August 1, 2010
Got this email from esteemed Western author, Robert Utley:

I got a lot out of the recent True West. I don’t care for Mark Boardman’s writing style, but he drew the whole story together in one place for the first time I’ve seen. Now, when queried, as I often am,
I have a chronological reference. As you know, I stand with Fred Nolan in his estimate of the nonsensical furor stirred by Sederwall and Sullivan.

The really valuable item in the issue was the one you put in, with the drawings, which I had never seen. Perhaps too rigidly, I cling to the version I wrote many years ago, your first narrative. The Dobbs interview to me does not stand up, and there is no new scenario. Nor do I subscribe to the BBB
take.

I do think that Bill Richardson is again toying with a pardon. It’s OK if he wants. The outcome would be the same as Billy expected from Wallace. EXCEPT, this word pardon is too loosely used and always has been. RMU take: Wallace never promised Billy a pardon. He promised that he would do all
he could to persuade DA Rynerson not to prosecute. He must have been aware of Rynerson’s hatred of Billy and known that he would never drop the prosecution. By 1879, though, when Billy was in the pokey in Santa Fe, Wallace should have done the right thing and pardoned him. But he was anxious
to be away and off to the Ottoman Court.

Thanks for an excellent issue, even if our “takes” don’t coincide.
—The Old Bison

"We can do no great things, only small things with great love."
—Mother Theresa