[All excerpts taken from Over the Chihuahua and Santa Fe trails, 1847-1848: George Rutledge Gibson's Journal George Rutledge was born in Virginia around 1810. He later studied law and opened a law office in Vincennes, Indiana, in 1834. During the early 1840s he moved his practice to Weston, Missouri. He also tried his hand at journalism, that is, publishing his own newspapers, both of these ventures failed, perhaps so for his law practice as well for when the Mexican War started, Gibson volunteered and was elected a second lieutenant. He was part of Colonel Stephen Watts Kearny's Army of the West, which left Fort Leavenworth for the occupation of New Mexico in 1846. He later became assistant quartermaster and commissary and accompanied Colonel Alexander Doniphan's forces to El Paso and Chihuahua, seeing action at the Battle of Brazito on 25 December 1846 and the Battle of Sacramento on 28 February 1847. The first section of Gibson's journal begins when he left C...
[The following is an extract from the well-researched 1979 novel, The Holdouts by William Decker. It discusses a topic we discussed at length in last week’s offering The Lumberjack/Mining Camp Caulk-Kick . You can read that piece here. Or better yet, snag our instructional on this godawful viciousness here .] With his size and strength Red had always been a formidable fist fighter, but he tried to avoid fighting. Sam remembered how disturbed Red had been when an old logger had given them advice on how to fight. They had been at a dance when a fight broke out in the parking lot and a crowd gathered to watch two men slug it out in a clearing among the cars and pickups. No rowdiness or drinking was allowed inside the community dance hall, so it all took place out in the parking lot, and this was the third fight that night. It ended when one of the men went down and did not rise again. Sam had been awed by the solid blows the men exchanged. The sight of grown men battling was so m...