The Luckiest Outlaw: The Life and Legends of Doc Middleton

James Riley, alias Doc Middleton (ca. 18511913), was a notorious horse thief and murderer, a respectable businessman, a winner with the women, and an open-handed benefactor of the unfortunate. As a wanted man, Middleton concealed his past at every turn, burned incriminating letters, threw out red-herring tales, and lived under a dozen names. Because he was so hard to pin down and round up, a Cheyenne newspaper called him the luckiest outlaw who ever infested the western frontier. Harold Hutton, a rancher on the Niobrara River, deep in Doc Middleton country, has written the definitive biography of this Great Plains Robin Hood.