Wyatt Earp

on
Gunfighting
"I was a fair hand with pistol, rifle, or and accurate shooting, which was that the gun-
shotgun, but I learned more about gunfighting fanner and hip-shooter stood small chance to
from Tom Speer's cronies during the summer live against a man who, as old Jack Gallagher
of '71 than I had dreamed was in the book. always put it, took his time and pulled the
Those old-timers took their gunplay seriously, trigger once.
which was natural under the conditions in Cocking and firing mechanisms on new
which they lived. Shooting, to them, was revolvers were almost invariably altered by
considerably more than aiming at a mark and their purchasers in the interests of smoother,
pulling a trigger. Models of weapons, methods effortless handling, usually by filing the dog
of wearing them, means of getting them into which controlled the hammer, some going so
action and operating them, all to the one end of far as to remove triggers entirely or lash them
combining high speed with absolute accuracy, against the guard, in which cases the guns
contributed to the frontiersman's shooting skill. were fired by thumbing the hammer. This is not
The sought-after degree of proficiency was to be confused with fanning, in which the
that which could turn to most effective account triggerless gun is held in one hand while the
the split-second between life and death. Hours other was brushed rapidly across the hammer
upon hours of practice, and wide experience in to cock the gun, and firing it by the weight of
actualities supported their arguments over the hammer itself. A skillful gun-fanner could
style. fire five shots from a forty-five so rapidly that
The most important lesson I learned from the individual reports were indistinguishable,
those proficient gunfighters was the the winner but what could happen to him in a gunfight was
of a gunplay usually was the man who took his pretty close to murder.
time. The second was that, if I hoped to live I saw Jack Gallagher's theory borne out so
long on the frontier, I would shun flashy trick- many times in deadly operation that I was
shooting -- grandstand play -- as I would never tempted to forsake the principles of
poison. gunfighting as I had them from him and his
When I say that I learned to take my time associates.
in a gunfight, I do not wish to be There was no man in the Kansas City
misunderstood, for the time to be taken was group who was Wild Bill's equal with a six-gun.
only that split fraction of a second that means Bill's correct name, by the way, was James B.
the difference between deadly accuracy with a Hickok. Legend and the imaginations of certain
sixgun and a miss. It is hard to make this clear people have exaggerated the number of men he
to a man who has never been in a gunfight. killed in gunfights and have misrepresented the
Perhaps I can best describe such time taking as manner in which he did his killing. At that, they
going into action with the greatest speed of could not very well overdo his skill with pistols.
which a man's muscles are capable, but Hickok knew all the fancy tricks and was
mentally unflustered by an urge to hurry or as good as the best at that sort of gunplay, but
the need for complicated nervous and muscular when he had serious business at hand, a man to
actions which trick-shooting involves. Mentally get, the acid test of marksmanship, I doubt if
deliberate, but muscularly faster than thought, he employed them. At least, he told me that he
is what I mean. did not. I have seen him in action and I never
In all my life as a frontier police officer, I saw him fan a gun, shoot from the hip, or try to
did not know a really proficient gunfighter who fire two pistols simultaneously. Neither have I
had anything but contempt for the gun-fanner, ever heard a reliable old-timer tell of any trick-
or the man who literally shot from the hip. In shooting employed by Hickok when fast
later years I read a great deal about this type of straight-shooting meant life or death.
gunplay, supposedly employed by men noted for That two-gun business is another matter
skill with a forty-five. that can stand some truth before the last of the
From personal experience and numerous old-time gunfighters has gone on. They wore
six-gun battles which I witnessed, I can only two guns, most of six-gun toters did, and when
support the opinion advanced by the men who the time came for action went after them with
gave me my most valuable instruction in fast both hands. But they didn't shoot them that
way. that fashion. The soft flesh of the thumb ball
Primarily, two guns made the threat of might slip if a man's hands were moist, and a
something in reserve; they were useful as a slip was not to be chanced if humanly avoidable.
display of force when a lone man stacked up This thumb-joint method was employed whether
against a crowd. Some men could shoot equally or not a man used the trigger for firing.
well with either hand, and in a gunplay might On the second point, I have often been
alternate their fire; others exhausted the loads asked why five shots without reloading were all
from the gun on the right, or the left, as the a top-notch gunfighter fired, when his guns
case might be, then shifted the reserve weapon were chambered for six cartridges. The answer
to the natural shooting hand if that was is, merely, safety. To ensure against accidental
necessary and possible. Such a move -- the discharge of the gun while in the holster, due to
border shift -- could be made faster than the hair-trigger adjustment, the hammer rested
eye could follow a top-notch gun-thrower, but if upon an empty chamber. As widely as this was
the man was as good as that, the shift would known and practiced, the number of cartridges
seldom be required. a man carried in his six-gun may be taken as
Whenever you see a picture of some two- an indication of a man's rank with the
gun man in action with both weapons held gunfighters of the old school. Practiced gun-
closely against his hips and both spitting smoke wielders had too much respect for their
together, you can put it down that you are weapons to take unnecessary chances with
looking at the picture of a fool, or a fake. I them; it was only with tyros and would-bes that
remeber quite a few of these so-called two-gun you heard of accidental discharges or didn't-
men who tried to operate everything at once, know-it-was-loaded injuries in the country
but like the fanners, they didn't last long in where carrying a Colt's was a man's
proficient company. prerogative."
In the days of which I am talking, among
men whom I have in mind, when a man went From "Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshall" by
after his guns, he did so with a single, serious Stuart N. Lake.
purpose. There was no such thing as a bluff;
when a gunfighter reached for his forty-five,
every faculty he owned was keyed to shooting
as speedily and as accurately as possible, to
making his first shot the last of the fight. He
just had to think of his gun solely as something
with which to kill another before he himself
could be killed. The possiblity of intimidating an
antagonist was remote, although the 'drop' was
thoroughly respected, and few men in the West
would draw against it. I have seen men so fast
and so sure of themselves that they did go after
their guns while men who intended to kill them
had them covered, and what is more win out in
the play. They were rare. It is safe to say, for all
general purposes, that anything in gunfighting
that smacked of show-off or bluff was left to
braggarts who were ignorant or careless of
their lives.
I might add that I never knew a man who
amounted to anything to notch his gun with
'credits,' as they were called, for men he had
killed. Outlaws, gunmen of the wild crew who
killed for the sake of brag, followedthis custom.
I have worked with most of the noted peace
officers -- Hickok, Billy Tilghman, Pat Sughre,
Bat Masterson, Charlie Basset, and others of
like caliber -- have handled their weapons many
times, but never knew one of them to carry a
notched gun.
There are two other points about the old-
time method of using six-guns most effectively
that do not seem to be generally known. One is
that the gun was not cocked with the ball of the
thumb. As his gun was jerked into action, the
old-timer closed the whole joint of his thumb
over the hammer and the gun was cocked in