Charles A Siringo

After years of cowboying, Charles A. Siringo had settled down to store-keeping in Caldwell, Kansas, when a blind phrenologist, traveling through, took the measure of his "mule head" and told him that he was "cut out" for detective work. Thereupon, Siringo joined the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in 1886. A Cowboy Detective chronicles his twenty-two years as an undercover operative in wilder parts of the West, where he rode with the lawless, using more stratagems and guises than Sherlock Holmes to bring them to justice and escaping violent death more often than Dick Tracy. He survived the labor riots at Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, in 1892 (his testimony helped convict eighteen union leaders), hounded moonshiners in the Appalachians, and chased Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch. Once described as "a small wiry man, cold and steady as a rock" and "born without fear," Charlie Siringo became a favorite of high-ups in the Pinkerton organization. Nevertheless, the Pinkertons, ever sensitive to criticism, went to court to block publication of Siringo's book. Frank Morn, in his introduction to this Bison Books edition, discusses the changes that resulted from two years of litigation. Finally published in 1912 without Pinkerton in the title or the text, A Cowboy Detective has Siringo working for the "Dickensen Detective Agency" and meeting up with the likes of "Tim Corn," whom every western buff will recognize. The deeper truth of Siringo's book remains. As J. Frank Dobie wrote, "His cowboys and gunmen were not of Hollywood and folklore. He was an honest reporter.

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Many histories of the short life of Old West gunslinger William Bonney have been published, but few pack the punch of Charles A. Siringo's History of 'Billy the Kid', a thrilling first-person account that traces the doomed outlaw's story from birth to death. Siringo was known in his time as a cowboy detective and spent months pursuing Bonney.

Charlie Siringo (1855-1928) lived the quintessential life of adventure on the American frontier as a cowboy, Pinkerton detective, writer, and later as a consultant for early western films. Siringo was one of the most attractive, bold, and original characters to live and flourish in the final decades of the Wild West. Siringo's love of the cattle business and of cowboy life were so great that in 1885 he published a rollicking, picaresque account of his experiences in A Texas Cowboy, or Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony--Taken From Real Life, which Will Rogers dubbed "The Cowboy's Bible." In short, Siringo was a key player in shaping the romantic image of the Wild West cowboy. Howard Lamar's biography deftly shares Siringo's story with historians and the general public interested in the American West. Lamar's account is structured within seventy-five pivotal years of western history, from the Civil War in Texas to Hollywood's glorification of the West in the 1920s. Siringo was not a mere observer, but a participant in major historical events including the Coeur d'Alene mining strikes of the 1890s and Big Bill Haywood's trial in 1907. Within this framework, Lamar focuses on Siringo's youthful struggles to employ his abundant athleticism and ambitions and how Siringo's varied experiences helped develop the compelling national myth of the cowboy.

“An almost perfect novel” of yearning, adventure, and redemption in the dying days of the Old West from the bestselling author of Peace Like a River (St. Louis Post-Dispatch). Minnesota, 1915. With success long behind him, writer, husband, and father Monte Becket has lost his sense of purpose . . . until he befriends outlaw Glendon Hale. Plagued by guilt over abandoning his wife two decades ago, Hale is heading back West in search of absolution. And he could use some company on the journey. As the modern age marches swiftly forward, Becket agrees to travel into Hale’s past, leaving behind his own family for an adventure that will test the depth of his loyalties and morals, and the strength of his resolve. As they flee the relentless former Pinkerton Detective who’s been hunting Hale for years, Becket falls ever further into the life of an outlaw—perhaps to the point of no return. With its smooth mix of romanticism and gritty reality, So Brave, Young, and Handsome examines one ordinary man’s determination to risk everything in order to understand what it’s all worth, in “an old-fashioned, swashbuckling, heroic Western . . . [An] adventure of the heart and mind (The Washington Post Book World).

Few nineteenthcentury western figures had the wide range of experiences and acquaintances that Charles A. Siringo had. Stubborn and egotistical yet honest and freespirited, cowboy and private eye Charlie Siringo wrote several autobiographies that captured the interest of thousands of readers and contributed to the myth of the cowboylawman as an archetypal western hero. Charles Siringo was born on the Texas Gulf Coast in 1855. At an early age he became a cowboy, driving longhorn cattle up the Chisholm Trail. Shortly after writing his first autobiography, A Texas Cowboy, Siringo moved to Chicago, where he heard the bomb explosion that set off the Haymarket riot, and he witnessed its aftermath. The incident motivated him to join the worldfamous Pinkerton's detective agency, and for the next twentytwo years he tracked criminals, traveling throughout the West and to such faraway places as Alaska and Mexico City. Siringo eventually left the Pinkerton agency in 1907 and moved to Santa Fe to become a rancher, writer, and freelance detective. His second autobiography, originally entitled Pinkerton's Cowboy Detective, resulted in a lawsuit and launched a bitter conflict between Siringo and the agency. Ben Pingenot's biography of Siringo reveals him as a truly unique individual, but one with human imperfections. The result is the story of a man in the context of his times, of a man whose path crossed those of Billy the Kid, Bat Masterson, Clarence Darrow, Charles M. Russell, Will Rogers, and others. It is a story of a character just as interesting as Siringo's writings made him appear, but far more complex than he knew, and more thoroughly human than any stiff mythical figure of Western lore.

In his introduction to the 1927 edition of Riata and Spurs, Gifford Pinchot said that Charlie Siringo's story of his life is one of the best, if not the very best, of all books about the Old West, when cowpunchers actually punched cows. He goes on to say that it is worth something to be able to lay your hand on a book written by a man who is the real thing, and who tells the truth. Others might not have the same opinion about the book and some might argue about Siringo's memories of things that happened during his lifetime. But, in any event, the book is a colorful portrayal of the ins and outs of cowboys, bad men, and the one detective who took out after them. Siringo originally had references to his experiences with the Pinkerton Agency, but which objected to his statements and they do not appear in the 1927 edition. There's plenty left, however, including stories about Billy the Kid, Kid Curry, Butch Cassidy, and even a mention of Will Rogers. All in all, this fascinating book will give today's readers a rare glimpse of what was once called the Old West and is now gone forever. This new edition includes a new foreword by New Mexico historian Marc Simmons.