King Fisher, The Short Life And Elusive Legend Of A Texas Desperado

CHUCK AND THOMAS C. BICKNELL PARSONS

Publication: University pf North Texas Press, 2022, Denton

First edition. 8vo. Brown cloth, titles stamped in silver on the spine, xv [blank], 272 pp., preface, acknowledgments, prologue, illustrated from photographs, portraits, maps, endnotes, selected bibliography, index. The life and times of John King Fisher (1855- 1884). "Fisher found a home in the tough sun-beaten Nueces Strip, a lawless land between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. There he gathered a gang of rustlers around him at his ranch on Pendencia Creek. For a decade King and his gang raided both sides of the Rio Grande, shooting down any who opposed them. King's reign ended when he was arrested by Texas Ranger Captain Leander McNelly. McNelly advised Fisher to change his ways, so King became deputy sheriff of Uvalde County. His hard-won respectability would not last. On a spring night in 1884, King made the mistake of accompanying the truly notorious gambler and gunfighter Ben Thompson on a tour of San Antonio, where several years prior Thompson shot down Jack Harris at the latter's saloon and theater, the Vaudeville. King Fisher accompanied Thompson back to the theater where assassins were waiting. When the smoke cleared Fisher was stretched out beside Thompson, dead from thirteen gunshot wounds." As new, unread copy in dust jacket.

Inventory Number: 49549