The colorful figures of the western American frontier, the Indian fighters, the mountain men, the outlaws, and the lawmen, have been romanticized for more than a hundred years by writers who found it easier to invent history than the research it. "Bat" Masterson was one such character who cast a long shadow across the pages of western history as it has been routinely depicted.

"A legend in his own time," he was called in a television series produced in the 1960's. A legend he has becomeone firmly fixed in the popular imagination. But in his own time W.B. Masterson was a man, a...

The English essayist Charles Lamb once said, Man is a gaming animal. If he had known the American frontier gamblers depicted in this book, he might have added in spades, referring to the avidity with which these knight of the green cloth pursued their profession.

All of the pioneers who ventured into the American West of the nineteenth century were gamblers in a sense, betting on the land, the future, and themselves. They risked their fortunes and, sometimes, their very lives. And for those too impatient to wait for the bonanza of a rich ore strike, or for the cattle to multiply, or for...

Now, for the first time, Robert K. DeArment has told the full story of George Scarborough s life, illuminating his activity as a lawman during the final part of the nineteenth century and his controversial killings while wearing the badge-he was tried for murder on three occasions and acquitted each time."

Here for the first time is the complete life story of the controversial lawman Frank Canton, born Joe Horner, who, after conviction and imprisonment for armed robbery, escaped to change his name and transform himself into an ambitious, hard-working peace officer pursuing felons all over the western frontier for almost half a century.

Canton was active in widely separate sections of the country--Texas, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Alaska--during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth. Western historian Robert K. DeArment has tracked down the facts of...

Sam Bass is perhaps the most notorious Texas outlaw of the 1870s. Within four years he and his band robbed trains, stages, and stores from the Dakota Territory to the Mexican border. He was not a killer, and because the railroads and their high freight rates were unpopular, Bass quickly became a legendary hero. Nevertheless, Wells Fargo agents, railroad detectives, Texas Rangers, and posses of private citizens chased Bass from his hideout in Denton County, Texas, throughout the old Southwest until he was shot by Texas Rangers in an attempted bank robbery at Round Rock, Texas, in 1878.

John H. Holliday, D. D. S., better known as Doc Holliday, has become a legendary figure in the history of the American West. In "Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait, " Karen Holliday Tanner reveals the real man behind the legend. Shedding light on Holliday's early years, in a prominent Georgia family during the Civil War and Reconstruction, she examines the elements that shaped his destiny: his birth defect, the death of his mother and estrangement from his father, and the diagnosis of tuberculosis, which led to his journey west. The influence of Holliday's genteel upbringing never...

More than a century after his death in 1878, the mere mention of John Larn s name can trigger strong reactions along the Clear Fork of the Brazos River in northern Texas. In "Bravo of the Brazos," Robert K. DeArment tells for the first time the complete story of this enigmatic and controversial figure.

Larn was good-looking, well-mannered, and gentle around women and children. He was a successful rancher and renowned frontier sheriff. Yet he was also the charismatic leader of a vigilante committee that enjoyed widespread support. Before his death at age 29, Larn had killed or...

Bleeding Kansas has earned its name. A state already scarred from the violence wrought by the likes of John Brown and William Quantrill, Kansas witnessed further episodes of wanton bloodshed in the late nineteenth century when settlers poured into a supposedly peaceful frontier.

Focusing on the tumultuous years 18851892, Robert K. DeArment s compelling narrative is the first to reveal the complete story of the county seat wars that raged in Kansascontroversial episodes that made national news in the late 1900s but are largely unknown today.

With a story populated by some of the most...

Think gunfighter, and Wyatt Earp or Billy the Kid may come to mind, but what of Jim Moon? Joel Fowler? Zack Light? A host of other figures helped forge the gunfighter persona, but their stories have been lost to time. In a sequel to his "Deadly Dozen," celebrated western historian Robert K. DeArment now offers more biographical portraits of lesser-known gunfighters men who perhaps weren t glorified in legend or song, but who were rightfully notorious in their day.

DeArment has tracked down stories of gunmen from throughout the West characters you won t find in any of today s western...