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About this Book
Punctuated by
gunshots and posse hoofbeats, these true tales, many told for the first
time, illustrate, in both words and rare photographs, perilous trails
and dangerous men from a time gone forever.
• While Tommy Brown and Buck English were born to raise hell, stagecoach
robber Shorty Harris just wanted to buy a restaurant with his loot.
• Although he didn’t plan on killing lawmen when he helped rob stages to
aid the Confederacy, in the end, ex-Monterey County Undersheriff Tom
Poole took the long walk up the Placerville scaffold for murdering
Deputy Joseph Staples. The local newspaper reported, “He smiled on all
and seemed perfectly resigned.”
• Black Bart, the most famous stagecoach robber ever, robbed
twenty-eight stages in eight years. Between robberies, he led the life
of a society gentleman in San Francisco.
The Sotello brothers, John Keener, Bill Miner, Louis J. Dreibelbis,
Ramon Ruiz, and all the others were fascinating characters—a desperate
breed who added their stories to the legends of the Old West.
About the Author
Born in Fresno, California, in March of 1930, William
B. Secrest grew up in the great San Joaquin Valley. After high school he
joined the Marine Corps where he served in a guard detachment and in a
rifle company in the early years of the Korean War. Returning to
college, he obtained a BA in education, but for many years he served as
an art director for a Fresno advertising firm.
Secrest has been interested in history since his
youth and early began comparing Western films to what really happened in
the West. A hobby at first, this avocation quickly developed into
correspondence with noted writers and more serious research. Not
satisfied in a collaboration with friend and Western writer Ray Thorp,
Secrest began researching and writing his own articles in the early
1960s.
Although at first he wrote on many general Western
subjects, some years ago Secrest realized how his home state has
consistently been neglected in the Western genre and concentrated almost
exclusively on early California subjects. He has produced hundreds of
articles for such publications as Westways, Montana, True West, and the
American West, while publishing seven monographs on early California
themes. His book I Buried Hickok (Early West Publishing Co.)
appeared in 1980, followed by Lawmen & Desperadoes (The Arthur H.
Clark Co.) in 1994 and Dangerous Trails (Barbed Wire Press) in
1995. Books published with Word Dancer Press include California
Desperadoes (1999), Perilous Trails, Dangerous Men (2001),
and When the Great Spirit Died (2002). Current projects
include a biography of Harry Love, the leader of the rangers who tracked
down Joaquin Murrieta, and famous feuding families of California.
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