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Roughing It
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Historical SummaryIN TRAINING men to kill, the Civil War, like other military conflicts, produced the professional killer. Beginning with the struggle over the Free Soil issue, bloody warfare prevailed in Missouri and Kansas. Joining the Confederate guerillas to retaliate against harsh treatment at the hands of the Union militia, a youngster named Jesse James suffered outlawry, but continued an unabated reign of crime. With Jim Lane’s Red Legs on the free state side fought Wild Bill Hickok. In the second incident reported below, George Ward Nichols told the readers of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (February, 1867) the inside story of the sensational McCanless massacre, when Wild Bill, a one-man Union army, killed ten enemy gangsters. Naturally, Wild Bill was acquitted. The "prince of pistoleers" was very anxious that Nichols should get word to his old mother that he was not "a cutthroat and vagabond" and that he was a loyal Union adherent. "I have told his story precisely as it was told to me," Nichols declared, "confirmed in all important points by many witnesses; and I have no doubt of its truth." Apparently the publicity from it must have backfired, because Wild Bill later hedged on some of the details. In the days when the six-shooter was the law of the land, it was kill or be killed. "The most of the men I have killed," confessed Wild Bill, "it was one or t’other of us, and at such times, you don’t stop to think; and what’s the use after it’s all over?" The McCanless massacre was later topped by Wild Bill when he simultaneously killed two assailants who had entered by opposite doors of a restaurant. A flashy stunt done with mirrors. The mining and cattle-rustling days produced the notorious cold-blooded killer of the type of Billy the Kid, the most famous desperado of the Southwest, but recently deflated by Burton Rascoe as a "nondescript, adenoidal, weasel-eyed, narrow-chested, stoop-shouldered, repulsive-looking creature with all the outward appearance of a cretin." His career of murder was prematurely terminated at the tender age of twenty-one. The gangster Slade was cut to the same pattern. He was one of Plummer’s band of outlaws, ironically called "The Innocents," who terrorized the mining towns of Nevada and Montana. In Roughin’ It (third excerpt) Mark Twain found him astonishingly courteous. But then, luckily for Mark, Slade just happened to he sober. When drunk, he was a "fiend incarnate." "The true desperado," commented Mark Twain, "is gifted with splendid courage, and yet he will take the most infamous advantage of his enemy. Armed and free, he will stand up before a host and fight until he is shot all to pieces, and yet when he is under the gallows and helpless he will cry and plead like a child." The western cutthroat, like the twentieth-century gangster, proved to be a "yellow rat." Thomas J. Dimsdale, in his authentic account of The Vigilantes of Montana, reports that, when the Vigilantes moved against Plummer’s gang in 1864, they finally caught up with Slade. Six hundred miners marched into Virginia City and prepared to underwrite his execution. On the gallows Slade exhausted himself with tears, prayers, and lamentations, repeatedly exclaiming: "My God! My God! Must I die? Oh, my clear wife!" But the command was inexorably given: "Men, do your duty!" The box slipped from beneath his feet and he died almost instantaneously. The careers of the killers served to underscore the report of the humorist, Artemus Ward, who, on a visit to the territorial prison in Carson City, Nevada, was told by the warden: "This man’s crime was horse-stealing. He is here for life. This man is in for murder. He is here for three years." For a time life was cheap on the frontier. Roy Bean, who for years held court in the "Jersey Lily" saloon, dealt out summary justice to cattle rustlers in accordance with the "law west of the Pecos." On the other hand, a prisoner charged with slaying a Chinese was dismissed on the ground that "he’d be damned if he could find any law against killing a Chinaman."
Key QuoteHow "Wild Bill" Hickok killed ten gangsters with seven bullets.
Mark Twain
American Publishing Company
1871
The Original Grade-B Westerns
[1856–1865]
III
Mark Twain face to face with desperado Slade.
. . . There was much magic in that name, SLADE! Day or night, now, I stood always ready to drop any subject in hand, to listen to something new about Slade and his ghastly exploits. Even before we got to Overland City, we had begun to hear about Slade and his "division" (for he was a "division-agent") on the Overland; and from the hour we had left Overland City we had heard drivers and conductors talk about only three things—"Californy," the Nevada silver mines, and this desperado Slade. And a deal the most of the talk was about Slade. We had gradually come to have a realizing sense of the fact that Slade was a man whose heart and hands and soul were steeped in the blood of offenders against his dignity; a man who awfully avenged all injuries, affronts, insults or slights, of whatever kind—on the spot if he could, years afterward if lack of earlier opportunity compelled it; a man whose hate tortured him day and night till vengeance appeased it—and not an ordinary vengeance either, but his enemy’s absolute death—nothing less; a man whose face would light up with a terrible joy when he surprised a foe and had him at a disadvantage. A high and efficient servant of the Overland, an outlaw among outlaws and yet their relentless scourge, Slade was at once the most bloody, the most dangerous, and the most valuable citizen that inhabited
the savage fastnesses of the mountains. . . .
In due time we rattled up to a stage-station, and sat down to breakfast with a half-savage, half-civilized company of armed and bearded mountaineers, ranchmen and station employes. The most gentlemanly-appearing, quiet, and affable officer we had yet found along the road in the Overland Company’s service was the person who sat at the bead of the table, at my elbow. Never youth stared and shivered as I did when I heard them call him SLADE!
. . . And to this day I can remember nothing remarkable about Slade except that his face was rather broad across the cheek bones, and that the cheek bones were low and the lips peculiarly thin and straight. But that was enough to leave something of an effect upon me, for since then I seldom see a face possessing those characteristics without fancying that the owner of it is a dangerous man.
The coffee ran out. At least it was reduced to one tin-cupful, and Slade was about to take it when he saw that my cup was empty. He politely offered to fill it, but although I wanted it, I politely declined. I was afraid he had not killed anybody that morning, and might be needing diversion. But still with firm politeness he insisted on filling my cup, and said I had traveled all night and better deserved it than he—and while he talked he placidly poured the fluid, to the last drop. I thanked him and drank it, but it gave me no comfort, for I could not feel sure that he would not be sorry, presently, that he had given it away, and proceed to kill me to distract his thoughts from the loss.
But nothing of the kind occurred. We left him with only twenty-six dead people to account for, and I felt a tranquil satisfaction in the thought that in so judiciously taking care of No. 1 at that breakfast-table I had pleasantly escaped being No. 27. Slade came out to the coach and saw us off, first ordering certain rearrangements of the mail-bags for our comfort, and then we took leave of him, satisfied that we should hear of him again, some day, and wondering in what connection.
And sure enough, two or three years afterward, we did bear of him again. News came to the Pacific coast that the Vigilance Committee in Montana (whither Slade had removed from Rocky Ridge) had hanged him. . . .
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Chicago: Mark Twain, "The Original Grade-B Westerns," Roughing It, ed. Mark Twain in History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, ed. Louis Leo Snyder and Richard B. Morris (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Co., 1951), Original Sources, accessed November 21, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=8RNWA1C8U987CFX.
MLA: Twain, Mark. "The Original Grade-B Westerns." Roughing It, edited by Mark Twain, in History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, edited by Louis Leo Snyder and Richard B. Morris, Harrisburg, Pa., Stackpole Co., 1951, Original Sources. 21 Nov. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=8RNWA1C8U987CFX.
Harvard: Twain, M, 'The Original Grade-B Westerns' in Roughing It, ed. . cited in 1951, History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, ed. , Stackpole Co., Harrisburg, Pa.. Original Sources, retrieved 21 November 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=8RNWA1C8U987CFX.
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