifted the carbine from its saddle scabbard. Sometime later he gifted the gun to Mr. Sutton, its owner in 1920. The photograph accompanying Mr. Sutton’s essay indicated that BELLE STARR is rather crudely but conspicuously carved on the right side of the butt stock . On one side of the breech in her name in brass letters. On the other side is a brass figure of a bell and a star. One would suppose that this precious Winchester is in a major collection. On the other hand, it could still be reposing in a closet somewhere in Missouri.

The largest collection of old guns that was made public knowledge was that of C. Burton Saunders of Berryville, Arkansas. Outdoor Life editor J.A. McGuire judged that an account of Mr. Saunders’ vast collection was sufficiently noteworthy to warrant a three-and-a-half page coverage in the October 1923 issue. Perhaps the centerpiece of Saunders’ 700-plus guns was a Colt Navy once owned by Jesse James. Supporting the claim was a letter from the son of the man Jesse gave the pistol to in 1877. Thomas G. Davis had done James a favor of some sort, and the method of demonstrating his appreciation was to present Mr. Davis with a gun when he happened to be temporarily weaponless. The barrel is inscribed “Jesse James, Sep.12, [sic] Pilot Knob, Mo.” Also worthy of mention is a Single Action Colt that was said to have been given to James’ brother-in-law at Sonora, California. The relative later lent it to a forest ranger and the gun was ruined when his cabin burned. Saunders was later able to acquire it.

A 44-caliber Starr six-shooter was decorated by James himself with a copper dagger and an inverted letter “J” inletted into the grip. Driven into the grip was a number of small nails, each of which was believed to have represented a man fallen dead to the Starr. Included in this count were four law officers who tried to arrest Jesse in 1876 at the Miller Ranch, five miles out of Joplin. Legend has it that after the revolver was emptied, James threw it on a table and made his getaway. A servant woman present immediately dropped the gun into a jar of warm lard that was on the hearth. She later buried the jar together with the concealed gun, and it was preserved in this fashion until it was recovered at a later date. Ultimately, it wandered into the collection of C. Burton Saunders.

Joaquin Murrietta was a conscienceless Mexican bandit and gringo-hater who specialized in brutally plundering California mining camps. He lived by the sword, and at age 23, died the same way. He was decapitated, and his pickled head was kept on display at the Gordon Museum in San Francisco. During the 1906 earthquake/fire, the gruesome thing was lost and never found. Taken from his headless corpse in 1853 was his Colt Dragoon, which also found its way into the Saunders collection. Killed with Murrietta was a hopeless criminal known as Three Finger jack. Saunders got his gun too.

For those clinging to a vestige of hope that some remaining elements of the Old West still survived, a singular event signaled its finishing throes. The demise of the Old West was official when its personified symbol passed away in the Spring of 1917. Buffalo Bill Cody, Army scout, buffalo hunter, and the showman who took the frontier West around the world, died quietly in Denver, and with him the era of the frontier and the conquest of the plains and the mountains. With his passing, the Old West was gone, hopelessly and irretrievably lost to a glorious and semi-mythical past.

Period advertisement for Joaquin Murrietta’s traveling head.

Fittingly, Chauncey Thomas was the last man to interview Cody as he lay on his deathbed. Mr. Thomas’ wordy account of his audience with Buffalo Bill appeared in the May, 1917 number of the Magazine of the West. In his last days, Bill and Chauncy talked guns and Western experiences. Cody spoke of his heavy buffalo guns, the type favored by bison killers who sniped them from a stand. Bill used two Sharps rifles, a ponderous .45-120-550 weighing 18 lbs. and an 11-lb. bottlenecked .44 caliber.

Cody liked to shoot his bison from a horse’s back, galloping close to the herd and lung-shooting them at very close range. For this, a light powerful rifle was his weapon of choice. A Winchester 1873 was especially well liked, as was a Spencer carbine.

Cody smiled when he named his favorite buffalo gun: “Lucrezia Borgia,” a breechloading 50-caliber Springfield that was special to him. With it he slew 4,250 animals in a single year. (The real Lucrezia Borgia, a sixteenth-century Italian socialite, had an equally bloody reputation.) The Indians had a nickname for Cody’s Lucrezia. To certain red men, she was known, affectionately or fearfully, as “Shoot Today – Kill Tomorrow.” When Buffalo Bill and the West he knew were both gone in 1917, Lucrezia Borgia remained draped across a set of elk antlers at the ranch, next to the knife Cody used to kill Yellow Hand.

When Cody died, the “real” Old West died with him. Today, we’re fortunate that the recollections of those who really had “been there, done that” have survived in the yellowing pages of the old outdoor literature. The witty Chauncey Thomas, the orator most capable, delivered a succinct but sufficient eulogy for this unique period in American history: “The Old West is dead, and the frontier six shooter is a relic. Where the Indian roamed we have the suffragette; we run short of carfare instead of cartridges, and instead of pulling the .45, we are pulled by the 5:40.”

Emerson Hough was an habitual Forest and Stream columnist through the peak of the frontier years and a familiar provider of sporting, natural history, and conservation material. When he contributed a short feature, unimaginatively titled “The West and the Gun” in the June 23, 1900, number, it must have struck his loyal followers as uncharacteristically reflective. When he published his observation, it was a trifle too early in the century for the sort of thoughts that were on his mind.

Mr. Hough spent the best part of his life in the West; for many years he was a New Mexican. He wrote that he lived through a time when seeing a sidearm strapped to a man’s hip was the usual and expected thing. He once shot – informally at targets – with Pat Garrett, the sheriff of Lincoln County, the man who ended the career of Billy the Kid with a bullet.

While visiting a Chicago gun store during the first Spring of the twentieth century, Hough caught his initial glimpse of the new-fangled Colt .38 Automatic pistol and puzzled over its complex gadgetry. It was a curious, right angled, out-of-balanced affair. Hough had grown old enough to be resistant to change and to progress. With sad strokes of his pen, Mr. Hough foreshadowed the attitude that would preoccupy the minds and imaginations of Westerners for the next 20 years when he wrote: “These Browning boys, out in Ogden, Utah, who get up all these revolutionizing inventions in firearms, are Western men, and they must have an odd reflection now and then that there is no longer any West, no longer any Billy the Kids, no longer much use for guns, big or little.”

By the time of the European War, the Wild West had been broken and tamed. The boom town was now a ghost town. The nester had fenced himself in and was there to stay. The bad man didn’t come to town to drown his thirst any longer; law and order were on tap.