Cowboy Kisses News ~ Julie Lence

Hello Cowboy Kisses Readers! Just a quick update regarding author changes. Jan Scarbrough and Cali Black have resigned their positions and moved on to other adventures in their writing careers. Western romance authors Amanda A. Brooks and Niki Mitchell are replacing them. Amanda is taking over the 2nd Monday slot, while Niki is taking over the 1st Friday slot. The Cowgirls are happy to have them as part of the team and hope you will extend them warm welcomes, too. When they become available, be sure to check out their author pages located on the right-hand toolbar.  

Thank you, & Welcome Amanda and Niki!! 

Julie  

**San Tan Flat **

The Legend of Rawhide. Nebraska or Wyoming???

  

The word Rawhide carries certain grit. It conjures up images of cattle drives, wagon trains, and the vast open prairie of the west. In both Wyoming and Nebraska, it is more than a name. It is a Legend.

The other day I fell in the YouTube rabbit hole learning about lore and legends in different states. While listening to the legends in Nebraska, the Rawhide legend caught my attention. "That happened in Wyoming," I told the television. So, I jumped on Google and looked it up and turns out there are two Legends of Rawhide.

The Legend of Rawhide Creek, Nebraska

Rawhide Creek meanders through, Dodge, Washington, Douglas, and Colfax counties. According to lore, the creek earned its title in 1849, at the height of the California Gold Rush. A young Wisconsin emigrant vowed to kill the first Native American he saw. His victim wasn't a warrior, but a Pawnee woman.

After her murder her tribe demanded justice. The man was captured, tied and flayed alive along the bends of the creek. His skin left as a warning to others passing through. 

Reuben W. Hazen, a former Army captain and Dodge County Sheriff, published a book titled History of the Pawnee Indians in 1893. In the chapter "The Pawnees Flaying a Man Alive" Hazen tells the story. He gives a detailed account of the legend. 

"After crossing the Missouri River at Council Bluffs, thence traveling 22 miles, they came to the Elkhorn River. After crossing the river, the young man saw a squaw sitting upon a log, to make his promise to kill an Indian good, he drew a bead upon his rifle and the squaw rolled off the log. The Wagon train continued to a small stream of water and camped for the night. They had not been in camp but a short time, before the Pawnees began to collect around them, their faces painted in warlike colors in streaks of red and black, to the number of hundreds, and demanded the culprit who killed the squaw... The party saw their situation and thought better that one of them be scarified than the whole party lose their lives... the young man was surrendered to them... stripped of his clothes, then laying upon his back, his hands and feet pinioned to the ground. Then they drew a knife lengthwise of the body, skinning him alive. At the same time, the Pawnee compelled the party to look upon the ghastly and horrid sight. They cut Esterbrook's body to pieces and immersed the man's skin in the little stream and since that event it derives its name, the Rawhide. The man's skin has been tanned and was in the Pawnee's possession when they went to their reservation."

Historians have tracked the location of the skinning three miles due west of Elk City, a tiny unincorporated village just south of Highway 36 about a mile and a half east of the Elkhorn River.

Many saw that the man still haunts that area. Reports of a skinless man screaming in the wind or a skin hanging from a tree have been reported.

The Legend of Rawhide, Wyoming

In Lusk, Wyoming, a wagon train is heading west from Iowa to California during the 1849 gold rush. Among a wagon train traveling west, Clyde Pickett, vows to kill the first Native American he sees. That person was a Sioux princess.

The wagon train is besieged, and the settles face harrowing choices. In the end, Clyde surrenders and meets a violent fate. His punishment, being skinned alive. The event took place near the buttes outside Lusk. They are called the Rawhide Buttes.

The Legend of Rawhide takes on a theatrical form. Every second weekend in July, the little town comes alive with the Legend of Rawhide reenactment. The town hosts parades and events with proceeds supporting local economy.

In 1946 the county didn't have much money, and they wanted to improve the fairgrounds. EvaLou Paris wrote the script for the Legend of Rawhide. The community put on the pageant, and it was a huge success. The written story for the show is about Clyde Pickett, who falls in love with Kate Farley. Clyde vows to kill the first Indian he sees to impress Kate.

Over 200 volunteer actors are involved and the reenactment draws in a large crowd to watch.

Though Nebraska and Wyoming Rawhide legends are basically the same and have no proof it actually happened, they are both frontier morality tales. Rash actions, cultural clashes, and consequences.

So who really knows if these events actually took place, but the legends continue to spark interest.

Judge Roy Bean

 Judge Roy Bean, often dubbed the "Law West of the Pecos, was one of the Old West's most colorful and controversial figures. Born in Kentucky in 1825, Bean drifted westward, living a rough-and-tumble life that included gunfights, smuggling and gambling. By the late 1880s, he had set up shop in Langtry, Texas, running a combination saloon and makeshift courthouse. From behind the bar, Bean dispensed his unique brand of justice--often guided less by the letter of the law and more by his own notions of fairness, profit, and frontier practicality. His rulings were swift, unpredictable, and occasionally laced with humor, all while he sipped whiskey and kept an eye on the poker game.

Bean's court was far from ordinary. He held trials in his saloon, the Jersey Lilly, named after the British actress Lillie Langtry, with whom he was infatuated despite never meeting her. The "courtroom" was decorated with posters of Langtry, and Bean would happily tell travelers tall tales about her. His sentences could be unconventional--fining the dead man in a shooting case for "carrying a concealed weapon" or letting offenders go if they agreed to buy a round of drinks for the crowd. Though his methods skirted official law, Bean maintained order in a rough border region where formal justice was scarce, earning him both admiration and scorn.

Despite his eccentricities, Roy Bean became a living legend before his death in 1903. Stories of his rulings spread far and wide, mixing fact and folklore until the man and the myth were nearly inseparable. For many Western readers, Bean represents the wild spirit of frontier law--where survival often depended on wit, courage, and a willingness to bend the rules. Whether viewed as a shrewd showman, a corrupt opportunist, or a folk hero who brought a kind of order to lawless lands, Judge Roy Bean's place in Western lore is secure, his life a reminder that in the Old West, justice could be as unpredictable as the desert wind. 

 

 Books available at Amazon

Creatures of Habit

When I read about J.K. Rowling writing in longhand on a legal pad while sitting in a coffee shop, I shudder. To each his own, but this sounds like torture to me.

Every writer has his/her own way of creating. I used to write on a manual typewriter at my dining room table. Then I wrote on an electric typewriter and then a desk computer in an office in my home. Then I moved to a different house and made the whole upstairs an office and library and wrote on a new desktop computer. Then the Internet, routers, and laptops took over and I now write on a laptop in a downstairs office. I keep thinking that I'll start writing in the upstairs office again, but then I think it's dumb to heat and cool that whole floor.

The point is, I like to write in basically the same place and on the same instrument, day after day. Sometimes, if my back his aching or I'm crushing a deadline, I'll take the laptop into the living room and sit on the couch to write during the evening after writing all day in my office. 

My library upstairs is hardly ever used now and I've donated more than half of my books that used to be shelved up there to charities. The Internet has become my main source of information, along with a few books about the west and cowboys that are out of print.

I haven't written in longhand anything fictional since I was a kid and didn't know how to type yet. I know of several writers who do write in notebooks, but it seems odd to me. They will have to commit their work to type for it to be saved and/or emailed, so why not start off keying in the computer and skip a step? Or they have to hire someone to key the whole thing into a computer. Waste of money. The longhanders say this way of writing makes them more creative and allows them more time to think.

For me, I think faster than I can type -- and I type fast. When I think back to the days of the typewriter and correction fluid/tape, I break out in hives.

I also use my computer to read back what I've written. The computer guy (I like to use the male voice) reads it to me and that helps me catch mistakes, misspellings, omitted words, etc. It also makes me laugh when he reads my sex scenes in his monotone, unemotional voice.

Back when I was part of a critique group, the reading of our work aloud was a godsend. We could hear it, catch the odd phrasing, wince at the wrong wording, tsk at the poor punctuation, and question how believable a plot point was and if someone really would talk like that. After years and years of being critiqued, I still have one or two other people I respect (as in, they are astute writers and/or readers) read my final drafts and tell me where I've succeeded and where I've failed. It's part of my writing "habit."

That's the thing, you see. Writers are creatures of habit. That's the only way you can actually become a writer. You have to make sitting down in front of a computer screen (or notebook) a habit. Every damned day until it is ingrained. Until it's almost an addiction. If I miss a day or two, I have withdrawal symptoms. I feel that something is amiss. I'm antsy. I feel guilty. That's why most writers write while they're on vacation. They need their "fix."

That's also why some writers continue to write in longhand on lined paper. It's habit. It's their daily drug of choice. The "fix" is in. 

The Western Perspective - a Woman's View

Post by Doris McCraw

aka Angela Raines

Mount of the Holy Cross -Helen Chain
From Colorado Springs Pioneer Museum
Collection in 50% of the Story

When you think of the West, it's usually cowboys, fur traders, wagon trains. Yet, what did women see, especially the creative ones? This post will look at a few.

Isabella Bird, Grace Greenwood, and Helen (Hunt) Jackson wrote of what they saw. Bird, "A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains", Jackson, "Nelly's Silver Mine", and Greenwood's "New Life in New Lands".

Helen Maxwell 
from Wikipedia

Martha Maxwell and her dioramas of animals in their natural habitats brought the world a new way of seeing the West and its nature. Martha Maxwell - Colorado Women's Hall of Fame

Ana (Anna) Dickenson, who in 1873 summited four 14,000-foot peaks, including Pikes Peak and Long's Peak. Ana Dickenson

And there was artist Helen Henderson Chain, who painted "The Mount of the Holy Cross" in 1879, and also climbed. She also traveled with her husband and photographer William H. Jackson.Helen Chain

Gutenberg Project - A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains

Internet Archive- New Life in New Lands

Project Gutenberg - Nelly's Silver Mine

Until Next Time,

Doris

Angela Raines - Amazon

Doris A. McCraw - Amazon

 

Outlaw Henry Newton Brown ~ D. K. Deters

I was rummaging through some western historical books recently and came across an interesting story about the infamous outlaw Henry Newton Brown. This part of his history begins in Caldwell, Kansas. Growing up in Kansas, the story immediately drew my attention.

Geographically, the town of Caldwell was known as the “Border Queen” because its southern boundary is on the Kansas-Oklahoma border. Located fifty miles south of Wichita, Caldwell was also a stop on the famous Chisholm Trail.

Caldwell, Kansas 1889 (Public Domain)

In 1880, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroad reached Caldwell, sparking a boom for commercial establishments. Saloons lined Caldwell’s main streets with hosts of businesses as the town continued to expand. Unfortunately, Caldwell had earned a reputation as a disorderly town.

Gunfights plagued Caldwell:

1880 - A city marshal and an assistant marshal were murdered.

1881 - The mayor and a former marshal were killed in a street fight.

1882 - Another city marshal was gunned down.

As the town fell rife with lawlessness, enter notorious outlaw Henry Newton Brown, who was involved in the Lincoln County War in New Mexico. He had joined up with Billy the Kid and the “Lincoln County Regulators.” On April 1, 1878, Brown, Billy the Kid, and other desperados murdered Lincoln County Sheriff William Brady. Brown left New Mexico to avoid murder charges. After leaving the gang, he found legitimate work as a cowboy and even became a deputy sheriff, but those jobs didn’t last because he had a temper and was quickly dismissed.

 

Henry Newton Brown  - 1857-1884 (Public Domain)

However, by 1882, Brown had made his way to Kansas, and Caldwell officials welcomed him as an assistant city marshal. He was later promoted to marshal. The gunfighter quickly cleaned up the bustling border town. Afterward, the grateful citizens raised his pay to $125 per month and awarded him with an engraved Winchester for restoring law and order.  The inscription read: "Presented to City Marshal H. N. Brown For valuable services rendered in behalf of the Citizens of Caldwell Kas A. N. Colson Mayor Dec 1882.” Area papers wrote glowing articles about his deeds. Of course, they didn’t know about Brown’s outlaw past.

(Public Domain)

Brown seemed to have abandoned his life of crime and married Alice Maude Levagood, the daughter of a well-to-do Caldwell brick maker, in March 1884. A woman of good standing, Alice had graduated from Park College, Parkville, Missouri, with the class of 1882.

 

Alice Maude Levagood  - 1861-1935 (Public Domain)

On April 30th, 1884, the marshal, in debt and living beyond his means, returned to his outlaw roots. Joined by his deputy and two outlaw friends, they robbed a bank in Medicine Lodge using the rifle the citizens of Caldwell had given to him. Two people were killed, and his gang was captured. Brown was shot the same day, trying to escape. His gang members were lynched.

 

.

Bank robbers John Wesley, Henry Brown, William Smith and Ben Wheeler. 

(Public Domain)

He did write a letter to his wife which read in part: "Darling Wife: I am in jail here. Four of us tried to rob the bank here and one man shot one of the men in the bank. I want you to come and see me as soon as you can. I will send you all of my things and you can sell them. But keep the Winchester. It is hard for me to write this letter, but it was all for you, my sweet wife, and for the love I have for you. "Do not go back on me. If you do it will kill me. Be true to me as long as you live, and come to see me if you think enough of me. My love is just the same as it always was. Oh, how I did hate to leave you last Sunday evening. But I did not think this would happen. I thought we could take in the money and not have any trouble with it, but a man's fondest hopes are sometimes broken with trouble. We would not have been arrested but one of our horses gave out and we could not leave him [the rider] alone. I do not know what to write. Do the best you can with everything. I want you to send me some clothes. Sell all the things you don't need. Have your picture taken and send it to me. Now, my dear wife, go and see Mr. Witzleben and Mr. Nyce and get the money. If a mob does not kill us we will come out all right after while. Maude, I did not shoot anyone and didn't want the others to kill anyone. But they did and that is all there is about it. Now, my darling wife, goodbye. H. N. Brown."

Did Maude still love him? That is unclear, but she never remarried. Maude didn’t keep the rifle, and it became the property of the Robert R. Foster family. The Fosters later sold the gun to Dr. M. B. Aynesworth around October 1976. A short time later, in 1977, Dr. Aynesworth donated the rifle to the Kansas Historical Museum in Topeka, Kansas. (The museum is on my bucket list.)

I found several articles about Henry Newton Brown. All of them are fascinating. Although nefarious acts marked Brown’s life, he was the essence of the Old West figures who changed from outlaw to peacekeeper and back again.

 

Resources:

Truewest Magazine, Lawdogs Go South Henry Newton Brown’s Gang vs Medicine Lodge Cowboys by Bob Boze Bell 

The Wild West, Lawmen, Outlaws, Ghost Towns & More by Bill O’Neal, James A. Crutchfield, and Dale L. Walker

Legends of America, Henry Newton Brown – Outlaw Marshal of Kansas

Wikipedia, Henry Newton Brown