Billy Brooks For Western Wednesday...!

Often in the old west, it wasn't unusual to find an outlaw or gunfighter switching sides and becoming a lawman. However, Mr. Brooks got it backwards. Here is his story.

Billy Brooks

Gunfighters were a unique Western frontier product and a breed of their own—neither outlaw nor lawman but often either or both during their lifetime. This photo of Billy Brooks depicts a typical gunfighter of the 1870s, and he fit the mold: he was a lawman in Newton and Ellsworth, Kansas, a gunfighter in Dodge City—before any of those towns became “cowtowns”—and he died at the end of a rope in 1874 as a horse thief. This photo was probably taken circa 1872.

Guess moving from lawman to gunfighter to horse thief wasn't such a good career move. Brooks should have stopped while he was ahead!

Coffee back out on the patio, where the temps are going back to the 80s.