Outlaws and Peace Officers

Memoirs of Crime and Punishment in the Old West

Stephen Brennan, Stephen Brennan

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781510700383
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Biographies de sciences sociales

This New York Times ' bestseller features the West's most prominent lawmen and criminals, who tell their stories of fight, death, and survival. In the romantic narrative of the Old West, two larger-than-life characters emerged as the perfect foils for each other—the rampant outlaw and the heroic peace officer. Without the villain, sheriffs would not have needed to uphold the law; and without the sheriff, villains would have had no law to break. Together, both personalities fought, lost, and triumphed amid shootouts, train robberies, and bank holdups against the backdrop of the lawless American frontier.This spectacular New York Times ' bestselling collection of true memoirs and autobiographies, told by the very people who lived these criminal and righteous lives during the Old West, reveal the outlaw and peace officer at their worst and best. Watch as Mark Twain introduces notorious gunslinger Jack Slade; hear about Theodore Roosevelt's encounters with men, women, and game from Roosevelt himself; read sheriff Pat Garrett's biography of Billy the Kid, the outlaw he killed; and listen as lawmen Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp describe each other in their own accounts. Including other carefully curated stories by Tom Horn, Cole Younger, and more, Outlaws and Peace Officers invokes danger, honor, and the fight for survival during this perilous but exciting chapter in American history.

CHAPTER I.

DODGE

By William MacLeod Raine

It was in the days when the new railroad was pushing through the country of the plains Indians that a drunken cowboy got on the train at the way station in Kansas. John Bender, the conductor, asked him for his ticket. He had none, but he pulled out a handful of gold pieces.

“I wantta—go-go to—h-hell,” he hiccuped.

Bender did not hesitate an instant. “Get off at Dodge. One dollar, please.”

Dodge did not get its name because so many of its citizens were or had been, in the Texas phrase, on the dodge. It came quite respectably by way of its cognomen. The town was laid out by A. A. Robinson, chief engineer of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, and it was called for Colonel Richard I. Dodge, commander of the post at Fort Dodge and one of the founders of the place. It is worth noting because it is one of the few respectable facts in the early history of the cowboy capital. Dodge was a wild and uncurried prairie wolf, and it howled every night and all night long. It was gay and young and lawless. Its sense of humor was exaggerated and worked overtime. The crack of the six-shooter punctuated its hilarity ominously. Those who dwelt there were the valiant vanguard of civilization. For good or bad they were strong and forceful, many of them generous and big-hearted in spite of their lurid lives. The town was a hive of energy. One might justly use many adjectives about it, but the word respectable was not among them.

There were three reasons why Dodge won the reputation of being the wildest town the country had ever seen. In 1872 it was the end of the track, the last jumping-off spot into the wilderness, and in the day when the transcontinental railroads were building across the desert the temporary terminus was always a gathering place of roughs and scalawags. The payroll was large, and gamblers, gunmen, and thugs gathered for the pickings. This was true of Hays, Abilene, Ogalala, and Kit Carson. It was true of Las Vegas and Albuquerque.

A second reason was that Dodge was the end of the long trail drive from Texas. Every year hundreds of thousands of longhorns were driven up from Texas by cowboys scarcely less wild than the hill steers they herded. The great plains was being opened, and cattle were needed to stock a thousand ranches as well as to supply the government at Indian reservations. Scores of these trail herds were brought to Dodge for shipment, and after the long, dangerous drive the punchers were keen to spend their money on such diversions as the town could offer. Out of sheer high spirits they liked to shoot up the town, to buck the tiger, to swagger from saloon to gambling hall, their persons garnished with revolvers, the spurs on their high-heeled boots jingling. In no spirit of malice they wanted it distinctly understood that they owned the town. As one of them once put it, he was born high up in the Guadaloupe, raised on prickly pear, had palled with alligators and quarreled with grizzlies.

Also, Dodge was the heart of the buffalo country. From here great quantities of hides were shipped back on the new railroad. R. M. Wright, one of the founders of the town and always one of its leading citizens, says that his firm alone shipped two hundred thousand hides in one season. He estimates the number of buffaloes in the country at more than twenty-five million, admitting that many as well informed as he put the figure at four times as many.

Many times he and others traveled through the vast herd for days at a time without ever losing sight of them. The killing of buffaloes was easy, because the animals were so stupid. When one was shot, they would mill round and round. Tom Nicolson killed 120 in forty minutes; in a little more than a month he slaughtered 2,713 of them. With good luck a man could earn one hundred dollars a day. If he had bad luck he lost his scalp.

The buffalo was to the plains Indian food, fuel, and shelter. As long as there were plenty of buffaloes he was in Paradise. But he saw at once that this slaughter would soon exterminate the supply. He hated the hunter and battled against his encroachments. The buffalo hunter was an intrepid plainsman. He fought the Kiowas, Comanches, and the staked plain Apaches, as well as the Sioux and the Arapahoe. Famous among these hunters were Kirk Jordan, Charles Rath, Emanuel Dubbs, Jack Bridges, and Curly Walker. Others even better known were the two Buffalo Bills (William Cody and William Mathewson) and Wild Bill.

These three factors then made Dodge: it was the end of the railroad, the terminus of the cattle trail from Texas, and the center of the buffalo trade. Together they made “the beautiful bibulous Babylon of the frontier,” in the words of the editor of the Kingsley Graphic. There was to come a time later when the bibulous Babylon fell on evil days and its main source of income was old bones. They were buffalo-bones, gathered in wagons, and piled beside the track for shipment, hundreds and hundreds of carloads of them, to be used for fertilizer. It used to be said by way of derision that buffalo bones were legal tender in Dodge.

But that was in the far future. In the early years Dodge rode the wave of prosperity. Hays and Abilene on Ogalala had their day, but Dodge had its day and its night too. For years it did a tremendous business. The streets were so blocked that one could hardly get through. Hundreds of wagons were parked in them, outfits belonging to freighters, hunters, cattlemen, and the government. Scores of camps surrounded the town in every direction. The yell of the cowboy and the weird oath of the bull-whacker and muleskinner were heard in the land. And for a time there was no law nearer than Hays City, itself a burg not given to undue quiet and peace.

Dodge was no sleepy village that could drowse along without peace officers. Bob Wright has set it down that in the first year of its history twenty-five men were killed and as many wounded. The elements that made up the town were too diverse for perfect harmony. The freighters did not like the railroad graders. The soldiers at the fort fancied themselves as scrappers. The cowboys and the buffalo hunters did not fraternize a little bit. The result was that Boot Hill began to fill up. Its inhabitants were buried with their boots on and without coffins.

There was another cemetery for those who died in their beds. The climate was so healthy that it would have been very sparsely occupied those first years if it had not been for the skunks. During the early months Dodge was a city of camps. Every night the fires flamed up from the vicinity of hundreds of wagons. Skunks were numerous. They crawled at night into the warm blankets of the sleepers and bit the rightful owners when they protested. A dozen men died from these bites. It was thought at first that the animals were a special variety, known as the hydrophobia skunk. In later years I have sat around Arizona campfires and heard the subject discussed heatedly. The Smithsonian Institute, appealed to as referee, decided that there was no such species and that deaths from the bites were probably due to blood poisoning caused by the foul teeth of the animal.

In any case, the skunks were only half as venomous as the gunmen, judging by comparative staff statistics. Dodge decided it had to have law in the community. Jack Bridges was appointed first marshal.

Jack was a noted scout and buffalo hunter, the sort of man who would have peace if he had to fight for it. He did his sleeping in the afternoon, since this was the quiet time of the day. Someone shook him out of slumber one day to tell him that cowboys were riding up and down Front Street shooting the windows out of buildings. Jack sallied out, old buffalo gun in hand. The cowboys went whooping down the street across the bridge toward their camp. The old hunter took a long shot at one of them and dropped him. The cowboys buried the young fellow next day.

There was a good deal of excitement in the cow camps. If the boys could not have a little fun without some old donker, an old vinegarroon who couldn’t take a joke, filling them full of lead it was a pretty howdy-do. But Dodge stood pat. The coroner’s jury voted it justifiable homicide. In future the young Texans were more discreet. In the early days whatever law there was did not interfere with casualties due to personal differences of opinion provided the figure had no unusually sinister aspect.

The first wholesale killing was at Tom Sherman’s dance hall. The affair was between soldiers and gamblers. It was started by a trooper named Hennessey, who had a reputation as a bad guy and a bully. He was killed, as were several others. The officers of the fort glossed over the matter, perhaps because they felt the soldiers had been to blame.

One of the lawless characters who drifted into Dodge the first year was Billy Brooks. He quickly established a reputation as a killer. My old friend Emanuel Dubbs, a buffalo hunter who “took the hides off’n” many a bison, is authority for the statement that Brooks killed or wounded fifteen men in less than a month after his arrival. Now, Emanuel is a preacher (if he is still in the land of the living; I saw him last at Clarendon, Texas, ten years or so ago), but I cannot quite swallow that “fifteen.” Still, he had a man for breakfast now and then and on one occasion four.

Brooks, by the way, was assistant marshal. It was the policy of the officials of these wild frontier towns to elect as marshal some conspicuous killer, on the theory that desperadoes would respect his prowess or if they did not would get the worst of the encounter.

Abilene, for instance, chose “Wild Bill” Hickok. Austin had its Ben Thompson. According to Bat Masterson, Thompson was the most dangerous man with a gun among all the bad men he knew—and Bat knew them all. Ben was an Englishman who struck Texas while still young. He fought as a Confeder-ate under Kirby Smith during the Civil War and under Shelby for Maximilian. Later he was city marshal at Austin. Thompson was a man of the most cool effrontery. On one occasion, during a cattlemen’s convention, a banquet was held at a leading hotel. The local congressman, a friend of Thompson, was not invited. Ben took exception to this and attended in person. By way of pleasantry he shot the plates in front of the diners. Later one of those present made a humorous comment: “I always thought Ben was a game man. But what did he do? Did he hold up a whole convention of a thousand cattlemen? No, sir. He waited until he got forty of fifty of us poor fellows alone before he turned loose his wolf.”

Of all the bad men and desperadoes produced by Texas, not one of them, not even John Wesley Hardin himself, was more feared than Ben Thompson. Sheriffs avoided serving warrants of arrest on him. It is recorded that once, when the county court was in session with a charge against him on the docket, Thompson rode into the room on a mustang. He bowed pleasantly to the judge and court officials.

“Here I am, gents, and I’ll lay all I’m worth that there’s no charge against me. Am I right? Speak up, gents, I’m a little deaf.”

There was a dead silence until at last the clerk of the court murmured, “No charge.”

A story is told that on one occasion Ben Thompson met his match in the person of a young English remittance man playing cards with him. The remittance man thought he caught Thompson cheating and discreetly said so. Instantly Thompson’s .44 covered him. For some unknown reason the gambler gave the lad a chance to retract.

“Take it back—and quick,” he said grimly.

Every game in the house was suspended while all eyes turned on the daredevil boy and the hard-faced desperado. The remittance man went white, half rose from his seat, and shoved his head across the table towards the revolver.

“Shoot and be damned. I say you cheat,” he cried hoarsely.

Thompson hesitated, laughed, shoved the revolver back into its holster, and ordered the youngster out of the house.

Perhaps the most amazing escape on record is that when Thompson, fired at by Mark Wilson at a distance of ten feet from a double-barreled shotgun loaded with buckshot, whirled instantly, killed him, and an instant later shot through the forehead Wilson’s friend Mathews, though the latter had ducked behind the bar to get away. The second shot was guesswork plus quick thinking and accurate aim. Ben was killed a little later in company with his friend King Fisher, another bad man, at the Palace Theatre. A score of shots were poured into them by a dozen men waiting in ambush. Both men had become so dangerous that their enemies could not afford to let them live.

King Fisher was the humorous gentleman who put up a signboard at the fork of a public road bearing the legend:

THIS IS KING FISHER’S ROAD. TAKE THE OTHER.

It is said that those traveling that way followed his advice. The other road might be a mile or two farther, but they were in no hurry. Another amusing little episode in King Fisher’s career is told. He had some slight difficulty with a certain bald-headed man. Fisher shot him and carelessly gave the reason that he wanted to see whether a bullet would glance from a shiny pate.

El Paso in its wild days chose Dallas Stoudenmire for marshal, and after he had been killed, John Selman. Both of them were noted killers. During Selman’s regime, John Wesley Hardin came to town. Hardin had twenty-seven notches on his gun and was the worst man killer Texas had ever produced. He was at the bar of a saloon shaking dice when Selman shot him from behind. One year later Deputy United States Marshal George Scarborough killed Selman in a duel. Shortly after this, Scarborough was slain in a gunfight by “Kid” Curry, an Arizona bandit.

What was true of these towns was true, too, of Albuquerque and Las Vegas and Tombstone. Each of them chose for peace officers men who were “sudden death” with a gun. Dodge did exactly the same thing. Even a partial list of its successive marshals reads like a fighting roster. In addition to Bridges and Brooks may be named Ed and Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Bill Tilghman, Ben Daniels, Mysterious Dave Mathers, T. C. Nixon, Luke Short, Charlie Bassett, W. H. Harris, and the Sughrue brothers, all of them famous as fighters in a day when courage and proficiency with weapons were a matter of course. On one occasion the superintendent of the Santa Fe suggested to the city dads of Dodge that it might be a good thing to employ marshals less notorious. Dodge begged leave to differ. It felt that the best way to “settle the hash” of desperadoes was to pit against them fighting machines more efficient, bad men more deadly than themselves.

The word “bad” does not necessarily imply evil. One who held the epithet was known as dangerous to oppose. He was unafraid, deadly with a gun, and hard as nails. He might be evil, callous, treacherous, revengeful as an Apache. Dave Mathers fit this description. He might be a good man, kindly, gentle, never taking more than his fighting chance. This was Billy Tillman to a T.

We are keeping Billy Brooks waiting. But let that go. Let us look first at “Mysterious Dave.” Bob Wright has set it down that Mathers had more dead men to his credit than any other man in the West. He slew seven by actual count in one night, in one house, according to Wright. Mathers had a very bad reputation. But his courage could blaze up magnificently. While he was deputy marshal word came that the Henry gang of desperadoes were terrorizing a dance hall. Into that hall walked Dave beside his chief Tom Carson. Five minutes later out reeled Carson, both arms broken, his body shot through and through, a man with only five minutes to live. When the smoke in the hall cleared away Mathers might have been seen beside two handcuffed prisoners, one of them wounded. In a circle around him were four dead cowpunchers of the Henry outfit.

“Uncle” Billy Tilghman died the other day at Cornwall, Oklahoma, a victim of his own fearlessness. He was shot to death while taking a revolver from a drunken prohibition agent. If he had been like many other bad men he would have shot the fellow down at the first sight of danger. But that was never Tilghman’s way. It was his habit to make arrests without drawing a gun. He cleaned up Dodge during the three years while he was marshal. He broke up the Dooley gang, killing Bill Raidler and “Little” Dick in personal duels and capturing Bill Doolin, the leader. Bat Masterson said that during Tilghman’s term as sheriff of Lincoln County, Oklahoma, he captured, or drove from the county more criminals than any other official that section ever had. Yet “Uncle” Billy never used a gun except reluctantly. Time and again he gave the criminal the first shot, hoping the man would surrender rather than fight. Of all the old frontier sheriffs none holds a higher place than Billy Tilghman.

After which diversion we turn to Billy Brooks, a “gent” of an impatient temperament, not used to waiting, and notably quick on the trigger. Mr. Dubbs reports that late one evening in the winter of ’72–’73 he returned to Dodge with two loads of buffalo meat. He finished his business, ate supper, and started to smoke a postprandial pipe. The sound of a fusillade in an adjoining dance hall interested him since he had been deprived of the pleasures of metropolitan life for some time and had come to depend upon Indians for excitement. (Incidentally, it may mentioned that they furnished him with a reasonable amount. Not long after this three of his men were caught, spread-eagled, and tortured by Indians. Dubbs escaped after a hair-raising ride and arrived at Adobe Walls in time to take part in the historic defense of that post by a handful of buffalo hunters against many hundred tribesmen.) From the building burst four men. They started across the railroad track to another dance hall, one frequented by Brooks. Dubbs heard the men mention the name of Brooks, coupling it with an oath. Another buffalo hunter named Fred Singer joined Dubbs. They followed the strangers, and just before the four reached the dance hall Singer shouted a warning to the marshal. This annoyed the unknown four, and they promptly exchanged shots with the buffalo hunters. Then what took place was startling in the sudden drama of it.

Billy Brooks stood in bold relief in the doorway, a revolver in each hand. He fired so fast that Dubbs says the sounds were like a company discharging weapons. When the smoke cleared Brooks still stood in the same place. Two of the strangers were dead and two mortally wounded. They were brothers. They had come from Hays City to avenge the death of a fifth brother shot down by Brooks some time before.

Mr. Brooks has a fondness for the fair sex. He and Browney, the yard-master, took a fancy to the same girl. Captain Drew, she was called, and she preferred Browney. Whereupon Brooks naturally shot him in the head. Perversely, to the surprise of everybody, Browney recovered and was soon back at his old job.

Brooks seems to have held no grudge at him for making light of his marksmanship in this manner. At any rate, his next affair was with Kirk Jordan, the buffalo hunter. This was a very diff...