From: firstinitiallastname@texas.net   
      
   Von Fourche wrote:   
      
   >     Everytime I buy an issue of True West Magazine I see old pictures of law   
   > people in pictures with a dead bad guy they just blew away.  What's the deal   
   > with this?  They set them up against a wall, prop a gun in the guys hands,   
   > and surround him and snap a picture.  Kind of spooky to see these pics.  A   
   > little sickening.   
      
   Well, it was an event. And how many significant happenings were there to   
   photograph? It wasn't sickening. More of a relief, when a danger had   
   been removed.   
      
   It wasn't always, or even mostly, someone killed in a Hollywoodesque   
   gunfight. A lot of them were chased down and killed. Killing them was   
   routine in remote areas. There was a sort of circular logic at work. It   
   was dangerously impractical to try to capture a bad man on the run, to   
   try to tend to him for several days while traveling back to the local   
   jurisdiction. The bad man knew the routine and wasn't inclined to   
   venture a surrender. He also knew what would await him was likely to be   
     lethal, anyway.   
      
   Not to say that killing was inevitable. Plenty were returned, when there   
   were sufficient lawmen to safely bring them back and when they did   
   surrender or was surprised while asleep. That wasn't at all uncommon. In   
   places like west Texas, with very sparse populations, tracking wasn't   
   that difficult for an experienced manhunter, and the possible routes and   
   destinations were severely limited by geography and availability of water.   
      
   Where there were lawmen with broad jurisdiction, such as Texas Rangers,   
   in pursuit, there was a good chance of overtaking a man who may have   
   fled with little preparation.   
      
   Some bandits killed in 1915 when they raided a King Ranch headquarters   
   without knowing they had been anticipated are pictured at:   
   http://www.taliesyn.com/ralph/raid_on_norias.htm   
      
   Of interest is who was doing all the photography.   
      
   The photographer of the 1915 raid's biography appears at:   
   http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/bio.html   
      
   So, it wasn't all photogrpahy of dead men.   
      
      
      
   --   
                          Gerald Clough   
       "Nothing has any value, unless you know you can give it up."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)