I think Siegel went filmic about it.
Like Books said:
It's usually some
six-fingered bustard
that couldn't hit
a cow in the tit
with a tin cup
that does you in.
Those lines recurring … and Books seeing the boy in his moment of death - his surrogate son - crying out to him to watch out. What better way to die than that. Having the boy's support and sympathy. And getting the death he wanted. And his words coming true.
Epic.

Die fighting.
That's what a man does.

He says to Gillom
"They blink an eye or draw a breath before they pull a trigger. I won't".
He'd been winning shootouts and showdowns for so many years that his survival instincts wouldn't just drop within that moment.
What the hell is a gigawatt?!

Although Gary Wills claims that Thibido tells Books about the no-goods in the movie and not the novel in his book "John Wayne's America, actually it's vice versa. In the film Books has encountered Cobb and Sweeney already, and Thibido only tells Books of Pulford. The book's Thibido basically tells Books that if he were to kill the local troublemakers, the town would pay for all the funerals, Books included. Books probably is counting on Pulford to be his killer, and if not, Books'll just take Pulford out too.

The reason Books defended himself was not so much that he wanted to, but that it was second nature to that. If someone goes after you, you defend yourself. It is just a natural reaction.

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Watched this again the other day, decided to check the boards. My take on this has always been that O'Brien was meant to be Books' trump card (pardon the pun). Books, I'm fairly certain, thought O'Brien could do the job if the others couldn't.

My question has always beenwhy Pulford (Hugh O'Brien?)
Cobb was an ass. No big loss.
Sweeney had a grudge against him, so might as well see about settling accounts.
But he never met Pulford before, did he? The only gunfight we see Pulford beforehand is the one where the guy who lost as the faro table and accused him of cheating, came back in and tried to kill him. Clearly self-defense, and well within Books' own moral code.
Of course, Pulford didn't have to accept the invitation, and could have just sat out the fight while Books nailed Cobb and Sweeney. Hmmm. He might have shot the bartender before he shot Books in the back.
OTOH, ya gotta love Hugh O'Brien's move, when he draws his gun while simultaneously flipping the deck of cards out of his other hand. Nice.

If you know you're going to die, why not make your death count for something?
Taking out some bad guys and leaving the world a better place is not a bad way to go.

Books wasn't the kind of man to commit suicide. If he was, he could have just shot himself in the head with one of his own guns. Instead, he chose to go out the way he'd lived for so longin a gunfight. He stacked the odds to make it near-impossible for him to win, but neglected to consider that he was better than the gunfighters he invited. He couldn't throw the fight or react slower than his top speed. That would be akin to suicide. His only hope was that despite how good he was, the three gunfighters would be better. Alas, not.
You can see it on Books' face after the fight. He'sannoyedthat he's still standing. If he hadn't gotten shot in the back, he would probably have probably gone off and tried to take down a bank robbing gang or something of similarly high odds.

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dgcrow, that is the way I always looked at it. He heard Thibido when he talked about doing some weeding. It was his way of doing something to clean up Carson City.

SPOILERS
I've posted on the conundrum of this ending elsewhere here. Another way to put it: the movie was "lucky" that the bartender came out to shoot Wayne in the back, or he'd have to go back home and die slow of cancer anyway. (I don't believe Boone's wounds to him were mortal)
Looking at the showdown several times, I think the irony is this: Wayne figured he'd likely get killed going against three men at once, but:

1. The men surprised him by electing to come at him one at a time. Boone and O'Brien realized that the first guy was a putz and would lose fast. Then Boone moved and O'Brien decided (as a gentleman gunfighter) not to enter the fight (O'Brien reaches for his gun when Boone does, but thinks again and waits.) When Boone gets killed, O'Brien makes his move. Thus does Wayne get three "single match-ups."
2. Books proved to have a gunfighter's instincts even in "suicide mode." His reflexes and survival instincts were "hard-wired." He had to fight back as hard as he could. And he won.

I think you're right. Books thought he would be killed. I also think he realized that he was one of the last of his "breed". So in his last gunfight, he wanted to at least try to take out three other men notorious in their own way. Sort of a "closing of the books" (oops, no pun intended) on an era in Carson City.

He wasnt shot in the chest it was in the arm.

I think that Books knew that there is no honor in committing suicide. He wanted to go out with dignity, which meant, for him, dying in a valliant gun battle. Also, even though books ended up killing all three men, he was mortally wounded by one of them. In 1901 there was virtually no chance of surviving a bullet wound in the chest. Books would have soon died of that chest wound despite the bartender.

Since he was dying of cancer but didnt want to die from it, I think he wanted to go out the way he wanted to which was true to his code, that is if someome should shot and kill him then so be it, but that doesent mean that he cant do the exact same thing.
It's the 80's. Do alot of coke, and vote for Ronald Regan.

I've thought about the matter myself. I can only speculate how Books thought the day was going to play itself out. One thing is for sure, he knew he was going to die, but how? Did he really think he had a shot at taking out all three invitees by himself? Maybe he thought he would take out one, and that maybe the other two would kill or inflict serious injury on each other. Put another way, once Books was out of the picture, the last ones standing would fight each other to the death.

No he could not be sure, but the odds were he would be killed. "He most likely would have killed himslf." I have always found it interesting and a tribite to Wayne's stature that it took T.V's Wyatt Earp, paladin, and the villian from deleverance and josey wales to get him. After all he couldn't be gunned down by just anyone.

He couldn't have done anything else. The point was that he had to be true to himself. If he had simply wanted to die he could have shot himself, or drained a whole bottle of Laudanum and gone to sleep.