“And there was Bob Lee and the Peacocks”:
One of Robert E. Howard’s Favorite Texas Feuds
Robert E. Howard loved the history of Texas and the Southwest. He used it in writing many of
his stories. Famously, he wrote the last Conan tale, “Red Nails”, after his 1935 trip to New
Mexico, where he got the chance to see the sleepy town of Lincoln and walk its streets reveling
in the history of the Lincoln County War and Billy the Kid, an incident from history that he loved.
His story tells of the long-running feud between the inhabitants of the fabled city of Xuchotl,
where red and black nails were pounded into a post to keep score of which side’s followers had
been killed by the other. Howard was inspired by his knowledge of the Lincoln County War and
recent trip, as well as some other bloody feuds that had occurred in Texas to write this bloody
tale. Some of the Texas feuds Howard talks about in his letters are the Mason County Hoodoo
War between the German Unionist settlers and the Texan Confederate sympathizers, and the
Taylor-Sutton feud, which took place between two families over control of DeWitt county.
However, one of Howard’s favorite Texas feuds that may also have helped in his creating “Red
Nails”, is the Lee-Peacock feud, which was the bloodiest feud in Texas history, and perhaps the
second bloodiest in the United States. Continue reading
