Asa Dunnington - Selectively Lawless: The True Story of Emmett Long, an American Original

To Cheryl, David, Steve, and grandchildren.

Foreword

The Wild West provides some of the most enduring tenets of American mythology, journalist E. L. Hamilton once wrote. And no wonder: the lawlessness of the time provided plenty of drama, and the lonely windswept territories, mountainous and arid, provided the cinematic backdrop.

True enough, but the fact is that the mythic outlaw of the frontier cannot be confined to the time and place where he first entered American popular culture. Thats what we discover in the pages of Selectively Lawless by Asa Dunnington, the saga of a remarkable man named Emmett Long: a rancher by profession and a gambler by passion, but also the proprietor of a speakeasy and a brothel, a bank robber, a moonshiner, a card shark, and much else besidesan authentic American original.

Born in the small town of Pottsboro, Texas, in 1904, Emmett was one ranch hand with an early appreciation for the internal combustion engine. Hed been breaking horses since he was eight years old, but what he longed to ride at the age of sixteen was not an old paint but a motorcycle called the new Indian Scout. So Emmett was a kind of urban cowboy of the early twentieth century, even if many of his exploits recall the wildest days of the Old West.

Emmett is shown to possess exactly the kind of dangerous edge that we expect to find in a Western badman. Heaven help the man who crosses Emmett Long, warns Dunnington. But Emmett is also a sly dog and a trickster, a man who is able to deploy a cutting sense of humor at the most awkward of moments. For that reason, Dunnington shows us scenes of jaw-clenching tension as well as scenes that make us laugh out loud, and often both at once.

Emmett may have been only a selective outlaw, but he seems to have spent a good deal of his long life on the wrong side of the law. The company he kept ranged from Pretty Boy Floyd in the thirties to Benny Binion in the sixties. Still, he turns out to be the kind of rogue whose sheer charisma we cannot help but admire. To his credit, Dunnington allows us to see Emmetts winning qualities, his kinder and gentler side, his encounters with love and loss, and his ultimate moment of redemption from his life of crime.

Dunnington first heard some of the stories from the horses mouth in Emmetts old age and others from Emmetts daughter (and Dunningtons cousin-in-law), Mattie Bloomquist. Now he shares them with his reader in the engaging and compelling style of a storyteller around a campfire. And he shows us an outlaw who is unlike any of the characters we have encountered before. Emmett Long may remind us of the outlaws we meet in books and movies, but Selectively Lawless has the irresistible ring of the real thing.

Jonathan Kirsch

Acknowledgments

My thanks to Milli Brown of Brown Books Publishing Group for her friendship and for sticking with me through all of the legal battles it took to get here; to Katlin Stewart for keeping me on the right track; to Jonathan Kirsch and Bob Ross for helping with the legal battles; to Christy Phillippe for her friendship and editing; to Abra Myers for her photography and typing; and to Jennifer Hughes for her typing. Thanks also to my son, Steven, for keeping his foot on the pedal and to my granddaughter, Brooke, for always asking, Is the book done yet?

Prologue

T he older man and the younger man sat in the room, long shadows casting a palpable sense of heaviness and weight between them.

Its a burden on my soul, Asa, said the older man, hunched over the table. A burden, taking that mans life.

The younger man, Asa, nephew of the older, nodded slowly and silently, recognizing the import of what was being said, both aloud and unspoken.

Not a day passes I dont wish it couldve been different. Emmett Long, one of the so-called baddest of the bad outlaws of the old Wild West, turned in his chair to look his nephew direct in the eye.

Asa stared over at the old man, looked into the elders clear blue eyes and saw the ring of truth behind them. He felt like a priest hearing a confession.

There was a great and profound sadness underlying Emmetts words, but the old man continued.

You write my story for me, Asa. But dont make any excuses for me. I done what I done, and there aint no gettin around it.

Asa nodded.

And if I see that fella I done kilt in the hereafter, Ill tell him the same.

And so Asa wrote the story.

Chapter 1

E mmett Guy Long was born in Pottsboro, Texas, in the middle of Grayson County in 1904. That was also the year Henry Ford set a new land speed record of just over ninety-one miles an hour on a frozen lakebed in Michigan, Teddy Roosevelt was reelected president of the United States, and New Years Eve was celebrated in Times Square for the very first time.

Pottsboro was home to fewer than four hundred people back then, and its barely more than 2000 now, so most things change a lot more slowly there, as was true in the many small towns in which Emmett lived during his formative years.

He was the fourth of nine children, almost all of whom lived to adulthood, born to itinerant sharecroppers who moved from farm to farm and crop to crop, working the land with their children in exchange for food and shelter and a hardscrabble existence while attending whatever church was nearby (but preferably a Methodist one).

His father, John, would offer to preach at any church with a vacant pulpit and a hankering for a laymans stem-winder, making sure Etta Lee and the kids were all lined up in the very front pew, their faces freshly scrubbed and their clothes always homemade.

At the age of fourteen, while the rest of the family was hunkered over in a blazing Texas cotton field, Emmett suddenly rose up from the dirt between the endless rows of cotton, stretched his back, and handed his burlap collection sack to his sister Carmen.

Carm, he said. I picked my last.

Carmen, who was a hard worker, barely looked up. What are you talkin about? She laughed before turning more serious. Better get back to work fore Daddy catches you.

Im leavin, Carm.

Leavin?

Now Emmett had his sisters undivided attention. Next time you see me, Ill be drivin a brand-new car with a fistful of cash in my pocket.