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TALES OF BAD MEN, BAD WOMEN & BAD PLACES: Four Centuries of Texas Outlawry
$18.95
WST616
What makes a badman, a bad woman, or a bad place? A “bad” man, in today's parlance, can be a “bad man to mess with.” In that case, any number of fine old Texas Rangers would qualify as “bad men.” However, when “badman” is only one word, it has a meaning all its own. It means a criminal---an outlaw, a killer, a robber, a thief, a swindler, a liver-on-the-law's-fringes, or--sometimes--someone who delights in making the lives of others uncomfortable, if not miserable, though operating entirely within the law. It could even mean, and often did, that the individual was “wuthless” a bum, a sponger, a petty annoyance not bad enough to kill but not acceptable in the house. Quite often “badmen” never thought of themselves as “bad men.”
A bad woman could be one of three sorts of woman. She could be, like her male counterpart, an outlaw, a killer, a robber, or a thief; or she might be a notorious prostitute or madam; or she might be a woman who stepped over the line of accepted “womanly conduct” in her time. In any case, a badman or a bad woman was usually recognized as such by at least the majority of the community in which he or she lived.
But what about a bad place? There are certain places today you wouldn't want to go into unless you just had to, and then you'd prefer to go in daylight, in company with several people - preferably at least some of them armed - and you'd go in and get out as fast as you could. At one time, in the American West, there were whole towns like that - not as many as Hollywood would have you believe, but they did exist. Bodie, Wyoming, home of the Badman from Bodie. Galeyville, Arizona, hangout of the cattle-rustling Clanton gang. And then there were the Texas towns, like Tascosa and Helena, which were just as bad if lesser known.
It wasn't always the people that made a place bad. Sometimes it had something to do with what happened there in the past and might happen there again. Sometimes it's something you could see, and sometimes it's something you could feel and hoped you wouldn't see.
This book contains all varieties - bad men and badmen, all sorts of bad women, and both types of bad places. They're all part and parcel of the Texas tales the schoolteacher never tells.
Paperback, 224pp - 5.75x8.75