American Outlaw

I sat with this newspaper man, on a stool next to the stove. It was an intolerably cold night and the saucepan was on as I made a fine negus to warm us up.

"I met the man", I told the reporter, "about two years before the supposed run in with Earp."
The newspaper man rode the edge of his seat as I went into detail about that day.
"Earp was a nobody, then, but Allison had a reputation as a cold-blooded killer. I, personally, don't believe a word of what Earp said. There's no way he could of stood tall against Allison. They say Bat Masterson was there, too, but I know for a fact that he was nowhere near Dodge that day."
With a quick glance up, this reporter, Collins, couldn't disguise his disappointment in my story.

"What do you want, kid? The truth? Well, it's nowhere near as exciting as the legend, is it? Earp started telling people that he run off Clay Allison but think about it. Allison had twenty five cowboys with him, guns or no guns. Even Earp wasn't that stupid. No, as far as I know, Earp never showed up that day. " I added a teaspoon of sugar to the negus and handed it to Collins. "It's hot.", I said just before he took a sip and scalded his tongue. This kid was a fool, looking for a story that never happened and some fifty years too late, to boot.

"Look at it this way," I said. "Allison is dead, run over by his own wagon. Now Earp is dead. Most anybody who was actually there is dead. You got two choices, the truth or a lie."
I opened the stove and added another stick and as I sat down the kid was closing up his book and putting away his pencil.

"Hold on there, kid. I still got stories you might like to hear. I was in Cimarron in '76 when he threw that printing press into the river. He was pretty upset with them for printing all that garbage about him. He paid for it, though. $200. He was just trying to make a point."

Collins didn't bother to open up his notebook again. I sat, saying nothing, for a minute or two and then I gave in.

"All right." I said. "Let me tell you about the time Allison pulled that dentist's tooth with a pair of pliers after the dentist made a mess of Allison's mouth."

What was the point? The Shootist was a legend and who was I to argue? Sure, I made up a few stories about Allison and then I elaborated on a couple of my own. What's the harm? I'm just an old cow hand and it's been months since anybody's bothered to come up here for anything, and it was nice to have the company. And I had met Clay Allison, once.