Charles Siringo grew up as a South Texas cowboy before applying for a job as a Pinkerton detective after seeing the Chicago Haymarket riots. (Because Pinkerton threatened lawsuits, it’s the “Dickenson” agency here, and Pinkerton operative and convicted murderer Tom Horn is named as “Tim Corn”). Siringo specialized in undercover work, convincing cattle rustlers, gold mine swindlers, moonshiners, and bank robbers that he was an outlaw fleeing from Texas. Although Pinkertons repeatedly sought to reward him with a desk job at the Denver office, he always refused, preferring work as a field agent.

Siringo notes that he was sympathetic to the nascent labor movement and was reluctant to get involved in the famous Coeur d’Alene miner’s strike, but changed his mind when the miners began attacking mine owners with dynamite. When his cover story was broken, he narrowly escaped being lynched by miners by sawing through a bedroom floor and crawling away undetected. Siringo, in turn, prevented a plan to lynch Bill Haywood, Clarence Darrow, and other union members and sympathizers.

His writing style is straightforward, and, unfortunately, not politically correct; Irish immigrants and black people he encounters are always quoted in dialect, usually not favorably. Siringo knew just about every famous name from Western history – Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch (he expresses some admiration for Cassidy, calling him one of the shrewdest and most honorable criminals he had to deal with). Illustrated with a few contemporary photographs. No notes, bibliography, or index. ( )