Treason in the Rockies by Paul N. Herbert

Author:Paul N. Herbert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2016-03-06T16:00:00+00:00

4

Jellybean and the Vagabond

As the special agent in charge of the El Paso FBI office, it was Delf “Jellybean” Bryce’s job to know all about Nazis in America, saboteurs and prisoners’ escapes. The El Paso office at that time covered much of west Texas as well as the entire state of New Mexico.

Bryce would later come into his own bit of national celebrity. Not many law enforcement agents were profiled with photos in Life Magazine, but that’s what happened in November 1945 when America was introduced to Bryce and his shooting exploits. Titled “G-Man Can Draw a Gun Faster Than You Can Read This,” the article reported Bryce’s impressive feats, including one where the legendary lawman held a silver dollar with his shooting hand at forehead level, dropped the coin, and shot—and hit—the coin by the time it got to waist level. The Life photos showed a montage, slow motion–like, of Bryce doing this trick—stroboscopic photos they were called. Another photo showed a silhouette target with a tight circle in the middle of the chest. He could draw in two-fifths of a second and by aiming his body in a unique position and using the footwork of a basketball player, he would fall forward if hit, so he could keep on shooting. The Life editors concluded that Bryce was “the FBI agent most likely to live longest” and that he could have easily outdrawn western gunmen like Billy the Kid.84

Three months after the Life profile, a British magazine called Picture Post featured Bryce in a cover story titled “Quickest Man on the Draw”:

Delf Bryce is a G-man who can beat the pistol-packing criminal at his own game. He is quicker on the draw than any other F.B.I. agent, which is saying a lot, for G-manning America is not a métier in which you can take it easy and still go on living. He learned his stuff at the pistol-shooting course of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, after nine years in the Oklahoma police force. He is 39, and the best of some 4,000 experts on the lightning draw. Perhaps he had a natural quickness greater than that of any of the others, but it was long and painstaking practice that made him the first of the four thousand. The F.B.I. method allows only one count, in which the agent, with a swooping, circular movement, seizes his gun, draws it, aims and fires. He daren’t fumble, for his man has been practising too—sometimes on other G-men who didn’t live to say what went wrong. But, though the gangster doesn’t hang around to have his speed measured, he must be pretty good to equal Mr. Bryce.85

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