No matter what you have seen in Western movies, the good old-fashioned pistol duel remains the most iconic scene in the genre. It is the classic image: the lawman and the outlaw meeting at high noon to see who is faster on the draw, a test of who uses the gun better. The truth is that these formalized duels didn’t really happen at the time.
But if you have heard the story of how Wild Bill Hickok was shot in the back of the head while playing cards, you would know just how gruesome the real Gunslingers were. However, if you think the Western movie characters are bloody, it is all courtesy of the real Gunslingers that have threaded the soils of the Old West.
Watch this article through to its end to find out who were the deadliest Gunslingers in the history of the Old West. We will count them down from the tempestuous to the truly terrifying, uncovering the lives, crimes, and unusual habits of these legendary or infamous men.
Number 12: Jim Miller
We start with Jim Miller, a man whose temper was way too high. It was so high that he killed his first victim after the two of them had argued. But it was not always like that for Jim.
He was born in Van Buren, Arkansas, but his parents migrated to Fannin County, Texas when he was one year old, and he grew up there. His father, Jacob Miller, was a stonemason and helped build the first capital building in the Texas state capitol in Austin. But just a few years after the migration, tragedy struck the Miller family.
Jim’s father died, so their mother had to move the family to Lavette, Texas, to live with her parents.
In 1869, when Jim was just eight years old, an even darker tragedy unfolded. His grandparents were found murdered in their home. While it is unclear who murdered the elderly two, young Jim was arrested for the crime.
However, he was never prosecuted for it. After Jim was released, he went to live with his sister, Georgia, and her husband, John Thomas Goff, on their farm at Plum Creek near Gatesville. But the relationship would not have gone well, as Jim was always getting into arguments with John Thomas.
All of their conflicts stopped abruptly on July 30, 1884. After they had another argument, Jim took a shotgun and shot John Thomas to death while the man was brutally wounded. This was the first time Jim was convicted of murder.
He was then sentenced to life in prison. The conviction, however, was overturned.
After leaving the Goff farm, Jim became a hired hand on the Mott gang County Ranch of A. J. Clemens, cousin in his alleged J.
Wesley Hardin. Despite his legal troubles, Jim joined the Texas Rangers and worked as a resident with the Texas Rangers in Memphis, Texas. Later, he served in Hall County.
At that time, he killed a man in the neighboring County of Collingsworth in the course of his profession. During the 1902 summers, Jim killed two men and injured one, claiming they were caught stealing cattle in Ward County. He also killed lawyer James Jarrett on August 28, 1902.
Jarrett had defended area farmers near the the city of A strongly believed that the fences disrupted the grazing of their cattle. Those ranchers hired Jim to murder Jarrett, paying him $500. Jim caught his money while he was watering his horses near his farm and had to shoot him four times.
Jim continued to take lives and do different things until everything went downhill, and he, together with his crew, was caught for the ultimate crime. Jim remained stoic while the other three reportedly begged for their lives. All Jim had to say was that he wanted his diamond ring given to his wife and that he be permitted to wear his black hat while being hanged.
Yes, his requests were granted. He tried to die in his black coat, but the authorities probably thought it was too much for anyone with a level of his crime. Jim reportedly was not sober when he was being hung, but he did not wait for anyone to do it; he just stepped down from the box and that was the end of his pending and Bitter life.
Number 10: John Wesley Hardin
As for John Wesley Hardin, the first time he recorded a killing was when he was just 15 years old, and he went on to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 as many as 44 men. He was a gunfighter and outlaw in the Wild West during the late 19th century. John believed he was a man who more often sinned against than a woman who had been killed by him.
He was an addicted gambler who made most of his money betting on horses or dealing in cattle. John Hardin left his mark on history as one of the Wild West’s most skilled gunmen, killing at least 21 men in fights and ambushes between 1868 and 1877. Hardin himself, however, put that number closer to 44.
Just as you may have expected, a man like Hardin is bound to make some enemies along the way, and in the case of John Hardin, he had a $4,000 bounty on his head. But instead of being bothered by anything, he spent his days gambling and drinking and also taking another man’s wife as his lover. His parents created for him a different path, but he seemed to not want to accept it.
He was named John Wesley Hardin after the founder of the Methodist branch of Protestantism.
One crazy saying of John was that he never killed anyone who didn’t deserve for it to happen. But another story he once recounted casts some serious doubt on that claim. One night, while John Hardin was sleeping in a hotel in Abilene, a man named Charles Cougar was snoring so loudly in the room next to him that Hardin pounded on the wall to quiet him down, but the man did not wake up.
To try and wake the man, John fired up his gun and shot a bullet through the wall. When the snoring stopped and the man made no other sound, Hardin realized he had aimed too low and had accidentally shot the man dead.
That was not even the incident that solidified his spot in history. That occurred in 1874, on John’s 21st birthday. Celebrating a big win at stores, Hardin and a few companions got incredibly drunk and drew the ire of Comanche, Texas’s deputy sheriff, Charles Webb.
A gunfight happened on the same day, and John won, but a lot of people were not happy about it, forcing John to be a fugitive with a four-thousand-dollar bounty on his head. He was eventually sentenced to 25 years in prison in 1877. Twenty-five years is a whole lot of time, and that is exactly what John thought, as he tried to escape multiple times.
But because it was so hard to escape, John Hardin moved to Theology and law instead. He even became superintendent of the prison’s Sunday School.
By 1894, he had transformed himself into an upright, law-abiding citizen and was pardoned for his crimes. Following his pardon, John was admitted to the State Bar and left town for El Paso, intending to set up a law practice. But John’s effort to live a decent life didn’t go as planned.
While acting as a defense attorney for a man named Martin Morose, a cattle thief, John took an interest in Martin’s wife, and soon enough the two became lovers. Martin found out and was angry that he was. He did not directly confront John.
Instead, he paid a lawman named George Scarborough to punish John, but Scarborough did not follow through on the assassination. Scarborough was once again gunned down at the border. It was rumored that John hired the men to assassinate Martin and other women.
But soon on August 19, 1895, one of the lawmen involved in Martin’s murder, John Selman, found John Hardin in the Acme Saloon in and shooter in the back of the head. It is speculated that John was murdered because he didn’t pay Selman the Maloney promised for killing Martin.
Number 10: Doc Holliday
One of the names that is not hard to come by when talking about the history of the Old West is Doc Holliday. Born John Henry on August 14, 1851, the man called Doc Holliday was a gambler, gunfighter, and dentist. He lost his mother to tuberculosis when he was just 15 years old.
This was in the classic novel by Scott C. Holliday because his relationship with his mother was very close. He earned a Doctor of Dental Surgery degree and soon began work as a dentist in the office of Dr.
Arthur C. Ford in Atlanta, Georgia. Shortly after starting his dental practice, Doc Holliday discovered that he had contracted tuberculosis, most likely from his mother before she died.
His adopted brother was also diagnosed with the same disease and later died, so he also could have contracted it from memory.
Several doctors he consulted told him he had only a short time to live and encouraged him to move to a drier climate to extend his life. In October 1873, Doc Holliday packed up and headed for Dallas, Texas, the railroad’s end at the time. As time went on, Doc forced himself to find another way to earn a living other than dentistry.
He was intelligent, so he became a natural at gambling. He lived a miserable life, as he had limited time to live. He became moody and drank heavily while still gambling.
He knew gambling could get dangerous, so he needed a way to protect himself. He dedicated himself to practicing with a six-shooter and a long wicked knife, honing his skills.
Soon he had time to put his practice to use. On January 2, 1875, Doc and a local saloon keeper had a disagreement that quickly turned to violence. While several shots were fired, neither man was struck, and both were arrested.
At first, the gunfight was thought to be amusing, until a few days later when Doc again got into a conflict with a man, killing a prominent citizen with two carefully aimed shots. Again on August 1879, Doc argued with a local gunman named Mike Gordon. The two took their argument to the street, where Doc politely invited Gordon to start shooting whenever he felt like it.
Gordon accepted the invitation and died with three shots in his belly. That was how deadly Doc Holliday was.
But he lived with something far more deadly than a bullet. While he hoped to take advantage of the reputed curative powers of the local climate and waters, the sulfurous fumes from the spring might have done his lungs more harm than good. He soon lay dying, and there on his dying bed, he looked at his feet and saw he had on his boots.
He said: “This is funny,” as he had always said he would die with his boots on. November 8, 1887, was the day Doc Holliday breathed his last breath, but his name remains in the history books more than even his own ghosts.
Number 9: Frank Buckin
Now we come to the ninth spot, and this is a tale of not just a gunman but an ill-tempered one. Frank Leslie was known for his violent streak, especially whenever he drank. He gained the nickname “Buckskin” while serving as a civilian scout in the Plains Indian Wars.
According to history, Leslie opened the Cosmopolitan Hotel in the mining town of Tombstone, Arizona. Shortly thereafter, he committed his first known murder, shooting Mike Coyne in a dispute over the man’s wife. The killing was officially ruled to have been in self-defense, but suspicion of foul play arose when Leslie then married the widow two months later.
Two years later, after Leslie badly pistol-whipped a man outside the Oriental Saloon, many Tombstone citizens began to suspect Leslie was a dangerous man. He was also accused of taking the life of the feared gunslinger John Ringo, but the law enforcement was unable to prove his guilt. However, Billy Clanton, a friend of Ringo’s, was so certain Leslie was the suspect that he called him out.
In return, the poor man was gunned down by Leslie and the gunfight never even started.
Even for a world of gunmen and killers in Tombstone, Leslie was unusually violent. He terrified the people of Tombstone, who finally got the chance to get him in 1889. Two years earlier, Leslie had divorced his wife and taken up with Tombstone prostitute named Blonde Molly Williams.
The relationship eventually soured, and in a drunken rage, Leslie shot the defenseless woman dead. With testimony from a ranch hand who had witnessed the incident, a Tombstone jury convicted Leslie of murder and sentenced him to 25 years. Surprisingly, Leslie won parole with the aid of a young widow, a writer named Bella Ward.
After his release, he regained his freedom, but he soon disappeared from the pages of history. In fact, there is no record of his death, and no one knows even his last day.
Number 8: John King Fisher
The story of John King Fisher is very different from the others, as he was a rancher, an outlaw, and even a peace officer. He was born in 1854 in Collin County to Jobe and Lucinda Fisher. Just before the Civil War, the family migrated to Florence County, Texas.
It all started in 1869 when Fisher was accused of stealing a horse. He had borrowed the horse without telling the owner and was promptly arrested by a posse. Reportedly, he escaped with the help of the horse’s owner who had decided not to press charges.
Fisher made his way to Goliad, where he was again arrested, this time for housebreaking and sent to prison. After being pardoned four months later, he moved to Dimmit County and established a ranch on Pendencia Creek. The region known as the New Asisi Strip was a lawless area where cattle rustling was the natural way.
Fisher, relying on both patronage and intimidation, quickly established himself as one of the leaders of the Strip. His ranch became a haven for drifters, criminals, and rustlers.
In the section where he reigned, Fisher was feared and respected. A certain road branch bore the sign “This is King Fisher’s Road. Take the other.”
The space was placed to distinguish between public road and his private road, but many at the time viewed it as evidence of the extent of Fisher’s power and control. Fisher engaged in so many things from cattle theft to violence, especially for shooting people to death. However, he soon decided to live a more quiet life, as he managed to escape conviction.
In 1881, he was appointed as deputy sheriff of Uvalde County. He proved to be an efficient and well-liked lawman and made plans to run for public office. But on the night of March 11, 1884, in the Vaudeville Variety Theater in San Antonio, Fisher and his friend, the notorious gunman Ben Thompson, were involved in a shootout sparked by a disagreement between Thompson and the theater’s owners.
Fisher got caught in the crossfire, and neither her nor her companion survived that bloody night.
Number 7: Bass Reeves
Bass Reeves never had it easy from the very beginning. He was born into slavery in 1838 in Crawford County, Arkansas. He was property of a man named William Reeves, whose surname Bass took.
Like other enslaved people at the time, his first name came from his grandfather, Bass Washington. Bass started life as a water boy and was later made a field hand, working in the fields alongside his parents.
During the Civil War, Bass gained his freedom, but it is unclear exactly how and when. What is certain is that around the time of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th amendment in 1865, he was a free man. As a freedman, Bass returned to Arkansas and farmed near Van Buren.
He farmed until 1875, when Isaac Parker was appointed federal judge for the Indian Territory. One of Judge Parker’s first acts was appointing U. S.
Marshal James F. Fagan as head of some 200 deputies. Fagan heard of Bass’s knowledge of the region and his ability to speak several tribal languages.
He quickly recruited Bass as a U. S. Deputy.
Bass Reeves became the first black U. S. Deputy Marshal west of the Mississippi River and one of the greatest frontier heroes in the nation’s history.
Sometimes he appeared “as a cowboy, a farmer, a gunman, or an outlaw himself,” but one thing was certain—when he carried a gun, he never missed. According to legend, he could make his shots count accurately, and he was virtually god-fearing one. He went after gangs of all kinds and would end up bringing them to justice.
If they did not surrender, he was just as fast and deadly, if not faster, with his six-shooter. A telling example is the incident of 1889, when Bass went after Tom Story’s gang of horse thieves. He waited along the route the gang was known to use, and surprised Tom Story with an arrest warrant.
Tom panicked and drew his gun, but Bass drew faster and shot him dead. For Bass, there was no mercy for a non-compliant outlaw.
Number 6: Wild Bill
Wild Bill was not born Wild Bill, but his story was too wild to be called by his real name, James Butler Hickok. He was probably the most famous Deadwood resident, even though he was only in town for a few short weeks. James Hickok arrived in Deadwood along with Colorado Charlie and Calamity Jane in July of 1876.
He was a well-known gambler and gunfighter, having participated in many shootouts before coming to Deadwood. Wild Bill won’t spare anyone when it came to taking care of himself first.
Before the Civil War, Wild Bill was a driver for the Pony Express and later a stagecoach driver. But he soon came to a station called Rock Creek Station in Nebraska, where he killed David McCanles in a dispute over a woman and the sale of the station. In fact, Wild Bill was involved in many shootouts during his lifetime.
His wild life came to a sudden end more than a few weeks after he arrived in Deadwood. On August 2, 1876, in Nutt and Mann’s Saloon, Jack McCall shot Wild Bill from behind while he was playing poker. When he died, he was holding a pair of aces and eights, and those cards ever since have been given a nickname that lives in poker lore: the Dead Man’s Hand.
Such was his influence on the world that even his death left a permanent mark.
Now it’s time for today’s subscriber pick. In the dark world of gunsingers of the Old West, these three are believed to have been the most relentless of all. Judging from the way they lived their lives, they seem so deadly that no one can make a list of the most brutal people without mentioning them.
If you have ever heard about any of these people, what can you say about them? Let us know in the comment section below.
Number 5: Porter Rockwell
This is the story of a man known for many things, including Joseph Smith, Junior’s personal bodyguard, his loyalty, his generosity, as well as his tenacity and ruthlessness as a lawman in Utah. Not much is known about Porter’s childhood, and conflicting information puts his birth as either June 28, 1813, or 1815. But what we know for sure is that as a young man he became a close friend of the slightly older Joseph Smith.
The Rockwell family would become some of the first members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Porter was baptized on the day the church was founded, April 6, 1830.
After the New York branch of the Church relocated to Ohio, Porter was then sent to Jackson County, Missouri, the central gathering place for church members. It was in Missouri that Porter would become an expert with a gun. While it is believed he killed men not only as a gunman and religious enforcer but also as a Deputy Marshal, Porter told a crowd in 1869, “I never killed anyone who didn’t need killing.”
However, many considered him an outlaw, suspecting him in the murder of several people in service to the Church. This included the “Serenelian 𝒶𝒻𝒻𝒶𝒾𝓇,” an incident that saw six professional gamblers from California be murdered (allegedly by Porter) while being escorted out of Utah Territory in 1857. Porter would be indicted for the incident some 20 years later, but he died before his trial could begin.
Number 4: Billy the Kid
You have probably heard of Billy the Kid and wondered why he is still famous today. It is all because “Billy the Kid” was not actually a kid—he never had a chance at a childhood. His real name is Henry McCarty.
He lost his father very early and soon after his mother contracted tuberculosis, a disease that eventually took her life. After his mother died, Billy and his younger brother were busted up by a foster home. At age 14, Billy was forced to work in a hotel, washing dishes and waiting on tables.
Billy was supposed to be friendly, and the manager liked him. Billy was just a normal boy who wouldn’t go around causing any sort of a ruckus, and he was always ready to help out with the chores. However, he was not a totally normal boy.
On September 23, 1875, Billy was arrested for hiding a bundle of stolen clothes for a man. It was 𝓈𝒽𝓸𝒸𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔 because the owner trusted Billy so much. Two days after being taken to jail, the scrawny teen escaped by climbing up the chimney.
From that point forward, Billy would be a fugitive. In order to survive as an escaped outlaw, he met up with Jesse Evans, the leader of a gang of cattle rustlers called “The Boys.” Billy had no safer place to go, and since it was suicide to wander alone in that hostile and lawless land, he reluctantly joined the gang.
He was active in carrying out orders while killing several people. He soon went into hiding, but he had to start stealing livestock from white ranchers and Apaches on the Mescalero reservation.
He had so many indictments that he agreed to be a witness. The Governor of New Mexico, General Lew Wallace, promised to pardon Billy if he testified against other criminals. When Billy did follow through, he was denied his promised freedom.
As you may have guessed from Billy’s attempt to flee, he was an escape artist. He slipped out of his handcuffs and fled.
Billy soon became friends with Pat Garrett, who was later elected sheriff of Lincoln County. As Sheriff, Garrett was supposed to arrest his friend, but Billy by then had formed a gang of his own. On December 15, 1880, Governor Wallace offered a $500 reward for Billy’s capture, and Pat Garret began a relentless pursuit.
Garrett set up trap after trap, but the kid seemed to have an animal instinct for danger, one that Garrett could not seem to catch. That was not to last. Billy and his gang were captured on December 23, 1880.
He was taken first to Las Vegas, then Santa Fe, and eventually to the city. But on April 28, 1881, Billy somehow overpowered and killed his two guards. It is not exactly known how he did it, but it is widely believed that a friend or a sympathizer left a pistol in the nearby privy where Billy went daily.
Yet, Billy did not get to live forever, He lost his life at a young age, but not before leaving a name that stands for the infamous gunman he became.
Number 3: Tom Horn Jr.
Tom Horn Jr. was a true hired killer. He was good at the bad he did.
Born in 1860 in Memphis, Missouri, Horn showed an aptitude for hunting and marksmanship at an unusually he was an early age. After moving out to the West, Horn was many things: a cowboy, a miner, an Army scout, and later a packer for the Rough Riders in Cuba. His most notorious career, though, was when he headed into the private spot.
Horn first worked for the famous detective agency, Pinkerton. They hired him to track down outlaws who were terrorizing their clientele. Clients like large banks and railroad that could afford to pay for private enforcement, where the failed system failed them.
But after four years at Pinkerton, Horn became bored and in 1894, he was signed up as a hired killer with the privately-run Wyoming Cattleman’s Association. For several years, the big cattle ranchers had been fighting a vigilance war in Johnson County against a diverse group of small farmers sheepmen who resisted their domination. 24 In 1894, negative publicity had made such open warfare too costly.
So the ranchers shifted to more stealthy means, hiring Horn to use his exceptional gun skills to pick off any man they marked as a troublemaker.
His precision was so great that he often shot from as far away as 200 paces, meaning most of his victims never saw the bullet or even knew what they saw. This is why one would rarely ever see it. In November 1903, Horn was younger, but he was not young.
The infamous killer was hanged for allegedly the death of 14-year-old child Nickell, son of a Wyoming sheep farmer. His death was just the final, fatal mistake that brought an end to Horn’s deadly career.
Number 2: Sam Bass
Sam Bass was a noted outlaw and train robber. He led two gangs during the foundation of the Old West. Bass first was for being an honest young man.
He came into possession of a small racing pony named “The Little Reds,” and most of the neighborhood boys would meet in Denton to race Saturday eyes. Bass raced his horse with much success. His boss soon noticed that he showed more interest in the pony than his work, so he was told to between keeping his job or keeping the pony.
What choice do you think he made? You guessed it—he kept his pony. That decision became a turning point for Sam Bass, and when he lost his job, he took on work as a cowboy in her own cattle drive for Joel Collins.
Collins was a man who was not able to pay his debts, so he and his gang, known as the Night Crow’s, began holding up stagecoaches. These robberies brought in very little money, but they started Bass onto a life of crime that was annihilated only after a few years. Bass’s gang would continue to rob places, and he was as swift as any man to pull the trigger if he had to.
One day, a gunfight ensued in the city of Round Rock. As Bass tried to flee, he was chased by Texas Rangers George Bush and serious. He was found lying in the pasture, but he was barely alive.
In a moment of weakness, Bass called out to the posse as they were about to ride past. “Hey, I’m over here! I’m Sam Bass, who you’re looking for!”
He was taken into custody, and his final wish was to die the next day. On his 27th birthday, Sam died, just as he had lived his life since his last name.
Number 1: Slater
Last but not the least among the most dangerous is Jesse James. He was an outlaw, a bandit, a train robber, and a Confederate, leaving a guerrero of the Civil War. He rose to fame as a leader of his own gang, striking both banks and railroad along.
Jesse once rebelled against a society he didn’t like, and he found among the restricted era of “the wild west” under the culture of the 1900s late in America, making him a folk hero. He was often labeled as the “American Robin Hood” because he was said to have robbed the rich and given to the poor.
However, Jesse was not only the good man. He was a cool-blooded murder, robber, horse again, and here did. He and his gang were very dangerous men.
But his own gang was brought down and whispered—he had to reach a point of paranoia, trust. He took in the Ford brothers, Charlie, and Robert Ford, and even gave them safety in his own home, but he did not know that he had just invited his fate to his home.
Prince as he grew more suspicious. One day while he was walking around a room and saw a dusty picture he wanted to dust, and as he reached to it, son Robert Ford drew his weapon. He shot the unarmed Jesse James in the back of the head.
It turned out the Ford brothers, the very men Jesse had housed, had betrayed their friend for justice, but all for the government’s reward.
That is the list of the most deadly gunfires in the history of the Old West. Thanks for reading, and see with you in the next words.
