A violent outlaw can become a region’s most celebrated folk figure

Evidence

Page 228 a Sharp’s revolver hung on the wall, and the sash and badge of a scout. I could not help looking at “Jim” as he stood talking to me. He goes mad with drink at times, swears fearfully, has an ungovernable temper. He has formerly led a desperate life, and is at times even now undoubtedly a ruffian. There is hardly a fireside in Colorado where fearful stories of him as an Indian fighter are not told; mothers frighten their naughty children by telling them that “Mountain Jim” will get them, and doubtless his faults are glaring, but he is undoubtedly fascinating, and enjoys a popularity or notoriety which no other person has. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 248

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: how frontier communities manufactured their own monsters and celebrities in the same breath, with mothers weaponizing a real man’s name as a nursery threat.
• FICTION: A narrator traveling alone with a notorious killer-guide who is both dangerous and the safest company available — a ready-made gothic-western premise.
• CANDY: Colorado mothers literally frightened children with ‘Mountain Jim will get you’ — a real bogeyman who lived down the road.