Maybe a nipple, maybe not.
The lawman Bass Reeves was a real person, kind of a real-life version of Django – a slave who became one of the best lawmen in the West. By the way, Bass Reeves had a brother named Tenor Reeves, who was even deadlier with his shootin’ iron, but failed to inspire any Old West legends because his would-be biographers couldn’t stop laughing at his squeaky voice.
Bass Reeves remains to this day one of the greatest humans named after a fish, joining:
Zebulon Pike
Salman Rushdie
Catfish Hunter
Mike Trout
Ed Muskie
Sid Bream
Marlin Perkins
Marlon Brando
Laura Harring
Gar Heard
The Cisco Kid
Mike Carp
Dore Schary
Jackson Pollock
David Soul
Aldo Ray
I disqualified “Other” Crappie Henderson because he apparently only exists in my imagination.
I should have but did not did not disqualify The Cisco Kid because one of my favorite TV shows called him “O. Henry’s Legendary Robin Hood of the Old West.” Here’s the real story. O. Henry created the character, but the original Kid was not any kind of good guy, or even an anti-hero. He was a low-down, ornery skunk, a desperado who killed people for fun. As the law closed in on The Kid, ol’ Cisco used a confederate to get a message to the lawman following him, saying that The Kid had kidnapped the lawman’s girlfriend, and had switched clothing with her in order to sneak away. When the lawman high-tailed it to the girlfriend’s house, he saw two figures in the moonlight, and shot the one in women’s clothing. Given that this is an O. Henry story, you can probably guess the ol’ switcheroo. The figure in men’s clothing promptly rode away, and the lawman then realized that The Kid had tricked him into killing his own girlfriend.
Pretty dark.
Somehow, this vile character later became a hero in movies, comics and TV shows.
