Give a Boy a Gun: A True Story of Law and Disorder in the American West

Claude Dallas Jr. was raised in Upper Michigan and Ohio by a father whose philosophy was ""give a boy a gun and you're makin' a man.'' After high school, the young man went to the rugged border area of Idaho, Oregon and Nevada and worked as a cow-puncher and handyman on several ranches. But his dream was evidently to become a 19th centurystyle mountain man and so he turned to poaching, often killing animals even though he had no need for the meat. In 1981, he killed two game wardens in front of a witness. On the run for 15 months, he was eventually captured in a shootout and found guilty of manslaughter in a singularly bizarre trial. The trial is well told, but the book as a whole is a disappointment from the author of such fine true crime tales as ``Son'' and The Man with the Candy. November 8