nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth. Western historian Robert K. DeArment has tracked down the facts of the mysterious Canton's early life and misdeeds in Texas; his participation in the Johnson County War as an agent of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association; his pursuit of the Daltons, Bill Doolin, and other outlaws in Oklahoma Territory; his experiences as a peace officer and gold prospector in Alaska; his career as a bounty hunter; and his.

In the Old West, upright lawmen were scarce. Often, the men who were bound to keep the peace were just as corrupt as the men they pursued. These dishonest deputies chose their professions based on convenience rather than conviction, and the most revered were often the wiliest. These men held grudges, ruled with violence, and instilled fear in all who crossed their paths. Offered here is an untainted perspective of these outlaws that discerns fact from myth. Legends such as Wyatt Earp and renegade lawman Dirty Dave Rudabaugh are presented as real men with quirks and weaknesses. The authors deconstruct not only the Dalton's last stand in Coffeyville, Kansas, and the gunfight at the OK Corral-among other famous heists-but also the triumphs and flaws of their organizers. The Old West's former outlaws turned good, former lawmen gone bad, and honorable citizens who moonlighted as robbers and rustlers are presented in these pages. ABOUT THE AUTHORS Laurence J. Yadon is an attorney, mediator, and arbitrator who presents on various legal subjects, Oklahoma history, and crime history. He has assisted the Department of Justice in litigation matters before his local United States district court and has successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court. He is the co-author of Pelican's 100 Oklahoma Outlaws, Gangsters, and Lawmen: 1839-1939; 200 Texas Outlaws and Lawmen: 1835-1935; Ten Deadly Texans; Old West Swindlers; and Arizona Gunfighters. Yadon resides in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Robert Barr Smith is a History Channel commentator and the author of more than thirty articles and five books on the American Old West. He has edited several titles, including Pelican's 100 Oklahoma Outlaws, Gangsters, and Lawmen: 1839-1939; 200 Texas Outlaws and Lawmen: 1835-1935; Ten Deadly Texans; and Arizona Gunfighters, and he co-authored Old West Swindlers, also published by Pelican. A retired colonel, Smith served more than twenty years in the Judge Advocate General's Corps and earned the Bronze Star and the Legion of Merit while serving in the United States Army. He is a former deputy attorney general of California and a retired professor of the University of Oklahoma College of Law. He lives in Norman, Oklahoma. Dirty Dave Rudabaugh � Hoodoo Brown and Company � Henry Newtown Brown � John Larn � Bob and Grat Dalton � Wyatt Earp � King Fisher � Ben Thompson � Henry Plummer � Joseph Alfred Slade � Doc Middleton � Frank M. Canton

So many books about the American West leave out the more intriguing details: When, in 1803, the young USA doubled its size with the purchase from France of an unexplored vastness called La Louisiane, it was a British bank which lent the Americans most of the $15 million that they didn't have. So the financial papers for the biggest real-estate deal in history are, to this day, held in a London vault. Not many people know that… If his ranching uncle-by-marriage had had his way, the teenaged Winston Churchill – a disappointing scholar – might have been sent west to Wyoming to train as a cowboy. Who knows but, in time, he himself might have become a rancher. How then would history have turned out? Another ranching Englishman played a key role in recruiting a small army of Texas gunmen to “invade” northern Wyoming and kill more than 40 small settlers, men who had too easily been accused of being rustlers. The plan went badly wrong. But the Englishman had slipped away – gone home on holiday… It seems unlikely that Butch Cassidy was killed in a Bolivian shoot-out. It seems that he returned, under a false name, to live out his days in the West. In 1935, he even submitted a autobiographical script to Hollywood – only to have it rejected as being “too preposterous to be believable”. He died two years later – penniless. “Royal tourist visits the Colonies” was the local headline. In her VC-10, the Queen had flown into the small town of Sheridan in Wyoming. First, she took an extended walkabout along Main Street and then she holidayed for several days on a friend's ranch in the shadow of the Big Horn Mountain … Tim Slessor, a one-time BBC producer, has filmed “out West” for nearly 50 years. In this book, he picks out a selection of fascinating stories that range from the mountain men and their fur trade to the pioneers of the overland trail, from Custer and the disaster at the Little Big Horn to the last stand of the Sioux at Wounded Knee, from the early cow-towns and the railroads to the cattle barons and the emigrant sod-busters.

William Preston Longley (1851-1878) went on a murderous rampage over the last few years of his life. Once he was arrested in 1877, and subsequently sentenced to hang, his name became known statewide as an outlaw and a murderer. Longley created and reveled in his self-centered image as a fearsome, deadly gunfighter. In truth, Longley was not the daring figure that he attempted to paint.

Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday—such are the legendary names that spring to mind when we think of the western gunfighter. But in the American West of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, thousands of grassroots gunfighters straddled both sides of the law without hesitation. Deadly Dozen tells the story of twelve infamous gunfighters, feared in their own times but almost forgotten today. Now, noted historian Robert K. DeArment has compiled the stories of these obscure men. DeArment, a life-long student of law and lawlessness in the West, has combed court records, frontier newspapers, and other references to craft twelve complete biographical portraits. The combined stories of Deadly Dozen offer an intensive look into the lives of imposing figures who in their own ways shaped the legendary Old West. More than a collective biography of dangerous gunfighters, Deadly Dozen also functions as a social history of the gunfighter culture of the post-Civil War frontier West. As Walter Noble Burns did for Billy the Kid in 1926 and Stuart N. Lake for Wyatt Earp in 1931, DeArment—himself a talented writer—brings these figures from the Old West to life. John Bull, Pat Desmond, Mart Duggan, Milt Yarberry, Dan Tucker, George Goodell, Bill Standifer, Charley Perry, Barney Riggs, Dan Bogan, Dave Kemp, and Jeff Kidder are the twelve dangerous men that Robert K. DeArment studies in Deadly Dozen: Twelve Forgotten Gunfighters of the Old West.

As Elmer Kelton notes in his afterword to this book, "Chuck Parsons' biography is a long-delayed and much-justified tribute to Armstrong's service to Texas." Parsons fills in the missing details of a Ranger and rancher's life, correcting some common misconceptions and adding to the record of a legendary group of lawmen and pioneers.

In the 1870s, Deadwood was a thriving—and largely lawless—boomtown. And as any fan of western history and films knows, stagecoach robberies were a regular feature of life in this fabled region of Dakota Territory. Now, for the first time, Robert K. DeArment tells the story of the "good guys and bad guys" behind these violent crimes: the road agents who wreaked havoc on Deadwood's roadways and the shotgun messengers who battled to protect stagecoach passengers and their valuable cargo. DeArment shows in dramatic detail how for two years gangs of robbers ruled the road, perpetrating holdups and killings, until lawmen and stage-company and railroad agents finally brought an end to the mayhem. The characters populating this violent tale include such legendary figures as Wild Bill Hickok and the famous railroad detective James L. "Whispering" Smith, a formidable opponent of bandits. We also get to know the men who operated the stages, the lawmen and company men who ran and defended the coaches, and the outlaws who fought against them. DeArment tells where these men came from and what became of them after the outlawry ended. He ends his account in the 1880s with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show and its spectacular rendition of a shotgun robbery, featuring an actual Deadwood stagecoach. After nearly a century and a half, the Deadwood stage continues to command our attention.