Latest / Blood Trails / Introducing: Gunfighters, with Bryan Burrough
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: From mediator and author Brian Burrow, this is Gunfighters, a
- 0:04Speaker 1: gripping descent into the shocking true history of the American frontier.
- 0:09Speaker 2: What's long been considered the very first gunfight of the
- 0:12Speaker 2: old western frontier happened in the scraggly village of Springfield, Missouri,
- 0:17Speaker 2: just before 6 o'clock at the beginning of a warm
- 0:20Speaker 2: Friday evening. As everyone watched, two men stepped out into
- 0:24Speaker 2: the open. They had argued over a pocket watch one
- 0:27Speaker 2: of them seized from the other to satisfy a poker debt.
- 0:30Speaker 2: The man who took the watch was a tough character
- 0:33Speaker 2: named Davis Tut. The other gentleman, the one who wanted
- 0:36Speaker 2: his watch back, was James Hickok. Hickok hollered for Tut
- 0:40Speaker 2: to return his watch. The watch, shall we say, was
- 0:43Speaker 2: not forthcoming. The two men, both wearing holstered pistols, stood
- 0:47Speaker 2: frozen for a long moment. Suddenly, without a further word
- 0:51Speaker 2: or exchange between them, both threw their guns and fired.
- 0:56Speaker 2: Davis Tut staggered forward, shouted, Boys, I'm killed! and keeled
- 1:01Speaker 2: over dead. As he did, Hickok whirled around to confront
- 1:04Speaker 2: a pack of Tut's armed pals. He snarled at them.
- 1:08Speaker 2: Put up your shooting arms, there'll be more dead men here.
- 1:12Speaker 2: And they did. Hickok walked away clean. My name is
- 1:18Speaker 2: Brian Burra. I'm the author of eight books, and I've
- 1:21Speaker 2: been a writer at places like the Wall Street Journal,
- 1:24Speaker 2: Vanity Fair, and Texas Monthly for going on 40 years now.
- 1:28Speaker 2: I've been fascinated by the gunfighters of the Old West
- 1:31Speaker 2: since I was in sixth grade, when I was like 11.
- 1:34Speaker 2: From Butch and Sundance, I plunged into the stories you'd expect.
- 1:38Speaker 2: Billy the Kid, Jesse James, all the big names. And
- 1:41Speaker 2: then in time, I began digging down into the careers
- 1:44Speaker 2: of gunfighters I'd never heard of. Maybe you haven't either.
- 1:47Speaker 2: I'll tell you stories in this podcast about all sorts
- 1:50Speaker 2: of dimly remembered men. Once you understand the context and
- 1:54Speaker 2: the background of all this, so many of these stories
- 1:57Speaker 2: are even wilder than what you see.
- 1:58Speaker 1: In the movies. Listen to Gunfighters with Brian Burrow, presented
- 2:03Speaker 1: by Takovas, starting on September 15th on the iHeartRadio app,
- 2:08Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.