Overview

"This is the story of George Scarborough's life, illuminating his activity as a lawman during the final part of the 19th century, and his controversial killings while wearing the badge - he was tried for murder on three occasions and acquitted each time. Robert K. DeArment is the author of ""Alias Frank Canton"". Leon C. Metz is the author of ""John Selman, Gunfighter"", ""Pat Garrett"" and ""Dallas Stoudenmire""."

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9780806128504

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The life and times of one of the more modest frontier gunmen, and his sizable role in the taming of the New Mexico and Arizona Territories, by Wild West biographer DeArment (Knights of the Green Cloth, 1982 - not reviewed). Scarborough had more than his share of gunplay and excitement in his brief career as a defender of law and order, and his reputation among his peers and the desperadoes he tracked throughout the southwestern wilderness was considerable, but he failed nonetheless to achieve the lasting fame of a Pat Garrett or a Bat Masterson. The son of a Texas homesteader and parson, Scarborough knew firsthand the unsettled conditions on the southern frontier in the wake of the Civil War. After riding the range as a cowboy, he decided he'd rather run men than cattle first, in 1984, as sheriff of Anson, Texas, then as deputy US Marshal in untamed El Paso, and finally, during the 1890's, as a private detective for the New Mexico Cattlemen's Association. Best known at the time for his killing of gunslinger and latter-day lawman John Selman in El Paso, Scarborough was forced by that incident and an earlier shootout to stand trial twice for murder, but he was acquitted in both cases. Intent on his work, he had little appreciation for sensationalized news reports of his exploits, even refusing to talk to journalists for fear of revealing too much of his methods, so when he was gunned down on the trail in 1900 and died after surgery, the mysteries and legends surrounding him were largely forgotten. Unfocused and as much about Scarborough's milieu as the man himself, but still a colorful rendering of the hard men (and women) who thrived on the frontier. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Robert K. DeArment is a University of Toledo, Ohio, graduate whose field of interest is nineteenth-century American history with special emphasis on outlaws and law enforcement in the frontier West. He is the author of Bat Masterson: The Man and the Legend and the three-volume Deadly Dozen: Forgotten Gunfighters of the Old West, published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

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