August 23, 2007
Here's the Frederick Remington sketch of Al Sieber, from James Ballinger's book "Frederick Remington's Southwest." It seems obvious to me he copied this from a well-known photo of Sieber, on crutches. The face angle is exactly the same (it's in Classic Gunfights, Volume III, in the "Tragic Pow-wow" gunfight). Check it out and see if you agree.



Speaking of CGIII, I got a nice blurb in this morning's Scottsdale Republic for my booksigning this Saturday at 2 P.M. at Barnes & Noble, on Shea and the 101.

Finished the Matt Warner image to accompany his narration of the Staunton-Murphy campfire shootout. He wrote his narrative in the 1930s, some forty years after the events, and it's clear he was aping the pulp fiction of the latter time, utilizing narrative like, "I do all my shooting with the Marlin, shooting from the level of my hips. In close range rifle shooting you can't wait to sight your gun from the level of your shoulders. If you are an experienced gun fighter, you can tell by the feel of it how to swing your rifle from your hip level with dead accuracy."



Warner had a horse shot out from under him, and in his narrative it goes like this: "While my horse is falling I grab my .30-30 Marlin repeating rifle from the scabbard on the saddle with my left hand, my Colt six-shooter from my belt with my right hand, throw my feet out of the stirrups, and land on my feet as he strikes the ground. Seeing Milton's shoulder exposed above a log, I shoot him three times with my six-shooter. Three bullets enter his shoulder in a space no larger than your hand and range down into the body."

Great narrative, but most of it is hooey. Two of the guys he shot were in a tent (one of them asleep). Ha. Excellent example though of how the violent events of the nineteenth century morphed into the one-man heroism of the twentieth. And you can blame most of it on writers.

Classic Onion Headline de Jour
Jews, Muslims, Hindus Agree On Chicken

"Silence is one of the great arts of conversation."
—Hannah More