306

Letter describing a conversation with stagecoach robber Pearl Hart, a gunfight at a baseball game, and more.

Bisbee, AZ, 23 October 1899
Autograph Letter Signed only as "Lute," to friend Levi. 14 pages, 8¾ x 5¾ inches; mailing folds, minor wear to 14th sheet.

  • Notes: One of the wilder Wild West letters you can hope to read.

    The author, who signs simply as "Lute," went west to work as an engine operator in a mine. His letter begins: "Bang, bang, bang, whiz, zip, and some dead men. This is the wild and wooley, and no mistake." 

    He describes his journey by ship to Texas, and then by rail across New Mexico, where he met a famous passenger, "the last stagecoach robber" Pearl Hart (1871-1955): "At Deming I got my first sight of the wild and wooley. A sherif got on the train with Pearl Harte, the female bandit [who] held up a stage with her 6-shooters and got about $500. She was captured and put in the Tucson jail. She cut through the roof and with another escaped. Jailbirds ran for Deming where they were captured. I rode in the same car with her, and talked to her. She told me about how she held the stage up. She wears men's clothes and smoked cigars, drank whiskey, sang songs and told dirty stories all night." 

    Our letter writer arrived in Bisbee on 21 October, just two days before writing the letter. He was met by a friend named George, who confiscated his Smith & Wesson: "He has taken my S&W away from me and hid it. He says I might get into trouble, so my hopes of becoming a bad man very soon are dashed." He explained that "it is against the law to carry a revolver in the town of Bisbee, and against the state law to carry any concealed weapon." However, the letter does not lack for gunplay. He notes that the day before his arrival, "there were two men killed near here Friday. They held up a faro bank and got winged." 

    This news was soon overshadowed by an incident in the border town of Naco. Two Bisbee baseball teams hired an excursion team and brought a large crowd to Naco for a ballgame: "The people got on the train to come home when without any warning a lot of Mexicans opened fire with Winchesters on the Americans, who fired back with their Colts. The fight was soon general. The Mexicans fired at the cars a little. Women screamed and fainted, and there was hell let loose for a while. The fighting was going when the train pulled out, so it is not known how many men were killed." Many cowboys headed off to Naco that night, "armed to the teeth." 

    After two days of Bisbee, Lute declared: "I like this place very much," declaring its murderous inhabitants to be "the most cordial people I have ever met." 
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