Here's a sampling of High Plains titles on Wyoming and the West: history, outlaws and lawmen, women, poetry, memoirs, and other perspectives of the West. For more information click on the image of the book.
Follow the Boys of Company K to Wyoming during the Civil War.
The inside story of the life of Butch Cassidy.
Poems that will change the way the world looks at women in ranching.
A side of the military you never read about the official U.S. Army Laundresses.
Did Tom Horn commit the murder of 14-year-old Willie Nickell for which he was hanged?
The story of the horse that became the symbol of Wyoming
Frontiersman Biography
A road trip for a cause...on a donkey.
In the mid 1800s Jack Slade was the West’s best know badman. The name Slade was seldom uttered without the word “notorious” attached to it as a danger sign. And nearly every Overland Trail journal of the time repeats the story of Slade cutting off the ears of the founder of Julesburg, Colorado, Jules Beni, and carrying them in his pocket as a charm.
His reputation was so colorful and outrageous during his lifetime that newspapers from coast to coast carried stories of Jack Slade, the efficient yet deadly superintendent of the Overland Stage Line and the Pony Express.The strange thing is that a man who was such a legend in the 1860s has been all but forgotten.
Mark Twain, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Sir Richard Burton all wrote about Slade and his exploits. Twain wrote that while having breakfast at Slade’s stage station, Slade offered him the last of a pot of coffee. Though Twain wanted it, he declined because he was “afraid that Slade had not killed anybody that morning and might be needing a diversion.”
Yet Slade was known as the best superintendent on the stage route, and he is credited with making the Pony Express a success. His division covered much of the Wyoming trail, and parts of Nebraska and Colorado. With his Jekyll/Hyde personality, he was a good friend and a deadly enemy.
He was headquartered at Horseshoe Stage Station near present-day Glendo, Wyoming. When the stageline moved south, Slade built the Virginia Dale (Colorado) stage station and named it after his wife. However, his alcoholic binges continued until he lost his job with the Overland Stage line.
Later he moved to Virginia City, Montana, where he continued to be both heroic and threatening. There vigilantes, fed up with his drunken carousing and defiance of the law, ended the life of Jack Slade when they took justice in their hands and placed a rope around his neck. His wife then preserved his corpse in a whiskey-filled coffin to await spring.
• 0-931271-68-1 • trade paper • index • bibliography • 224 pp • photos • $15.95 ORDER NOW
• 0-931271-67-3 • limited edition hardcover with dustjacket, signed & numbered • $35.00 ORDER NOW
“In the glory days of the great freighting empire of Russell, Majors, and Waddell…it took a tough man to keep the wagons rolling. And one of the toughest, without question, was Joseph Alfred “Jack” Slade. …By any account he fought, shot, and hanged dozens of men…Scott admits much of the Slade story is steeped in legend, but his account fills a significant gap in the literature of the West.” •• American Cowboy Magazine
“Slade, although rough at times and always a dangerous character—having killed many a man—was always kind to me. During the two years that I worked for him as pony-express rider and stage-driver, he never spoke an angry word to me.” •• Buffalo Bill Cody, in The Life of Buffalo Bill, an Autobiography
“Bob Scott has gathered up all the material available to document the life and nefarious activities of this unbalanced character, and has put together his complete history.” •• Chuck Lewis, True West
Bob Scott is the author of Slade! He grew up hearing and reading tales about Slade. Nonetheless, his interest in researching and writing about Slade had to take a back seat to other interests for many years. Bob became a radio broadcaster at his hometown station while still in junior high school and went on to pursue a twenty-year career as newscaster in major radio news departments in Denver, Dallas, and Houston. It was during these years that Bob learned to enjoy digging for facts and putting together an understandable and interesting story about often complicated situations. Later, Bob served twenty-five years as station manager and group manager of stations in Colorado, Arizona, Oregon, Texas and Michigan.
Bob is the father of two daughters and three sons and is a proud grandfather. Now retired, he calls Colorado his home.