SO YOU WANNA BE A MARSHAL by Marisa Masterson

The Old West was wild for about seventy years--a long time to go without justice or law enforcement. Good thing President George Washington signed the law in 1789 that allowed for the creation of the United States Marshal Service. Without the federal marshal, the Wild West might have been, well, wilder.

Originally, marshals were charged with executing warrants. From the earliest days, these marshals were allowed to recruit local deputies or even temporary marshals to help them. Morgan and Wyatt Earp as well as "Doc" Holliday were examples of men hired as special deputies. They were made temporary marshals to deal with the Clanton gang in a little shootout that took place at a spot called the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.

Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Dodge City Peace Commission, 1883

A marshal didn't have to be someone with legal training or a spotless background. Men such as Wyatt Earp could have criminal acts in their past and still serve as a marshal. They simply needed a strong commitment to enforce the law as well as to execute warrants given them by a judge.



Bass Reeves was a man like this. He couldn't read, but he is well-known in history as a sucessful marshal in the Indian Territory. Someone would read the warrant to him which he then memorized. Reeves fearlessness and ability to speak five Native American languages worked in his favor as a marshal.

For my upcoming novel, The Teacher's Star, I used the wording from Bass Reeves Oath of Office (right). A lawman in need of help convinces my heroine to become a temporary marshal--

Delia’s brows flew upward. “So, you knew where I was headed? That’s why you sat by me?”

He gave an abrupt nod and reached into his inside coat pocket. His right fist gripped something tightly as he withdrew it. A piece of paper appeared in his left hand from his outside pocket.

“Swear—”

“You want me to cuss?” Was the man delirious?

“Sign. Like swearing in…to office.” The man thrust the paper toward her as if reaching up to her while he dangled from a cliff.

He wanted her to sign it? Easy enough.

She dug briefly in her oversized reticule and came up with a short pencil. Taking the paper, she filled in her name and the affixed her quick signature in what looked to be the correct spot.

“Read—to me.” He gagged and gripped his belly, face now snowy white.

Sneaking her wire-framed spectacles out of her bag, she slid them quickly up her nose and began to read softly to the suffering man.

“I, Delia Perkins, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute all lawful precepts, directed to the Marshal of the United States for the territory of Wyoming, under the authority of the United States—”

Her voice trailed off, alarm keeping her from closing her mouth. “What are you doing here?”

Mr. Jessup ignored her question. Between pains, he groaned out, “Finish it.”

Adventure, obedience, pride. She didn’t know which of these drove her at that moment. Delia opened her mouth and wholeheartedly affirmed, “And in all things well and truly, and without malice or partiality, perform the duties of Deputy Marshal of the Wyoming Territory during my continuance in said office, and take only my lawful fees, so help me god.”

The raspy voice begged, “The pencil. Paper.”

She handed both to him. Jessup crawled his name. “Date.”

Retrieving the pencil and paper, she filled in September 21, 1871, showing it to him. He nodded and opened his right fist. A silver star landed in her lap, gleaming against the dark drown skirt of her traveling suit. A large envelope landed on top of it.

By 1893, the Wild West was declared officially tamed. U. S. marshals went on executing warrants as well as stepping in to suppress major labor strikes. In the 1920s, marshals helped to enforce prohibition. None of this sounds like the dangerous and exciting man who rides into town with a silver star on his vest, ready to single-handedly bring justice. Sigh!

Look for The Teacher's Star to be released March 3, 2020 as a part of The Belles of Wyoming.

 Inspired by Shakespeare's As You Like It --

Ginger Snap is trapped. She hates living a lie. Yet, her family will be homeless and hungry if she doesn't. Once she meets Theodore Edwards, she becomes desperate for a way to escape the web of deception tangled around her.
Theodore Edwards wants to help people. After all, that's why he's sure he has a calling to become a minister and not a lawyer. Now finished with the law degree his family insisted on, Theodore travels to Kearney, Nebraska. If he stays there six months, working for his father's cousin, the family will pay for his seminary training.
Simple enough he thought, but Theodore didn't count on a boarding house filled with crazy animals, train robbers, or a beautiful woman who seems to disappear when he goes looking for her.
Will he find the helpmate his grandfather predicts he'll meet? How can he keep her when she keeps running from him?

Pre-order now at https://www.amazon.com/Ginger-Snap-Lockets-Lace-Collection-ebook/dp/B083V63YVG. Available March 30, 2020.

R. I. P. By Cheri Kay Clifton

We western authors have researched stories of legendary frontiersmen, outlaws, gunslingers, lawmen, and Native Americans.  For this post, I’ve written how and where a few of their stories ended and where they now “rest in peace.”

For many notorious outlaws, the Old West cliché is true, they died with their boots on! Not surprising that a number of cemeteries in the West are named Boot Hill.  The most famous one of all is Boot Hill in Tombstone, Arizona.  And its most famous inhabitants are Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLaury, all killed at the gunfight at O.K. Corral on October 26, 1881.

Certainly another outlaw at the top of the numerous list of those lying 6 feet under is Henry McCarty, aka, William Henry Bonney, aka, Billy the Kid.  On July 14, 1881, Pat Garret, the Lincoln County, New Mexico Sheriff was questioning a friend of Billy’s at his home in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Sitting in a darkened bedroom, Garrett was asking Billy’s whereabouts when Billy unexpectedly entered the room.  Billy didn’t recognize Garrett in the dim light and asked, “Quien es?” – “Who is it?”  These were the last words Billy uttered.  Garrett shot Billy twice in the heart.  Billy the Kid was buried the next day at Fort Sumner cemetery.  He was just 22.  The old Fort Sumner Post Cemetery is near present-day Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

As for lawman, Pat Garrett, (proper name, Patrick Floyd Jarvis Garrett), he endured a sullied reputation from folks accusing him of killing Billy the Kid without warning.  After finishing his term as Lincoln County Sheriff, Garrett wrote (with the help of a ghostwriter), his experiences with the Kid.  He died his own strange death, shot on the road while talking to a rancher who he’d leased grazing rights to in order to pay debts.  Originally buried in Odd Fellow Cemetery in 1908, Las Cruces, New Mexico, Garrett was reinterred in the Masonic Cemetery in 1957.

Outlaw Jesse Woodson James held the well know distinction of gang leader, bank robber, stagecoach robber, train robber, and murderer from the state of Missouri and the famous member of the James-Younger Gang. In 1882, he was killed by a member of his own gang who hoped to collect a reward.  Originally buried at his homestead in Kearney, Missouri, his grave was moved to Mount Olivet Cemetery in 1902.  Jesse was 34 years old.

Known as Texas’ most deadly gunman, John Wesley “Wes” Hardin killed over thirty people.  Captured by a Texas Ranger, he was released in 1894 after serving eighteen years in prison.  One year later, Hardin was shot and killed by John Selman, an outlaw-turned-lawman in El Paso’s Acme Saloon.  Selman was gunned down just a year later.  Hardin is buried at the Concordia Cemetery in El Paso, Texas at the age of 42.  Ironically, Hardin’s killer, John Selman is buried just a few feet away.

John Henry “Doc” Holliday was a gambler, gunfighter, dentist and good friend of lawman Wyatt Earp.  He’s best known for his role as a deputy marshal in the events leading up to and following the gunfight at O.K. Corral.  The man suffered nearly his entire life with tuberculosis.  In 1886 he moved to Glenwood Springs, Colorado, hoping that the hot springs vapors would improve his health.  However, a year later after spending two months in bed, he looked down at his bare feet and said, “That’s funny,” and died.  He’d always figured he would have died with his boots on.  He was 36 years old.

The Glenwood Springs cemetery sits high on a steep hill.  At the time of Doc Holliday’s death, the steep road was too icy so he was buried at the bottom of the hill with the intention of his body being moved when the ice thawed.  But, he never was and many years later, a housing development was built at the base of the hill and though a marker sits in the cemetery, his actual remains are probably buried in someone’s back yard!

Don’t want to discriminate, for there was also the female legendary “outlaw queen,” Belle Starr who was a horse thief, outlaw and part-time prostitute, and the first woman to be tried for the serious crime of horse thievery by the famous Judge Isaac Parker. In 1889, she was shot in the back and killed by an unknown assailant. Forty years old, she was buried at her cabin southwest of Porum, Oklahoma. Her daughter, Pearl had the following inscription engraved on her tombstone:

“Shed not for her the bitter tear,

Nor give the heart to vain regret,

‘Tis but the casket that lies here,

The gem that fills it sparkles yet.”

Can’t leave out James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok, a legend in his time and one of the most famous frontiersmen in the West. On August 2, 1876, he was playing poker at the Nuttall & Mann’s #10 Saloon in Deadwood, South Dakota when he was shot from behind by Jack McCall.  At age 39, lying dead on the floor, Wild Bill was holding a pair of black aces and a pair of eights, which has since been known as the “Dead Man’s Hand.” When in Deadwood, I visited his grave at the cemetery. Calamity Jane, who had long been infatuated with Wild Bill during his lifetime, asked to be buried next to him. Her last request was granted when she died on August 2, 1903.

Another famous lawman and gunfighter, Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp, who was marshal of Ellsworth, Kansas in 1873, marshal in Wichita in 1874, and marshal in Dodge City in 1876, spent his final years working mining claims in the Mojave Desert during the winters and summered in nearby Los Angeles, California.  In 1929 at age 80, he died peacefully with his wife, Josie at his bedside.  Earp is buried at Hills of Eternity Memorial Park in Colma, California.

Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s death became one of the most famous American legends known as “Custer’s Last Stand.” Custer finished at the bottom of his West Point class in 1861, yet led courageous service during the Civil War, only to lead his 7^th Cavalry troops to their demise at the Little Bighorn Battlefield in 1876. He was 36 years old and is buried at West Point, New York.

 In a previous blog, I had reported on Buffalo Bill Cody, the greatest showman the Old West ever knew and his extensive museum in Cody, Wyoming.  After his death in 1917, he was buried on Lookout Mountain in Golden, Colorado.  He was 70 years old.

Speaking of Buffalo Bill, I’d also like to add Phoebe Ann Moses, a sharpshooter who rose to fame in a way most men could only dream of doing and became a legend in her own time!  She was known as Annie Oakley.  Buffalo Bill cast her as “Little Sure Shot” and she did trick shooting with his Wild West show for 16 seasons.  Even at age 60, she was still performing and winning shooting contests.

 Her health declined in 1925 and she died of pernicious anemia in Greenville, Ohio at the age of 66 on November 3, 1926. Her body was cremated in Cincinnati two days later and the ashes buried at Brock Cemetery near Greenville, Ohio. Assuming their marriage had been in 1876, Oakley and he expert marksman husband, Frank Butler had been married just over 50 years.

Butler died 18 days later in Michigan. His body was buried next to Oakley's ashes, or, according to rumor, Oakley's ashes, placed in one of her prized trophies, were laid next to Butler's body in his coffin prior to burial. Both body and ashes were interred in the cemetery on Thanksgiving Day (November 25, 1926).

Hope you visit my website at www.cherikayclifton.com

Happy Trails To You!

Huckleberry or Bearer?

By Christi Corbett

I got my first Smartphone several years ago, and promptly changed the text and email alert notification sound to the epic line from the movie Tombstone, “I’m your Huckleberry.”

But is it really Hucklebearer?

I get a lot of texts each day, and though I’m a writer (which is an amazing job and I love every minute) my family still wants things like food, so I do have to mingle with others on occasion. Invariably I’ll get a text or an email when I’m standing close to someone, and oftentimes a flicker of curiosity will cross their face, a flicker which rapidly turns to recognition.

Most can’t resist speaking up, usually along the lines of “Hey, I know that line! Isn’t that from that one movie? You know, the one that starred the guy from that other movie? Overboard I think it was called. And that guy with the voice was in it too. It also had that one guy from Top Gun in it, and he was super sick. He was the one who said that line actually. Wait, I know. It was Tombstone!”

I smile and nod, and invariably a discussion begins of the finer points of the movie, which character had the best mustache, was it Dana Delany riding down that hill sidesaddle or a stunt double, did you love or hate Jason Priestly in it, and our favorite lines and scenes.

One day, a bystander argued that the line was commonly thought of as Huckleberry, but it was really Hucklebearer.

I've since learned there are two definite schools of thought on the subject, and each has plenty of facts and history to back their word up. 

Check out a clip from the movie here and decide for yourself which team you're on, Huckleberry or Hucklebearer? 

So, did you get a good listen? Perhaps a few times to be sure?

Now, I reveal to you an angle that most don't consider...what word did the script call for Val Kilmer to use?

Sorry to disappoint anyone in the "Team Hucklebearer" category. In this article it's revealed the script definitely states "Huckleberry".

CLICK HERE for 10 Tombstone Facts you Never Knew Until Now.

Let's have some fun in the comments section...what’s your favorite scene from the movie?