For over 150 years, Western badmen have filled dime novels, pulp magazines, and movie screens. Jesse James. The Dalton Brothers. Black Bart. Belle Starr. Their names have become a part of American folklore.
Somewhere along the way, they stopped being criminals and became folk heroes.
The legend says Joaquin Murietta came to California during the Gold Rush and was driven into outlawry by prejudice and the Foreign Miners Tax. The story says he robbed wealthy Americans and gave gold to poor Mexican families. The evidence for that is thin.
Jesse James received the same treatment. The legend says he robbed banks and railroads and shared the money with poor Missouri farmers. The truth is simpler. Jesse robbed banks, trains, stagecoaches, and anyone who carried money. As for sharing the take?not so much.
Belle Starr rode with rustlers and horse thieves in Indian Territory and called her revolvers her "babies." She lived by the gun and died by it.
The outlaw life wasn't glamorous.
James Dodsworth rode with the Doolin-Dalton Gang for six weeks. The gang stayed on the move and rarely spent more than one night in the same place. They slept with Winchesters beside them and pistols under their heads. One man stood guard while the others slept. Everyone expected a posse or a bullet in the back.
Robberies often failed. Sometimes the gang cut off the wrong train car. Sometimes the safe wouldn't open. Sometimes a posse arrived before the job began.
One time, the Dalton Gang forgot to bring dynamite to blow the safe. Pearl Hart risked the gallows for a stagecoach robbery that brought in less than five hundred dollars.
Most outlaw careers ended the same way: at the end of a rope, in a gunfight, or with a bullet in the back.
