A Sunday fishing party—"Bad-men"—Ben Thompson and other desperadoes—The
story of a hot spring.
A few weeks after I arrived at the mines, some of the men wanted to get
up a fishing party one Sunday to go over to the Nueces River, and I was
asked to make one of the number.
It was arranged that we should leave the mines on Saturday night, camp
out, and come home on Sunday afternoon. We started at 6.30 P.M., got
over to the river by eight o’clock, and by eleven o’clock I and a young
electrician named Burnet were the only two sober men in the crowd.
Luckily for me Burnet was a giant in strength and a “Long-horn” (as
native-born Texans are called); for it was not long before the others
started wrangling, and finally one of them said he could lick any one in
the crowd, bare hands or with a knife. I and Burnet suppressed him and
took away his knife, then Burnet told the rest of the men he would lick
any one who started trouble, and we all rolled up in our blankets and
tried to get some sleep. But every few minutes the first man would stick
his head out of his blankets and say, “I can lick any one in the crowd.”
Finally, this got monotonous, and Burnet told him he would sit him on
the fire to cool off. This subdued him for a while, and I was beginning
to think for good, when, just as I was dropping asleep, out popped his
head with the same remark, which he repeated again after a short
interval. Not getting called down by Burnet, he finally got quite brave,
crawled out of his blankets, and kept getting louder and louder in his
remarks. Just as I was beginning to think Burnet must be asleep, and was
preparing to try a fall with him myself, up jumped Burnet and, grabbing
his man, threw him bodily into the fire. Luckily for the poor devil, he
staggered as he fell, and consequently dropped mostly on the far side of
the fire, with only his legs in it. He soon jerked them out, and escaped
with no worse hurt than singed pants. After this we had peace for the
rest of the night.
Next morning they started drinking again (we had not destroyed the
liquor as we could not fight the whole crowd), but by noon we got them
started home. Most of these young fellows would have been quiet enough
in different surroundings. But the little town of Uvalde had turned out
more “bad-men” than any town of its size in the West, and the fathers of
these young men had been handy with a gun and mixed up in some shooting
or other, so the sons thought it behoved them to keep up the family
reputation. One young fellow, John Garnet (who was later my shift mate
in the extracting house), was the only survivor of a large family, every
member of which had died by violence. His father was a large sheep-owner
and very brutal to his Mexican herders. One night the boys, coming home
from a barbecue in town, found the old man tied in his arm-chair with
his throat cut, and every herder on the place gone. There and then the
eldest boy made a vow to kill every Mexican he met. He went over to C.
P. Diaz, across the Mexican line from Eagle Pass, and shot two or three
Mexicans who, he thought, had been implicated in his father’s killing.
The Rurales tried to arrest him, and he killed two and wounded three
before they finally killed him. John himself I saw once in Uvalde, some
years later, have a fight with his Cousin Joe, whom he licked. Joe said,
"John, you are too big for me to fight with my fists, but I’ll get my
gun and fix you." The rest of us got round John, and finally got him
into his buggy and started off to his ranch, but fifteen minutes later I
saw him drive round the plaza with a shot-gun across his knees. We
remonstrated with him, but all he would say was, "Boys, it’s no use; I
cannot leave town as long as Joe is looking for me." Luckily, some other
friends had worked on Joe by telling him how bad it looked for the last
two members of the family to be fighting, and got him to go home. It is
this feeling that they cannot back down that makes so many young fellows
who are naturally decent enough become killers and bad-men. For once you
had killed some one and got a reputation as a fighter, your gun had to
guard your life, for there were plenty of would-be fighters willing to
try you out, and if they killed you they got the reputation you had and
their own as well. The reader wonders probably why the city marshal or
the sheriff did not interfere in a case like this. The reason is
twofold: in the first place, whoever moved would make an enemy of both
men if he interfered before there was any shooting done, and it would
hurt his chances at elections; in the second place, because a fair,
square “shooting-scrape” was even at that time not thought a very
serious matter in West Texas. And how could it be otherwise in a
community like Uvalde, where the man who was sheriff while I was there,
and had held the office for twenty-two years, had killed more than one
man in his youth in a private feud which his father had started; in a
community where they still speak of Ben Thompson as a hero?
Ben Thompson was a noted character of San Antonio some years ago—a man
utterly without fear, a good shot and quick on the draw. He was a
bad-man of a peculiar type, insomuch as he never bothered any but
bad-men, and therein lay his immunity from the law, as the men he killed
were all practically outlaws, and he could always plead self-defence.
When he heard of any really tough man in his neighbourhood who was wild
and woolly, he would hunt him up, pick a quarrel with him, and generally
shoot him. He finally fell out with the men who kept a gambling and
dance hall in San Antonio, and in a row one night shot up the furniture
and the lights. Subsequently, on two or three occasions when the thought
of how he had been robbed there rankled in his breast, or perhaps just
for excitement, he used to go in and kick up a row. Finally, this got
monotonous, and they summoned up courage to call his bluff. They sent
him word that he was not to come to their place again, as every man in
the house would take a hand and kill him. When the message was brought
to Ben Thompson, he said, "I wonder if they really have the nerve?
Anyway, I’ll just go and see about it," and over he went. The signal was
passed from the door-keeper, and, as Ben opened the swinging doors,
eight or ten pistols cracked at the same time, and Ben’s days were over.
They had the nerve all right when there were enough of them. I knew one
of the men implicated in this killing some years later, and I never knew
him to turn his back to anybody or to a door or window. He was not at
that time scared of any one, but it had become a habit from years of
watching for some of Ben’s friends to avenge him.
Billy the Kid, of whom I made mention before, was a noted desperado, but
of quite a different stamp. He never fought fair like Thompson, and
never gave the other man a ghost of a show if he could help it. He was a
half-breed Indian, or at least had Indian blood in him. When he was
finally killed, it was proved that he had killed more than one man for
every year he had lived. He is supposed to have originated, or at least
brought to perfection, the art of whirling a gun and shooting. On two
occasions when arrested, he pulled out his gun and handed it butt first
to the sheriff, holding it by the barrel with the butt up and with his
first finger in the trigger guard. As the sheriff on each occasion
reached for the gun, the Kid would whirl it on his finger, and, as the
butt reached his palm, shoot. Finally, as I said before, Sheriff Pat
Garrett (a product of Uvalde) and Kipp Kinney went after him. They found
out a Mexican girl whom the Kid used to visit, and lay in wait for him
there after tying and gagging her. Garrett stayed in the house behind a
sofa, and Kipp was to stay outside to see that the Kid did not get to
his horse again after the shooting commenced. The Kid rode up when night
fell and walked into the house; but, like all hunted animals, his
suspicions were easily aroused, for he had hardly entered the dark room
when he drew his pistol and asked who was there. As he called out,
Garrett rose from behind the sofa, and, sighting the Kid against the
light of the doorway, fired twice, killing him instantly. This was not
showing much sporting spirit in Garrett, but the man was a murderer of
the worst type, killing men just for the sport of it.
While I am on the subject of bad-men, I may tell a story of Luke Short,
another of that ilk. Luke had been arrested by two deputies, who were
taking him to the county seat, handcuffed, in a buggy. They stopped at a
wayside saloon to get some refreshment, and, for security, left Luke
handcuffed to the buggy wheel. While they were inside taking a drink or
two, the door opened and in walked Luke Short with the wheel of the
buggy to which he was still handcuffed. He went up to the barkeeper and
said, "Colonel, these two snakes left me out there to die of thirst. I
haven’t any money in my pocket with which to pay, but how many drinks
will you give me on this?" and he slapped the wheel down on the bar. How
many drinks he got, or how he got the axlenut off, the narrator did not
explain.
The same raconteur told me this other tale, which he also swore was
true. He and a partner once found a hot spring and mud-bath of wonderful
curative properties. A New Yorker, who was suffering from some
complication of diseases, heard of it, and offered that, if they would
take him out and it would cure him, he would not only pay them for their
trouble, but buy their rights in the spring and bath as well. The money
was payable on their return if he was cured, but said the narrator, “I
never got the money.” On being pressed, he told the following tale: “We
took him out with ten pack-mules carrying fancy canned goods and other
truck. When we arrived and pitched our camp, it was arranged that we
should bury him in the mud every morning up to his neck and dig him out
again every night. Well, after a week he was so much better that one
night he opened up a bottle of champagne for a celebration. The next
morning, after we had buried him, we were feeling pretty thirsty from
the celebration, so my partner and I decided to sample some more of the
fizz. One bottle led to another, so that by night we were too drunk to
remember to dig him out. In the morning, when we came to life again, we
went to see how he was getting along, and we found that the blamed
coyotes had eaten his head off, so we lost our money.”
The Pat Garrett above mentioned got such a reputation as a killer of
bad-men that they paid him $10,000 to come up to New Mexico to be
sheriff of a county there where the bad-man flourished. Later, he was
with Roosevelt’s rough-riders in the Spanish American War, and, when
Teddy was elected president, he appointed Pat to be the head of the
Customs Department in El Paso, Texas.
Some time ago he got into a private row with some farmer over irrigation
rights, and the farmer killed him. “How are the mighty fallen!”