All right, by popular demand, let's go ahead and discuss Buckshot Roberts, the toughest Nails

gunfighter who took on a dozen hard cases all by himself, including a young outlaw known as

Billy the Kid.

Now, if you're anything like me, your first exposure to Buckshot Roberts was the movie Young

Guns.

You know the scene.

Billy and the regulators were getting ready to have a nice lunch when

Dirty Steve came running up saying that there was a well-heeled man headed their way. Sure enough,

it was the grizzled Buckshot Roberts, slowly ambling up on a mule and supporting a pair of rifles,

claimed he was there for the bounty on the kid. He called Dick Brewer a peckerhead, cocked his

rifle, said

let's dance, and from there, the fight was on. But is that really what happened? And who exactly

was this buckshot Roberts guy anyway? I'm going to be honest with you, there's not a lot

known about the real-life Roberts. Hell, we don't even have a photo of the man. Sure, there are images

online claiming to be Roberts, but for the most part, they depict a guy by the name of

George Coe, which does sort of make sense, considering that Roberts shot a couple of Coe's

fingers off. We'll get to that here in a moment. Best I can find so far as a description of the

real Roberts goes just states that he was short,

stocky, and preferred mules over horses.

I've also seen a few references to him being born in 1837.

I was not able to verify, but if that's true, he would have been around 41 years of age in 1878

when he went toe to toe with Lincoln County's finest.

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