Triggernometry

The parcel arrived this March. It contained a book and a hand-written, undated note. It was confusing: a date really would have helped. The note was from parents of former students of mine, thanking me for teaching their kids and offering me a book that they found in a bookstore in St. Louis this summer. This summer? I received the book in March!

I began piecing together clues: a reference to the fact that they will miss me at school next year (I left that school three years ago), and an oblique reference to Covid-19. The return address on the parcel was in their daughter’s name, but her last name was different. When did she graduate? Has she had enough time to finish college and get married?

My detective work led me to believe that the parents wrote the note five years ago, and handed both book and note to their daughter to mail to me. She graduated from college, was married, and moved to another state. In unpacking at her new digs she found the book and note, searched the internet for my new address, and mailed it to me.

Well, that puzzle kept boredom at bay yet one more day.

I have just finished reading the book, and it is the best book I have read thus far this year. The book is Triggernometry: A Gallery of Gunfighters, by Eugene Cunningham. Published by the University of Oklahoma Press, it carried a copyright date of 1934. I was not familiar with the author (born 1896, died 1957), but I could tell he had a sense of humor. The extended subtitle of the book is “with Technical Notes on Leather Slapping as a Fine Art, gathered from many a Loose Holstered Expert over the Years”.

Cunningham was a writer of westerns, but he did publish three works of nonfiction, one of which is Triggernometry. He was fortunate in that he was able to meet several of the gunslingers that he wrote about, and for some of those who were no longer with us, he was able to interview people who knew them. Of course, some of the profiles are based purely on the research he conducted. Most of the gunslingers he profiled were Texans, either folks who were born elsewhere but eventually settled in Texas, or native Texans, or those who spent the bulk of their lives in Texas. I forgive him his parochialism: he lived in El Paso for a long time.

I recognized many of the names: Wild Bill Hickok, Bat Masterson, Butch Cassidy, Billy the Kid. I learned about new heroes: John R. Hughes, James B. Gillett, Captain Bill McDonald, and others. I read about a miscarriage of justice (Tom Horn). And this just scratches the surface.

Throughout the book Cunningham presents the facts. Every now and again you read his opinion as to what the facts mean, but his main goal is to present fact, not rumor, not inflated reputation.

He confirms what I have come to believe about the Earps: they, and in particular Wyatt, were not as portrayed in the 1950s television series, the theme song of which I can still remember. For one thing, the television show never mentioned that Wyatt Earp was at times a pimp and at one time ran a house of ill repute. The clan seemed to walk the line of legality, spending time on both sides of it. While Cunningham describes the Earps’ participation in the shootout at the OK Corral, it is in a chapter on Billy Breakenridge, “Tombstone’s Deputy”. The Earps did not merit a chapter of their own. As for Wyatt, Cunningham describes him as an “efficient killer”.

Maybe I’m just getting old. Maybe I long for the westerns of my youth. Try to find a good old shoot-’em-up western on television these days. And maybe I’m just tired of living in a world where the only alpha males are street thugs and gang members. But for whatever reason, I enjoyed the hell out of this book.