The Story of the Outlaw: A Study of the Western Desperado

A study traces the emergence, character, and regional varieties of the Western desperado, combining narrative accounts, eyewitness testimony, and official records to map episodes of outlawry, train robbery, border feuds, and vigilante justice. It surveys early mountain and plains banditry, mining and cattle-era conflicts, and notable episodes such as the Lincoln County and Stevens County wars, while profiling individual bad men — including Plummer, Boone Helm, Wild Bill Hickok, and Billy the Kid — and the men who pursued them. Chapters analyze methods of law enforcement, frontier lynch-law and vigilantism, manhunts, and the transition from isolated frontier violence to more organized criminality in towns and rail corridors.