Thomas Edgar Crawford—variously known as “The Texas Kid,” “The Montana Kid,” “Buckskin,” “Kid,” and “Ed”— teamed up early with such notorious characters as Black Jack Ketchum and Henry Starr. Later Crawford took up ranching in Montana and lived to tell about the war between the cattlemen and sheepmen. He tried gold mining in California, but was soon forced to sell his holdings in order to avoid financial catastrophe. Here, published for the first time, are Crawford’s recollections of life in the West from 1881 to 1910, dictated when he was past seventy years old, not long before his death in 1941. His story constitutes an amazing record of the activities of outlaw gangs of his time and provides new material about the Jackson Hole and Hole in the Wall outlaws—although Crawford was reluctant to reveal the role he played in their affairs. Crawford could understand a train or bank robber, but more than once he took the trail after a horse thief. He liked horses and intensely disliked sheep, but even so, he often opened his home as a refuge to sheepherders to save them from freezing to death in a blizzard. He loved to hunt, and some of his best tales concern adventures in search of game.The West of the Texas Kid is one man’s account of the West as he knew it. Here, Thomas Edgar Crawford has helped preserve the lore and legends of the Old West.
