The Challengers: Kitty Kat Taggart

In 1855, while Katharine Alva Taggart's mother was still pregnant with her first child, the family moved her to the free state of Kansas. Tensions on the Missouri-Kansas border remained high throughout the American Civil War, and by the time the girl was eight years old, Kat lost both her parents in clashes between those on either side of the slavery issue. Orphaned, the young girl lived a varied life in the west, first living with a schoolteacher and her young son, and eventually making her own way. Tough and rowdy, her weakness was a bad temper and a quick draw of her pistol. Still, the woman grew up with keen reflexes and a strong sense of right and wrong, which helped her find her path in a land where anything can happen, and usually does.