The gunfighter was a man bred in a lawless and violent era of civil war, range wars, and greed for land and gold. He played a real and deadly part in a period when men were conditioned to settle differences with gunplay. He shot and fought and killed throughout Texas in its struggle with Mexico, along the Kansas-Missouri border, and up and down the cattle trails. Black powder smoke from his guns darkened the Kansas cow towns and the Far West mining camps. 

What part of the gunfighter legend is true, and what part a novelist's or screenwriter's fantasy? What has been the gunfighter's influence on American society-and. for that matter, on world society? For there is no doubt that the shoot-‘em-up gun-totin’ hero of the early West is a figure of interest and sympathy to people all over the world.

Well documented and rich with illustrations of gunfights and gunmen, this book is a real find for "gunfighter buffs," as well as for all readers interested in knowing what the wild West was really like.