Much information (some of it factual, a lot of it fictional) is available about the famous gunfighters of the Old West--the Jameses, Billy the Kid, Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, John Wesley Hardin, and that latter-day folk idol, Butch Cassidy. Dozens of less-well-known but sometimes even more murderous gunslingers--such men as Cullen Baker, Harvey Logan, Longhaired Jim Courtright, and Mysterious Dave Mather--have received only scant mention in scattered accounts.

This encyclopedia--a who's who of the gunfighting West-provides a compilation of facts, sifted myths, folklore, and...