D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
May 2008
Once Upon a Time in the West
Six Guns and Shady Ladies brings the wilder days of the West back to life — with a few laughs in-between gunfights.
By Jeff Berg
Bernie Sargent travels around the Southwest demonstrating, among other things, that you really can shoot four men dead in five seconds.
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Gary Haskins, Albert Burnham, Tommy
Cotton and Jerry Gilham get into a Wild West tussle. |
Sargent and his wife Melissa are the founders of Six Guns and Shady Ladies, which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary as a sort of Old West traveling show. The El Paso-based troupe roams the region, including southern New Mexico of course, presenting a colorful re-creation of western history. In March they performed at the Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum in Las Cruces, and they're tentatively scheduled to make a special appearance in Mesilla.
The SGSL repertoire includes the 1881 "Four Dead in Five Seconds" incident, which Bernie feels is every bit as interesting as the better-known "Shootout at the OK Corral" over in Tombstone, Ariz. At the time, April 1881, citizens could not carry guns on the streets of El Paso. But an exception was made for a posse of Mexican vaqueros who rode into town looking for two missing compadres. The two missing men had been sent to look for some cattle possibly rustled by a gringo, over the border to the ranch of one John Hale. Upon arriving at the Hale ranch, the posse found the quite-dead bodies of their two missing amigos. An inquest was held in El Paso, where a nervous mob gathered near the courthouse, fearful of armed Mexicans who might want justice made out of lead for their dead friends. But the Mexicans returned home with the bodies and no gunfire broke out, until. . . .
A headstone for one of the next actors in the drama, Confederate veteran and newly appointed Marshal Dallas Stoudenmire, rests peacefully under a shade tree in the Sargents' backyard. Stoudenmire, however, did not die in the ensuing shootout — though almost everyone else involved did: Constable Gus Krempkau, who was fluent in Spanish, had served as a translator during the court proceedings. As Krempkau went to retrieve his firearms, he was accosted by a former marshal, George Campbell, who accused him of mistranslating testimony and being friendly to the Mexicans. Campbell's friend, rancher and suspected rustling mastermind John Hale, drunkenly grabbed one of Campbell's pistols and shot Krempkau. As he fell, Krempkau drew his own gun. Hearing the shot, Marshal Stoudenmire ran from a nearby cafe, guns in hands, and fired haphazardly, killing a man named Ochoa, who was running for cover. Stoudenmire then plugged Hale, who'd peered out from behind a pillar he was hiding behind, in true Western cliche fashion, right between the eyes.
Meanwhile, the fallen Krempkau shot Campbell twice, in the hand and in the foot, thinking it was Campbell who'd wounded him, not Hale. Stoudenmire took over, his next shot striking Campbell in the stomach. When Stoudenmire walked over to where Campbell lay dying, he was greeted with, "You big son of a bitch, you murdered me!" Within a few minutes, Campbell and Krempkau both were dead. With the innocent bystander Ochoa and Hale, that brought the body count to four. Numerous witnesses testified that all of the shooting took place within five seconds, thus creating one of the best unknown tales of killings in the Old West — four dead in five seconds.
When Bernie Sargent and his fellow Six Guns and Shady Ladies players demonstrate the shootout, of course, the "dead" men all get up and walk away at the end of the show.
Don't mistake the Sargents for a pair of "greenhorns." Even though they are originally from out of state (Pennsylvania) and have lived in the area only for the last dozen years or so, they have become completely engulfed in the history of the Southwest. Away from the limelight of performances, the Sargents are nothing but serious about the history of the area. Bernie serves as chairman of the El Paso County Historical Commission.
"My interest started with a friend who was also a business customer," he explains. The Sargents' "day jobs" involve running Border Group, which sells electronic components to maquiladoras, the factories run by international companies such as Toro, Hoover and First Alert over the border in Juarez.
"I wanted to put together a costume and talked to a friend about it," Bernie continues. "I was invited to a show that was being put on in T or C for Geronimo Days and went with a group (now defunct) that was performing there."
That was a dozen years ago, he says. That early performance as an outlaw has morphed into one of the biggest traveling shows in the area. Now when the Sargents do a show, they haul a trailer filled with $20,000 worth of equipment and props with them.
It wasn't long before Melissa joined in. She cites her interest in advertising, antiques and vintage clothes as a catalyst: "I am dedicated to the costumes, and have one room just for costumes."
Looking around the Sargents' well-appointed house, it is easy to see that they share the decorating chores. Samples of old advertising are displayed all over the dining area. A breech-loading Civil War era rifle is displayed on a wall. And then there's the taxidermied bear that Bernie saved from the landfill, which helps stand guard with the family dog, Dingo (whose friendly nature might require the help of the bear).
"There used to be three re-enactor groups in El Paso when we started," Bernie recalls. "Now we are the only one and have 39 members."
These 39 six-gunners and shady ladies (almost evenly divided by gender) perform short skits based on western history, but fused with music and, Bernie notes, "poetic license." He allows, "It is history blended with humor."
But Melissa cautions, "Don't get the idea that we are clowns falling out of a stagecoach."
He adds, "Some of the skits are based entirely on newspaper accounts of the events using the actual quotes, and a number of them are written by our members for entertainment value, but based on the era of the Old West. We do improvise from time to time for the benefit of our audience and also to keep it fun for the members of our group."
Some rehearsing is required, according to the head six-gunner: "If there is a real full schedule during a particular month, we usually do our practice a couple hours before the show. We have nearly 50 skits in our repertoire that we can utilize.
"We even have groupies," he adds with a chuckle. "People follow us to various shows, especially to Tombstone."
Tombstone's continued prominence among Old West aficionados sticks in Bernie's craw a little bit. The OK Corral gunfight, he says, was the only thing of importance, in terms of Old West history, that ever happened in Tombstone. "Their 30 seconds of fame," he describes it dryly.
The SGSL group got itself banned from one Tombstone festival because they tried to add fun to the rather humorless events. Their costumes, however, won prizes.
In contrast to Tombstone's inflated reputation, El Paso and neighboring Las Cruces are rich in Wild West heritage, which Bernie says neither fully capitalizes upon. Both places emphasize their Mexican culture, which Bernie says he appreciates, but he points out that it's hardly unique: "You can go almost anywhere and get a margarita and a bowl of salsa, but when people think of El Paso, what do they think of? The Old West. Why market what is available everywhere, and why settle on just that small portion of what everyone already knows?"
He adds, "The local schools don't even teach local history."
And then there is that famous Marty Robbins song, "El Paso." Bernie knows the true story from Robbins' son, Ronny. "There was no Rosa's Cantina. He told me that his dad came up with the idea for the song while driving through El Paso."
Nor were there any actual recorded incidents of two gunfighters having a "showdown" at any particular time of day in the middle of Main Street, Bernie insists, in El Paso or any riproaring Western community. But he does confirm that some of those who carried guns carried two guns, an idea that has been challenged over the years. Sometimes they even packed more weaponry, secreted in leather pockets sewn inside a coat or jacket. Many Old West characters simply were very bad shots, he explains: "Most good gunmen weren't the first to shoot, but rather they had the best aim."
Melissa Sargent is equally knowledgeable about the role of "shady ladies" in the Old West. She has a particular interest in the styles and fashions of the period. For the SGSL troupe, women's costumes are sometimes remade from old prom dresses and such, since the prices of ready-mades has soared to as high as $500 in recent years.
"It was a romantic period, a more genteel time, and it makes you feel more feminine to wear the outfits," she says. "I also like to learn how the fashions changed over the years. In the early 1800s, women's clothes were looser, and during the Civil War period hoops and bustles came into style. . . . Women were not allowed to wear pants or own property, so fashion became a way for women to keep appearances up."
She also knows the "language of the fan," which may be fact or fiction, but was said to be a way for women to signal their availability. Fan signals were probably also used by female spies during the Civil War, albeit for different reasons.
Melissa goes on to note that the Civil War changed things in other ways: If a woman became a widow during the conflict, she often didn't have a way to make a living or earn money. After the war, there were fewer men to marry. Lacking other opportunities, many women turned to "the world's oldest profession." They worked in various venues, including houses and "cribs" (a very small space or shack), sometimes having their names on the door to make it easy for repeat customers who could read. Brothels near a military base were called "hog ranches" or "pig farms," Melissa says, adding, "One lady is said to have had 200 clients in 24 hours, many from Fort Bliss."
According to the outlawwomen.com Web site, the average price for a prostitute's services was a dollar. (Eliot Spitzer, are you reading?) Time spent with a "soiled dove" often became as much a social event as a sexual encounter, in a land bereft of women in general.
"Whenever there was a disease outbreak or an epidemic," Melissa goes on, "prostitutes were the first brought into help. They weren't part of the upper crust, so they became, shall we say, expendable."
To at least try to keep up appearances, El Paso had a system of fines for prostitution. Melissa says with a laugh that it was the Utah Street vicinity that first got paved streets and boardwalks, paid for by the fines: "Utah Street was the area where most of the girls worked, and the reason it was probably paved first was so the men could go there and not have mud on their shoes and clothes, so no one (wives, especially) would know where they had been."
Times have not entirely changed. With a note of disgust, Melissa says she's had to fend off a couple of moronic SGSL spectators who suggested that she carry her shady lady role one step further.
Perhaps to avoid such problems, she's branched out. "I play all kinds of characters, including Ruby the Temperance Broad. Ruby takes on the prostitutes." SGSL has also just added its first "school marm."
Another aspect of Old West history that is much overlooked, the Sargents say, is the role of Chinese migrants. In the 1880s, El Paso became known as the "Chinese Mecca of the Southwest," with an estimated Asian population of 1,500 to 2,000; in 1883, only two of those were women.
"El Paso's 'Chinatown', was on the southwest side of the city," Bernie says, "and the only Chinese cemetery in El Paso is within the Concordia Cemetery." It has about 100 graves.
The citizenry of El Paso railed against the Chinese presence, blaming them for any disease outbreak since Chinatown was crowded and dirty, partially because of laundry water that was dumped on the streets. The residents of "Little Monaco" (another of El Paso's nicknames due to its wide-open gambling) also complained about the many opium dens in Chinatown. But the city never acted to close the dens, since — like the bordellos — many "upstanding" citizens frequented them.
Bernie says, "After the Civil War, when slavery was banned, the Chinese said they would do it" — the menial labor formerly done by slaves — "and a number of them were brought here." The Chinese influx "upset some folks, and they pressured Washington (DC) to do something about it, which resulted in the Chinese Exclusion Act."
This 1882 law was the first significant restriction on immigration in US history, and remained in effect in various forms until 1943. The act led to an "underground railroad" of Chinese migrants coming over the border from Juarez to El Paso, where they were kept in safe houses, giving them a chance to learn English to have a better chance of staying here.
According to Nancy Farrar in her book, The Chinese in El Paso, "Immigration officials even believed that tunnels with walls two feet thick and ceilings made of railroad iron actually extended under the Rio Grande to serve as entryways for illegal Chinese. When the right time came, they crossed the border into El Paso." Specially designed houses with attic rooms and underground passages were built; floors contained secret compartments where a man could lie down and hide. Farrar writes that some buildings on south Oregon Street were linked with underground tunnels.
Bernie says, "Most of the Chinese that came to El Paso came through South America, and they had left China as indentured servants, and then had to work that off in South America before coming north. There was a 70 to 80 percent death rate for them, and most Chinese people worked on the railroad, in mines or in laundries. The change in the law (1943) was made to help the Chinese fight the Japanese during World War II."
That wasn't the first enlistment of Chinese help in a fight, however. "Pancho Villa hated the Chinese," Bernie adds, "and when the Federales found out about their expertise in martial arts, they were hired to help fight Villa's forces."
Chinese households in the area, he adds, used to hang Japanese flags so that they wouldn't be harassed by Villa's forces.
Whatever the topic, it's obvious that the Sargents relish their roles of myth busters and historical revisionists. But they certainly enjoy the playful side of their work as well, as witnessed in the Six Gun and Shady Lady performances.
Bernie says, "We want to have fun with history and we're not into reenactment."
After wincing at the often far-too-seriousness of "historical reenactors," Melissa adds, "People want something that is entertaining, not a history class."
For information on Six Guns and Shady Ladies, see sixgunsandshadyladies.homestead.com/Information2.html
or call (915) 581-7920.
Senior writer Jeff Berg lives in Las Cruces.