Bob Carlton

Storylandia 21 Bob Carlton

In the Old West, legendary men, epic stature conveyed upon them by the chronicles of their contemporaries, stalked mythic landscapes. Chicken Smith was one of those men. But when twentieth century historical revisionism displaces the nineteenth century American mythmaking machine, the question arises: who was the real Chicken Smith? The bloodthirsty outlaw portrayed by his detractors? A Robin Hood figure defending the rights of his fellow citizens? Or someone else altogether? The editor of the present volume sifts through the scholarship of his predecessors, unearthing new information along the way in his quest to answer these questions. Through primary documents, commentary, analysis, and occasional flights of poetic prose, the editor traces Smith's life from his humble Midwestern origins to his last years as an upstanding member of his community. The result is a textual mosaic, a portrait that, though far from complete, reveals a complex web of associations that cause one man's actions to continue reverberating down to our own time.