As one of America’s best contemporary authors of history, Austin-based Bryan Burrough is used to hyper focusing on specific groups in his work. They might be powerful oil men (The Big Rich), early gangsters (Public Enemies), or 1960s/’70s government protesting “radicals” (Days of Rage).
But it was his last book, the myth-busting Forget the Alamo (co-authored with Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford) that led him to his most current side trip in the same universe: The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild (448 pp., $35, Penguin Press). Burrough will have a talk and signing locally on June 6 at Brazos Bookstore.
The Old West gunfighter has become one of the most archetypal images of America both in this country and abroad. And the Lone Star State was such fertile killing ground that—as Burrough points out—the term “Texas gunfighter” was almost an oxymoron.
“The idea of people getting famous for shooting other people is an odd notion, and it’s so distinct to the Old West. There were lots of criminals killing people in Boston and Baltimore and New York, and they never got famous,” Burrough says via Zoom from his book-lined home study.
“And I started reading and appreciating the Western frontier as part of the American Creation Myth. Of all the things that Americans worship, the biggest thing is individualism. And that’s what the Old West gave us. There’s something about a man alone with a gun, typically against overwhelming odds, that strikes a chord with Americans.”
Burrough traces the beginnings of the gunfight and the reasons behind them to the tail end of the Civil War and an extension of the “honor duels” of the antebellum South. Where an offense could be taken, a challenge could be issued, and two men (with their seconds) met on a field. The results could be none or many shots fired, and any physical condition to the duelists from no scratches to injuries to death.
Two “Codes of the West” emerged: one involving honesty, courtesy, and horse care, and a “darker” one involving honor, pride, courage—and never backing down from a fight.
Burrough pegs the first recognized “gunfight” in 1865 and involving Wild Bill Hickok. The Gunfighters recounts scores up through the 1901 demise of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Which—spoiler alert—didn’t exactly go down as it did for Robert Redford and Paul Newman on the movie screen. Nor were the hundreds of pulp novels and stories and (later) tens of thousands of hours of TV programming exactly concerned with historical accuracy.
“I think it’s Hollywood movies that speak to audiences, foreign audiences especially,” Burrough adds. “The Old West mesa or a mountainside and a lonely guy with a gun. It’s just iconic portraiture.”
That Texas would serve as the main stage for gunfighters should not be surprising. The vast landscape, geography, and proximity to Mexico helped in its starring role. As well as the point of origin of a lot of cattle drives which gave birth to that other giant American archetype: the cowboy.
Burrough says that then-contemporary observers noted that Texas “literally ran with blood” and was “the most violent place in all the former Confederate states.” And he adds that the perception at the time in the rest of the country was that “everything was bigger and badder and scarier and deadlier” in Texas. And the natives loved embracing that idea.
In fact, Burrough says Texas as “the connection” makes this narrative work, and ties things together rather than just a series of episodic chapters on individual gunfights. The author says that he spent a dozen years on and off buying historical books and documents that helped make his case come together.
“Texas had a huge role, especially in the explosion of violence that comes in the decade after the Civil War. The Texans had an influence in gunfighter violence more than we expected,” Burrough says. “And it was the Texas cattle business that brought that out to the rest of the country and spread the behavior of Texas males to the West.”
In Forget the Alamo, Burrough adds that he and his authors set out to disprove a cherished Texas myth. For The Gunfighters, he’d done just the opposite, to make the role of Texas more crucial than what has previously been noted.
The book includes stories with a Who’s Who/All-Star Cast of known names of the Old West: Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, Jesse James, John Wesley Hardin, Wild Bill Hickok, Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, Butch Cassidy, and the Sundance Kid.
But he also charts the stories of names not in the pop culture pantheon like Clay Allison and Luke Short. And what he found is that often, the tales of adventures and dangerousness of any of them could be exaggerated, distorted, or out and out untrue beginning sometimes with things written while they were still alive. Burrough had to do a lot of sifting, deciding, and going instinct to determine “truth” and say something new.
“That comes more in the writing than the research for me,” Burrough—whose next book will be about pirates—says. “There could be five versions of one gunfight. I can’t always tell you what’s the truth, but I can tell you what I think it is. You must know what smells accurate and when the story is a little too good.”
There are two gunfighters whose reputation as fierce and deadly combatants are wholly undeserved and exaggerated: Wild Bill Hickok and Johnny Ringo. But there’s at least one wild famous story that Burrough feels just may be accurate: That John Wesley Hardin once killed a man just for snoring.
“The man was asleep in his room at four in the morning and Hardin shot him through a wall. Either they had an argument or something happened,” he recounts. “They weren’t looking at each other. Why do you get mad at someone through a wall? I believed the story! Some anecdotes are so iconic, you’ve got to render a judgment. And that’s one I was comfortable doing.”
One surprising fact Burrough exhumes is just how much cowboys and ranchers hated the wild sheep that would eat up all the grass and water that the cows then couldn’t have. Entire wars were started over and about the fluffy creatures.
The other is how that the No. 1 tool of the gunfighter—the Colt revolver— was actually a huge failure when it was first introduced as a weapon by the company. It was only after the Texas Rangers got a hold of a cache that had actually been rejected by the U.S. Navy did the weapon enter the scene and legend.
Throughout the book, Burrough offers humorous asides and pop culture references in breaking that fourth wall to the reader. One failed entrepreneur is described as “an Elon Musk wannabe.” Of one cowpoke it’s said, “he looked like David Crosby on a dude ranch.” There are other nods to the movie Blazing Saddles, video game Red Dead Redemption, and contemporary singing “cowboys” the Eagles.
The Gunfighters ends cinematically with Burrough visiting Tombstone, Arizona and the site of perhaps the most famous gun battle in all of American history: The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Burrough paints an accurate but nonetheless depressing picture of history-as-tourism where the short-but-famous battle is reenacted over and over again by rote performers. For people who are then encouraged to enter one of the town’s many gift shops for souvenirs.
Burrough knows that the appeal of and interest in the history of the Old West is, like many of the era’s books and documents that sit on the groaning shelves in his office, fading. But at 63, he says he’s no longer chasing the next hot topic for a best seller.
“I’ve been reading gunfighter books since sixth grade, and I wanted to write one that was fresh. But honestly, this stuff is just not as cool as it used to be,” Burrough says.
“But I am so charged up and happy about this book. If only 18 people read it but 18 people love it. I’m gonna be good with that. I just want to write books now that I think are fun.”
Bryan Burrough will appear for a talk and signing at 6:30 pm on Friday, June 6, at Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet. For more information, call 713-523-0701 or visit BrazosBookstore.com. Free, books to be signed must be purchased from Brazos.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
