Our Enduring Fascination With The Man In Black

December 16, 2016
   In the just-wrapped first season of the HBO series "Westworld" one of the main characters is simply called "The Man In Black."

The Man In Black is played wonderfully by Ed Harris

   Of course, to someone my age, "The Man In Black" conjures up a slightly different visage:

Johnny Cash Is The Man In Black

But even Cash is a latecomer to the image. Check out this cat:

The Duke As The Man In Black

   Zorro could easily be called the Hombre In Black. There were quite a few early cowboy stars who preferred all black, like Lash LaRue, Hopalong Cassidy, and even Denzel Washington in the new "Magnificent 7." Denzel sported an all-black outfit with a black horse and saddle to boot. My question is, where did this idea originate? Is The Man In Black a Twentieth Century concept, or are there earlier incarnations?

"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well."

—Robert Louis Stevenson

Chris Casey Flashes His True West Maniac Card With Pride

December 16, 2016
   I have asked our True West Maniacs to send me a picture of themselves flashing their card. Chris Casey, of Stillwater, Oklahoma fame, sent me his this morning.

Chris Casey's True West Maniac Card

My Maniac card (issued sometime in the early 2000's) has certainly seen better days; but, it has outlived 3 wallets and it has been carried to Spaghetti Western locations in Spain, many a Golden Boot event, to Lone Pine, to Vasquez Rocks and Agua Dulce, to Old Tucson, Mescal, Tombstone, Sonora (California and Mexico!), Columbia (CA), all over Oklahoma and Texas, New Mexico, and well...just about everywhere.   My card is a survivor.  Ha! But, I like it and I am proud to carry it! 

—Chris Casey

Get Ready for Yuma-Ma!

December 15, 2016
   By now, if you've been following along, you've seen a couple dozen sketches of one determined woman.

Daily Whip Out: "Sarah Brava On The Banks of The Colorado"

   Although she comes down to us via the random and ridiculous contortions of history as Sarah Bowman, I am going to be calling her Sarah Brava for two reasons: one is her last name is a mess of alleged names, married names and vague guessing game names (see the contorted examples in the Elliott quote, below). And, two, I wanted her to have a solid name for my purposes and Brava is, of course, Spanglish for a brave and determined woman. Comprende?

   Plus, it's proprietary.

Daily Whip Out: "Yuma-Ma!"

   Sarah is the first resident of Yuma and that is a historic fact. She is therefore the Mother of the town, which, I believe, makes her Yuma-Ma! And yes, I did a cartoon back in the eighties using that exact name, which I came up with for an advertising slogan for the town that winter forgot (another facetious slogan I came up with which they never used.)

   I see her visage as somewhere between Rosie The Riveter and Xena-Princess Warrior.

Rosie The Riveter, by Norman Rockwell

   A large, muscular woman, but still attractive. Not easy to do, and my hat is way off to Norman. Damn, that guy was good.

   I was interviewed by Jackson Polk and Melissa Sargent on El Paso KTSM radio last Saturday and spent most of the interview talking about The Great Western since Sarah spent some quality time in old Hell Paso. Here is the interview if you want to hear it (click on hour one):

http://www.elpasogold.com/uncategorized/12-10-16/

   One thing is clear: I am finally closing in on this brave and determined pioneer character and you can expect big things from this big woman.

"She was married to her second husband, whose name is variously spelled Bourdette, Bourget, Bourginnnis and Bourkyte. The man was probably Charles Bourgette of the Fifth INfantry, but he remains a shadowy figure, and his relationship with Sarah was less than permanent. Sarah was always looking for new romantic mountains to climb."

—J.F. Elliott, "The Great Western: Sarah Bowman, Mother and Mistress to the U.S. Army" in the Journal of Arizona History

Calling All Maniacs

December 16, 2016
   My friend John Langellier often gets movie gigs because of his expertise on U.S. cavalry gear and history. John was the history consultant on "Geronimo" among many other Westerns. Last week he was on a movie set in New Mexico and the authentic cavalry gear guy on the movie is a well known industry pro who is a big fan of True West magazine. How big?

David Carrico proudly displays his True West Maniac card.

   Back when we first bought the magazine in 1999 I realized that the general public was quite fickle about history but that there was a certain breed of cat who is, well, crazy about the Old West and will walk a mile just to see an authentic photo, weapon or Western movie. I actually arrived at this concept when I was testing the waters to see if I should do my first book on Billy the Kid back in 1991. I contacted 21 different publishers and they all turned me down. One of them said, "Just what the world needs, another book on Billy the Kid." However, one of the publishers, Jim Earle, liked the idea but balked at doing color (see his quote, below).

   Thanks to Carole Glenn and R.G. Robertson, among others, we launched the True West Maniac Club and offered lifetime subscriptions for the first 1,000 who signed up. David, above, was one of them, and to this day he carries his card in his wallet to flash when he needs to show off his street cred.

   Currently there are several thousand Maniacs out there (I will get the actual number) and I want to acknowledge and honor you all. Please send me a photograph of yourself holding your card. And please include your number.

"There are 5,000 maniacs out there who will buy anything that has to do with the history of the West."

—Jim Earle, publisher, Early West Books, College Station, Texas

The Moment Ishmael Realized He Was Playing Monte With The Muerte Gang

December 14, 2016
   Got up this morning in a Mexican vaquero kind of mood. Love those old style sugarloafs.

Daily Whip Out: "The Moment Ishmael Realized

He Was Playing Monte With The Muerte Gang"

   I've got to give a shout-out to Chris Casey who turned me on to several 1940s Mexican Westerns and these two scenes (above and below) are from one of those films.

Daily Whip Out: "El Jefe Lays Down The Law"

   Yesterday, a friend of mine was looking through a stack of my paintings and he said, "you sure like weather, don't you?" 

Daily Whip Out: "Dust Storm Blows Thru Blackhawk, Nevada"

   When I acknowledged this is true, he added, "I remember when we first met and I asked you your favorite Western, you said you liked 'McCabe & Mrs. Miller' because of the weather." I nodded in the affirmative, and then he added, "That is about the gayest reason for liking a Western I have ever heard."

"People Are Idiots And I Can Prove It"

—the title of just one of Larry Winget's best selling books

Calling All Dusters in Old Photographs?

December 13, 2016
   We know the James-Younger boys were allegedly wearing dusters at the attempted Northfield bank robbery (1876) but, to my knowledge there has never been any photos of them in dusters (after the capture of the Youngers and Charlie Pitt's body, etc.). We have always assumed dusters were around because of this incident. Here is the closest Old West photo I can find that appears to show someone wearing a duster:

An alleged stage robbery in progress with the bandit wearing a duster.

   I believe this photo was taken in the early 1900s and the highway robber is standing in the back with what appears to be a duster on, although it could also just as easily be described as an artist's smock. The story goes that one of the passengers had a Brownie and asked if he could take a photo. It seems a tad too precious to me—and also a tad late—but at any rate, this is the closet image I can find of an Old West character wearing a full blown duster.

"Killin" Jim Miller in a long coat

   Not really a duster, but it's long enough. I don't recall seeing dusters in photographs until the early auto era. Can anyone provide an image from the 1800s of anyone wearing a duster? Well, hold your horses, here's an image posted by Jerrie Jennings Paschal on Facebook:

Two cowboys wearing hats and boots; one wears a duster, the other a slicker
Photographer unknown, ca. 1885
2004.013
Purchase by Donald C. & Elizabeth M. Dickinson Research Center

The man on the left wears a white or tan duster made of heavy linen or lightweight canvas with a small, split, flop-over collar. The duster's sides laid over both sides of the horse's rib cage. Introduced before the 1880s, the slicker (also known as saddle coat and pommel yellow slicker), worn by the man on the right, was made of heavy cloth, canvas or duck, and waterproofed with linseed oil. When worn, the slicker covered the entire saddle as well as the rider and ensured a dry seat.

And, of course, when it rains, it pours. Here's a certain Texas boy wearing a duster:

Sam Houston, circa 1857 wearing a duster. Courtesy of Gary Zaboly

   And, leave it to Gay Mathis to find an even cooler image of a Texas Ranger:

James Francis Blair, circa 1848, a private in Samuel Walker's company

of Texas Rangers during the early months of the Mexican War, wearing

 a broad brimmed palmetto hat and a light-colored linen duster,

popular amongst the Rangers.

   Of course, it's in the so-called Spaghetti Westerns in the late 1960s that we get the proliferation of dusters in a Western movie:

Al Mulock (at left), Jack Elan and Woody Strode face off against Charles Bronson

 in the epic open of Sergio Leone's "Once Upon A Time In The West"

"The dusters were a mania of [Sergio's] and they became a mania of the time as well. We went to look at costumes at Western Costume in California, and we happened to find these beautiful dusters, which were dustcoats for riding. They had also been shown in the film by John Ford, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, in the flashback. They were white, so we changed them to chocolate brown. Before we changed them, they looked like they were worn by ice cream vendors."
—Carlo Simi, production designer for "Once Upon A Time In The West"

Garage Billys And Billy Kilmer

December 12, 2016
   It's been said that no one who can read has ever successfully cleaned out an attic, and the same is true of an artist looking in the garage for something specific. Found three Kid pics, instead, and just had to tweak two of them.

Daily Whip Out: "Billy The Redeemer."

   Some people forget that Val Kilmer has not only played Doc Holliday, but he also played the boy outlaw as well:

Daily Whip Out: "Billy Kilmer"

And if you're getting nitpicky, Val also played Wyatt Earp in another flick.

Daily Whip Out: "Val Earp"

"I'm not writing literature. My books are about killing people."

—Berward Cornell, prolific historical novelist, "The Flame Bearer"

The Western Vs. "Westworld"

December 11, 2016
   Okay, I just watched the last episode of HBO's first season of "Westworld," and I have one thing I need to get off my chest: I hated the hats.

   That said, it was kind of the point to the whole damn show. The conceit of the show strip mines the John Ford engineered version of the "settling of the West." it's no accident that one of the chief engineers of the futuristic theme park is named Ford.

   According to HBO's in-house numbers, over 11 million people have been watching the series on all platforms (cable, iPads and mobile devices, etc.).

   We can agree that the Western story, as created by Owen Wister, Zane Grey and John Ford (especially John Ford!) is a concocted story. It's mostly myth-making legitimized by Frederick Jackson Turner as our country's creation story. I'll have much more to say about the plot and the points made, and not so subtly made, but the bottom line is, this show got people's attention, and since it is a Western, or a half-assed-Western, or, a half-a-wannabe-Western, I believe True West has to step up and weigh in on it. Expect to see more in-depth analysis from our astute contributing editors.

   Anyway, back to the hats. They are awful, at least to a historical accuracy fanatic like myself. That the younger version of William wears a big, ol' Who-Shot-JR?-1970s-styled-bull-rider hat just looks silly, to me, but, as my friend Paul Andrew Hutton so aptly puts it, "That is exactly the point. It doesn't matter. Everything is a dream, within a dream."

   Here's C. Neil William's take on it: "It's a theme park catering to people's perceptions of the west, and therefore much more about the Western than any real, historical west...and the Western is a screwed-up, hodgepodge of ideas and imagination. So in its way, 'Westworld' is dead on accurate, JR hats included."

   Come to find out, according to Sigmund Freud, in his theory of dream analysis, a "hat" stands in for a, well, I'm slightly embarrassed to say this, but it stands in for a "penis." Perhaps this explains why I have always opted for big-brimmed shadetree hat styles.

   "Hey, Boze, nice penis compensation on your head, there." In my defense, I have never ducked the accusation of being "all hat, no cattle." Does any of this bother me?

   In your dreams.

   Bottom line: we want to know what you think of the show. So, weigh in and let 'er rip.

"The story that lasts is the best myth. Whoever comes up with the best fairy tail wins. It has nothing to do with what actually happened."
—Natalie Portman

Marty Robbins On The Cover?

December 9, 2016
   As you know we are always looking around for good history and sometimes we find it right in our own back yard.

Dan The Man Harshberger's proposed cover layout 

   Our good friend Marshall Trimble has written a feature for us on the true life of The King of The Gunfighter ballad. Here's just a small taste of the wonderful piece:

Big Iron On His Hip
By Marshall Trimble

In 1947, Ole Dame Fortune lent a helping hand. He’d been a

regular at Vern and Don’s, a local bar on east Van Buren Street in

Phoenix where he made the acquaintance of Frankie Starr, the

featured artist in the band. One evening Frankie came over and said

their guitar player was missing and could he fill in. He later recalled, “I

couldn’t play very well but I could play better than Frankie.”

The gig lasted three hours and afterwards Frankie handed him a

ten-dollar bill. For a guy making a dollar an hour hauling brick Martin

thought he’d been overpaid but Frankie told him that was union scale.

He played with the band the next two nights and pocketed thirty

dollars. When the guitar player he replaced left town Martin became

lead guitar player in the band. At last he was making money for doing

something he loved.

His next break came one night when Frankie was sick and asked

Martin to fill in. He later recalled that he was so shy and self-

conscience he couldn’t even look at the audience. He got behind the

microphone, stared at the floor and performed his first song on stage,

Eddy Arnold’s, Many Tears Ago.


The audience liked him but Martin would later say modestly, “I

think they just felt sorry for me.”

Working with Frankie Starr, Martin learned a lot about interacting

and engaging with his audience. It would take a while but engaging

his audience was something that would make him one of country

music’s most beloved performers.

Frankie Starr was also responsible for Martin landing his first

gig on the radio. Calling themselves the K Bar Boys, they began

singing on KTYL Radio in Mesa. The station had a large window in

front and folks would pull up outside the studio and watch the show.

Martin was still taking a lot of needling from his blue-collar-

worker brothers about making a living playing music, advising him to

get a “real job.” One day a friend, Harry Talmachoff, suggested he

shorten his name to Marty Robbins.

He agreed, besides he thought, “Marty Robbins” would look

much better on a record label. Although he never changed his name

legally he would be forever known as Marty Robbins.

   That's the history of how he got his stage name. You'll get the rest of the story in an upcoming issue of True West magazine.

"To the town of Agua Fria rode a stranger one fine day
Hardly spoke to folks around him, didn't have too much to say,
No one dared to ask his business, no one dared to make a slip
The stranger there among them had a big iron on his hip,
Big iron on his hip."

—Marty Robbins, "Big Iron On His Hip" from the classic album "Gunfighter Ballads,"

Happy Doc Holliday to You!

December 8, 2016
   Here's a nifty little, ahem, Holliday piece I have been tweaking and noodling on for a couple years. I found it in my Verdict's Out pile this morning and gave it a couple more strokes. As far as I'm concerned, it's ready for, ahem, consumption.

Daily Whip Out: "Doc & Wyatt Unlimber Their Smoke Wagons"

   Here's the deal: Artprints like this sell for $50, but just because I love and admire all the people who read this blog, I am offering you this art print for $20, while supplies last. (Hint: I'm ordering 25.) There's only one catch: you have to be a subscriber to True West magazine. If you qualify, send your money to me at:

BBB: Doc & Wyatt Artprint Offer
PO Box 4410
Cave Creek, AZ 85327

  When I get your order, I'll mail you the artprint. If you want it custom signed, put that in a note with your check.  It's that simple. This deal is only good until the 19th. It's my way of saying thank you to all my compadres.

"Holy Mole, Dude, you can't make any money off of this deal. What the hell are you doing?"
—Ken Amorosano, my partner and COO of True West magazine

The Great Western Western

December 7, 2016
   Got The Great Western Western on the brain (that's not a typo, I see her story as a Western movie). Went home for lunch and took another swing at her massive visage, hard on the banks of the Coloroado.

Daily Whip Out: "Her Bosoms Shimmered In The Moonlight."

   One historic quibble: the old time Colorado River, before the dams, was not this blue.

"Too thick to drink, too thin to plow."
—Old Vaquero Saying about the Colorado River

The Deadly Dangerous Fifteen Hand Mammoth Jack

December 6, 2016
   So, I woke up the other day and realized The Great Western should ride a big, red, mammoth jack.

Daily Whip Out: "The Deadly Dangerous Fifteen Hand Mammoth Jack"

   Makes sense: a big bad girl would gravitate towards a big, bad jack to ride. So, how realistic is this for the Great Western to ride one of these demonic mules? I asked a mammoth jack expert and here are his comments:

     "Fifteen hand jacks are not concerned about the gentle ways of horse whispering. Most people
keep them in a fortified stall unless it is breeding time. A fifteen hand mammoth jack can be more dangerous than a 17 hand Belgian or Percheron stallion. They are more deadly dangerous. A chain on a strap over their nose will seldom even bend their neck if they take off. I doubt if a zebra stallion could be much worse. A fifteen hand mammoth jack would never back down in a fight to the death with a 17 hand ton draft stud. When they charge into battle, their senses shut down and they have no feeling, so pain means nothing. If a horse charges into battle at 35 MPH, a mammoth jack charges at 18 MPH, and while his charge isn't as fast as a horse,  the jack hits everything in his way like a mad bull.

   "Thousands of middle-aged people switch to riding a mammoth. They are slow, steady and strong and they will walk all day. But a breeding jack is a demon far removed from backyard, pet mammoth geldings. If you ever make a movie of The Great Western or Mickey Free and decide to put them on real mammoth jacks, it will be a real challenge.

Daily Whip Out: "The Great Western On Her Big, Bad Jack"

  "True, Roy Rogers used Trigger—a stud—in films for twenty years, but a mammoth jack on a film set would be one dangerous unpredictable sucker to control from the beginning to the end. If they decide to take off and you have a hold of him, you might as well pull on his tail as try and stop him with the reins."
—Raymond Isenberg

Daily Whip Out: "Mickey Free On His Mammoth Jack"

"A mule is like a horse, but more so."
—General Crook

My Pledge to You

December 5, 2016
   Last weekend I awoke in the middle of the night, still high on tequila and Neil Young. I had stumbled on a new song, "My Pledge," which was recommended to me by Napster, a name I hate, by the way, because of the little rat-bastard-music-thief who came up with the name and the shame. My current iPhone music provider was originally called Rhapsody ($9.99 a mo), but they inexplicably changed their name to align themselves with the Twat-head who has encouraged an entire generation that it is perfectly fine to steal from artists and not pay them.

Daily Whip Out: "Mr. Rockabilly"

   But I digress.

   Napster aside, I was actually in a great mood, buoyed by the artistic genius of Neil Young ("A Southern man don't need him around anyhow. . ."). How many great songs has he written? I can think of a dozen that are in my top twenty of all time (see the lyrics to just one, below). Anyway, while the Stones are scraping the bottom of the blues barrel and Paul McCartney can't sing his way out of a paper bag anymore, much less write something original (Okay, Mac gets a pass here because he's probably way over his limit of hit songs anyway), but here comes this Old Man ("take a look at me, I'm a lot like you. . .") who pulls off this amazing new song, with a soaring creativity that takes my breath away. Imagine being in the studio and the singer says, "Okay, I'm going to do this as a talking song. You see this guy is talking to a judge and he swears to tell the truth and nothing but the truth and he's talking along, but on the first line of each stanza I'm going to sing over my talking voice, in a falsetto overdub, and I won't sing the entire stanza, just the first six or seven words and then I'll drop off. It's just going to be me, my acoustic guitar and a drummer. But I don't want ANY fills, just a snare and a bass drum. Trust me, it's going to be epic."

   And for crying out loud, it is! Best song of the year: Neil Young's "My Pledge." Get yours today on Napster.

"Stick around while the clown who is sick does the trick of disaster, for the race of my head and my face is moving much faster. Is it strange I should change, I don't know, why don't you ask her."
—Neil Young, "Mr. Soul"

Forty days and forty nights: The Arkstorm of 1862

December 5, 2016
   When it comes to atmospherics I have often been compared to a certain British Master. On Saturday last, I decided to embrace the accusation.

Daily Whip Out: "An Ode to The Great Western And J.M.W. Turner"

   As I have been researching the life of The Great Western I ran across the date of a flood in Yuma that wiped out all the surrounding towns and made Fort Yuma an island. Googling the flood and the date I came upon this:

The Arkstorm of 1862
   In late December of 1861 a major artic airborne wave trough moved inland over the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and California and dropped heavy rain for 40 days and 40 nights. Following this biblical deluge, in early January of 1862, heavy snow fell in the mountains all the way down to the Central Valley. Then a series of warm rain followed, melting the snowcaps and sending water downhill at a rapid rate. There were four distinct rainy periods, starting in December of 1861, another just before Christmas and a third and four in the first weeks of January, 1862. A foot of snow, or more, covered the mountain passes to the north and then it got warm, too soon, and then it rained a warm rain and the water in the rivers became a mighty monster carrying ruin and destruction all along its course. The labor of a hundred men were swept away in a few moments time. Nine inches of rain fell in 36 hours

To paraphrase from the language of the day:

   The insatiate monster took everything in its path, crushing houses and grinding them in the maw of destruction, and sweeping all the broken fragments downriver at a frightening clip. In the light of Wednesday morning, a scene of desolation extended up and down the river bottom with Iron Works, foundry and machine shops all gone.

   Here's an eyewitness account:   

... I was a passenger on the old steamer Gem, from Sacramento to Red Bluff. The only way the pilot could tell where the channel of the river was, was by the cottonwood trees on each side of the river. The boat had to stop several times and take men out of the tops of trees and off the roofs of houses. In our trip up the river we met property of every description floating down—dead horses and cattle, sheep, hogs, houses, haystacks, household furniture, and everything imaginable was on its way for the ocean. Arriving at Red Bluff, there was water everywhere as far as the eye could reach, and what few bridges there had been in the country were all swept away.

”

   Dozens of wood houses, some two stories high, were simply lifted up and carried off by the flood, as was "all the firewood, most of the fences and sheds, all the poultry, cats, rats and many of the cows and horses". The Chinese in their poorly built shantytowns were disproportionately affected.

   In March of 1862, the Wool Growers Association reported that 100,000 sheep and 500,000 lambs were killed by the floods. Even oyster beds in San Francisco Bay near Oakland were reported to be dying from the effects of the immense amounts of freshwater entering the bay. Full of sediment, it covered the oyster beds. One-quarter of California's estimated 800,000 cattle were killed by the flood, accelerating the end of the cattle-based ranchero society. One-fourth to one-third of the state’s property was destroyed, and one home in eight was carried away or ruined by the flood-waters. Mining equipment such as sluices, flumes, wheels and derricks were carried away across the state. An early estimate of property damage was $10 million. However, later it was estimated that approximately one-quarter of the taxable real estate in the state of California was destroyed in the flood. Dependent on property taxes, the State of California went bankrupt. The governor, state legislature, and state employees were not paid for a year and a half.

Here's how it played out in Arizona:

   In western New Mexico Territory (Arizona and New Mexico were connected at this time), heavy rains fell in late January, causing severe flooding of the Colorado River and Gila River. On January 20, 1862, the Colorado River began to rise, and on the afternoon of January 22 it rose suddenly in three hours from an already high stage nearly 6 feet, overflowing its banks and turned Fort Yuma in California into an island in the midst of the Colorado River. At 1 o’clock on the morning of January 23, the river reached its crest. Jaeger City a mile down river from Fort Yuma, and Colorado City, across the Colorado River from it were washed away. The river overflowed its banks to the extent that there was water 20 feet deep on a ranch in the low-lying ground just above Arizona City where the Gila River joined the Colorado. The riverside home of steamboat entrepreneur George Alonzo Johnson and the nearby Hooper residence were the only places in the town unharmed because they were built on high ground. Colorado City had to be rebuilt on higher ground after the 1862 flood.

   The Gila River also flooded, covering its whole valley at its mouth where it met the Colorado from the sand hills on the south to the foothills on the north. Twenty miles to the east of Fort Yuma, it swept away most of the mining boomtown of Gila City along with a supply of hay being gathered there to supply the planned advance of the California Column into Confederate Arizona. Further east the road was flooded, buildings and vehicles swept away and traffic was disrupted for some time thereafter by the mud covering the road to Tucson. The great flood in the Gila and Colorado rivers, covered their bottom lands with mud. Much of the livestock along the rivers drowned and the crops of the Indians along the river were destroyed.

The overflow of the 1862 Colorado River spring flood waters reached the Salton Sink via the Alamo and New Rivers, filling it and creating a lake some 60 miles long and 30 miles wide. This catastrophic weather system has become known as the Arkstorm.

"When it rains, it pours."
—Old Vaquero Saying

An Angel Who Moonlights as A Massive Whore

December 2, 2016
   Still haunted by the conflicting truths about The Great Western. By most accounts she was an angelic nurse, and, at the same time, more than one admirer described her as "an enormous whore." Sylvester Mowry wrote in a letter to a friend, "Among her other good qualities she is an admirable 'pimp,'" for having procured for the flamboyant rogue a 17-year-old Mexican girl: "she is living with the 'Great Western' and comes up nights to my room."  Horndog Mowry was kicked out of Utah for trying to seduce the daugher-in-law of Brigham Young and he also fought a duel in Tubac against the editor of Arizona's only newspaper, who claimed, in print that Mowry was exaggerating Arizona's population to encourage migration. They met on the square with Burnside rifles and, after both missed, everyone retired to a keg of whiskey.

   Pioneer Jeff Ake claimed his father always called her, "The greatest whore in the West. . ."

   And, yet, when Olive Oatman was released from captivity, her escort "delivered her at Fort Yuma and she was cared for by a woman known as the Great Western and finally sent to an uncle in California." The troopers loved her and she allegedly received "rations for life" from Co. H 4th Infantry. According to Lt. Edward Tuttle, who arrived in 1863, The Great Western "had adopted three Mexican children and raised them (one boy and two girls) to maturity; the boy a fine cook; the girls helpers in her Laundry."

Daily Whip Out: "Midnight On The Colorado"

   Is it any wonder, she is haunting my dreams?

"She was a splendid example of the American Frontier woman."

—Lt. Edward D. Tuttle

Cover Boy Powhatan Clarke

December 1, 2016
   Back when The Top Secret Writer and I were busy doing the Mickey Free story, I became fascinated with one of the true life Medal of Honor soldiers in the Apache War:

Daily Whip Out: "Powhatan Clarke & Crew"

Fast forward to the current issue we are working on (February, 2017) and guess who is on the cover?

February, 2017 cover boy, Powhatan Clarke

"You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history."

—Daivd McCullough