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Were I tasked with apprehending the man I might have done the same thing.
Hardin's killer was not tasked with apprehending him, he was on a personal vendetta. Hardin at the time had served 17 years in prison and had been paroled. There was no warrant for his arrest. Hardin had had an argument with John Selman, Jr, an El Paso deputy who had arrested a prostitute who was a friend of Hardin's. It may or may have involved some violence, the reports differ.) It was Selman's father, a former outlaw turned lawman who came for revenge. He walked up to Hardin in a saloon and shot him in the back of the head. Hardin was killed instantly, but Selamn Sr. put three more bullets into him just to make sure.
Quick draw duels may have been fictional, but armed duels were not. See Aaron Burr vs Alexander Hamilton. Did they continue this tradition into the Wild West? It was both in the 1800s. When did the dueling stop?
Dueling was on the wane in the 18th century and was rapidly dying out in the early decades of the 19th. By the time of the wild west (roughly, the end of the Civil War to the last decade of the century) it was virtually non-existent. At any rate, dueling was predicated on honor and personal affront, something for which neither law enforcement (which was about the violation of laws, not personal insults) nor criminals (who had scant use for chivalric codes) concerned themselves with.
In a nutshell, the duel existed in a culture of rules and social expectations, whereas the western frontier was defined as lacking those things - hence, the 'wild' aspect of the West. The showdown is almost entirely mythical, belonging in the same category of harmlessly disarming an opponent by intentionally shooting the gun out of his hand, or of various fanning results - tight groupings, or the Man with No Name fanning X number of shots into X number of bad guys (and then jauntily adjusting his hat).
However he did spend a fortune keeping those clothes freshly laundered.
What fascinated the most about the show was that through 431 episodes, the Cartwright family must have killed about 300 people. All in self defense or dire necessity of course. Despite this incredibly high total, none of them was ever arrested for murder, save for several times when one of them would be falsely accused of murder and forced to stand trial. (And of course during the trial, the rest of the Cartwrights would find the actual killer...and kill him, but not before he confessed.)
Hey, Its TV! If it had been more realistic you couldn't have had any continuity because as violent as it was in the Old West, it wasn't that violent, so you would have had to skip from a Marshal in Kansas to a Sheriff in New Mexico to a Ranger in Texas.
But you were right. Selman was tried for Hardins Murder, (hung jury.) Scarborough was tried for his killing of Selman. So it goes.
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Originally Posted by Grandstander
Hardin's killer was not tasked with apprehending him, he was on a personal vendetta. Hardin at the time had served 17 years in prison and had been paroled. There was no warrant for his arrest. Hardin had had an argument with John Selman, Jr, an El Paso deputy who had arrested a prostitute who was a friend of Hardin's. It may or may have involved some violence, the reports differ.) It was Selman's father, a former outlaw turned lawman who came for revenge. He walked up to Hardin in a saloon and shot him in the back of the head. Hardin was killed instantly, but Selamn Sr. put three more bullets into him just to make sure.
And Selman Sr's Case was actually an episode worthy of Bonanza. Scarborough was found not guilty only after a thief was arrested that had stolen Selman's gun.
The showdown is almost entirely mythical, belonging in the same category of harmlessly disarming an opponent by intentionally shooting the gun out of his hand, or of various fanning results - tight groupings, or the Man with No Name fanning X number of shots into X number of bad guys (and then jauntily adjusting his hat).
The fanning business is rather preposterous. The pistols available in those days were not especially accurate, and the more the range increased, the less accurate they became. Fanning the hammer just meant that you were shaking the weapon, making it even less accurate.
TV shows and films often depict ridiculous accuracy, a fight between guys hiding behind rocks 150 feet apart would most likely have resulted in no one being shot unless by a fluke.
Also on the shows like Bonanza and The Big Valley and so forth, getting shot means that you clutch your chest and fall right down. No blood, no screams of horror and pain, just a surprised look and plop.
In modern English, 'hero' is often used interchangeably with 'protagonist' when discussing fiction.
Not necessarily all the time.
You definitely have cats like the Michael Collins Deathlok 2.0 who fit the hero bill.
There are also those like the Punisher who range the blurry borders between hero-anti-hero-villain.
Then you have a character whose various incarnations defies all three classifications & categorizations (not just Fixit persona regardless of color; but also Mindless, Savage, Professor in his hirsute, olive mad Maestro form [frankly some stories even touched upon the irony of having the good doctor being the moral center yet being the one whose weapons of mass destruction track record can be just as bad if not worse than what his alter ego has ever done, a theme the early Lee stories played with during his Army employ]).
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Originally Posted by Hulsker 1856
High Plains Drifter is my guess.
Don't remember the name & too lazy to google it, but it was an Eastwood flick.
One big misconception is that lawmen and people in general in the west used gun holsters. If you read the court documents about the shootout at the O.K. Corral all the law men say the pulled their weapons out of their coats and pockets on the way to the shootout. None of them drew their weapons out of holsters. Hollywood has glorified the fancy gun holster. In reality gun holsters were not that common. So to answer your question if lawmen were dealing with anyone they would most likely have their gun in hand, especially since rifles and shot guns were much more common that revolvers were.
I like to think the "real" West was more like what was portrayed in "Unforgiven". If you wanted to kill someone, you killed them in the most expedient way possible.
"You just shot an unarmed man".
"Well, he should have armed himself."
And like Pat Garrett waiting for Billy the Kid in his bedroom and shooting him to death when he entered.
You just get it done however.
I wonder if there really ever was a quick draw gunfight like that portrayed by Marshal Dillon in Gunsmoke? I kind of doubt it.
And then there we the movies that portrayed three or four bad guys terrorizing an entire town. When you think about it many of the men of the 1870's were civil war veterans and I am sure all of them had guns and knew how to use them. And standing in formation shooting at the enemy kind of took the coward label away from them in my opinion.
I wonder if there really ever was a quick draw gunfight like that portrayed by Marshal Dillon in Gunsmoke? I kind of doubt it.
And then there we the movies that portrayed three or four bad guys terrorizing an entire town. When you think about it many of the men of the 1870's were civil war veterans and I am sure all of them had guns and knew how to use them. And standing in formation shooting at the enemy kind of took the coward label away from them in my opinion.
There were a few, but they usually weren't as dramatic or as clearly defined as TV. Anyone who'd been in a few gunfights, or even seen one or two, would know better than to just assume he could outdraw a random stranger. Nobody wanted to stand in the middle of the street and wonder just how fast he was compared to that other guy who was staring back at him. They all knew that some people were extremely fast, and you never really had any way to know if that other guy was one of those. Most shootouts were just one guy losing his temper and going for his gun first, then the other guy trying to pull his fast enough to drop the first guy, and they'd often just keep shooting until one was dead or both were out of bullets.
And some of those ol' boys were just superhumanly fast. Luke Short and Doc Holliday were known for being very fast; John Lee Hardin was said to be the fastest and most accurate shot many of his contemporaries had ever seen, and Hardin himself looked up to Wild Bill Hickock his whole life, and never thought he measured up to his hero. Curly Bill Brocious may have been the fastest of them all; he could pull, shoot out the flame of a candle (without touching the candle), and have his weapon back in the holster so fast that many people in the room could not believe he had actually been the one to fire the shot.
You have to figure that when someone made a conscious decision to become one of those men who literally lived and died by the gun, many of them would do everything possible to give themselves an edge. Take a look at this guy... if he can do it in this day and age, I'm sure there were plenty of guys back then who spent many, many hours teaching himself to do same or similar. A man would have to be insane to go face to face in the street without knowing just who he was up against...
I always wondered when the Indians were circling around the wagons, why the settlers did not just shoot the Indians' horses out from under them and then take their time shooting the Indians on foot?
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