The Wild West is no longer as wild as it used to be. More than 30 years have passed since the great Californian Gold Rush and most of the Forty-Niners are dead and gone by now. The Forty-Fives are still very much in action though - (I'm talking about Colt 45 of course, in case you're too backwards to understand it).
The Government has dealt with "the Indian problem" in its harsh but effective way. You have no doubt heard the expression "The only good Indian is a dead Indian?" Unfortunately the buffaloes have been dealt with in almost the same way - the vast herds of buffalo, that once used to roam the prairie have been almost exterminated by reckless hunters and the great railroad companies, who regard buffaloes as "obstacles to traffic" and kill them by the thousands, thus depriving the prairie Indians of their main source of living.
So, when we talk about the Wild West, we don't mean wild as in "wilderness", but wild as in "lawless" - disorder, violence, fighting and killing. We mean not the grandeur of untamed nature, but the drama of undisciplined and untamed men.
The Civil war is over, but it has left much hatred and vengeances in its traces - there was no peace at Appomattox for the men who rode under the black flag of Quantrell. Men like Jessie and Frank James and the Youngers still are raiding the countryside and there are a lot of other outlaws around too: Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Dalton brothers, John Wesley Hardin - the list is almost endless... You have no doubt heard of The Hole In The Wall too? - that hidden valley in the mountains, where famous outlaws gather and join forces before they start their raids to hit society. After the disastrous drought in 1883, when fortunes vanished over night, the big ranchers discharged most of their hands and the small farmers gave up the struggle and abandoned their homes. With only their bedrolls, six-shooters and horses left, the cowboys roamed the range, seeking food and work. Desperate in the face of starvation, a man with a gun would be likely to take matters into his own hand - his gun hand. When some of those jobless and homeless cow-punchers reached that valley, the Hole In The Wall, which for years had been a meeting place for rustlers, horse-thieves and renegade redmen, suddenly became a sizeable community. Gangs like The Wild Bunch use it as a base for their raids - (by the way, did you know that Butch Cassidy headed an organisation called "The Train Robbers' Syndicate?") On the side of the Law men like Matt Dillon, Bat Masterson and the legendary Wyatt Earp and his brothers take up the struggle. True enough there can be some doubt about the ethics of Wyatt's long time crony, the notorious Doc Holiday, but nobody doubts the integrity of Wyatt himself or his brothers Virgil and Morgan. Or at least they had better not, since Wyatt is one of the fastest guns in the west, and the Earps stick together like David and Jonathan. Mess with one Earp and most likely you have >to deal with the other brothers too.
Then there is the Cattle wars. The Cattle Barons, striving for more land and power, are fighting not only each other but the small farmers and homesteaders too, who they regard as a threat, because the free range is being diminished by the plough and the barbed wire. The Cattlemen also claim, that the Homesteaders are rustlers, whereas the latter refer to the unwritten rule of the range, that an unbranded maverick belongs to the finder. In Powder River County the Stockmen's Association was formed to protect the interests of the cattlemen, and soon they had taken the law into their own hands; bush- whacking, cutting barbed wire fences and burning down homes...
Meanwhile the Cattle Barons are fighting each other too. Each big rancher has his own small army of hired guns; >more or less famous gunfighters, mercenaries, outlaws and riffraff. Every man who can tote a gun seems to be drawn to the county to make an easy buck for himself - or get killed in the process, depending on how fast on the draw he is...
So there is no peace in the Wild West. Almost every man out here wears a six-shooter at his hip to protect himself and his property and he doesn't hesitate to use it either when called for.