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On a muddy Los Angeles street, three months after the Civil War had ended, Frank and Houston King were waging a war of their own, plotting to kill a wealthy rancher who had stabbed their brother the night before.
Outside the Bella Union Hotel on Main Street, on a humid July 6 in 1865, the King brothers waited to kill Robert S. Carlisle.
It was high noon. The scene was set for one of the the most famous gunfights in Los Angeles history-a bloody affair that left two gunfighters dead and another one wounded, along with several bystanders. A stagecoach horse was also killed in the street.
In a town even then known as one of the most lawless in the nation, the shootout at the Bella Union brought the art of the showdown to new levels of gore. It remained the standard of outrageous violence by which all other Los Angeles shootouts were measured-until modern gangs came into prominence.
At the time, shootings and lynchings in town were so routine that the local newspaper, the Star, rarely accorded them more than a few lines of type.
Because Sheriff Tomas Sanchez had trouble controlling the shootings, citizens groups were organized, meting out vigilante justice at the end of a rope. There were 35 hangings in 25 years among a population of 5,000.
The little pueblo known as the City of Angels had earned the nickname of "Los Diablos," the town of the devils, because of its hair-trigger violence.
At the Bella Union, tempers often were short and gunfights were common. The watering hole got a reputation as Los...