The Wild West Dictionary Definition of ANNUS HORRIBILIS.

Badass Hindmost was a feared name in the flat, treacherous lands of Arizona during the Wild West days of packing heat and forever riding off into the sunset—which seemed to recede further and further until it sunk with a hiss 480 miles away into an over-the-horizon pond called the Pacific.

Born Billy Bonney in 1841, the little tyke went through a dozen mullein-leaf nappies every day, punctuated by rapid-fire flatulence that assaulted the nostrils of the Hindmost family; so much so that Daddy Hindmost rechristened the little boomer as Blasting Billy. Needless to say, Mother Hindmost was not amused, considering that her husband, with an unrelenting zest for beans, was the Hindmost progenitor of this family trait.

Blasting Billy bounced up in size, graduating from his rocking horse to riding a dog, to a pony. At the age of 17, Daddy Hindmost “capped” Billy the kid into adulthood with his first Stetson and six-shooter and watched proudly as his son honed his marksmanship at potting empty bottles, and slugging home-brewed yuk.

Blasting Billy spent the next three years in the saddle discovering life in the Wild West’s saloon bars and working as a ranch hand. A man of few words, he let his fists and six-shooters do the talking, and in no time at all earned the label of ‘Badass’ — behind his back of course. Yet there was a softer side to him. In his few pensive moments of inspiration, he would dig out his brush and paints in the saloon and rapidly sketch memorable scenes of cowboy life, confirming that he was indeed the fastest draw in the West.

That reputation preceded him to Tombstone and was bolstered by the number of ‘dispatches’ he made to Boot Hill, cutting short the lives of his opponents by plugging them at the count of two, instead of the customary three. Tombstone had a new Marshall, elected unopposed.

Badass Hindmost signed his name into Wild West history when he functioned as referee to the famous gunfight at the OK Corral at Tombstone; sitting atop a giant prickly pear cactus to get a bird’s eye view of the shootout.

The gunfight was the result of a long-simmering feud with Cowboys Billy Claiborne, Ike and Billy Clanton, and Tom and Frank McLaury on one side: against Deputy Marshal Virgil Earp, Special Policemen Morgan, Wyatt Earp, and part-time medic Doc Holliday.

In a brief but sharp exchange that lasted a mere 30 seconds, Billy Clanton and both the McLaury brothers were killed. Ike Clanton, Billy Claiborne, and Wes Fuller took to their heels. Badass hollered at the escaping Cowboys to stand and fight, but they would have nothing of it. He let loose four warning shots, but the recoil caused him to lose his perch, and he slipped down the prickly cactus, collecting a score of needles in his ample nether section, and thumped bottom first into the stone-flecked, hardened desert soil of Tombstone.

His howls of pain, punctuated by choice epithets regarding his punctured backside drew the attention of the warring gunslingers. The Earp brothers quickly hurried to his side, turned him upside down and de-pricked him of the few visible needles embedded in his ass.

“Let me through,” said Holliday. “I’m a doctor.”

Doc tugged Badass’s jeans down to his knees, revealing a rump all bloodied and sore like a populated pin cushion. Lacking pincers, the men held Badass down and wrenched the prickly cacti needles out one by one.

“Really horrible,” muttered Doc Holliday. “That ass is going to be quite painful for a whole darn year because we got no antiseptic cream in the whole of goddamn Arizona.”

“Uggghh,” grimaced the Earp brothers, “An Ass, ‘Orrible Ass!” And thus, a new double-barreled word entered the Wild West lexicon of cowboy lingo under the letter A.

“Yeah, this here is an ass which looks truly horrible,” said Doc Holliday, “and we can’t get those splinters all out. Hey boys, if there are any showing, Aw… just bang ‘em in further with the gun butts.”

The lawmen proceeded to whack in all the splinters still sprouting from Badass Hindmost’s bottom. Thereby predating the Whack-a-Mole Game by over 120 years.

Editors of the Wild West Dictionary have confirmed that the original use of the phrase “Annus Horribilis” happened at the 1881 gunfight at the OK corral, as cited in Zane Grey’s Tombstone classic: The Revenge of the Prickly Cactass.