Of all the wild characters of the Western frontier, gunfighters were certainly the most feared and the most legendary. Was it their bizarre moral code, their charisma, their temper, or their precise marksmanship that made them so memorable? They were not simply violent, for in the Wild West of the late 1800s, this was hardly unique. The gunfighters whose reputations have survived all had some extra characteristic that has kept them alive throughout history: mystery, depravity, good looks, dandyism, or morality.
Gunfighters were an integral part of the West and a direct result of its...