A good classic to start with would be The Prairie Traveler, a guidebook written in the 1850s to advise pioneers, adventurers and wagon trains planning to head westward.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23066/23066-h/23066-h.htm
Full of tons of good information and first hand accounts about how traveling and expeditions were done at the start of the Old West. For many years it served as one of if not the most popular guidebooks in that area.

Richard Slotkin's "Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in 20th Century America" is exactly what you're looking for since it not only tackles questions of violence and authority, but looks at how they have entered the American mythos and been communicated to the public through portrayals in literature, film and TV, so quite pertinent for you. He breaks it into several sections, looking at how the myth of the frontier has been used in various periods of time, from the late 1890s on through the Vietnam era, and evaluating the ways that its themes have, in various ways, been molded as "surrogates" for what Americans were dealing with at the time. It's a hefty tome, but quite thorough, and well suited to giving you a better understanding of the topic at hand here, as it offers insight not only into the Frontier, but also into the META narrative of the frontier that your own script will become part of.

If you haven't already had a look, you might be interested in some of the works listed in the relevant section of the AskHistorians book list.

Hi there - we're happy to approve your question related to your novel, and we are happy for people to answer. However, we should warn you that many flairs have become reluctant to answer questions for aspiring novelists, based on past experience: some aspiring novelists have a tendency to try to pump historians for trivia while ignoring the bigger points they were making, while others have a tendency to argue with historians when the historical reality does not line up with what's needed for a particular scene or characterization. Please respect the answers of people who have generously given you their time, even if it's not always what you want to hear.

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