Laying Track?

“El Deguello,” an old battle song originally used by Muslims to signify no quarter given.

- Marshall Trimble

What music did Gen. Santa Anna request during the Alamo battle?

Elinor Hobart Kansas City, Missouri

The name comes from the Spanish word degollar which means “to cut the throat.” Santa Anna was telling the Texans that his men would take no prisoners. And they didn’t.

Did the “Buntline Special” gun really exist?

Ralph G. Swanson Prescott, Arizona

Western historians disagree over whether Wyatt Earp ever carried a long barrel pistol. All we know for sure is that Stuart Lake coined the phrase in 1931’s Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal.

The late Joe Rosa told me: “When I visited Colt in the early 1970s, I recall Marty Huber, who then ran the research division, was very anti-Lake and -the others who had invented the Buntline story simply because [the gun manufacturer] was inundated with requests for information. Also, my own and others’ research concluded that Ned Buntline never visited Dodge City, Kansas, and during the 1876 celebrations, was very much in the East.”