With Frontierado fast approaching on Friday August 2nd, here’s another seasonal post.
THE CABALLERO’S WAY (1907) – This was the original short story written by O. Henry in which he introduced the character called the Cisco Kid. The Caballero’s Way was first published in the July issue of Everybody’s Magazine, then was included in the anthology The Heart of the West later that year.
The Cisco Kid in this short story bears no resemblance to the Kid of later decades in pop culture. Early silent films like The Caballero’s Way (1914) and The Border Terror (1919) kept the basics of the O. Henry short story. The Kid was a selfish, ruthless, self-centered robber and hellraiser whose only admirable quality was his chivalrous refusal to harm women.
The communities in the Cisco Kid’s territory between the Frio River and the Rio Grande help hide the kid from his Texas Ranger pursuers out of fear, NOT out of any fondness for the violent killer. Also unlike later portrayals of the Kid as a good guy, Cisco is an American whose surname is Goodall and he loves to shoot Mexican men.
A romantic triangle develops among the Cisco Kid, his favorite girl Tonia Perez and Lt. Dandridge, the Texas Ranger in charge of the latest attempts to capture or kill the Kid. In O. Henry’s story, Tonia clearly prefers Dandridge and wants him to kill Cisco so they can be together without any danger from him. Continue reading
Previously I examined Joel Chandler Harris’ 1902 story Flingin’ Jim And His Fool-Killer, set in Georgia in October of 1872, plus Ridgway Hill’s Facts for the Fool-Killer, set in and around Buffalo, NY in 1909. 
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