Chairs scraped back and customers hastily vacated their tables as the tall young buffalo hunter pushed open the swing doors and walked towards the bar.
Only Blue Throat and his gang stayed where they were.
Blue Throat was slumped with his back against the bar, elbows supporting his massive frame.
He leered at the stranger as the distance between them closed.

"Since when did they allow beardless kids into the saloon bars of this town, boys"?
He asked.
"Seems to me I don't remember altering any law about that".

He straightened up, alert now as the buffalo hunter came closer.
"Stay right here where you are, kid", he called.
"I don't aim to have minors breathing down my neck when I'm a-drinking":

The stranger ignored him.
He didn't stop till he was within three feet of Blue Throat and by that time the gang leader's right hand was on the butt of his revolver.

"I'm Billy Tilghman", said the stranger, "and I've come for Pat Conyers' body".

"And what makes you think you're going to get it, pretty boy"?

"Because I'm asking.
Most of the time I get what I ask for".

Blue Throat winked at his six cronies.
"The kid has no manners, boys.
Shall we teach him some"?
His gun was half drawn when he asked the question, but the weapon never left its holster.
Tilghman's clenched fist swept over in a terrific right cross and clipped the big gunfighter on the side of his chin.
His head snapped round and he reeled back, crashing into the table where his buddies were sprawling.

Tilghman leapt on to him, dragged him upright and hit him again, this time sending him careening against the bar.
A bullet gouged into the bar top an inch from Tilghman's stomach as Blue Throat's henchmen started shooting.
Tilghman flung himself aside, dropped on one knee and pulled his own gun.

The Colt roared twice and two men dropped, writhing.
A third shot doused the light.
Somewhere at the far end of the room a voice yelled, "You all right, Billy"?

"Yes, George, but I ain't got poor old Pat's body yet.
And I aim to have it".
He fired again, and somewhere in the gloom a man screamed.
Another took off his gun belt and flung his weapons to the floor.
"OK, Tilghman, I'm quitting".

"And me", said another Blue Throat henchman.

Somebody brought a light.
Tilghman and his partner, George Rust, herded the men into a corner.
"And now", said Tilghman with deadly calm, "I'll repeat what I said.
I've come for Pat Conyers' body".

In two minutes the body of Tilghman's former comrade, who had been killed by Blue Throat in a gambling brawl the previous night, was carried into the town's funeral parlor to be prepared for decent burial.
Blue Throat, nursing an aching jaw and a collosal dose of wounded pride, rode out of town with the survivors of the fight.

"That critter will be back tomorrow", predicted George Rust, "and he'll bring fifty of his kind back with him.
Blue Throat won't stand for this.
He'll shoot up the town".

The prediction was correct.
The Reverend James Doran had scarcely completed Pat Conyers' last rites on Boot Hill in the township of Petrie, when shots were heard in the distance.

"Amen", said the Reverend Doran, grabbing his rifle propped up against a tombstone, "and now my brethren, it would seem that our presence is required elsewhere".

Billy Tilghman and his comrades rode off to the battle.
Blue Throat, who had ruled the town with his six-shooter for the last six months, certainly had no intention of relinquishing his profitable dictatorship.
It was essential that he should restore his formidable reputation as a rip-roaring, ruthless gun-slinger, and this was the time-honored Wild West method of doing it.

He rode in at the head of sixty trigger-happy and liquor-crazed desperadoes and took over a livery barn at the entrance to Main Street.
The entire length of the street could be raked with rifle fire from this barn.
Any posse riding down the street to demand Blue Throat's surrender would be wiped out with one deadly burst of fire.

The law-abiding citizens of Petrie had gathered inside Kaster's Store, halfway down the street.
Several were firing into the barn when Billy Tilghman arrived.
He sized up the situation and shook his head.

"If Blue Throat has his way he'll keep us all cooped up in here for days", he said.
"There's only one thing to move him fast, and we have it right here in this very store".

He called the store owner and together they went into the stockroom.
Billy returned with six sticks of dynamite.
"I'm gonna drop these into Blue Throat's lap", he announced, "and I'd like every gun to be firing into that barn while I get near enough to toss 'em through the window".

He slipped outside, hugging the walls of buildings and dodging into doorways.
Blue Throat's men spotted him and a hail of bullets splintered the store fronts and board walk as he passed.

Fifty yards away from the barn he dodged inside a barber's shop and came out at the back.
Here he couldn't be seen by Blue Throat and his gang.
All he had to do was light the fuses of the dynamite sticks, run to within ten yards of an open window in the barn and hurl the sticks through.

Billy Tilghman did just that.
Within seconds the big barn was blasted into smoking splinters, with every outlaw either dead or injured inside.
It was the abrupt end of Blue Throat's dictatorship in Petrie.
Though only slightly injured himself the big hoodlum never returned to those parts.

To Tilghman the incident was just one of a long list of hair-raising, smash-'em-down adventures on the side of the law which started in 1872 when he was only eighteen years old, and did not end till fifty years later when he was shot dead after warning a drunk to be quiet.

Of all the rip-roaring two-fisted tough boys of the Old West, "Uncle Billy Tilghman" stands out head and shoulders.
He was the lawman who survived more gunfights than any other famous gun-slinging character in the book.
He saw the most action, beat up more badmen with his bare fists, broke up the most gangs and sent more murderers to the gallows than any other U.S. marshal who lived before or after him.

For fifty years his guns and ham-like fists shot holes through and battered the daylights out of the enemies of law and order in the frontier towns of the West.

The deeds of countless western bandits and outlaws have been glorified almost to the point of hero-worship, but because Billy Tilghman remained strictly on the side of the law throughout his action-packed career, his achievements and the appalling risks he took while taming the West have remained almost unsung.

Citizens took the view that a lawman was expected to risk his life on the odd occasion anyway, but this fighting fury of a man risked it regularly over a period of half a century.

He came within an ace of being riddled with bullets during his long fight with the Doolin gang which terrorized Oklahoma in the 1890's.
Led by Bill Doolin, these mobsters specialized in train robberies but as a sideline they looted stores and robbed banks, making liberal use of their guns.
Bill Doolin's ambition, it appeared, was to carve out his name with bullets alongside those of Jesse James and Billy the Kid, and Bill Tilghman had sworn he would stop him.

Tilghman knew that some ranchers were hand-in-glove with the Doolin gang.
They bought rustled cattle from the outlaw, kept him supplied with guns and ammunition, harbored his men in their houses.
Billy decided to set an example by arresting one of the ranchers, named Ed Dunn, who lived at Rock Fort.

On a bitterly cold day in January, 1895, accompanied only by Neal Brown as his deputy, Tilghman left the township of Guthrie and headed for Rock Fort and Dunn's ranch.
It was snowing hard when they got there and they saw no horses outside.
The only evidence of occupation came from the chimney, which was belching out thick smoke.

The two lawmen halted their wagon about twenty yards from the door.
"Wait here, Neal", said Tilghman.
"If I don't come out within half an hour ride back to town and bring out a posse".

Leaving his rifle in the wagon, Tilghman walked up to the door and hammered on it.
There was no reply so he shoved it open with his foot and stepped inside.
Directly opposite the door was a roaring log fire, a welcome sight on that bitterly cold day.
Seated near it with his back to the door was the rancher, Ed Dunn.

"Hello, Ed", said Tilghman.
The rancher grunted an acknowledgement but didn't move.

Tilghman closed the door behind him and walked towards the fire.
Suddenly he saw something which made his big heart give a sickening lurch and caused the hairs to bristle on the back of his neck.
Along each side of the room were six tiered bunks, each one screened off with a curtain.

And projecting wickedly through these curtains were the gleaming muzzles of six rifles, all trained on Billy Tilghman.
The fighting marshal had walked right into a trap and at any moment six slugs might slam into his hide.

Thinking fast, Tilghman never hesitated for one instant.
He walked right up to the fire as though blissfully unaware of the guns covering him.
The men behind them were Bill Doolin and five of his gang -- every man a killer.

"Cold day", said Tilghman, placing his hands behind him and casually presenting his backside to the fire.
"Just dropped in to ask where Jed Hawkins lives.
Can't seem to locate landmarks in this snow".

The rancher was trembling.
He wouldn't look Tilghman in the face.
"Follow the river for five miles", he said hoarsely.
"Jed's homestead is on the south bank".

Resisting the overwhelming temptation to flng himself out of that bristling death-trap, Tilghman deliberately engaged the nervous rancher in trivial conversation for a good ten minutes.
All that time rifle barrels were pointing unwaveringly at his head and body.
One false move on his part and he would be a dead man.

"Well", he announced, "Guess I'll be going now, Ed, and thanks for the warmup".
He strolled back to the door, whistling softly, hands still clasped behind him.
He left the house and almost certain death without even increasing his pace and wondered by what remarkable stroke of Providence he had been allowed to come out alive.

But he knew well enough that those guns would still be trained on his back as he walked towards the wagon.
If he showed signs of collecting his rifle and going back with his deputy to the ranch he would be shot down instantly.

Leisurely he climbed on to the wagon next to Neal Brown.
"Don't say or do anything", he said softly.
"Just get out of here without it looking as though we're in a hurry.
That place is crawling with Bill Doolin and his gang".

Even as he spoke those words Billy Tilghman's life hung on a thread.
Back in the house a hoodlum named Red Buck, sore because Billy had been allowed to leave unscathed, jumped from a bunk and swore he was going after him to kill him right then.

"You'll stay right here", commanded Bill Doolin, covering Red with his rifle.
"Billy Tilghman is too good a man to shoot in the back.
We'll let him go".

But the fighting marshal's fifty-year run of immunity from violent death came to a full and final stop one night in a street at Cromwell, Oklahoma, where he had been sent to clean up the gambling and vice rackets.

Wiley Lynn, a self-styled prohibition officer, had hit town the previous day and had been drinking ever since.
That night he reeled out of Ma Murphy's dance hall and proceeded to disturb the peace by shooting off his revolver.