Badge and Buckshot is a comprehensive book at many of the once-famous peace officers and outlaws of Old California. Told here for the first time are the true stories of Ben Thorn, the iron-willed but scandal-plagued sheriff of Calaveras County; John C. Boggs, the fast-shooting nemesis of the Tom Bell and Rattlesnake Dick gangs; Ben and Dudley Johnson, the notorious "Tulare Twins"; Kid Thompson, whose train-robbing exploits took place just blocks from present-day Los Angeles film and television studios; and Coates-Frost feud, California's bloodiest vendetta, which endured more than twenty...

Harry Morse - gunfighter, manhunter, sleuth - was among the West's most famous lawmen. Elected sheriff of Alameda County, California, in 1864, he went on to become San Francisco's foremost private detective. His career spanned five decades. In this biography, John Boessenecker brings Morse's now-forgotten story to light, chronicling not only the lawman's remarkable adventures but also the turbulent times in which he lived. Armed only with raw courage and a Colt revolver, Morse squared off against a small army of desperadoes and beat them at their own game. He shot to death the notorious...

Gunfights and general lawlessness were common in the frontier cities of the American West, and no city saw more violence than Los Angeles in the 1850s. In Reminiscences of a Ranger, Horace Bell reports that "midnight raids and open day robbery and assassinations of defenseless or unsuspecting Americans were of almost daily occurrence" in southern California. To combat this lawlessness, in 1853 the citizens of Los Angeles formed a volunteer mounted police force known as the Los Angeles Rangers to keep the peace within the city and to hunt bandits and murderers in the surrounding region. The...