Rooster Cogburn

Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn is a fictional character who first appeared in the 1968 Charles Portis novel True Grit. Fictional character biography Reuben Cogburn was born on July 15, 1825. Cogburn was a veteran of the American Civil War who served under Confederate guerrilla leader William Quantrill, where Cogburn lost his eye. He was married first to an Illinois woman who left him to return to her first husband after bearing Cogburn a single, extremely clumsy son, Horace, (of whom Cogburn says in, "He never liked me anyway"). Cogburn is described as a "fearless, one-eyed United States Marshal who never knew a dry day in his life." He was "the toughest marshal" working the Indian Territory on behalf of Judge Isaac Parker, the real-life judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas (having criminal jurisdiction in the Indian Territory, as the bailiff repeatedly announces in both films). When Cogburn goes to court in "Rooster Cogburn," it shows that Cogburn shot a total of 64 men in eight years, killing 60 (by the film's end, it was 70 shots, and 66 killed), all of whom he claimed to have killed in self-defense, in the line of duty, or fleeing justice. In the 1969 film, Cogburn helped a headstrong 14-year-old girl named Mattie Ross (Kim Darby), along with Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Glen Campbell), to track down Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey), the man who drunkenly killed her father. In the sequel, he teamed up with elderly spinster Eula Goodnight (Katharine Hepburn) and an Indian boy named Wolf while on the trail of the desperado, Hawk (Richard Jordan), who had stolen a shipment of nitroglycerin from the United States Army and killed family members of both Goodnight and Wolf. Cogburn lived in Fort Smith, Arkansas, in the back of a Chinese dry-goods store, along with the proprietor, his friend and gambling buddy Chen Lee, and an orange tabby cat named after Confederate General Sterling Price for his entire life as a marshal.