Everyone has seen the old western movies with shoot outs at high noon and daring bank robberies. This as well as media hype and story books have led the public to believe the old west was a very dangerous place that saw gun fights every day and Indians attacking every time you turned around. The real deal could not be father from the truth. The old west was actually quite a peaceful and quiet place. Aside from the natural hardship of putting down roots and tending to a farmstead or new business it wasn’t all that dangerous either.
Naturally some things happened from time to time, a train was robbed, or outlaws rode into town but these things weren’t as common nor as frightening to the general public as one as been brought to believe. There was a lot of sex and fucking from the houses of ill repute connected to saloons and there was a lot of celebration, a lot of festivals and good will but few if any gun fights overall. Many of these gamblers and the like actually ended up taking wives from among the saloon girls they’d had Sex with because they were available and well suited to the particular man, familiar, and they wanted the way out. They would then settle and start a life together quite respectably. Another reason also was that a majority of these men going out west were among the singles and were certainly looking for a lady companion as it often got quite lonely. Many were Civil War veterans who had seen the bloodiest battlefields in the history of the nation and so a few yahoo’s shooting up the place half drunk or robbing a bank didn’t frighten these locals very much at all, and in fact if anything it made them downright angry. That’s why you only saw one sheriff with two deputies keeping the law in a town of hundreds, because if need be they could almost literally deputize the entire town. So trouble often saw it’s way around such places.
