Tombstone Epitaph

07/24/2025

The current edition of the Tombstone Epitaph is packed with great history, including an article I contributed on early C**t revolvers.

07/23/2025

The Epitaph's own James B. Mills recently caught up with the guys at Billy the Kid's Historical Coalition to discuss his new book, "In the Days of Billy the Kid," Hispano frontier history, the "levels to outlawry," and the art of historiography in general...

Note: Some of the language is colorful.

A special interview with James B. Mills, author of the new book, "In the Days of Billy the Kid." We discuss the lives and times of Billy the Kid, Juan Patron...

07/22/2025

July 21, 1873. The James-Younger Gang (including Frank and Jesse James and Cole Younger) pulls its first train robbery near Adair, Iowa. It does not go as planned.

The outlaws stop the train by pulling the rails. Several cars go off the tracks and the engineer is killed. Then, when the gang goes into the express car, they find only about $2300. According to biographer Ted Yeatman, outfit leader Jesse James --who has boldly removed his mask--demands, "Where's the bullion?" The express messenger points to a large stack of gold and silver bars--but Jesse repeats his question. He apparently doesn't know the meaning of "bullion" and assumes it referred to coins.

The gang successfully escapes back to Missouri--without the bullion.

07/21/2025

July 21, 1865. Wild Bill Hickok and Davis Tutt face off in the Springfield, Missouri town square. The issue: a gambling debt. Tutt had taken Hickok's pocket watch as collateral the day before and showed it off in public, embarrassing Wild Bill.

At about 6 pm, the two stand 75 yards away from each other. Tutt fires first and misses. Some accounts report that Hickok balances his pistol on his left arm before shooting and hitting Tutt in the chest. The face-to-face gunfight is one of the only such contests in Western history. And it catapults Hickok to international fame.

07/19/2025

July 18, 1843. Virgil Earp is born in Hartford, Kentucky. While legend paints his brother Wyatt as a longtime lawman, it was Virgil who wore the badge in Tombstone and several other locales.

Virgil was shot in the leg at the OK Corral fight on October 26, 1881, then crippled by an assassination attempt two months later. He lost the use of his left arm--but still led an active life until his death in Goldfield, Nevada, on October 19, 1905. He was a deputy sheriff at the time. Virgil is buried in a relatively obscure grave in Portland, Oregon.

07/18/2025

July 18, 1901. Thirteen-year-old Willie Nickell is shot and killed near his home in Wyoming. It may have been a case of mistaken identity. Gunman Tom Horn is convicted and hanged for the crime--but there's still doubt that he actually pulled the trigger.

07/17/2025

July 17, 1870. Two 7th Cavalry troopers attack Wild Bill Hickok in a bar in Hays City, Kansas. Jerry Lonergan grabs Hickok from behind, pinning his arms to his sides. John Kile pulls a Re*****on .44 pistol, puts it to Hickok's ear and pulls the trigger.

It misfires. In the meantime, Wild Bill manages to pull one of his revolvers and mortally wounds Kile (who earlier had won the Congressional Medal of Honor). He then shoots Lonergan in the knee--and jumps through a window to escape before other soldiers show up.

Hickok is never arrested or tried in the shootings. He soon leaves Hays City.

07/16/2025

One of the two articles the Epitaph's own James B. Mills published in the July-August 2025 issue of True West magazine. Contrary to popular belief, Billy the Kid had not fallen off the proverbial radar by 1926, and Walter Noble Burns did not "save" the pistolero from cultural oblivion with the publication of his book that year...

Before the Myth was penned, The Kid had already become a Legend in Theaters, tabloids and the American Imagination     There is no question

07/15/2025

July 15-19, 1878. The Battle of Lincoln. The Big Killing. The climax of New Mexico Territory's Lincoln County War.

The Regulators are holed up in the McSween house (illustration). The fighters for The House are across the street. For the first three days, there's little damage. But then U.S. troops from Ft. Stanton arrive and aim their guns at the Regulators. Someone sets fire to the home and the Regulators make a break for safety.

Five Regulators are killed, including Alexander McSween. Several are hurt. At least two of The House combatants also die. With their leader gone, the Regulators break up--and The House cements its hold on Lincoln and surrounding territory.

But the legend of Billy the Kid is just starting...

07/14/2025

Review courtesy of Matthew Kerns...

Book Review: In the Days of Billy the Kid by James B. Mills

A deeper, richer American West—told through the lens of Hispano resistance and resilience.

James B. Mills has already reshaped how we think about Billy the Kid. In El Bandido Simpático, he showed that Billy’s story, long buried beneath layers of myth and media distortion, only becomes truly legible when we view it through the eyes of the people and the land that surrounded him. Mills’ great insight was this: Billy the Kid makes the most sense not as a gunslinger or an outlaw icon, but as a young man navigating the fractured, volatile world of New Mexico Territory, a place still reeling from the aftermath of the Mexican-American War and deep in the throes of Anglo-Hispano conflict.

Now, with In the Days of Billy the Kid, Mills expands that lens and brings into focus the lives of four crucial Hispano figures who lived, fought, resisted, and survived in the same world: José Chávez y Chávez, Juan Patrón, Martín Chávez, and Yginio Salazar. This book isn't just a companion to his earlier book, It is a vital extension of it, providing the other half of the story. If Mills’ first book made the case that Billy belonged in the Hispano world, this one shows us what that world actually looked like, felt like, and fought for.

It is within this Hispano context that we can now look at Billy the Kid, and at men like Chávez y Chávez and Salazar, with a newer, better, and deeper understanding and appreciation for this fascinating and often misunderstood portion of American history. Their struggles were not just about outlawry or reputation, but about land, identity, justice, and survival. The Lincoln County War, so often reduced to a shootout between cattle barons, is here placed in its proper frame: a continuation of Hispano resistance against exploitation, corruption, and displacement in the wake of American expansion.

Reading this, I felt like Mills was doing more than just pointing to the trail, he was redrawing the map. Drawing from a staggering array of archival material and previously overlooked sources, he uncovers the broader Hispano resistance—from the rise of Los Gorras Blancas to the political movements of San Miguel County, from the arrival of the railroad to the shadowy world of Vicente Silva’s Sociedad de Bandidos. Prior historians have viewed these as sideshows to the big show of Billy the Kid, but Mills reveals that they are central to understanding the true nature of the frontier and the communities who lived it, fought for it, and refused to be erased from it.

This isn’t your father’s, or grandfather’s, history of Billy the Kid. It’s more complete, more honest, and more human. The context here is the whole story, and in Mills' capable hands, that story is absolutely essential to a greater understanding of the West.

In The Days of Billy the Kid is available at: https://amzn.to/3IHtBNz

Mills' previous book, Billy the Kid: El Bandido Simpático, is available at: https://amzn.to/4kFJLVf

07/13/2025

Janelle Molony, alias the "Hottie Historian," makes a stop at Chimney Rock...

When pre-Civil War abolitionist John Brown's family was fleeing persecution in the east, they certainly didn't expect to run right back into it out west. Hea...