December 8, 2009
Nice day in the office. Went home for lunch and took Peaches on a walk down to the creek. Really running. Nippy out. Felt good to stretch it out.

Worked on a presentation for tomorrow. Trish Brink, Joe Freedman and myself are traveling down into Scottsdale to make a presentation to the Oldtown Scottsdale Group. Utilizing our 100 cover powerpoint slideshow. Really getting some mileage out of that little program.

Also did a quick study of The Apache Kid using red and black ink pens:

Trying to capture that killer eyeball, yet somehow retain a sympathetic look. After all the Kid tried to do the right thing and in spite of all the crap thrown against him, he survived against all the odds. And, when you read our version, he gets the girl.

"History is an argument without end."
—Pieter Geyl

December 8, 2009
Rained all day yesterday. Big storm last night. At about 11:30 P.M. the wind really howled and we had rolling thunder to boot. Peaches cowered by my bed (yes, we've started letting her in at night so she doesn't bark and wake the neighbors). This morning as I drove to work, I noticed that a big plastic horse at the feed store had blown down as had every single tree in the Christmas Tree Lot. It's clearing out now (9:40 A.M.), but we are supposed to get more rain.

Meanwhile, I'm noodling the idea that yesterday's post of Mickey Free's childhood and today's post on The Apache Kid (below) will be part of a Foreword-Backstory-Intro to the graphic novel. I was inspired by watching the animated movie Up over the weekend (we got inspired to rent Christmas movies and got A Christmas Story and a WWI flick—I can't think of the name—Joeux Noel?—the box is at home). Anyway, Up, had a faux newsreel beginning in black and white, as a prologue to the story. It was quite fanciful and stylized but it worked just fine, although I'm hard pressed to imagine that it had any resonance to a kid today (a newsreel that runs before the movie? Really dad? Was this during the Civil War?).

The Apache Kid Goes South
The artist and illustrator, Frederic Remington wrote a piece for Harper's Weekly on Al Sieber:

Al Sieber is a thousand times a hero, but he does not in the least understand this. He has acted all his life in great and stirring events as unconscious of his own force as the heat, the wind or the turn of the tide. He is a pure old warrior, and nothing has come down the years to soften Al
Sieber. Until he met the Apache Kid.

It was General Crook who discovered what none of his predecessors could figure out, that only an Apache could catch an Apache.

Crook advised his officers to recruit the wildest Apaches as scouts. This they did, but it took an unusual man to control these warriors in the field, and the best of them all, was German born Al Sieber.

When I asked him his secret to control the fiercest of the fierce, he shrugged and said, “I do not deceive them but always tell the truth. When I tell them I am going to kill them, I do it, and when I tell them I am their friend, they know it.”

In 1881 Sieber took under his wing a young Apache called Hos-kai (handsome one). For seven years this young Apache worked with Al and the scouts. He became like a son to Sieber and he thrived under Al’s guidance and respected his mentor greatly.

For several years Sieber’s Boys, as they were called in the territory, rode the far ranges of the reservation, keeping the peace and punishing with prejudice anyone who dared break the law.

Those who left without a pass, or raided the settlements like in the old days, were seldom heard from again.

In Apache legend they became known as Sibi’s Crew, half-feared as devil riders and half respected for their honesty and courage. In addition to Sieber, the devil riders included Tom Horn, Mickey Free and The Apache Kid. They did much to bring peace to that restive neighborhood.

Sieber began grooming his protege to replace him. Hoksai showed promise as a stalwart soldier. He showed promise as a decision maker and a fair-minded judge. Increasingly, while Sieber was away, the Apache Kid was left in charge of the scouts.

Unfortunately, on one of these abscences, Hoskai came under the influence of the scout Curly who reminded the boy of his Apache obligation to revenge his father’s murder. Pressured by others as well at a tiswin party, the Kid was mighty conflicted between his obligations to Sieber and the army, and the traditions and laws of his people.

Tiswin & Tulapai
The Apaches are fond of a native brew which the Spanish call “tiswin,” but the locals call “tulapai,” (pronounced tool-ah-pie). Although the agents frown on it, pretty much everyone casts a blind eye to the debauchery, unless there are problems, and when Apaches drink the tulapai, expect problems.

Hoskai, accompanied by Curly and others went out to the guilty party's wickiup (a San Carlos Apache called Rip). The Kid meant only to scare Rip, but Curly made sure a bullet found its mark.

“I want to be a good shot, but I am not. The talent for this lies with others.”
—The Apache Kid

The Kid went AWOL and continued to drink, something else he was not good at. After he sobered up, the Kid wanted to come in and make it right with Sieber. After sending in a message to San Carlos that he wanted to parlay, The Kid came in with six other scouts, including Curly. They met at Sieber’s tent, which turned into a tragic pow-wow, when an altercation broke out and in the melee, Sieber was shot in the leg. Although the Kid fled before the shooting began, Sieber blamed the Kid.

Al almost died from the wound. Five inches of his lower leg were sawed off and removed. Small parts of this leg bone ulcerated through the wound for years after. His left leg ended up three inches shorter than his right. The man who fought in countless campaigns, was now a cripple, and he hated the Kid for it. He felt betrayed by his own son.

Meanwhile, in New York City, Remington’s cover for Harper’s Weekly created a firestorm of bad publicity for the army. The cover, showing Mickey Free bringing in the heads of two renegade Apaches, reverberated all the way to the White House. "Heads Will Roll" was the title of the cover, and heads did indeed roll at San Carlos, with Captain Pearce being reassigned and Al Sieber being demoted.

“Some say it was my cover illustration in Harper’s Weekly that got Al fired, but I don’t believe it. A new regime came to power at San Carlos and the gallant Sieber couldn’t adapt to the new ways.”
—Frederic Remington

After 21 years as chief of scouts, Sieber stepped down. He was 47 years old.

The soldiers called her Beauty because she was just that. Her real name has been lost to history. Beauty attended Carlisle Academy in Pennsylvania, but there was a scandal with a teacher and she was returned to the reservation. She loved but one man, but he was an outlaw.

Both the Apache Kid and Beauty were caught between the new world then developing in the great Southwest and the old. Mickey tried very hard not to have anything to do with either. But, all in all, the Kid’s life showed promise, but then it all went bad. The facts are these:

Promised safe passage and a truthful hearing, the Kid once again turned himself in and was court-marshalled and sentenced to death, but General Miles interceded and commuted his sentence to ten years at Alcatraz.

Under a heavy guard, the Apache Kid was sent by train to San Francisco, and by boat to The Rock. He was accosted by several California highwaymen imprisoned there and the young Apache had to fight. He learned bad things, but for the most part he was left alone.

On review in the east, the Kid's sentence was commuted because of prejudice, and he was set free and sent back to San Carlos. He wanted to see Beauty, but she had, in his absence, married Curly, the scout who many believe actually shot Sieber.

At first their marriage was good and her family was proud, but Curly came back from the sweats and claimed to hear voices in the howl of the wind. More and more he rejected the White Man's influence, including the frying pan Beauty received on her wedding day. They fought over it. He demanded they return to the Old Ways, but Beauty had been schooled at Carlisle in the east and she knew a thing or two about convenience.

"No frying pans! It is forbidden! We are on the Old Road! Ussen has blessed the Old Road!"
—Curly

Sieber, hobbling around on crutches, went to Globe and got a court order to re-arrest the Kid on civil charges.

Newly elected Sheriff Glenn Reynolds was sent out and he arrested the Kid before he could free Beauty from her tormentor.

The Kid was brought into Globe just in time to see the Carlisle Kid hanged. Tom Horn quipped: "That's a hell of a waste of an education," before adding, "Remind me never to get hanged."

Al Sieber was the main witness against the Apache Kid in the civil trial, but defying her abusive husband, Beauty, who had placed her husband's belongings outside their wickiup, took the stand to vouch for the honor and integrity of the Apache Kid.

The Kid was touched—the jury was not.

This time the Kid was sentenced to seven years in the Yuma Territorial Prison, which might as well have been a death sentence, since very few Apache ever survived that hell hole.

Furious and tanked up on tiswin, Curly arrived at his former home and attacked Beauty with a knife, attempting to cut off her nose, as is the Apache custom for a straying wife.

Although he cut her badly, she managed to bean him with—a frying pan—sending his hulk into the fire.

He staggered out into the night, flaming, and plunged into Clear Creek and disappeared, smouldering, into the night.

The Apache Kid was being transported to the train station at Casa Grande, when he and seven other Apaches killed their guards and escaped.

All the other escapees were captured or killed by Mickey Free, but the Apache Kid vanished into Mexico and the Sierra Madres.

Mickey Free was assigned the task to hunt down his former friend, the Apache Kid and bring back his head. Mickey took up the trail and rode deep into Sonora, Mexico.

"To the citizen, he is a terror; to the soldier, a myth; and to his brother Indians, a hero with a charmed life, perfect attainments, and a glorious record."
—Powhatan H. Clarke, summing up the Apache Kid

End of Foreword-Backstory: This is where our story begins.

December 7, 2009
A day that will live in infamy, and a nice book marker for my uncle Glenn Marvin Bell and his birthday, which is today. Happy B-day Uncle Glenn (he's a retired teacher and school administrator).

Just read an interesting take in the New York Times on Pearl Harbor and how the seeds of the attack were probably sewn by Teddy Roosevelt when he brokered the Russian-Japanese War (and received a Nobel Peace prize for his efforts). The Japanese, emboldened by what the Anglo-Americans had done in North America, marching across the continent wiping out resistance and claiming the entire region as their own. Hey, they thought, we can do that too. So, the pre-emptive strike on our naval forces in Pearl Harbor, was part of that effort.

Meanwhile, I spent part of yesterday culling our Mickey Free notes to create a framework to build on with the powerpoint-slideshow version of the Mickey Free & The Apache Kid story. Here is part one of the rough draft, on Mickey Free's early years:

The Greatest Western Story Never Told?
Mickey Free is a story of The Border. The border between countries, the border between cultures and the border between people. For over 130 years the mystery of what happened to the Apache Kid has tormented historians. How did he get away? Was he killed and his death covered up? What I'm about to tell you may be the greatest Western story never told.

It's a story that is not without controversy: for example, Geronimo hated Mickey Free, calling him “the snake eye with the forked tongue.”

He had long-red hair, matted and tangled, hanging to his shoulders in the Apache style. His skin was weathered mahogany, with a series of scars. He rode a Mammoth Jack mule, 16-hands high and he carried a machete in the Yaqui style. He was neither American nor Apache nor Mexican, but somehow he was all three.

"He was half Mexican, half Apache, and all son-of-a-bitch."
—Chief of Scouts, Al Sieber

But let's go back to the beginning. When he was just a boy, he started a war. The longest in the history of the United States.

January 27, 1861
On Sonoita Creek, in southern Arizona Territory, Felix Ward, 13, was kidnapped from his step-father's ranch by Arivaipa Apaches led by one Victor (called Beto by the Apaches).

When Felix's step-father reported the kidnapping to the soldiers, officers attempted to contact Cochise to find out where the boy might have been taken. Meeting at Apache Pass, a brash young West Point graduate attempted to arrest Cochise, after the Chiricauhua denied knowledge of the boy's whereabouts. Cochise boldly escaped, cutting his way out of a tent and making it to safety. Others with him were not as fortunate and a standoff ensued between the soldiers holding Apache hostages and Cochise, who took hostages of his own. Lt. Bascom hanged six of the Apaches and Cochise went on a rampage killing every white person he could find (hint: he found plenty).

Meanwhile, far to the north of Apache Pass, the kidnapped boy, Felix Ward was being held in a camp near Arivaipa Creek.

As Tom Horn put it, “Felix became nothing more than a slave, relegated to cooking and cleaning and moving the camp, and when he tried to run away, he was caught and beaten again and again." When the young Apache John Rope first saw Felix he felt a great sympathy for the boy. His father offered a trade to Beto, but the cruel renegade refused. Rope was patient and reminded Beto of his obligation to Apache law.

All the weight of loneliness seemed to bear on the young captivo. Beto, the leader of the group who kidnapped Felix, was himself a former Mexican captivo, and perhaps because of it, he was relentless in his meanness towards the boy.

“A convert to any cause, is always overdone.”
—Tom Horn

Beto finally relented and traded Felix to the Rope clan for a bushel of peaches and, ironically, a rope.

Horn hailed from Memphis, ran away from home at age 14, landed in Santa Fe where he learned Spanish, drove stages and learned the packing game. He later drifted into Arizona and met Al Sieber at Prescott, prior to Al's ascension to Chief of Scouts at San Carlos. Tom and Al became fast friends.

"Tom is clean straw game.”
—Al Sieber

Not long after he arrived in Arizona, Horn spent the better part of a summer with Felix Ward and his adopted clan, the Ropes, in their summer encampment in Arivaipa Canyon. With that experience, Horn learned to speak tolerable Apache.

According to all who met him, Felix had the face that only a mother could love, but to hear Horn tell it, the scrawny boy had no feelings for his mother. Why this was no one knew.

The Rope clan treated Felix with much more equimanity, although, even in the new community, Mickey ran up against the natural pecking order of male dominance. The elder Rope took the scrawny, youngster under his wing and nurtured his skills at woodcraft and survival tactics. It wasn’t easy.

One of the first challenges Felix had to endure was the pinecone quest, which the Apaches call Khee-hahd-oh. The boys of the clan gathered before dawn at the river and each took a drink, then held the water in their mouths, while the senior Rope pointed to a distant, blue mountain range and ordered them to bring back a pine cone and the water, spitting it out on the ground when they
returned. If they could pass this test, they were ready for their first mission.

Of course, the stronger Apache boys, led by Curly took off like deer and quickly left Felix behind, quickly disappearing into the foothills.

Felix ran awkwardly, struggling to keep from swallowing the water in his mouth. After several miles, the desert tundra gradually gave way to cedar trees as the boys spotted their goal, higher up the steepening slopes.

Running with their mouths closed, to save the water, the young boys learned to breath through their nose. This greatly expanded their lung capacity, and at the same time gave them discipline to travel great distances, a survival technique still marveled at today.

Grabbing the first pine cones they could find, Curly and the other boys, quickly reversed their path, scrambling down off the mountain, racing each other. Halfway down they crossed paths with Felix still struggling up the incline. One of the older boys tripped Felix as they scooted past, all of them
laughing as they disappeared into the draw.

Several hours later, Old Man Rope met the boys coming along the river bank. They ran up, Curly in the lead, and dropped their pine cones at his feet, then they spit the water and breathed heavily for some time, laughing and kidding each other as young boys are wont to do everywhere.

Rope praised their skills and dismissed the boys and looked up the trail. All had passed the test, but one was missing. It was dusk before the pale form of the young captivo came stumbling out of the creosote, clearly overheated and distraught. He staggered up (his knees were bleeding where he had fallen) and tossed his puny pine cone on the pile and spit out his water, then swayed, bent over, barely keeping his feet as he tried in vain to catch his breath.

“You have the hard bone of the red-haired people, right here,” Old Man Rope said as he put one hand on the boy’s shoulder and pointed at Felix’s head with the other.

It was true. The Irish in the boy served him well, although no Irishman would claim this skanky kid. Slowly, Felix learned the skills he needed to survive as an Apache.

The next test was not so easy. Lying down in a cold mountain stream without making a sound.

Eventually, the young captivo named Felix graduated to the advanced level of frontier survival, and, thanks to the cruel humor of the San Carlos troopers, he received a new name: Mickey Free.

"In the end, Mickey Free freed me."
—The Apache Kid

December 5, 2009
Yesterday, our receptionist, Lynda, came into my office and said, "There's a gentleman up front who wants to talk to you about Mickey Free."

It was Mundo.

Lynda was kind of taken aback by how well I seemed to know this person I was meeting for the first time (welcome to the world of online friendships). As if you didn't know, Mundo is a zany contributor to our Ning website community and although we have emailed and posted and commented on each other's posts, I had never met him until yesterday.

I brought Mundo back to my office and we talked a bit about our community (the one you're in right now) and all of the recent Brokeback controversy (Mundo recommends everyone lighten up).

From there we compared growing up notes: we both were into dirt bikes (I raced a Triumph 500 in the late sixties, then gave it all up, but Mundo is still into it up to his eyeballs: he collects them and has a classic German ride—a Macco?— in his living room!); we both got the surfer bug (he moved to Cal in the early seventies, lived in his sister's apartment on the beach, surfed every day, met a beautiful surfer girl and married her: me, I collected Beach Boys LPs, wore surfer shirts and married a girl from Michigan. Ha.) And, in addition to rock 'n' roll, we both have always dug the Old West. Which brought us back around to Mickey Free.

He wanted to know the status of the project. What happened?

I told Mundo that we struck out with our True West excerpt of the story. Both Paul Hutton and I have some pretty solid contacts in Hollywood and, to put it bluntly, they all passed. When Hutton was here last month for the surprise birthday party for Robert Utley, Paul and I had lunch at Tonto Bar & Grill and spent most of an afternoon taking stock of what went wrong. Although I suggested perhaps we move on and count it as a loss, The Top Secret Writer was, and is, adamant that we give it another shot.

We talked about taking another route into the story, one that would involve our narrator, Frederic Remington, coming to Arizona late in life and trying to solve the mystery as he travels the territory and interviews the principals in the Apache Kid mystery.

Although this has merit, I still feel like we are missing the heat of the story, which is the relationship between Mickey Free and the Apache Kid. We have crafted a decent story, but the actual conflict between the two is MIA (literally Missing In Action).

Hutton went home to write a new version of the story while I have been mulling a new way to get past my graphic novel blockage (I refuse to do word balloons!). Last week I had a possible breakthough: while giving a slide show presentation at the Heard Museum (I showed them the 100 covers which you can see on the main page of this site), I came to the Mickey Free cover (November-December, 2008) and as I sketched in the story of the one-eyed mixto who started the longest war in the history of the United States, I noticed that the crowd became quite engaged. They wanted to know more.

Several women (the crowd was 95% women) came up to me afterwards to ask about this Mickey character. Was he real? Hmmmm.

As I drove back out to Cave Creek, I thought it might make a good future speech-slide presentation to put together the story of Mickey Free and the Apache Kid utilizing photos, good Mapinator maps and my drawings, a la Remington, to illustrate the story. When I started to think about the story from this perspective, it all started to click, and I realized this is definitely something I could do.

I heard a story about the Marx brothers. Supposedly, a famous producer (Irving Thalberg?) made them take the show on the road first before they filmed the movie. I think they went to Albuquerque, of all places, and road tested the jokes. Many they thought were going to be hilarious, bombed and, so they wrote more jokes, tried them out, and only used the proven winners in the subsequent film, Duck Soup, which is a classic.

So, I think I'll road test Mickey Free a la Duck Soup with an Al Gore Inconvenient Truth style presentation and keep refining it until we have something that really works.

So, that is my current angle of attack. And for this I say, "Thanks Mundo!"

"I would never belong to a group that would have me as a member."
—Grouch Marx

December 4, 2009
My old Kingman compadre, James Covarrubius turned up on the cover of the Arizona Republic this morning. He, and fellow New Times alum Ruben Hernandez, are putting on a Latin Art Show tonight at their new space three doors east of the Matador deep inside the Beast.

Speaking of old friends and art, I went home for lunch today and whipped out several patina paintings:

According to my dictionary (Oxford American) Patina literally means "a film, usually green, formed on the surface of old bronze." It has been expanded here to mean happy accidents simulating rusty-like patterns or funky effects. I don't know why but doing these is very therapeutic to me. It's as relaxing and soothing as drinking a beer on Friday night. Here's another one:

Sweet effects of a summer rainstorm perhaps? Here's a third, a bit more contrived:

Gee, I wonder what ol' Seneca has to say about this?

"A thing is never too often repeated which is never sufficiently learned."
—Lucius Annaeus Seneca

December 4, 2009
Nippy out this morning. Went for a brisk walk with Peaches. Ran into Joe Yager. He's coming over in the morning to work on the John Deere (can't get the fuel glass to drain). Nice to have tractor savvy neighbors (hint: it helps if they're from Kansas).

Last night Abby and I posted the Ten Years: 100 covers feature. If you followed it here on the blog you may still want to track through it and see the wild mood swings we have made on our march to the present.

Powerful Words To Live (and Publish) By
I read with interest a travel piece in last Sunday's New York Times about hiking into the Grand Canyon. Several phrases caught my eye: "The modern world falls away," and "embracing the silence and the stillness." The author, Henry Shukman, who lives in Santa Fe, also had this evocative thought: "That's why it feels like a pilgrimage to come here. It's good to reflect that if America has a heart this just might be it."

These powerful words and phrases are at the heart of what we're trying to do with the magazine, and with this site. When we read the magazine and we gather here we want the modern world to fall away.

"There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line."
—Oscar Levant

December 3, 2009
Last minute typo flurries. For example, I emailed Marshall Trimble after lunch thanking him for all his help on the Edward Cross vs. Sylvester Mowry gunfight. I also told him we gave his book a plug:

Recommended: Arizona: A Panoramic History of a Frontier State by Marshall Trimble, published by Doubleday and Company

Got this email back at 2:30 (a half-hour before the magazine goes out the door to Kansas City):

"Thanks for the plug but that book went out of print in 1988. LOL The more recent one and still in print is: Arizona: A Cavalcade of History."
—Marsh

I ran over to production (19 feet from my desk) and told Meghan. She and Robert Ray were tweaking the final pages. Have the Classic Gunfight pages been pdf'd? Yes. "Does Marshall's new book have the gunfight in it?" came the calm voice of the Lioness.

I called Marshall at Scottsdale Community College where he teaches history. "Let's see, I'll look up Mowry in the index. . .and. . .there is only one paragraph on him and nothing on the fight." Thanks Marsh, we'll see you at the Christmas party next week.

I ran back into production. "Leave it as is, our intrepid readers will have to go to Guidon Books and find an original copy." And so, this is how it goes, bit by bit, detail by detail, another issue, going, going, out the door.

Meanwhile, we have been getting some cool writeups across the country. Here are just a couple:

Trent Johnson wins Best of the West hatmaker.

We love the gals over at Double D Doubletalk and it appears the feeling is mutual.

"Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it."
—Old Vaquero Saying

December 3, 2009
January issue is almost put to bed. Last minute corrections and typos being corrected, late ads coming in over the transom, I mean, internet.

Meanwhile, just got word from a friend of mine that Gale Cooper has a movie in the works based on her self-published novel Mega Hoax. As mentioned, The Top Secret Writer, Meghan Saar, Bob McCubbin and myself are prominently mentioned as being part of a nefarious plot to elect Bill Richardson president of the United States. Although we were thwarted in our nefarious attempt to take over the government, we hopefully will have some say in who plays us in the movie. I told Hutton that if I had to guess, I would imagine Cooper would want Philip Seymour Hoffman to play the evil, shape shifting cuckoo bird (that would be Paul).

Hutton suggested the Deadwood bad guy, Ian McShane, could be a good Bob McCubbin. Other casting suggestions I would make are:

• Kristin Bell (Forgetting Sarah Marshall), or Janel Moloney (Donna Moss in West Wing) as The Lioness, Meghan Saar

• Randy Quaid (The Long Riders, Brokeback Mountain) as Steve Sederwall

• Benicio del Torro as Governor Richardson

• Steve Buscemi (Fargo) as BBB

And if you don't think Steve is right, just check out this photo from Grant Sergot of Optimo Hatworks in Bisbee:

"Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the handle or the blade."
—James Russell Lowell

December 2, 2009
Hall monitors have been the bane of my life. I've always hated hall monitors. All through school, I was never good enough to be one, and the ones who were, always seemed to catch me and punish me every chance they got, which, I seem to remember, was quite often. So, it's a little ironic that as the co-moderator of this site with Trish Brink, now I are one.

Furthermore, it's not my idea of fun to tell other people when to shut up, or even when to tone it down. After all, I've made a career out of being outrageous, crude and rude.

As Doc Holliday croaked on his deathbed, "This is funny."

So, here we are, fresh off a blood bath precipitated by some irresponsible jerk who posted a blog about the Autry and their upcoming show on all things Brokeback Mountain.

I choose to look at it as a family spat. And yes, I was the jerk who published the damn thing, thinking we would get a rise out of people.

Oh, did we ever.

In spite of the trauma, I believe that on the whole, the conversations were lively and spirited and the give and take was stimulating and thought provoking. I especially liked the various takes on John Wayne and his military issues and I thought both sides gave compelling reasons.

But, as we all know, from there things got a tad dicey. Here's the bottom line for me:

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion—but no one is entitled to use hate talk to anyone.

If you'll adhere to that one rule, we will be fine. I'm happy to report that everyone has calmed down and we seem to be back to being a family again. Which is to say, just wait until the next holiday, when Uncle Ernie drools on his bib and starts talking about illegals.

"Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress."
—Thomas Edison

December 2, 2009
Well, here is Dan The Man's first crack at the cover for January featuring the editorial style cartoon I created last week:

Notice that the top heads aren't written and Dan is putting in filler type. (He often makes these rude and crude to inspire us to fill them mucho pronto. Ha.)

Meanwhile, I went home for lunch a little early today and finished the big, Mesilla Brawl On The Mall painting for the splash page inside. Here's how it looked this morning:

And here's how it looked at 2:30 this afternoon:

As I finished I thought of a new title: "In The Shadow of God's House." The deadly gunfight (7 to 15 dead and some 50 wounded) took place on the northwest corner of the Old Mesilla square, catty-corner from the church. Oh, we are crazy mo fos, are we not?

Brought it back into the office, Robert Ray photographed it (too big for the scanner) and is working on the final layout (3:27 P.M.)

This is a very cool package in a very cool issue (one of the strongest I have ever worked on). Bob Alexander did an excellent job researching and writing this (and bringing it to us first). I really think with the current rancor in the political spectrum this story could get traction in the national media. We'll see. Some of it depends on a good press release, and that will fall to Mark Boardman. I'll keep you posted how this all shakes out. Goes to the printer tomorrow. Subscribers will have it in about two weeks.

"The thing you really believe in always happens and the belief in a thing makes it happen."
—Frank Lloyd Wright

December 2, 2009
My speech at the Heard Museum yesterday was a ton of fun. First off, my hosts, Jan and Jim Patten, from Pella, Iowa, bought me lunch at the Heard Museum Cafe which has excellent food. I had the spinach enchiladas, and we talked about Wyatt Earp's time in Pella (Jan's family lore lays claim to the story that her Dutch relatives beat up the Earp boys).

We had a packed house for the speech at 1:30, including, not one, but two folks from Kingman (who didn't know each other). The first person who came up to me before the speech was Joan Hampton Jasso who came to Kingman in 1952 and graducated from MCUHS in 1962 with Sarah Ann Waters, Bill Ridenour and Joe Hart, among others we both knew. The other gentleman, T.J. McMichael, graduated in 1958. Both cherished their days growing up in Kingman. This is a refrain I have been hearing more and more, the older I get. When I was younger the most common comment when I ran into a former Kingmanite was, "Man, I couldn't wait to get out of that hellhole." Come to think of it, I think I said the same thing when I was a snotty twerp and didn't know jack about the important things in life. Which reminds me of my Uncle Bud's line: "You sure know a lot, for being so damn dumb." Ha. Always have loved that Kingman quip.

Still working hard on the big, doubletruck of the Mesilla Brawl On The Mall painting, but had to stop this morning and whip out a Mountain Man spot illustration for an ad touting our 2010 Great American Trail Rides:

It's a poach from a Bill Moyers' sculpture titled "The Reckless Breed," although I changed it exactly 20% (my lawyers made me state this, for the record). Ha.

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
—Samuel Beckett

December 1, 2009
Man, where did this year go? Home stretch. We've got a great issue going out the door tomorrow. I'm scrambling to finish several pieces of art. Yesterday Ron F. posed for me to represent Edward Cross, the first newspaper editor in Arizona. I couldn't remember if he was the tall one, or was his dueling opponent, Sylvester Mowry? Went home for lunch and whipped this sketch out:

I figured I had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right. Came back into the office and looked at my notes and, I got it wrong. Cross was six foot three with red beard and hair. Ouch.

Last night I laid in a wash for another take on it and this morning finished it up:

Thanks to Phil Spangenberger and The Lioness Meghan Saar I had very good Burnside rifle reference.

Still need to finish the big doubletruck of the Mesilla Brawl On The Mall, or as my good friend Charlie Waters puts it: The Battle of the Bands. Ha. That effort tomorrow.

I have a speech this afternoon deep inside the Beast (at the downtown Heard Museum). I'm talking about the Apache Wars and Mickey Free.

Todo del Mundo
Howdy Bob, Just wanted to drop you a line to let you know how great Source Book issue is. Stopped at home for lunch and to check the mail, it's now 3:30 and I've had no lunch nor have I made it back to work and I'll be dipped but I'm only to page 55. Congratulations to you and your staff for putting this together! —Thanks.
—Mundo

"I don't trust camels or anyone else who can go a week without a drink."
—Old Vaquero Saying

November 30, 2009
For the past week or so, I've been studying famous battle paintings and I've noticed that the fighters in the portrayals always seem to be of two types: the heroic, chest-out defiant one (think Joan of Arc or Custer), and the fatally injured, but heroically posed woe-is-me-dying pose, complete with knitted eyebrows and a hand to the breast right out of some 1890s melodrama. These have never seemed very accurate to me. They certainly don't look like the fights I have witnessed growing up (true, they weren't gunfights, but still, a rock fight on the playground must have some similarities, no?)

When I was in high school we often had fights in the park next to the "new building," at lunchtime. The cry would go out, "A Fight in the park!" And off we'd go to see some fistful of testosterone carnage. Or, more accurately, "Hey, Mickey Campa is going to beat up someone. See you in the park!"

Mickey was our resident fisticuffs champ and I have personally seen him wail on more than one face.

One time two guys were goaded into meeting in the park. One was a good guy, a Mexican kid, and the other a scraggy white guy, like me. We all met in the park, but the two guys didn't want to fight. They were prodded and goaded and chided but they didn't really want to be doing this. Finally, a friend of the white guy, a dude named Stan Legg, jumped into the fray and said, "Oh, what the hell," and he punched the Mexican guy with a so-so haymaker. Suddenly the entire crowd went ballistic and while four or five In-dins (the Hualapais were there supporting the Mexican dude) jumped Stan and, as they staggered across the grass, all legs and fist flying, the rest of the crowd broke into small fights here and there. Me, I was doing the sideways shuffle, with my hands up at chest height and ducking, weaving and bobbing, trying to find the exit. Which I did successfully.

All through biology class my heart was beating so fast I could barely sit still.

As promised here are a series of illustrations I have been working over the long weekend, trying to capture that sideways shuffle I have personally witnessed:

Here are a few more sideways shuffle studies:

And here are those sketches applied to the heat of the Mesilla Brawl On The Mall:

From this fight I switched gears and did some sketches for the Burnside Rifle Classic Gunfight:

The newspaper reported that the two shooters, who were 80 paces apart missed each other, in part, because a dust storm enveloped the dueling site obliterating the field of fire:

Decent dust and wind effects. Gee, I wonder what ol' Alighieri has to say about that?

"Worldly fame is but a breath of wind that blows now this way, now that, and changes name as it changes direction."
—Dante Alighieri

November 29, 2009
Had a nice, four day stretch at home to work on a variety of artwork. Began an ambitious splash-page painting of the Mesilla shootout (January CG) complete with clarinet beatings and French horn whipping (as opposed to pistol whipping). Lots of dust, lots of blood, lots of anatomical problems. Hope to finish tonight.

Also finished an overview of the Burnside rifles duel at forty paces, and by the way, I'm assuming that in a duel like this, the two stood back to back in classic duel stance? Then each stepped off forty paces, which would make it eighty paces apart? I actually stepped this off on our road out front to see what that would look like and that's a fair distance for rifle shooting, especially when it was reported to be quite windy and dusty on the day of the duel at Tubac, A.T. (both missed, more than once).

Hope I get this one right. Gee, I wonder what ol' Coleridge has to say about this?

"Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, And hope without an object cannot live."
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

November 27, 2009
Time to catch up on some William H. Bonney clarifications. Last week, on the Kid's alleged birthday, I launched off on a series of statements that caught the eye of a certain scholar in Chalfont Saint Giles, England. Here are his corrections and the subsequent exchange:

"Actually Our Billy told the 1880 census taker (or the census taker, deciding discretion was the better part of valor, skipped that particular house and wrote down the first thing that came into his head) he was born in Missouri, Bob, not New Orleans, and that he was 22, not 24 or 25. Did he lie or did the census taker?

"His brother(?)/half-brother(?) Joe, told at least two census-takers he (Joe) was born in New York. Even more interestingly, he told one of them his father was a New Yorker and his mother was born in England, (so much for the "jolly Irish lady") then thirty years later told another census-taker they were both born in New York. Mind you, by then Joe had probably worked his way through more than a few barrels of nirvana juice, so no telling what condition his brain was in.

"And one more thing: although I was indeed a child prodigy and wrote short stories that drove Hemingway mad with jealousy, I sure as hell never located the Tunstall papers when I was nineteen. But hey, you go ahead f--- up the legend as much as you like, everyone else does.

Love to Kathy,

—Fred Nolan

I sent Fred an email telling him I knew he would correct my gaffs, and he sent me back this missive:

Bob,
If I had known you were relying on me to correct you I'd have let you wallow in it, but because I'm such a sweetheart, I'll let it ride. I just hope you realize what priceless pearls of wisdom I send you.
—Fred

Fred,
I do realize how priceless the gems are that you send me and I'll never forget how you corrected—via fax machine!— my entire BTK book in 1996. That was true friendship. You didn't have to do that and I will never forget it. Thanks again.
—BBB

Bob,
You are welcome. As for the discovery of the Tunstall documents (1956, Bob, 1956) , here's the typically-modest intro I wrote for the new edition of THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JHT which has just been published by Sunstone Press (plug, plug!!!).

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JOHN HENRY TUNSTALL
Revised Edition with a New Foreword by the Author and an Addendum with Corrections
By Frederick Nolan

The letters and diaries of John Henry Tunstall, a young rancher-Englishman murdered in 1878 during New Mexico Territory’s Lincoln County War.

Order from Sunstone: (800) 243-5644
or BUY FROM AMAZON

In 1956, Frederick Nolan, then 25, located in the archives of the British Foreign Office a substantial file of original correspondence between the British and American governments, the family of John Tunstall, and many of the participants in the New Mexico Territory’s Lincoln County War. Soon after this he was given unconditional access to Tunstall’s letters and diaries, and three and a half years later—although he had never set foot in the United States—completed a biography based upon the sympathetically-edited letters and diaries of the young English rancher whose brutal murder in February, 1878, triggered the bitter and unrelenting violence that followed.

His widely-acclaimed debut is recognized today as a breakthrough work which completely revolutionized historical understanding of the personalities and events of New Mexico’s Lincoln County War and in the process changed forever the way the subject would be written about. The first book ever to link those events to the shadowy cabal known as the Santa Fe Ring, the first book ever to place Billy the Kid in the true context of his time, the first book ever to make available the letters of such men as Alexander McSween, Huston Chapman, and the hitherto unknown Robert Widenmann, it set new standards for both research and writing in this field and in the process became a classic. It is augmented in this edition with a new foreword and a supplement of corrections to the first edition which incorporates the author’s more recent historical and biographical research.

Frederick Nolan is widely recognized as the world’s leading authority on the history of Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War and both he and his work on the subject have been garlanded with honors. He has received the Border Regional Library Association of Texas’ Award for Literary Excellence, the first France V. Scholes Prize from the Historical Society of New Mexico, and the first J. Evetts Haley Fellowship from the Haley Memorial Library in Midland, Texas. The Western Outlaw-Lawman History Association has presented him with its highest honor, the Glenn Shirley Award, for his lifetime contribution to outlaw-lawman history and The Westerners Foundation has named his The West of Billy the Kid one of the 100 most important 20th-century historical works on the American West. In 2007 the National Outlaw-Lawman Association awarded him its prestigious William D. Reynolds Award in recognition of his outstanding research and writing in Western history and in 2008 True West magazine named him “Best Living Non-Fiction Writer.” Among his other books about the West are an annotated edition of Pat Garrett’s Authentic Life of Billy the Kid; Bad Blood: the Life and Times of the Horrell Brothers; The West of Billy the Kid; and The Lincoln County War, the latter from Sunstone Press in a new edition. He lives in England.

Softcover:
7 X 10
ISBN: 978-0-86534722-9
548 pp., $45.00

Meanwhile, another Billy the Kid author (hint: the one who calls Paul Hutton a "shape shifting cuckoo bird") wrote this gem of a paragraph about a certain birth:

“Her daydreaming resumed. November 23, 1859. It was Billy’s birth. All she remembered was the bliss. In a New York tenement, a woman splayed wide her legs into a weightless crouch as, abandoned to passion, her perspiration-wet hair snaked out on the bed and her eyes rolled up in ecstasy. “Is there no shame in this woman?” the midwife thought. Distractedly, she was kneading milk-distended breasts, frustrated by their covering smock, as sliding boy parts and stiff cord pressed her, and brilliant light glory filled her skull. Away he slipped into stranger’s hands. Behind spasmed orgasmic thighs.”
—Gale Cooper, Joy of The Birds

"Mama, don't let your babies with sliding boy parts grow up to be cowboys/and/or/outlaws."
—Bob B.B. Boberson

November 25, 2009
Finished Blazing Pols at 3:30. Would have finished earlier but my computer kept beeping. When there are comments on my blog I get a beep and a link to approve them and yesterday's Brokeback Mountain post created a three ring circus of comment.

Here's the finished scratchboard:

Still didn't get those pistols quite right, but it'll have to do. A 1,200 dpi tiff went down to our art director, Dan The Man, at 4:30 and now we'll see what magic he works for the cover.

"Measure yourself by your best moments, not by your worst. We are too prone to judge ourselves by our moments of despondency and depression."
—Robert Johnson

November 25, 2009
Worked all afternoon yesterday on the the Blazing Pols illustration. After some 35 sketches, finally got a decent looking drawing of a gunfighting elephant at about two:

Utilizing the old spreading-lead-on-the-back-of-tracing-paper trick, I transferred that sketch to an expensive sheet of Essdee Scratchboard ($22 a sheet) and laid in the fightingi elephant and the head of the dying jackass:

So far, so good (yes, I changed the derby into an Uncle Sam hat because I knew that Dan The Man will probably want to carve that hat and put it in front of the True West logo). Unfortunately I had drawn myself into a corner (something I'm very good at). Although the editorial style cartoon I'm emulating harkens to the 1890s and early 1900s, the fight itself took place in 1871, so now I'm facing a dilemma. If an editorial cartoonist was drawing a cartoon of a fight that took place thirty years earlier, would he make the weapons authentic to that time? Perhaps, but this is supposed to be an allegorical representation of the fight, like you would see in a daily newspaper. Still, this is True West, so I opted for a percussion Colt as the jackass's weapons:

Rather than blunder onto the Essdee Scratchboard and try and fake my way through the pistol grips and frock coat folds, I decided to go into work this morning and have our production manager Robert Ray take a model jackass out in the back and pose those effects:

Now that is one fine jackass pose.

"He was grinnin' like a jackass eatin' prickly pear."
—Old Vaquero Saying

November 24, 2009
According to the Hollywood Reporter "Westerns are hot this year." In addition to Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) coming out next spring, FX is "saddling up for Reconstruction, a period Western set in a Missouri town during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era and centers on Jason, a proper East Coast gentleman who returns from the war a changed man and seeks refuge in a border state."

The producers, Joshua Brand and Peter Horton, evidently came up with the premise when discussing the economic crisis and the situation in the Middle East, including war-ravaged Iraq. "We thought a good way to tell the story would be through the allegory of the Western," Horton said.

I've also heard through the grapevine that Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian is going into production and is schedule to be released sometime in 2011.

Speaking of contemporary Westerns, the Autry National Center in LA is hosting an installation called "Whatever happened to Ennis del Mar?" Ennis, of course, was the Heath Ledger character in the controversial gay cowboy flick Brokeback Mountain. The Autry will be recognizing "the contributions of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community to the American West."

This series Out West (get it? Out of the closet) is scheduled to take place over the next twelve months, will feature Western scholars, authors, artists, politicians, musicians, and friends of Western LGBTs in discussions and gallery talks at the Autry. Programs currently being considered examine LGBT Native Americans, LGBT rodeo culture, LGBT political strides including the struggle for marriage equality, and LGBT contributions to the Western arts.

“'What Ever Happened to Ennis del Mar?' is the first program in the Out West series. When Gene Autry issued his ten-point 'Cowboy Code' in the 1940s, he could not have anticipated the story of Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, but the messages of tolerance, fairness, and integrity the Code promotes speak to the acceptance for which the Brokeback Mountain characters longed." Their story is the departure point for this first discussion which is scheduled for December 13.

Some have asked why there wasn't a lesbian counterpart to Brokeback Mountain and someone sent me this broadside:

How You Know You Are Still a Republican? if you are more upset about Brokeback Mountain than Abu Ghraib.

Ha.

Still working out the kinks in the Blazing Pols cover illustration. Did a tight rough scratchboard yesterday at lunchtime:

Need to ground the elephant a bit more and bring out his suit of clothes a bit more. Also, need to spend some time on the gun hands. Want them to be a bit more accurate and stylish. On the home stretch, hope to finish tonight.

"Watch what people are cynical about and one can often discover what they lack."
—George S. Patton

November 23, 2009
Today is allegedly Billy the Kid's birthday. We say allegedly because it appears Ash Upson gave the date to the Kid when he co-wrote The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid in 1881. Upson had actually roomed for a short time at the McCarty household in Silver City when the Kid's mama was still alive and taking in boarders to make ends meet. After the Kid's death at the hands of Pat Garrett, Upson either remembered the Kid's birth date because they shared the same birthday, or, Upson gave him his own birth date and called it a day.

The Kid? Oh, he lied about everything. He told a census taker in 1880 that he was 24 or 25 and that he was from New Orleans. The only guy who could have told us is Billy's half-brother and some boneheaded migrant typo didn't think it was important to know and didn't ask.

So suspect, or not, this is the day we give thanks to the Pecos Psychopath (as my wife not so fondly calls him).

How fitting that I just finished reading a new book on Billy titled To Hell On A Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, And the Epic Chase to Justice in The Old West, by Mark Lee Gardner which is coming out any day now.

As I mentioned the other day, there are over 1,000 books on Billy the Kid and as my alma mater, The University of Arizona Press told me when I submitted my Billy book proposal in 1991: "Just what the world needs, another book on Billy the Kid." That was probably a couple dozen Billy books ago and today, even I am suspect of another rehash of the same old stuff.

What started as a trickle of information has ended up a deluge of discovered documents and diaries (Fred Nolan's 1950 discovery of the Tunstall diaries in England for example). From secret government reports to depression era interviews by work project folks, we now know quite a bit about the Lincoln County War and the warriors who fought in it, prosecuted it and benefited from it.

What we still don't know could fill a book, (The Sex Life of Billy the Kid, for example written by a friend of mine) but that's another story.

Gardner opens the story at the Las Vegas, New Mexico train station where Pat Garrett's posse stands off a Vegas mob. Expertly marshaling all the known facts and utilizing quotes from the public record, the author spins out a concise and quick moving tale, bouncing forward and backward as he moves along.

Even though I have been reading and studying this story for almost a half century, I still found things in almost every episode I didn't know. For example, in the train standoff, some of the hispanos gathered around a pile of railroad ties. Didn't know that.

Gardner hits all of the high spots and doesn't dilly dally. Some episodes in the Kid's life zip by in a paragraph, but that paragraph contains everything we know. Gardner also takes the story up through the Brushy Bill fiasco and even includes the Steve Sederwall diggging up Billy controversy.

One episode which I didn't use in my book is the George Curry, Block Ranch memoirs where he talks about a suppertime visitor who talked about Garrett's election, then rides away saying, "You are a good cook and a good fellow, but if you think Pat Garrett is going to carry this precinct for sheriff, you are a damned poor politician." That episode was off limits for many years and without permission, authors were threatened with a lawsuit.

Something happened since I published my own book (I really wanted to use that) in 1992.

Perhaps the best part of the book for me, is the section on the death of Pat Garrett. All of the controversial aspects are covered (Killin' Jim Miller's alleged motive to be there).

I plan on reading it again, just for grins. Gardner really takes you to New Mexico and takes you on a ride, and when you think about it, that's what we want. A Good Ride to Hell On A Fast Horse.

"Well boys you may all do exactly as you please. As for me, I propose to stay right here in this country and steal myself a living."
—Billy the Kid

November 23, 2009
Had a very nice weekend. On Saturday night, Charlie and Linda Waters came down from Vegas for Dan Harshberger's birthday dinner at our house. The Waters brought three bottles of Argentina wine and I made Tacos de Bell. We had a grand time.

On Sunday morning, the Waters met Kathy and I, and our son Thomas Charles (yes, he's named for Charlie Waters) at the Matador at Second Street and Monroe deep inside the Beast. While we were all enjoying our huevos rancheros, in walked Jimmy Covarrubias, former MCUHS classmate and fellow artist. Jimmy and his compadres (from the Latin American Art Alliance) are opening a Latin Art Gallery just down the street and, after breakfast, we all went down there to see the layout. Fun seeing Jimmy. He has done well for himself. Check out his artwork.

Worked more on Blazing Pols (January cover story for True West) yesterday afternoon:

Trying to marry the dying donkey head to a frontier gunfighter body, but in that style of 1890s editorial cartooning. Utiliized several old bound editions of Punch (from 1881) to capture the cross hatching techniques:

I bought the Punch original copies in Santa Fe many years ago. I think I paid $400 for the set, but I have spent countless hours enjoying them and copying the superior pen and ink styles inside of each. Finally, came up with an approximation of a rogue (and tipsy) elephant:

Here, I sketched in a derringer in the Elephant's trunk, but I may change that to a liquor bottle. Going to be a sweet cover. Hope to have something today to send down for Dan The Man to work on.

"Being good is just a matter of termperament in the end."
—Iris Murdoch