I want this hand straight whether I’ll ever be able to use it or not.'Īfter Elmer’s Dad got him good and drunk, Elmer went on the say: 'Dad put my arm on a heavy table and sat down on it with my hand between his legs. He said, 'Son, do you still want to go through with it?' I said, 'I do.' I said 'Regardless of how much I howl or pass our or whatever, get the job done. Father went down to Goodkind’s wholesale liquor store and bought a gallon of Old Granddad, 100 proof, and came home with it. So mother got a bunch of cotton bats and gauze, soaked them in melted deer tallow, and had a lot of bandages ready. Mother said, 'Can you stand it?' I said, 'I don’t know, but you can go ahead and do it anyway.' They all said I would never live to be 21 anyway and they were not going to torture me any further.įinally, I had had enough of going with only one hand, so I asked Dad if he would break it. Father contacted every doctor in Helena to try to get them to operate on the hand and break it over and straighten it out. I told Father I had to have a left hand so I could hold a rifle and do normal things. The right side of my face was all drawn down towards my shoulder, also. I used to wrap a towel around it when Father sent me to school so the girls wouldn’t cringe at the sight of it. My left hand was just turned upside down and back on my wrist, just a claw extended from the top of my wrist. His entire body was covered with burns and his chin was 'welded' to his right shoulder with his left hand turned upside down on the back of his left wrist.Įlmer recounted this: 'When we moved from Missoula back to Helena I was considerable of a wreck. An ordinary man would have died from the fire. In 1911, Elmer was burned terribly in a hotel fire in Missoula, Montana, and carried scars for the rest of his life. In fact, he recounted learning to shoot a handgun from a former gunfighter turned barber, shooting at the patterns in the linoleum in the back of the barber shop. His strength showed as he fought the stroke for over two years, passing away on Februin a Boise nursing home.Įlmer was born right at the end of the frontier period on Main Hardin, Missouri, and consequently knew many Civil War veterans and gunfighters in his early years. 44 Magnum were set aside in December of 1981 when he suffered the de-habilitating stroke. Instead, the big Stetson and the Smith & Wesson.

Elmer, who seemed bigger than life, should have died in a gunfight, or have been mauled by a grizzly, or simply rode off into the sunset.

Elmer keith