Son of the Old West

The Odyssey of Charlie Siringo: Cowboy, Detective, Writer of the Wild Frontier

By: Nathan Ward

Narrated by: J. Rodney Turner

Born in Matagorda, Texas, in 1855, Charlie Siringo went on his first cattle drive at age twelve and spent two decades living his boyhood dream as a cowboy. As the dangerous, lucrative "beeves" business boomed, Siringo drove longhorn steers north to the burgeoning Midwest Plains states' cattle and railroad towns, crossing paths with such legendary figures as Billy the Kid and Bat Masterson. In his early thirties he joined the Pinkerton Detective Agency's Denver office, using a variety of aliases to investigate violent labor disputes and infiltrate outlaw gangs.

Siringo's landmark 1885 autobiography, A Texas Cowboy, helped make the lowly cowboy a heroic symbol of the American West. His later memoir, A Cowboy Detective, influenced early hard-boiled crime novelists for whom the detective story was really the cowboy story in an urban setting. Sadly sued into debt by the Pinkertons, who were determined to prevent their sources and methods from being revealed, Siringo eventually sold his beloved New Mexico ranch and moved to Los Angeles, where he advised Hollywood filmmakers, and especially actor William S. Hart, on their early 1920s Westerns.

In old age, Charlie Siringo was called "Ulysses of the Wild West" for the long journey he took across the western frontier. Son of the Old West brings him and his legendary world vividly to life.

©2023 Nathan Ward (P)2023 Tantor