Publisher's Synopsis
These accounts of the exploits and antics of twenty-one western gunfighters in Kansas during the days of the Long Drive are derived entirely from contemporaneous sources - newspapers; city, township, county, state, and federal records; and letters, diaries, and other manuscript not through a haze of artificial gunsmoke but sharp and clear through the eyes of their contemporaries. The focal points of the authors' half decade of research were seven Kansas cowtowns in their wildest years: Abilene, 1867-1871; Hays, 1867-1871; Newton, 1871; Ellsworth, 1871-1875; Wichita, 1870-1877; Dodge City, 1872-1886; and Caldwell, 1879-1885. The result is a book that will not only appeal to all lovers of Western Americana but will also prove a trustworthy research tool for scholars probing this area of American history. Much of the material first appeared in serial form in "The Kansas State Historical Society Quarterly" and was subsequently expanded and collected in "Why the West Was Wild" (1963), from which the present volume is drawn.
