QUEEN OF ALL MAYHEM

The most notorious of America’s female outlaws.

Journalist and author Huckelbridge has conjured up one heck of a Wild West tale about a “whiskey-drinking, horse-thieving, gunslinging double widow” that is chock-full of Western lore and nasty desperadoes. Myra Maybelle Shirley, aka Belle Starr, was born in 1848 near Carthage, Missouri, around horses and guns, was educated, and could play the piano. Huckelbridge conjectures—something he does frequently—that Myra “likely” became a Confederate spy. Her brother Bud, a Confederate soldier, was killed, traumatizing the 16-year-old and transforming her into an “outlaw.” The family then moved to the true frontier: Texas. “It was during these two powder-burnt decades,” writes Huckelbridge, “that the legend of Belle Starr would take root, nourished by that almost mystic Western triad of what would prove to be the woman’s three greatest passions: horses, outlaws, and the Indian Territories.” In 1866, at 18, she married the criminal Jim Reed, and they moved to Missouri, where they had a daughter and a son. After Reed was killed, she joined a violent Cherokee “galloping nightmare” clan full of killers and in 1880 married another ruthless criminal, Sam Starr. Her new name “twanged like a bullet off spit-shine brass: Belle Starr.” The Cherokee gave Sam some land, which they used as a robber’s roost for trafficked horses, protection rackets, and whiskey smuggling. They were arrested for horse stealing and locked up. She dodged other arrests. Sam was killed in a gunfight. Another marriage provided protection for her Indian land. At 40, riding her horse sidesaddle early one evening in 1889, Belle was shotgunned twice, dying in her daughter’s arms. Huckelbridge explores many “what-ifs,” but her killing remains a mystery.

The elusive, colorful story of a rare outlaw, told with brio.