Frontier Partisans

The Adventurers, Rangers and Scouts Who Fought the Battles of Empire

Working The Trapline — Old Corrals And Sagebrush

April 25, 2022, by JimC

Sometimes there is nothing more desirable than a long stretch of road and a far horizon.

Lady Marilyn had a plan for Saturday. She was craving the road and some wide open spaces. So we headed East to reconnect with the West. The mission was to hit Crystal Crane Hot Springs, a three-hour drive way out into the sage, not far from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. The hot springs was a McGuffin, really, mostly a reason to hit the road.

Yellow-headed blackbirds abounded. They like reedy bodies of water.

There is something truly fine and soul-satisfying about driving through endless miles of sagebrush, with mountains framing the horizon, and listening to Ian Tyson. The legendary folk singer is an old man now, and his health hasn’t been good. He’s still on his ranch in Alberta, Canada, because — as Tom Russell tells it — he’ll never leave his horses.

I like old corrals and sagebrush

Ponderosa pines

Cowgirls in old pickup trucks

California wines

I love them old time waltzes

George Jones and Emmylou

But I’d like nothing better

Than to lay these eyes on you

 

It felt mighty good to immerse myself once again in the work of an artist who wrote and sang the soundtrack of the revival of cowboy culture.

*

Rock Island Auction Co. continues to serve up some exceptional Frontier Partisan firearms.

This carbine was manufactured in 1877 and evidently saw many years of use in the American West. It has an integral blade front sight on the front barrel band, the two-line address and King’s patent marking, a two leaf rear sight, a saddle ring on the left, the serial number on the lower tang, carbine stock and forearm, and brass buttplate with cleaning rod compartment door (rod absent). The forearm has a line of tacks along each side. The buttstock has three tacks on each side of the wrist, a cross on each side, a line of tacks along the top of the comb, and a double line of tacks bordering the butt. Brass tack decoration is commonly associated with Native Americans in the West and was also used by white westerners, and the ’66 “Yellow Boy” is known to have been popular with Native Americans from many tribes in the West in the late 19th century. A very similar cross and double line border design can be seen the Winchester ’66 in the Smithsonian that is attributed as surrendered by Hunkpapa Lakota holy man and leader Sitting Bull to Major David H. Brotherton in 1881.

*

Frontier Partisan Ted Franklin Belue has another one of his well-researched articles in True West Magazine’s May edition. He tackles one of the most persistent bits of folklore surrounding Daniel Boone: Did he trek as far west as the Yellowstone in his old age? Belue’s answer is a definitive… maybe. Evidence, such as it is, is fragmentary remembrances that aren’t too strong on dates and in some cases conflict with what Boone was known to be doing at a particular time. Subsequent accounts seem to conflate other people’s expeditions with Boone’s, further muddying the waters.

Daniel Boone on the Missouri River. Art by Gary Zaboly.

As Belue notes:

“We all want that  Alfred J. Miller oil of him and Colter hunting griz on the Yellowstone or standing a’kilter to Old Faithful’s steam plume — hands high, mouth agape. One day, maybe, his lost memoir he dictated to Dr. Jones will surface at Sotheby’s and explain all. Until then…”

Can’t prove it’s true, can’t prove it’s not true. My own sense of it is that the Boone Yellowstone Hunt is, as Ted intimates, maybe just a bit of wishful thinking for all of us, just because it’s so poetically perfect. But maybe it’s enough to recognize that the old man kept to the trail virtually his whole life long. Whether or not he made it to the Yellowstone, he surely saw some country, and bridged the era of the Long Hunter and the Mountain Man.

*

EPIX TV network’s new Billy the Kid limited series is upon us. Two free episodes here. I’ll be firing this up soon — got an Outlander episode tonight and two Outer Range episodes to catch up to. Frontier Partisan cinema is loaded these days.

The world will never get enough of Billy the Kid. Hell, I wrote a song about him — I’m as sold as anybody on this very American story. Turns out, an Aussie historian is, too. A bloke named James B. Mills will give us a new Billy bio this summer, focused heavily on El Chivato’s relations with the Hispanic community of New Mexico.

In the annals of American western history, few people have left behind such lasting and far-reaching fame as Billy the Kid. Some have suggested that his legend began with his death at the end of Pat Garrett’s revolver on the night of July 14, 1881, in Fort Sumner. Others believe that the legend began with his unforgettable jailbreak in Lincoln, New Mexico, several months prior on April 28, 1881. Others still insist his legend began with the publication in 1926 of Walter Noble Burns’s book, The Saga of Billy the Kid.

James B. Mills has left no stone unturned in his twenty-year quest to tell the complete story of Billy the Kid. He explores the Kid’s disputable origins, his family’s migration from New York into the Southwest, and how he became an orphan, as well as his involvement in the Lincoln County War, his outlaw exploits, and his dealings with Governor Lew Wallace. Mills illuminates the Kid’s relationships with his enemies, lovers, and numerous friends to contextualize the man’s character beyond his death and legacy. Most importantly, Mills is the first historian to fully detail the Kid’s relations with New Mexicans of Spanish descent.    

Billy and the Apaches. Art by Bob Boze Bell.

So, the question remains, who really was the person the world knows as Billy the Kid? Was he more than a young reprobate committed to a life of crime, who relished becoming the famous outlaw and cold-blooded, self-absorbed “sociopath” or “thug” that some still prefer him—need him—to be? Or was he in fact the generally good-hearted, generous, courteous, young vigilante that so many remembered with considerable fondness, who ultimately preferred the company of the more peaceable Hispanic population than his own Anglo people? In this groundbreaking biography, Mills takes the reader closer to the flesh-and-blood human being named Henry McCarty, alias William H. Bonney, than ever before.

Mills is featured in the “What History Has Taught Me” lightning round at the back of the current issue of True West Magazine. He notes:
To me, Billy Bonney was an essentially good-hearted kid, with an unfortunate penchant for thievery, who simply wouldn’t take any shit. What most people don’t realize about Kid history is just how much the Hispanos loved and supported him. He was definitely their Billy. My next book is going to be In the Days of Billy the Kid: The Frontier Lives of José Chávez y Chávez, Juan Patrón, Martín Chávez, and Yginio Salazar. I’m currently busy working on it.
*
Picked up the current Adventure Special Issue of Sporting Classics, and … Waugh! … what a fine trove of articles. Wayne van Zwoll contributed a couple — one on the life and loves of Denys Finch-Hatton (of Out of Africa fame), and one on “impossible shots.” That one and a story on the intersection of rifle and shotgun shooting (yes, there is such an intersection) got me to ponderating on my own shooting preferences. As much as I admire long-range shooting, and have enjoyed shooting some purpose-built rigs with really, really impressive glass, my historical proclivities (along with a background in muzzleloaders) keep me firmly in the iron-sights-and-close-range environment. Well, I have a red dot on the AR, but still…
This is good for the budget, since a real precision long-range rig is vastly spendy, especially for the optics. Almost all of my shooting is wrapped up in various iterations of my Frontier Partisan Biathlon at 200 yards or less — and I’m good with that.
As always with Sporting Classics, there’s plenty of Africa: Simon K. Barr serves up a tale of hunting buffalo in the country where Karamojo Bell made his name (looking at you, David Wrolson). And our own Frontier Partisan compadre Thomas McIntyre shares folklore that explains how the Elephant Clan came into being, and how a great hunter learned to weave from observing the work of a spider.
Get ye to a news stand, sez I!
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Comments

  1. David Wrolson says

    April 25, 2022 at 9:46 am

    I talked about FP yesterday to a couple we met for lunch. They had not seen the Namibia pictures yet, so we had the book along and the back cover is me wearing the FP shirt with an elephant in the background.

    I told about how I found a site with a lot of people who have the same interests. I am excited to share a campfire with the likes of Thomas McIntyre-I can’t remember if he wrote the article about Burkina Faso going ass over end that broke my heart or not.

    Reading a fun fiction book called “The Cartographers” which is a map based mystery. As a geography major I couldn’t resist buying it, but I think it will likely be available at libraries.

    Reply
    • JimC says

      April 25, 2022 at 9:48 am

      Thanks David.

      Reply
  2. Jean says

    April 25, 2022 at 12:14 pm

    Now this is good music! That’s the kind of music I grew up with, that and wonderful classical music. I’m not a fan of rock. Thanks for sharing.

    Reply
  3. Quixotic Mainer says

    April 25, 2022 at 12:51 pm

    Looks like a fine journey to the springs! I haven’t seen prairie in quite some time, but it always does leave an impression. I have a feeling that old Yellowboy got quite a tour of that climate and era.

    I hear you on the note of iron sights! I never owned any personal arms with glass or optics until recently. My hobbies of historical shooting and hunting met up with the tactical stew I get marinated in at work and gave me a love for “scout” type rifles.

    Reply
  4. Patti Jo Beal says

    April 26, 2022 at 4:09 pm

    A little Ian goes a long way. I share his music with anyone who will lend an ear to my ramblings about how talented I think he is. His music is iconic, when the fodder that is curreny called country music is long gone, his songs will remain.

    All my friends know I want “50 year’s ago” played at my funeral, or memorial or whatever it ends up being!

    “The ringing of my jingle bobs is the music of my soul”

    Reply
  5. Joe says

    April 29, 2022 at 1:59 pm

    Love the Sporting Classics Adventure issues as well. Your writing is right on par with their storytelling, Jim, or dare I say better? You framed the Daniel Boone Yellowstone tale perfectly.

    Reply
  6. Matthew says

    April 30, 2022 at 8:31 am

    Two things: Victor Davis Hansen talks about Thucydides and Peloponnesean War in this podcast

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5sDuPUeqQs

    It talks about how war strips the veneer of civilization from people and how Athens fail and so on. I’ve read most of Thucydides.

    Also, I got a story published in swordsandsorcery magazine which does happen on a frontier.

    https://www.swordsandsorcerymagazine.com/glamour.html

    It’s not much but I am proud of it.

    Reply
    • JimC says

      April 30, 2022 at 8:41 am

      Hey, congrats!

      Reply
      • Matthew says

        April 30, 2022 at 10:03 am

        Thanks. It’s the second story I’ve written, but this one has the frontier as a setting whereas the other did not. I really wished I could have sold more stories, though.

        Reply

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