Jason Manning's Wild West

My Online Newsletter for Fans of the Fiction, Films & History of the American Frontier

ISSUE # 1 (January 2008)

Ruckus Along the Rio Grande

The Cortinas War -- Texas, 1859-60

On July 13, 1859, Juan Cortinas left his mother's ranch and rode into the border town of Brownsville, Texas. He spotted the city marshal, Robert Shears, beating a drunken Mexican. When Cortinas demanded that Shears cease and desist, the marshal hurled insults at him. Cortinas shot Spears in the shoulder and spurred away with the drunk riding double behind him. In that moment he became the champion of Brownsville's Mexican population, who all too often were cheated and abused by their Anglo neighbors.

Two months later, Cortinas returned to Brownsville with a hundred men in a raid that resulted in the killing of several Americans. He issued a proclamation, boldly asserting that "our enemies shall not possess our lands until they have fattened it with their own gore."

The local militia, the Brownsville Tigers, ventured forth to do battle with Cortinas -- and were routed. Cortinas besieged the town, shelling it with captured artillery. Federal troops challenged Cortinas next at the Battle of La Ebronal. There Cortinas met his first defeat, but escaped capture. The tide was beginning to turn against him. Texas Governor Hardin Runnels dispatched Major John "Rip" Ford's Rangers, who joined federal troops in a clash with the Cortinas army at Rio Grande City. Again Cortinas was defeated.

In February 1860, Cortinas attempted to waylay a riverboat owned by cattle barons Richard King and Mifflin Kennedy at a place called La Bolsa, where the Rio Grande made a horseshoe bend. The riverboat carried $60,000 in specie, but the Texas Rangers rode to the rescue and foiled the bandit leader's plan. As his army retreated, Cortinas was the last to leave the field, emptying his revolver at the Rangers and surviving a hail of hot lead as he galloped away.

After the defeat at La Bolsa Bend, Cortinas withdrew into the mountains deep within Mexico. The Texas Rangers made a couple of daring but fruitless raids attempting to find and capture or kill him. And so the "border war" fizzled out. Juan Cortinas would later become a general in the Mexican army and governor of Tamaulipas. To the end of his days he remained an implacable foe of Texas and was often accused of sponsoring raids across the Bloody Border.

Westernisms

Do you know what frontier folk meant when they used these terms?

airtights sugar eater Nebraska brick

Overland trout belly cheater slow elk

(answer below)

Pedro Arondondo was a gambler accused of cheating at cards by a cowboy named Red Ivan in Canon City, Colorado during the summer of 1889. The two dueled a few days later, and Arondondo was carried to Boot Hill with a bullet between his eyes. Strangely, forty-eight hours prior to his demise, Arondondo bought a black suit and ordered a headstone engraved as follows:

Pedro Arondondo, born 1857, died 1889

from a bullet wound between the eyes

fired by Red Ivan

[Source: Denis McLoughlin, Wild and Woolly:

An Encyclopedia of the Old West]

***

Horse Thievin'

A cowboy from New Mexico rode into Tombstone on a fine horse, stabled it at the OK Corral, then went broke and offered the animal for sale at a bargain price. The buyer who grabbed the opportunity paid up and asked about the ownership title. The cowboy responded, "The title is perfectly good as long as you go west with him, but don't take him east; it is not so good in that direction."

[Source: Paula Mitchell Marks, And Die in the West:

The Story of the O.K. Corral Gunfight]

***

The Mountain Rifle

The mountain rifle had a shorter and usually a considerably heavier barrel than the "Kentucky rifle," which had won the trans-Allegheny wilderness. It was stocked either half or full length and usually weighed from ten to twelve pounds. Preferably the bullet used was patched. The powder charge, of course, varied according to circumstances, from about 60 to about 200 grains; the rule of thumb that is traditional among riflemen would make the standard load for a half-ounce ball 93 grains .... [T]he available powder probably gave it, at most, a muzzle velocity no greater than 1600 foot-seconds, probably less than that. This would produce good shocking power but little penetration .... Though the half-ounce ball may be called standard, weights of 36, 48, and even 52 to the pound (.50, .47, and .45 caliber) are recorded.

[Source: Bernard DeVoto, Across the Wide Missouri]

Book Shelf

Here's a look back at some of the great westerns of yesteryear. Such books are often out-of-print, but if you find these titles I can recommend reading them...

Texas Fever, Donald Hamilton, 1960

No novel about a cattle drive has ever surpasseed The Trail to Ogallala by Benjamin Capps, but Hamilton does a fine job of dramatizing the post-Civil War conflict between ex-Confederate drovers from Texas and Kansas "Yankees" who try to keep the longhorns from market by claiming the herds are infected with "Texas fever." Hamilton wrote a few good westerns -- remember The Big Country? -- before achieving fame as the author of the Matt Helm spy novels.

Bought With A Gun, Luke Short, 1967

Frederick Glidden (Luke Short)) wrote this story in 1940 as "Gun Bought Grant." Short was the biggest name in westerns before Louis L'Amour came along, and this novel was a very successful one, with several printings. It's the story of a gunslinger whose reputation becomes a real problem when he faces the hangman for a killing he didn't do.

Six-Horse Hitch, Janice H. Giles, 1969

A big, sweeping novel of the western stagecoaches, it's the story of Starr Fowler, who works for Ben Holladay and becomes the greatest reinsman in the Wild West. This novel is packed with adventure and authenticity.

Westerners

William Drummond Stewart

A veteran of the Napoleonic Wars who fought at Waterloo, Captain William Drummond Stewart visited the American West in 1833. Described as a man of strong appetites and an adventurous spirit, Stewart joined a Rocky Mountain Fur Company caravan led by Robert Campbell. Campbell and William Sublette intended to establish an outpost on the Upper Missouri to compete with the American Fur Company's Fort Union.

An avid sportsman, Stewart hunted buffalo, bear and bighorn on his jouurney west, and his courage earned him the respect of the fur trappers. He attended the 1833 rendezvous at Greeen River and wrote of that experience in a novel, Edward Warren. The Crow Indians gave him some trouble, and they became the villains in his later literary endeavors. Joining Jim Bridger's brigade, the Scotsman was at the 1834 Ham's Fork rendezvous. In 1835 he was the guest of John McLoughlin, the "King of Oregon," at Fort Vancouver, outpost for the Hudson's Bay Company.

After helping Marcus Whitman pick a location for his ill-fated mission in Nez Perce country, Stewart returned to civilization, the veteran of a dozen skirmishes with Indians. But he was back in the mountains in 1836 with Tom "Broken Hand" Fitzpatrick and an American Fur Company caravan. Accounts indicate he fell in love with Marcus Whitman's attractive wife, Narcissa, who would die eleven years later at the hands of the Cayuse Indians in the massacre at Waiilatpu.

In 1837 Stewart once more journeyed west, this time accompanied by a young sketch artist named Alfred Jacob Miller, whose now-famous work tells us much about those fur trade days, and whose journal providees a lot of information about Stewart, by then a recognized "partisan" or brigade leader. At the 1837 Green River rendezvous Stewart presented Jim Bridger with a gift -- a suit of armor. Miller sketched Old Gabe gallivanting around in knight's garb.

Returning to St. Louis, Stewart entered into a legal battle with his elder brother, Sir John Stewart, concerning his inheritance. He went west one last time in 18842, traveling in grand style. He died in 1871, at the age of 77, in a Scottish castle.

Jim Bridger, cavorting in the suit of

armor given him by Stewart, as

sketched by Alfred Jacob Miller at

the Green River rendezvous

Hollywood Horse Operas

Western films are a hobby of mine -- I wish I had a dime for every one I've watched in my lifetime. I started writing when I was twelve years old and I'm convinced I was inspired to do so as much by western movies and television series as I was by the great western novels of Ernest Haycox and Will Henry. Here's my take on one great and one near-great western movie...

Stagecoach

(1939, Wanger)

A timeless and virtually flawless film, the one against which I measure all other westerns -- and few measure up. This is the movie that made John Wayne a star, and it was the best performance of his career. Thomas Mitchell as the Doc is outstanding, and John Carradine personifies the Bret Harte-type of gambler to perfection. Claire Trevor is fine as Dallas, the soiled dove with a heart of gold -- a character that has since become a western stereotype. Superb direction is provided by John Ford, who elicits genuine performances from every actor. Watch the expressions of every performer in the saloon scene when Luke Plummer learns that the Ringo Kid is in Lordsburg -- they all ring true and are a delight to behold. It's difficult to pick a "best scene" in a film like this, but you have to go with the first appearance of the Ringo Kid (Wayne) as he stands in the road, twirling his Winchester, to stop the stagecoach.

The Long Riders

(1980, MGM-UA)

One of my personal favorites, but it has a few shortcomings. This is the best of many Hollywood renderings of the outlaw careers of the James brothers. The cinematography is outstanding, and so is the soundtrack. The Keach brothers star as Jesse and Frank James, while the Carradines portray Cole, Jim and Bob Younger. David Carradine steals the show as Cole Younger. Many memorable scenes, like the one in which the gang executes a pair of Pinkerton detectives responsible for the death of Jesse's younger brother. But the best is the knife fight between Cole Younger and Sam Starr in a Texas saloon. (As far as I know, it never actually happened.) This film captures the ambience of post-Civil War Missouri, and the brutal nature of life on the outlaw trail. The shortcomings: James Keach's wooden portrayal of the charismatic Jesse James, and the treatment of the Northfield raid, but this is a near-great western film.

Excellent

Above Average

Average

Westernisms

airtights

canned food (peaches and tomatoes were very popular)

sugar eater

a spoiled horse

Nebraska brick

sod squares used to build houses on the treeless prairie

overland trout

bacon

belly cheater

ranch cook

slow elk

a cow; or, beefsteak from a cow that doesn't belong to you.

JASON MANNING is the author of more than 50 western and historical novels. His first book, Killer Gray, was published in 1979; he did not write his second novel, Gunsmoke on the Sierra Line, until ten years later -- it was published in 1989 by Zebra Books. He wrote five more titles for Zebra, Revenge in Little Texas, Texas Helltown and Showdown at Seven Springs among them. From 1990 until 1996 he wrote fourteen novels for HarperCollins using the pseudonym "Hank Edwards," including Gun Glory, Lawless Land, Lady Outlaw and Steel Justice in The Judge series, and the stand-alones Ride for Rimfire, Thirteen Notches, Apache Sundown and Gray Warrior. He also wrote two other westerns for HarperCollins under the pen name "Dale Colter." Beginning in 1993, Dutton Signet began publishing Manning's longer historical/western novels, with over one million copies in print of titles such as High Country, Green River Rendezvous, Flintlock, The Border Captains, Promised Land, The Black Jacks, The Marauders; the six Gordon Hawkes novels -- among them Mountain Massacre and Mountain Courage; and the six Barlow novels -- The Long Hunters, War Lovers and Apache Shadow among them. In addition, he wrote six westerns for St. Martin's Press -- the Ethan Payne trilogy (Frontier Road, Trail Town and Last Chance), and the Westerners series of biographical novels: Gun Justice, The Outlaw Trail and Gunmaster.

As an historian, Manning has taught at Stephen F. Austin State University, Southern Illinois University, and Montgomery College in Texas. His website The Eighties Club is widely regarded as an excellent resource on the history and pop culture of the 1980s. He has been active in wildlife conservation, with a particular interest in wolf recovery.

A Cowboy's Prayer

Lord give me a clear sky above me tonight

Please give me a fair chance in my next fight

Let me die in the saddle, a good horse beneath

And I to Your keeping my soul bequeath

Lord give me the wide plains and mountains so high

And give me the rivers that run deep and wide

Please give me wild places that no man has seen

And give me blue northers that blow sharp and clean

Give me the mustang and longhorn to herd

For this is the life a cowboy does yearn

Lord give me the trail town with all its delights

And get me away with at least one dollar tonight

Lord give me some rope with the ladies in waiting

And a fair hand at poker 'cause i sure do hate losing

Thanks, Lord, for the clear sky above me tonight

And thanks for the fair chance in my last fight

Let me die in the saddle, a good horse beneath

And I to Your keeping my soul bequeath

1986 by Jason Manning