Desperate Men: The James Gang and the Wild Bunch, Revised and Enlarged Edition

This book is in two parts: the first half is all about Jesse James and his exploits; the second half is concerned with Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch. Relying on secondary sources only, Horan recounts the life of Jesse James and the activities of his gang with accuracy, if in a pedestrian manner. Jesse's Civil War years with Quantrill, numerous stagecoach holdups and train robberies, the Northfield Bank robbery, and his eventual death at the hands of Robert Ford are all related. Horan errs in placing James at the Liberty, Missouri, bank hold up; Jesse was at home in bed tending to a wounded lung at the time. Horan was able to gain access to the files of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, and the information gleaned from there proved especially useful in the section on the Wild Bunch. Whereas the James segment was pretty straightforward history, the part on the Wild Bunch is written almost like a novel, with a great deal of invented dialogue and unsubstantiated descriptive details thrown in liberally throughout the text. The Wild Bunch, which at various times included, besides Cassidy, Harry Longabaugh ("The Sundance Kid"), George Curry, Elza May, and others, were associated with a number of illegal activities, including cattle and horse rustling, numerous bank and payroll holdups, train robberies, and murder. After getting away with a large amount of money from robbing the Winnemucca, NV, bank and a Great Northern train in Montana, Cassidy and Longabaugh went to South America. Rumors persist that Cassidy returned to the US and died in Spokane, WA, in 1937, but Horan (and the most recent hard research) insists he died in Bolivia in 1909. Horan is a careful historian and does not confuse fact with legend. Although I don't care much for the novelistic approach taken in the second half, one can't fault Horan for being lazy or confused or uninformed. A later, fuller book on Cassidy and the Wild Bunch was published by Horan in 1959.

I first read Horan's 1958 book The Wild Bunch, which is now kind of difficult to find. This book includes some interesting facts which have been unearthed since the time of the first book. The photographs that are reproduced here really add to the book as well - the photos reproduced in the old paperback I had were grainy, but these are great. The book gives a good description of the facts, and I was surprised at how fast I finished it. Definitely of interest to those who love the stories of the Old West.