Deadly Dozen: Twelve Forgotten Gunfighters of the Old West (review)

2??8Book Reviews227 tainly played a part in his one questionable act as Sheriff. What came to be called the "Bisbee Deportation" was, according to O'Neal, similar to a precise military strike against an enemy. Mine owners in the area of Bisbee, Arizona conspired to rid themselves of 400 mine workers they identified as agitators and union troublemakers . Bisbee city officials asked Sheriff Wheeler to allow them to deputize other men to deal with the union members. Wheeler refused. Bisbee leaders then appealed to Wheeler's patriotism, saying that the union strikes were being conducted to slow down the copper industry and thereby slow the U.S. entry into die Great War. This time Wheeler caved in to city demands, put together a posse of at least 2,000 men armed widi machine guns and rounded up 2,000 people (including one woman) believed to be agitators. Eventually 1,186 men were shipped to New Mexico in cattle cars. There was public outcry across die country as people questioned the deportation. Wheeler, at this time, knocked on military and civilian doors, begging to be allowed to enlist in the Great War. Eventually he was sent to France, but he never saw action, and in May 1918 was informed he was being charged with kidnapping for his role in the Bisbee Deportation. Wheeler was released from the army in 1918 to face die kidnapping charges. He publicly apologized for his actions, indicating that he had followed his own moral dictates and would stand by them. He also claimed all responsibility for die Bisbee incident. The jury found Wheeler not guilty in the case and interest in the Bisbee Deportation trials waned. Bill O'Neal does a splendidjob of providing details about Texas, the territorial outpost system, and life at military posts. The book also includes thorough endnotes and a bibliography. Historians of the West and Southwest will find a wealth of sources for additional research. Fort Bragg, CaliforniaMaria Elena Raymond Deadly Dozen: Twelve Forgotten Gunfighlers of the Old West. By Robert K. DeArment. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003. Pp. iv+266. Introduction, illustrations, afterword, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-806 1-3559-x. $29-95- cloth.) In this work Robert DeArment, noted historical writer specializing in outlaws and lawmen, devotes each chapter to the exploits of a different gunman of the Old West. Readers will not find on these pages the names of Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok, or John Wesley Hardin. Rather, those featured here will be remembered more by locals than by die national media, and few took part in the classic walk-down shootouts on dusty streets of towns in the glorified Wild West of fiction . "Gunfights were generally sudden, impromtu affairs," the author writes, "and gunfighters, although desperate, were not stupid" (p. 4). DeArment's Deadly Dozen, readable and thoroughly researched, describes those who killed with little or no mercy, those who took part in the most unusual gun battles, those who served on and off as lawmen, and those who committed their deeds in die Lone Star State. One gunman capable of killing either friend or foe without warning or remorse was gambler John Bull, who once shot his 228Southwestern Historical QuarterlyOctober own partner in cold blood. Then there was Barney Riggs, who according to DeArment "was a violent, vindictive man, a brutal, probably psychopadiic, killer" (p. 151). Two of the gun battles involved unlikely participants. In one of them, City Marshal Pat Desmond of South Pueblo, Colorado, had a violent dispute with one of his patrolmen. An eyewitness said the patrol officer "squatted, advanced his left leg, [and] dropped his right hand to his pocket" (p. 26). But Desmond fired first and put two shots into the extended leg. In the second incident, one Bill Standifer, a former security man for a cattle ranch, and his former employer, Pink Higgins, faced each odier on horseback. At a distance of less than a hundred yards, both men dismounted and Higgins killed Standifer with a single rifle shot. Many of the gunmen in this study served on and off as peace officers in places such as Colorado and New Mexico. Most notable among diese were...