TRIGGERFINGERITIS[1]
On the Plains thirty years ago there were two types of man-killers; and
these two types were subdivided into classes.
The first type numbered all who took life in contravention of law.
This type was divided into three classes: A, Outlaws to whom
blood-letting had become a mania; B, Outlaws who killed in defence of
their spoils or liberty; C, Otherwise good men who had slain in the
heat of private quarrel, and either "gone on the scout" or "jumped the
country" rather than submit to arrest.
The second type included all who slew in support of law and order.
This type included six classes: A, United States marshals; B, Sheriffs
and their deputies; C, Stage or railway express guards, called
"messengers"; D, Private citizens organized as Vigilance
Committees--these often none too discriminating, and not infrequently
the blind or willing instruments of individual grudge or greed; E,
Unorganized bands of ranchmen who took the trail of marauders on life
or property and never quit it; F, "Inspectors" (detectives) for Stock
Growers' Associations.
Throughout the seventies and well into the eighties, in Wyoming,
Dakota, western Kansas and Nebraska, New Mexico, and west Texas, courts
were idle most of the time, and lawyers lived from hand to mouth. The
then state of local society was so rudimentary that it had not acquired
the habit of appeal to the law for settlement of its differences. And
while it may sound an anachronism, it is nevertheless the simple truth
that while life was far less secure through that period, average
personal honesty then ranked higher and depredations against property
were fewer than at any time since.
As soon as society had advanced to a point where the victim could be
relied on to carry his wrongs to court, judges began working overtime
and lawyers fattening. But of the actual pioneers who took their lives
in their hands and recklessly staked them in their everyday goings and
comings (as, for instance, did all who ventured into the Sioux country
north of the Platte between 1875 and 1880) few long stayed--no matter
what their occupation--who were slow on the trigger: it was back to
Mother Earth or home for them.
Of the supporters of the law in that period Boone May was one of the
finest examples any frontier community ever boasted. Early in 1876 he
came to Cheyenne with an elder brother and engaged in freighting thence
overland to the Black Hills. Quite half the length of the stage road
was then infested by hostile Sioux. This meant heavy risks and high
pay. The brothers prospered so handsomely that, toward the end of the
year, Boone withdrew from freighting, bought a few cattle and horses,
and built and occupied a ranch at the stage-road crossing of Lance
Creek, midway between the Platte and Deadwood, in the very heart of the
Sioux country. Boone was then well under thirty, graceful of figure,
dark-haired, wore a slender downy moustache that served only to
emphasize his youth, but possessed that reserve and repose of manner
most typical of the utterly fearless.
The Sioux made his acquaintance early, to their grief. One night they
descended on his ranch and carried off all the stage horses and most of
Boone's. Although the "sign" showed there were fifteen or twenty in
the party, at daylight Boone took their trail, alone. The third day
thereafter he returned to the ranch with all the stolen stock, besides
a dozen split-eared Indian ponies, as compensation for his trouble,
taken at what cost of strategy or blood Boone never told.
Learning of this exploit from his drivers, Al. Patrick, the
superintendent of the stage line, took the next coach to Lance Creek
and brought Boone back to Deadwood, enlisted in his corps of
"messengers"; he was too good timber to miss.
At that time every coach south-bound from Deadwood to Cheyenne carried
thousands in its mail-pouches and express-boxes; and once a week a
treasure coach armored with boiler plate, carrying no passengers, and
guarded by six or eight "messengers" or "sawed-off shotgun men,"
conveyed often as high as two hundred thousand dollars of hard-won
Black Hills gold bars.
Thus it naturally followed that, throughout 1877 and 1878, it was the
exception for a coach to get through from the Chugwater to Jenny's
stockade without being held up by bandits at least once.
Any that happened to escape Jack Wadkins in the south were likely to
fall prey to Dune Blackburn in the north--the two most desperate
bandit-leaders in the country.
In February, 1878, I had occasion to follow some cattle thieves from
Fort Laramie to Deadwood. Returning south by coach one bitter evening
we pulled into Lance Creek, eight passengers inside, Boone May and
myself on the box with 'Gene Barnett the driver; Stocking, another
famous messenger, roosted behind us atop of the coach, fondling his
sawed-off shotgun.
From Lance Creek southward lay the greatest danger zone. At that
point, therefore, Boone and Stocking shifted from the coach to the
saddle, and, as 'Gene popped his whip and the coach crunched away
through the snow, both dropped back perhaps thirty yards behind us.
An hour later, just as the coach got well within a broad belt of plum
bushes that lined the north bank of Old Woman's Fork, out into the
middle of the road sprang a lithe figure that threw a snap shot over
'Gene's head and halted us.
Instantly six others surrounded the coach and ordered us down. I
already had a foot on the nigh front wheel to descend, when a shot out
of the brush to the west, (Boone's, I later learned) dropped the man
ahead of the team.
Then followed a quick interchange of shots for perhaps a minute,
certainly no more, and then I heard Boone's cool voice:
"Drive on, 'Gene!"
"Move an' I'll kill you!" came in a hoarse bandit's voice from the
thicket east of us.
"Drive on, 'Gene, or _I'll kill_ you," came then from Boone, in a tone
of such chilling menace that 'Gene threw the bud into the leaders, and
away we flew at a pace materially improved by three or four shots the
bandits sent singing past our ears and over the team! The next down
coach brought to Cheyenne the comforting news that Boone and Stocking
had killed four of the bandits and stampeded the other three.
Within six months after Boone was employed, both Dune Blackburn and
Jack Wadkins disappeared from the stage road, dropped out of sight as
if the earth had opened and swallowed them, as it probably had. Boone
had a way of absenting himself for days from his routine duties along
the stage road. He slipped off entirely alone after this new quarry
precisely as he had followed the Sioux horse-raiders and, while he
never admitted it, the belief was general that he had run down and
"planted" both. Indeed it is almost a certainty this is true, for
beasts of their type never change their stripes, and sure it is that
neither were ever seen or heard of after their disappearance from the
Deadwood trail.
Late in the Autumn of the same year, 1878, and also at or near the
stage-crossing of Old Woman's Fork, Boone and one companion fought
eight bandits led by a man named Tolle, on whose head was a large
reward. This was earned by Boone at a hold-up of a U. P. express train
near Green River.
This band was, in a way, more lucky, for five of the eight escaped; but
of the three otherwise engaged one furnished a head which Boone toted
in a gunny sack to Cheyenne and exchanged for five thousand dollars, if
my memory rightly serves.
This incident was practically the last of the serious hold-ups on the
Cheyenne road. A few pikers followed and "stood up" a coach
occasionally, but the strong organized bands were extinct.
Throughout 1879 Boone's activities were transferred to the
Sidney-Deadwood road, where for several months before Boone's coming,
Curly and Lame Johnny had held sway. Lame Johnny was shortly
thereafter captured, and hanged on the lone tree that gave the Big
Cottonwood Creek its name. A few months later, Curly was captured by
Boone and another, but was never jailed or tried: when nearing
Deadwood, he tried to escape from Boone, and failed.
With the Sioux pushed back within the lines of their new reservation in
southern Dakota and semi-pacified, and with the Sidney road swept clean
of road-agents, life in Boone's old haunts became for him too tame.
Thus it happened that, while trapping was then no better within than
without the Sioux reservation, the Winter of 1879-80 found Boone and
four mates camped on the Cheyenne River below the mouth of Elk Creek,
well within the reserve, trapping the main stream and its tributaries.
For a month they were undisturbed, and a goodly store of fur was fast
accumulating. Then one fine morning, while breakfast was cooking, out
from the cover of an adjacent hill and down upon them charged a Sioux
war party, one hundred and fifty strong.
Boone's four mates barely had time to take cover below the hard-by
river bank--under Boone's orders--before fire opened. Down straight
upon them the Sioux charged in solid mass, heels kicking and quirts
pounding their split-eared ponies, until, having come within a hundred
yards, the mass broke into single file and raced past the camp, each
warrior lying along the off side of his pony and firing beneath its
neck--the usual but utterly stupid and suicidal Sioux tactics, for
accurate fire under such conditions is of course impossible.
Meantime Boone stood quietly by the camp-fire, entirely in the open,
coolly potting the enemy as regularly and surely as a master wing-shot
thinning a flight of ducks. Three times they so charged and Boone so
received them, pouring into them a steady, deadly fire out of his
Winchester and two pistols. And when, after the third charge, the war
party drew off for good, forty-odd ponies and twenty-odd warriors lay
upon the plain, stark evidence of Boone's wonderful nerve and
marksmanship. Shortly after the fight one of his mates told me that
while he and three others were doing their best, there was no doubt
that nearly all the dead fell before Boone's fire.
A type diametrically opposite to that of the debonair Boone May was
Captain Jim Smith, one of the best peaceofficers the frontier ever
knew. Of Captain Smith's early history nothing was known, except that
he had served with great credit as a captain of artillery in the Union
Army. He first appeared on the U. P. during construction days in the
late sixties. Serving in various capacities as railroad detective,
marshal, stock inspector, and the like, for eighteen years Captain
Smith wrote more red history with his pistol (barring May's work on the
Sioux) than any two men of his time.
The last I knew of him he had enough dead outlaws to his
credit--thirty-odd--to start, if not a respectable, at least, a
fair-sized graveyard. Captain Jim's mere look was almost enough to
still the heart-beat and paralyze the pistol hand of any but the
wildest of them all. His great burning black eyes, glowering deadly
menace from cavernous sockets of extraordinary depth, were set in a
colossal grim face; his straight, thin-lipped mouth never showed teeth;
his heavy, tight-curling black moustache and stiff black imperial
always had the appearance of holding the under lip closely glued to the
upper. In years of intimacy, I never once saw on his lips the faintest
hint of a smile. He had tremendous breadth of shoulders and depth of
chest; he was big-boned, lean-loined, quick and furtive of movement as
a panther. In short, Captain Jim was altogether the most
fearsome-looking man I ever saw, the very incarnation of a relentless,
inexorable, indomitable, avenging Nemesis.
Like most men lacking humor, Captain Jim was devoid of vices; like all
men lacking sentiment, he cultivated no intimacies. Throughout those
years loved nothing, animate or inanimate, but his guns--the full
length "45" that nestled in its breast scabbard next his heart, and the
short "45," sawed off two inches in front of the cylinder, that he
always carried in a deep side-pocket of his long sack coat. This was
often a much patched pocket, for Jim was a notable economist of time,
and usually fired from within the pocket. That he loved those guns I
know, for often have I seen him fondle them as tenderly as a mother her
first-born.
In 1879 Sidney, Neb., was a hell-hole, filled with the most desperate
toughs come to prey upon overland travellers to and from the Black
Hills. Of these toughs McCarthy, proprietor of the biggest saloon and
gambling-house in town, was the leading spirit and boss. Nightly, men
who would not gamble were drugged or slugged or leaded. Town marshals
came and went--either feet first or on a keen run.
So long as its property remained unmolested the U. P. management did
not mind. But one night the depot was robbed of sixty thousand dollars
in gold bullion. Of course, this was the work of the local gang. Then
the U. P. got busy. Pete Shelby summoned Captain Jim to Omaha and
committed the Sidney situation to his charge. Frequenting haunts where
he knew the news would be wired to Sidney, Jim casually mentioned that
he was going out there to clean out the town, and purposed killing
McCarthy on sight. This he rightly judged would stampede, or throw a
chill into, many of the pikers--and simplify his task.
Arrived in Sidney, Jim found McCarthy absent, at North Platte, due to
return the next day. Coming to the station the next morning, Jim found
the express reported three hours late, and returned to his room in the
railway House, fifty yards north of the depot. He doffed his coat,
shoulder scabbard, and boots, and lay down, shortly falling into a doze
that nearly cost him his life. Most inconsiderately the train made up
nearly an hour of its lost time. Jim's awakening was sudden, but not
soon enough. Before he had time to rise at the sound of the softly
opening door, McCarthy was over him with a pistol at his head.
Jim's left hand nearly touched the gun pocket of his coat, and his
right lay in reach of the other gun; but his slightest movement meant
instant death.
"Heerd you come to hang my hide up an' skin the town, but you're under
a copper and my open play wins, Black Jim! See?" growled McCarthy.
"Well, Mac," coolly answered Jim, "you're a bigger damn fool than I
allowed. Never heard of you before makin' a killin' there was nothin'
in. What's the matter with you and your gang? I'm after that bullion,
and I've got a straight tip: Lame Johnny's the bird that hooked onto
it. If you're standing in with him, you better lead me aplenty, for if
you don't I'll sure get him."
"Honest? Is that right, Jim? Ain't lyin' none?" queried McCarthy,
relieved of the belief that his gang were suspected.
"Sure, she's right, Mac."
"But I heerd you done said you was comin' to do me," persisted McCarthy.
"Think I'm fool enough to light in diggin' my own grave, by sendin'
love messages like that to a gun expert like you, Mac?" asked Captain
Jim.
Whether it was the subtle flattery or Jim's argument, Mac lowered his
gun, and while backing out of the room, remarked: "Nothin' in mixin' it
with you, Jim, if you don't want me."
But Mac was no more than out of the room when Jim slid off the bed
quick as a cat; softly as a cat, on his noiseless stockinged feet he
followed Mac down the hall; crafty as a cat, he crept down the creaking
stairs, tread for tread, a scant arm's length behind his prey--why, God
alone knows, unless for a savage joy in longer holding another thug's
life in his hands. So he hung, like a leech to the blood it loves,
across the corridor and to the middle of the trunk room that lay
between the hall and the hotel office. There Jim spoke:
"Oh! Mr. McCarthy!"
Mac whirled, drawing his gun, just in time to receive a bullet squarely
through the heart.
During the day Jim got two more scalps. The rest of the McCarthy gang
got the impression that it was up to them to pull their freight out of
Sidney, and acted on it.
In 1882 the smoke of the Lincoln County War still hung in the timber of
the Ruidoso and the Bonito, a feud in which nearly three hundred New
Mexicans lost their lives. Depredations on the Mescalero Reservation
were so frequent that the Indians were near open revolt.
Needing a red-blooded agent, the Indian Bureau sought and got one in
Major W. H. H. Llewellyn, since Captain of Rough Riders, Troup H, then
a United States marshal with a distinguished record. The then Chief of
the Bureau offered the Major two troops of cavalry to preserve order
among the Mescaleros and keep marauders off the reservation, and was
astounded when Llewellyn declined and said he would prefer to handle
the situation with no other aid than that of one man he had in mind.
Captain Jim Smith was the man. And pleased enough was he when told of
the turbulence of the country and the certainty of plenty doing in his
line.
But by the time they reached the Mescalero Agency, the feud was ended;
the peace of exhaustion after years of open war and ambush had
descended upon Lincoln County, and the Mescaleros were glad enough
quietly to draw their rations of flour and coffee, and range the
Sacramentos and Guadalupes for game. For Jim and the band of Indian
police which he quickly organized there was nothing doing.
Inaction soon cloyed Captain Jim. It got on his nerves. Presently he
conceived a resentment toward the agent for bringing him down there
under false pretences of daring deeds to be done, that never
materialized. One day Major Llewellyn imprudently countermanded an
order Jim had given his Chief of Police, under conditions which the
Captain took as a personal affront. The next thing the Major knew, he
was covered by Jim's gun listening to his death sentence.
"Major," began Captain Jim, "right here is where you cash in. Played
me for a big fool long enough. Toted me off down here on the guarantee
of the best show of fightin' I've heard of since the war--here where
there ain't a man in the Territory with nerve enough left to tackle a
prairie dog, 's far 's I can see. Lied to me a plenty, didn't you?
Anything to say before you quit?"
Since that time Major Llewellyn has become (and is now) a famous
pleader at the New Mexican bar, but I know he will agree that the most
eloquent plea he has t this day made was that in answer to Captain
Jim's arraignment. Luckily it won.
A month later Jim called on me at El Paso. At the time I was President
of the West Texas Cattle Growers' Association, organized chiefly to
deal with marauding rustlers.
"Howd'y, Ed," Jim began, "I've jumped the Mescalero Reservation, headed
north. Nothin' doin' down here now. But, say, Ed, I hear they're
crowdin' the rustlers a plenty up in the Indian Territory and the Pan
Handle, and she's a cinch they'll be down on you thick in a few months.
And, say, Ed, don't forget old Jim; when the rustlers come, send for
him. You know he's the cheapest proposition ever--never any lawyers'
fees or court costs, nothin' to pay but just Jim's wages."
That was the last time we ever met, and lucky it will probably be for
me if we never meet again; for if Jim still lives and there is aught in
this story he sees occasion to take exception to, I am sure to be due
for a mix-up I can very well get on without.
From 1878 to 1880 Billy Lykins was one of the most efficient inspectors
of the Wyoming Stock Growers' Association, a short man of heavy
muscular physique and a round, cherubic, pink and white face, in which
a pair of steel-blue glittering eyes looked strangely out of place. A
second glance, however, showed behind the smiling mouth a set of the
jaw that did not belie the fighting eyes. So far as I can now recall,
Billy never failed to get what he went after while he remained in our
employ.
Probably the toughest customer Billy ever tackled was Doc Middleton.
As an outlaw, Doc was the victim of an error of judgment. When he
first came among us, hailing from Llano County, Texas, Doc was as fine
a puncher and jolly, good-tempered range-mate as any in the Territory.
Sober and industrious, he never drank or gambled. But he had his bit
of temper, had Doc, and his chunk of good old Llano nerve. Thus, when
a group of carousing soldiers, in a Sidney saloon, one night lit in to
beat Doc up with their six-shooters for refusing to drink with them,
the inevitable happened in a very few seconds; Doc killed three of
them, jumped his horse, and split the wind for the Platte.
And therein lay his error.
The killing was perfectly justifiable; surrendered and tried, he would
surely have been acquitted. But his breed never surrender, at least,
never before their last shell is emptied. Flight having made him an
outlaw, the Government offered a heavy reward for him, dead or alive.
For a time he was harbored among his friends on the different ranches;
indeed was a welcome guest of my Deadman Ranch for several days; but in
a few weeks the hue and cry got so hot that he had to jump for the Sand
Hills south of the Niobrara.
Ever pursued, he found that honest wage-earning was impossible.
Presently he was confronted with want, not of much, indeed of very
little, but that want was vital--he wanted cartridges. At this time
the Sand Hills were full of deer and antelope; and therefore to him
cartridges meant more even than defence of his freedom, they meant
food. It was this want that drove him into his first actual crime, the
stealing of Sioux ponies, which he ran into the settlements and sold.
The downward path of the criminal is like that of the limpid,
clean-faced brook, bred of a bubbling spring nestled in some shady nook
of the hills, where the air is sweet and pure, and pollution cometh
not. But there it may not stay; on and yet on it rushes, as helpless
as heedless, till one day it finds itself plunged into some foul
current carrying the off-scourings of half a continent. So on and down
plunged Doc; from stealing Indian ponies to lifting ranch horses was no
long leap in his new code.
Then our stock Association got busy and Billy Lykins took his trail.
Oddly, in a few months the same type of accident in turn saved the life
of each. Their first encounter was single-handed. With the better
horse, Lykins was pressing Doc so close that Doc raced to the crest of
a low conical hill, jumped off his mount, dropped flat on the ground
and covered Lykins with a Springfield rifle, meantime yelling to him:
"Duck, you little Dutch fool; I don't want to kill you"; for they knew
each other well, and in a way were friends.
But Billy never knew when to stop. Deeper into his pony's flank sank
the rowels, and up the hill on Doc he charged, pistol in hand. At
thirty yards Doc pulled the trigger, when--wonder of wonders--the
faithful old Springfield missed fire. Before Doc could throw in
another shell or draw his pistol, Billy was over him and had him
covered.
If my memory rightly serves, the Sidney jail held Doc almost a
fortnight. A few weeks later Doc had assembled a strong gang about
him, rendezvoused on the Piney, a tributary of the lower Niobrara.
There he was far east of Lykins's bailiwick, but a good many degrees
within Lykins's disposition to quit his trail. Accompanied by Major W.
H. H. Llewellyn and an Omaha detective (inappropriately named Hassard),
Lykins located Doc's camp, and the three lay near for several days
studying their quarry.
One morning Llewellyn and Hassard started up the creek, mounted, on a
scout, leaving Lykins and his horse hidden in the brush near the trail.
At a sharp bend of the path the two ran plunk into Doc and five of his
men. Both being unknown to Doc's gang, and the position and odds
forbidding hostilities, they represented themselves as campers hunting
lost stock, and turned and rode back down the trail with the outlaws,
alert for any play their leader might make.
Recognizing his man, Billy lay with his "45" and "70" Sharps
comfortably resting across a log; and when the band were come within
twenty yards of him, he drew a careful bead on Doc's head and pulled
the trigger. By strange coincidence his Sharps missed fire, precisely
as had Doc's Springfield a few weeks before.
Hearing the snap of the rifle hammer, with a curse Doc jerked his gun
and whirled his horse toward the brush just as Billy sprang out into
the open and threw a pistol shot into Doc that broke his thigh.
Swaying in saddle, Doc cursed Hassard for leading him into a trap, and
shot him twice before himself pitching to the ground. Hassard stood
idly, stunned apparently by a sort of white-hot work he was not used
to, and received his death wound without any effort even to draw.
Meantime, the firm of Lykins and Llewellyn accounted for two more
before Doc's mates got out of range. Thus, like the brook, Doc had
drifted down the turbid current of crime till he found himself
impounded in the Lincoln penitentiary with the off-scourings of the
state.
While it is true that back into such impounding most who once have been
there soon return, Doc turned out to be one of the rare exceptions
proving the rule; for the last I heard of him, he was the lame but
light-hearted and wholly honest proprietor of a respectable Rushville
saloon.
When in the early eighties the front camps of the Atchison, Topeka, and
Santa Fe and the Texas Pacific met at El Paso, then a village called
Franklin, within a few weeks the population jumped from a few hundred
to nearly three thousand. Speculators, prospectors for business
opportunities, mechanics, miners, and tourists poured in--a
chance-taking, high-living, free-spending lot that offered such rich
pickings for the predatory that it was not long before nearly every fat
pigeon had a hungry, merciless vulture hovering near, watching for a
chance to fasten its claws and gorge itself.
The low one-story adobes, fronted by broad, arched portals, that then
lined the west side of El Paso Street for several blocks, was a long
solid row of variety theatres, dance halls, saloons, and
gambling-houses, never closed by day or by night. They were packed
with a roistering mob that drifted from one joint to another, dancing,
gambling, carousing, fighting. Naturally, at first the predatory
confined their attentions to the roisterers.
Of course every lay-out was a brace game, from which no player arose
with any notable winning except occasionally when the "house" felt it a
good bit of advertising to graduate a handsome winner--and then it was
usually a "capper," whose gains were in a few minutes passed back into
the till.
The faro boxes were full of springs as a watch; faro decks were
carefully cut "strippers." An average good dealer would shuffle and
arrange as he liked the favorite cards of known high-rollers. These
had been neatly split on either edge and a minute bit of bristle pasted
in, which no ordinary touch would feel, but which the sand-papered
finger tips of an expert dealer would catch and slip through on the
shuffle and place where they would do (the house) the most good. The
"tin horns" gave out few but false notes; the roulette balls were
kicked silly out of the boxes representing heavily played numbers. Not
content with the "Kitty's" rake-off, every stud poker table had one or
more "cappers" sitting in, to whom the dealers could occasionally throw
a stiff pot. The backs of poker decks were so cunningly marked that
while the wise ones could read their size and suit across the table, no
untaught eye could detect their guile. And wherever a notable roll was
once flashed, greedy eyes never left it until it was safe in the till
of some game, or its owner "rolled" and relieved of it by force.
For months orgy ran riot and the predatory band grew bolder and cruder
in their methods. Killings were frequent. Few nights passed without
more or less street hold-ups--usually more. Respectable citizens took
the middle of the street, literally gun in hand, when forced to be out
of nights. The Mayor and City Council were powerless. City marshals
and deputies they hired in bunches, but all to no purpose. Each fresh
lot of appointees were short-lived, literally or officially--mostly
literally. Finally, a vigilance committee was formed, made up of good
citizens not a few of whom were gun experts with their own bit of red
record. But nothing came of it. The predatories openly flouted and
defied them.
On one notable night when the committee were assembled in front of the
old Grand Central Hotel, a mob of two hundred toughs lined up before
the thirty-odd of the committee and dared them to open the ball; and it
was a miracle the little Plaza was not then and there turned into a
slaughter pen bloody as the Alamo. It really looked as if nothing
short of martial law and a strong body of troops could pacify the town.
But one night, into the chamber of the City Council stalked a man, the
man of the hour, unheralded and unknown. He gave the name of Bill
Stoudenmayer. About all that was ever learned of him was that he
hailed from Fort Davis. His type was that of a course, brutal,
Germanic gladiator, devoid of strategy; a bluff, stubborn,
give-and-take fighter, who drove bull-headed at whatever opposed him.
But El Paso soon learned that he could handle his guns with as deadly
dexterity as did his forebears their nets and tridents.
Asked his business with the Council, he said he had heard they had
failed to find a marshal who could hold the town down, and allowed he'd
like to try the job if the Council would make it worth his while.
Questioned as to his views, he explained that he was there to make some
good money for himself and save the city more; if they would pay him
five hundred dollars a month for two months, they could discharge all
their deputies and he would go it alone and agree to clear the town of
toughs or draw no pay. The Mayor and Council were paralyzed in a
double sense: by the wild audacity of this proposal, and by their
memory of recent threats of the thug-leaders that they would massacre
the Council to a man if any further attempts were made to circumscribe
their activities. Some were openly for declining the offer, but in the
end a majority gained heart of Stoudenmayer's own hardihood
sufficiently to hire him.
The rest of the night Stoudenmayer employed in quietly familiarizing
himself with the personnel of the enemy. He lost no time. At daylight
the next morning, several notices, manually written in a rude hand and
each bearing the signature of the rude hand that wrote it, were found
conspicuously posted between Oregon Street and the Plaza. The
signature was, "Bill Stoudenmayer, City Marshal."
The notice was brief but pointed:
"Any of the hold-ups named below I find in town after three o'clock
to-day, I'm going to kill on sight."
Then followed seventy names. The list was carefully chosen: all
"pikers" and "four-flushers" were omitted; none but the _élite_ of the
gun-twirling, black-jack swinging toughs was included. Hardly a single
man was named in the list lacking a more or less gory record.
By the toughs Stoudenmayer was taken as a jest, by respectable citizens
as a lunatic. Heavy odds were offered that he would not last till
noon, with few takers. And yet throughout the morning Stoudenmayer
quietly walked the streets, unaccompanied save by his two guns and his
conspicuously displayed marshal's star.
Nothing happened until about two o'clock, when two men sprang out from
ambush behind the big cottonwood tree that then stood on the northeast
corner of El Paso and San Antonio Streets, one armed with a shotgun and
the other with a pistol, and started to "throw down" on Stoudenmayer,
who was approaching from the other side of the street. But before
either got his artillery into action, the Marshal jerked his two
pistols and killed both, then quietly continued his stroll, over their
prostrate bodies, and past them, up the street. It was such an
obviously workmanlike job that it threw a chill into the hardiest of
the sixty-eight survivors,--so much of a chill that, though
Stoudenmayer paraded streets and threaded saloon and dance-hall throngs
all the rest of the afternoon, seeking his prey, not a single man of
them could he find; all stayed close in their dens.
But that the thug-leaders were not idle Stoudenmayer was not long
learning. In the last moments of twilight, just before the pall of
night fell upon the town, the Marshal was standing on the east side of
El Paso Street, midway between Oregon and San Antonio Streets, no cover
within reach of him. Suddenly, without the slightest warning, a heavy
fusillade opened on him from the opposite side of the street, a
fusillade so heavy it would have decimated a company of infantry. At
least a hundred men fired at him at the word, and it was a miracle he
did not go down at the first volley. But he was not even scathed.
Drawing his pistols, Stoudenmayer marched upon the enemy, slowly but
steadily, advancing straight, it seemed, into the jaws of death, but
firing with such wonderful rapidity and accuracy that seven of his foes
were killed and two wounded in almost as many seconds, although all
kept close as possible behind the shelter of the _portal_ columns. And
every second he was so engaged, at least a hundred guns, aimed by cruel
trained eyes, that scarce ever before had missed whatever they sought
to draw a bead on, were pouring out upon him a hell of lead that must
have sounded to him like a flight of bees.
But stand his iron nerve and fatal snap-shooting the thugs could not.
Before he was half way across the street, the hostile fire had ceased,
and his would-be assassins were flying for the nearest and best cover
they could find. Out of the town they slipped that night, singly and
in squads, boarding freight trains north and east, stages west and
south, stealing teams and saddle stock, some even hitting the trails
afoot, in stark terror of the man. The next morning El Paso found
herself evacuated of more than two hundred men who, while they had been
for a time her most conspicuous citizens, were such as she was glad
enough to spare. In twenty-four hours Bill Stoudenmayer had made his
word good and fairly earned his wages; indeed he had accomplished
single-handed what the most hopeful El Pasoites had despaired of seeing
done with less authority and force than two or three troops of regular
cavalry.
Then El Paso settled down to the humdrum but profitable task of laying
the foundations for the great metropolis of the Farther Southwest.
Since then, an occasional sporadic case of _triggerfingeritis_ has
developed in El Paso, usually in an acute form; but never once since
the night Stoudenmayer turned the El Paso Street Portals into a
shambles has it threatened as an epidemic.
Unluckily, Bill Stoudenmayer did not last long to enjoy the glory of
his deed. He was a marked man, merely from motives of revenge harbored
by friends of the departed (dead or live), but as a man with a
reputation so big as to hang up a rare prize in laurels for any with
the strategy and hardihood to down him. It was therefore matter of no
general surprise when, a few weeks after his resignation as City
Marshal, he fell the victim of a private quarrel.
A few years later, Hal Gosling was the U. S. Marshall for the Western
District of Texas. Early in Gosling's regime, Johnny Manning became
one of his most efficient and trusted deputies. The pair were wide
opposites: Gosling, a big, bluff, kindly, rollicking dare-devil afraid
of nothing, but a sort that would rather chaff than fight; Manning a
quiet, reserved, slender, handsome little man, not so very much bigger
than a full-grown "45," who actually sought no quarrels but would
rather fight than eat. Each in his own may [Transcriber's note: way?],
the pair made themselves a holy terror to such of the desperadoes as
ventured any liberties with Uncle Sam's belongings.
One of their notable captures was a brace of road-agents who had
appropriated the Concho stage road and about everything of value that
travelled it. The two were tried in the Federal Court at Austin and
sentenced to hard labor at Huntsville. Gosling and Manning started to
escort them to their new field of activity. Handcuffed but not
otherwise shackled, the two prisoners were given a seat together near
the middle of a day coach. By permission of the Marshal, the wife of
one and the sister of the other sat immediately behind them--dear old
Hal Gosling never could resist any appeal to his sympathies. The seat
directly across the aisle from the two prisoners was occupied by
Gosling and Manning. With the car well filled with passengers and
their men ironed, the Marshal and his Deputy were off their guard.
When out of Austin barely an hour, the train at full speed, the two
women slipped pistols into the hands of the two convicted bandits,
unseen by the officers. But others saw the act, and a stir of alarm
among those near by caused Gosling to whirl in his seat next the aisle,
reaching for the pistol in his breast scabbard. But he was too late.
Before he was half risen to his feet or his gun out, the prisoners
fired and killed him.
Then ensued a terrible duel, begun at little more than arm's length,
between Manning and the two prisoners, who presently began backing
toward the rear door. Quickly the car filled with smoke, and in it
pandemonium reigned, women screaming, men cursing, all who had not
dropped in a faint ducking beneath the car seats and trying their best
to burrow in the floor. When at length the two prisoners reached the
platform and sprang from the moving train, Johnny Manning, shot full of
holes as a sieve, lay unconscious across Hal Gosling's body; and the
sister of one of the bandits hung limp across the back of the seat the
prisoners had occupied, dead of a wild shot.
But Johnny had well avenged Hal's death and his own injuries; one of
the prisoners was found dead within a few yards of the track, and the
other was captured, mortally wounded, a half-mile away.
After many uncertain weeks, when Manning's system had successfully
recovered from the overdose of lead administered by the departed, he
quietly resumed his star and belt, and no one ever discovered that the
incident had made him in the least gun-shy.
Whenever the history of the Territory of New Mexico comes to be
written, the name of Colonel Albert J. Fountain deserves and should
have first place in it. Throughout the formative epoch of her
evolution from semi-savagery to civilization, an epoch spanning the
years from 1866 to 1896, Colonel Fountain was far and away her most
distinguished and most useful citizen. As soldier, scholar, dramatist,
lawyer, prosecutor, Indian fighter, and desperado-hunter, his was the
most picturesque personality I have ever known. Gentle and
kind-hearted as a woman, a lover of his books and his ease, he
nevertheless was always as quick to take up arms and undergo any hazard
and hardship in pursuit of murderous rustlers as he was in 1861 to join
the California Column (First California Volunteers) on its march across
the burning deserts of Arizona to meet and defeat Sibley at Val Verde.
A face fuller of the humanities and charities of life than his would be
hard to find; but, roused, the laughing eyes shone cold as a wintry
sky. He despised wrong, and hated the criminal, and spent his whole
life trying to right the one and suppress or exterminate the other. In
this work, and of it, ultimately, he lost his life.
In the early eighties, while the New Mexican courts were well-nigh
idle, crime was rampant, especially in Lincoln, Dona Ana, and Grant
Counties. To the east of the Rio Grande the Lincoln County War was at
its height, while to the west the Jack Kinney gang took whatever they
wanted at the muzzle of their guns; and they wanted about everything in
sight. County peace officers were powerless.
At this stage Fountain was appointed by the Governor "Colonel of State
Militia," and given a free hand to pacify the country. As an organized
military body, the militia existed only in name. And so Fountain left
it. Serious and effective as was his work, no man loved a grand-stand
play more than he. He liked to go it alone, to be the only thing in
the spot light. Thus most of his work as a desperado-hunter was done
single-handed.
On only one occasion that I can recall did he ever have with him on his
raids more than one or two men, always Mexicans, temporarily deputized.
That was when he met and cleaned out the Kinney gang over on the
Miembres, and did it with half the number of the men he was after.
Among those who escaped was Kinney's lieutenant. A few weeks later
Colonel Fountain learned that this man was in hiding at Concordia, a
_placita_ two miles below El Paso. He was one of the most desperate
Mexican outlaws the border has ever known, a man who had boasted he
would never be taken alive, and that he would kill Fountain before he
was himself taken dead, a human tiger, whom the bravest peace officer
might be pardoned for wanting a great deal of help to take. Yet
Fountain merely took his armory's best and undertook it alone: and by
mid-afternoon of the very next day after the information reached him he
had his man safely manacled at the El Paso depot of the Santa Fe
Railway.
While waiting for the train, Colonel George Baylor, the famous Captain
of Texas Rangers, chided Fountain for not wearing a cord to fasten his
pistol to his belt, as then did all the Rangers, to prevent its loss
from the scabbard in a running fight; and he finished by detaching his
own cord, and looping one end to Fountain's belt and the other to his
pistol. Then Fountain bade his old friend good-bye and boarded the
train with his prisoner, taking a seat near the centre of the rear car.
When well north of Canutillo and near the site of old Fillmore,
Fountain rose and passed forward to speak to a friend who was sitting a
few seats in front of him, a safe enough proceeding, apparently, with
his prisoner handcuffed and the train doing thirty-five miles an hour.
But scarcely had he reached his friend's side, when a noise behind him
caused him turn--just in time to see his Mexican running for rear door.
Instantly Fountain sprang after him, before he got to the door the man
had leaped from platform. Without the slightest hesitation, Fountain
jumped after him, hitting the ground only a few seconds behind him but
thirty or forty yards away, rolling like a tumbleweed along the ground.
By the time Fountain had regained his feet, his prisoner was running at
top speed for the mesquite thickets lining the river, in whose shadows
he must soon disappear, for it was already dusk. Reaching for his
pistol and finding it gone--lost evidently in the tumble--and fearing
to lose his prisoner entirely if he stopped to hunt for it, Fountain
hit the best pace he could in pursuit. But almost at the first jump
something gave him a thump on the shin that nearly broke it, and,
looking down, there, dangling on Colonel Baylor's pistol-cord, he saw
his gun.
Always a cunning strategist, Fountain dropped to the ground, sky-lined
his man on the crest of a little hillock he had to cross, and took a
careful two-handed aim which enabled Rio Grande ranchers thereafter to
sleep easier of nights.
And now, just as I am finishing this story, the wires bring the sad
news that dear old Pat Garrett, the dean and almost the last survivor
of the famous man-hunted of west Texas and New Mexico, has gone the way
of his kind--"died with his boots on." I cannot help believing that he
was the victim of a foul shot, for in his personal relations I never
knew him to court a quarrel or fail to get an adversary. Many a night
we have camped, eaten, and slept together. Barring Colonel Fountain,
Pat Garrett had stronger intellectuality and broader sympathies than
any of his kind I ever met. He could no more do enough for a friend
than he could do enough to an outlaw. In his private affairs so
easy-going that he began and ended a ne'er-do-well, in his official
duties as a peace officer he was so exacting and painstaking that he
ne'er did ill. His many intrepid deeds are too well known to need
recounting here.
All his life an atheist, he was as stubbornly contentious for his
unbelief as any Scotch Covenanter for his best-loved tenets.
Now, laid for his last rest in the little burying-ground of Las Cruces,
a tiny, white-paled square of sandy, hummocky bench land where the pink
of fragile nopal petals brightens the graves in Spring and the mesquite
showers them with its golden pods in Summer; where the sweet scent of
the _juajilla_ loads the air, and the sun ever shines down out of a
bright and cloudless sky; where a diminutive forest of crosses of wood
and stone symbolize the faith he in life refused to accept--now,
perhaps, Pat Garrett has learned how widely he was wrong.
Peace to his ashes, and repose to his dauntless spirit!
[1] _Triggerfingeritis_ is an acute irritation of the sensory nerves of
the index finger of habitual gun-packers; usually fatal--to some one.