Road Agent's Spin

The road agent's spin, also known as the "Curly Bill spin" (after Curly Bill Brocius), or the "Border roll" was a gunfighting maneuver first identified in the days of the Old West. It was utilized as a ruse when forced to surrender a side arm to an unfriendly party.

Normal Old West procedure for surrender of a loaded pistol called for it to be handed over backwards (butt-first). A well-trained gunslinger could, upon demand for surrender, surreptitiously insert their forefinger through the trigger guard of the reversed pistol while extending it toward the party being surrendered to as a false sign of compliance. When the party being surrendered to reached for the pistol with their (presumably dominant) hand, a sharp, practiced motion of the wrist would pivot the gun around the forefinger, flipping it back into firing position for an immediate shot. This maneuver could also be done with the pistol upside down as well as backwards.

It is worth noting that the maneuver relied upon a suitably inexperienced or overly-confident mark; an unwise captor might well underestimate their target's lethality and fail to carefully dictate the manner in which the surrendering party turned over their live weapon(s). Any lawman or gunslinger worth his salt could (and did) easily negate any trickery by a number of methods, including forcing the surrendering party to throw their gun(s) to the side or return them to their holster, then drop their entire gun belt and step backwards several feet.

It was also easy to spot the the road agent's spin if one noticed the surrendering party attempting to retain their index finger on or inside the trigger guard, instead of showing a flat palm or all fingers wrapped around the barrel.