FOUR AGAINST THE WEST

Parallel lives of Roy Bean, the self-styled “law west of the Pecos,” and his three very different brothers.

Born in Kentucky, the Bean brothers—James, Samuel, Joshua, and Roy—were living emblems of westward expansion. All possessed, to varying degrees, something of the rule-evading, even lawless ethos of the Anglo conquest, from outright murder to the mere gaming of the system. Trade brought some brothers west, war others; several thrived in an economy of contraband goods, stolen livestock, and enslaved people. Indeed, Roy, living in Confederate-inclined New Mexico, “dream[ed] aloud of importing slaves to create a lavish ranch,” writes Pappalardo. Roy, the youngest, is the brother best known by name today—but in almost every respect incorrectly, for the supposed lawman, while worse than most of the criminals in his corner of Texas, was a genius at self-invention. On that note, all the brothers were skilled at convincing their fellow westward-ho types that they were natural leaders of men, and indeed a couple of them were, elected to office in California and New Mexico. For his part, Roy, writes Pappalardo, paraphrasing a contemporary, was “a scoundrel capable of bravery and chicanery.” The author’s penchant for dramatizing proves wearing (“head flung backward at an impossible angle, the red crescent of his slit throat stretched open and yawning”). Still, fans of the Wild West as viewed under the revisionist lens will applaud Pappalardo’s dismantling of Roy Bean’s mostly self-made myth, promoted uncritically and even embellished by John Huston’s 1972 film The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, with Paul Newman turning a very bad guy into a lovable eccentric.

A bit overcooked, but of interest to readers of Western Americana.