The True Life Wild West Memoir of a Bush-Popping Cow Waddy (Electronic book text)

A sixteen-year-old runaway from Illinois, Charley Hester (18531940) lit out from home in 1869, bound to make a life for himself on the great American frontier. In the winter of his life seven decades later, he dictated an account of his experiences in the Wild West of his youth. Charley Hesters memoir recounts the journeys that took him to Missouri, Texas, Indian Territory, Kansas, and Nebraska and brought him face-to-face with badman John Wesley Hardin as well as Joel Collins before Collins formed his band of stagecoach and train robbers. The young cow waddy also tells of meeting Wild Bill Hickok, observing Doc Hollidays deft card play, and witnessing the waylaying of a drunken buffalo hunter by Wyatt Earp. So engaging that they figured in Warner Brothers research for the classic movie Dodge City, Hesters adventures are the stuff of true Americana: history rendered in bolder strokes and brighter colors than the most outlandish fiction, as outrageous and outrageously entertaining as it is true.