Dangerous Dan Tucker: New Mexico’s Deadly Lawman

Deputy Sheriff, Town Marshall, Deputy U.S. Marshall, Train Agent, Livestock Inspector, Dan Tucker was the quintessential lawman during the violent frontier period of southwest New Mexico. By his own deadpan account, he was obliged to kill eight men in Grant County alone – not counting four other outlaws he personally dropped from the scaffold. Disinclined by nature to back down from anyone, Tucker was involved in some one dozen shooting scrapes, was shot four times, and he arrested Russian Bill and Sandy King. Yet Dangerous Dan Tucker is more than a gunman’s story. Author Bob Alexander skillfully weaves in Tucker’s nervy confrontations with criminals, with the quirky, everyday details of an underpaid lawman living on the edge. Prodigiously researched and documented, Alexander presents a significant Western character heretofore lost to history. His Dan Tucker is no Hollywood hero, but he is extremely competent and supremely dangerous – if you’re an outlaw.