Outlaws and Peace Officers Read online

  Here I looked over towards a sullen, dark complexioned young man whom I had recognized as Jim McChesney, a boy raised in Southern Texas, and I asked him what he had done with his old sweetheart Matilda Labaugh. He was surprised and asked who in the h—I was, that I should know he courted Matilda Labaugh over twenty years previous. I wouldn’t tell him, but did say that he could call me Charlie Henderson. He then asked if I knew his name. I told him, yes, that it ought to be Jim McChesney. This was another surprise, and he wanted to know when I left the part of Texas where Matilda had lived. I told him that I pulled out one night in 1872 when a boy, but that I had slipped back to see my friends many times since then. His face brightened, and walking up to me he shook my hand, saying: “I know you.” Then he whispered in my ear and asked if I wasn’t one of the Pumphry boys. I told him that my name was Henderson now. I had chosen the year 1872, for at that time two of the Pumphry boys, mere children, had committed murder and left the country. McChesney felt sure that I was one of these boys, and that suited me.

  Finally, all left the room to hold a consultation. Two men were dispatched with a lantern to examine the place where I said my horse had fallen over the bluff, and to ride to Howard’s saloon to find out if I had told the truth. Another man was sent in haste to a small ranch three miles down the river, after some linament. Supper was then brought in and set before me. In the course of an hour and a half the man returned with the linament and Hall applied it to the supposed wound, and he bound up the knee so tight with bandages that it pained, but the tight bandages did good in preventing me from thoughtlessly bending my leg and thereby giving myself away.

  About ten o’clock the two “boys” returned from Howard’s. Then all went outside and held a long consultation. Next day Jim McChesney told me confidentially that Howard had confirmed the truthfulness of my story and had told of the reckless manner in which I had run through the woods. He said he was not surprised at hearing of my being hurt, that he expected to see me killed before I got out of his sight.

  Several days later McChesney told me of their long council of war, after the two “boys” had returned from Howard’s. He said most of the “boys,” especially the three escaped convicts from the penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas, were afraid that I might be a detective and insisted that I be taken out to a tree and hung up by the neck, just to frighten me into a confession in case I was a detective; but said he and Tom Hall argued against it as they felt confident that I was all right. Hall argued that it would be a shame to take advantage of a poor crippled man. He said if I was a detective that I couldn’t help from showing it before many days and then I could be hung for “keeps.”

  All the men slept on camp beds spread on the floor, except Hall. He had a private room cut off from a corner of the kitchen, and in it he had a single bedstead. This he kindly turned over to me and he slept with one of the “boys” on the floor.

  It was after 1:00 a.m. when I went to bed, as I pretended that my leg was paining so that I could not sleep, anyway. After being put to bed by Hall I took off the bandages from my leg so that I could rest my knee by bending it. I retired with my Colt’s 45 pistol in the shoulder scabbard under my overshirt, and my bowie knife was swung to my waist by a small belt under my drawers. Therefore no one had seen my gun and knife. The cartridge belt containing my supply of ammunition was in my “war-bag,” and this I put under my head. I slept very little during the night. Before daylight next morning, I fastened the bandages back on my leg so as to keep it stiff while hobbling about the house. After breakfast, Hall and McChesney made me a pair of crutches.

  A few of the “boys” seemed suspicious of me, especially Johnny Franklin, a bowlegged Texan, who had escaped from the penitentiary in that State, so McChesney told me.

  During the day Hall played “foxy” and tried to find out more about me. In speaking of Texas cowboys he asked if I ever knew Bill Gatlin. I told him yes, that I had worked with him in the Panhandle country until he got into trouble and had to skip and change his name again. I told him that Bill Gatlin was a name he had adopted after coming to northern Texas. These were facts, as I had known Gatlin well, but I never dreamed that he was the Bill McCoy I was now trying to locate.

  A few days later, after I had convinced Hall that I was all right and was really acquainted with Gatlin and many of his Texas friends, he confided in me and told me how Bill Gatlin, under the name of Bill McCoy, had killed Deputy Sheriff Gunn, and was sentenced to hang, and that he (Hall) and others paid a slick jail breaker from the East $500 to commit a petty crime in Cheyenne so as to be put in jail. The result was that he sawed the bars and liberated McCoy and the other prisoners. A horse was kept in hiding for McCoy and he came direct to the Keeline ranch where they had kept him hid out in the hills until a few days before my arrival, when he was mounted on Hall’s pet roan race-horse and skipped for New Orleans, there to take a sailing vessel for Buenos Aires, South America. For a pack animal McCoy used a large-hoofed bay horse that he had stolen from the sheriff’s posse who were searching for him. Later, Hall and McChesney told many incidents of how they had fooled the sheriff’s posse of one hundred men who were scouring the hills for McCoy.

  A week later we all rode forty miles to attend a dance at John Owens’s ranch, a mile above the “Hog ranch” (a tough saloon and sporting house) at Fort Laramie. I was still walking on crutches, therefore couldn’t dance. The crutches were tied to my saddle en route. Late at night when the “boys” were pretty well loaded with liquor, I rode to Fort Laramie and secured a room at the hotel where my first reports were written. About daylight my reports were mailed to Denver, and then I rode back to the dance. The crowd had simmered down to just a few ladies and many drunken cowboys who kept the air outside full of smoke from their revolvers. My friends, McChesney and Franklin, were the worst. I finally succeeded in getting my drunken friends into a room to lay down, but McChesney raised such a racket breaking the windows and furniture with his pistol, that we had to abandon sleep and start back to the Keeline ranch. As I was sober, it fell to my lot to get them all on their horses and headed for home. Hall and the cook had not come with us.

  A supply of whiskey was taken along, and my life was made miserable keeping the men from fighting. To prevent McChesney from killing someone, I slipped the cartridges out of his pistol without letting him know it. Soon after this, McChesney and one of the “boys” got into a fuss while riding along, and McChesney pulled his pistol and began snapping it at the fellow, who pulled his loaded pistol and would have killed McChesney if I hadn’t shoved my cocked revolver into his face just in time. I made him ride on ahead while I kept McChesney behind with me. We arrived at the Keeline ranch before night, and were a hungry, sleepy crowd.

  Our next excitement came a few days later, when Howard came running over on horseback one evening to tell us that his wife was dying. He had left her alone while he came after help. All of us, Hall and the cook included, rode over to Howard’s and spent the night. What happened would have made angels weep. Howard turned the saloon over to us and the liquor was free. Whiskey was poured down the poor woman’s throat up to the last breath. She died before midnight and then the “Irish wake” began in dead earnest. Poor Howard, a large fine-looking, middle-age man, cried as though his heart would break. Between drinks he “harked back” to the time when he first met the corpse. Then he was on the police force of Cheyenne, and she was a beautiful young woman who made a living by boxing and singing on the saloon stages.

  Until morning, whiskey and wine flowed like water, and my friend McChesney was in clover. Cowboy songs, both nice and vulgar, were sung over the corpse. Tom Hall was the champion singer of the crowd.

  Next day the body was put in a rough box and lowered to its last resting place amid the drinking of toasts and the singing of “There’s a land that beats this all to h—, etc.” One of the songs which was sung at the burial amused me. It ran thus:

  Oh, see the train go ‘round the bend,

  Goodby, my
lover, goodby;

  She’s loaded down with Dickenson men,

  Goodby, my lover, goodby

  When we took our departure the Howard saloon looked like a cyclone had struck it. The walls were shot full of holes and the liquors were gone. Howard left for Cheyenne when he sobered up. Of course, I didn’t have as much fun as the rest, owing to the fact that I had to use one crutch.

  With Mrs. Howard under the sod, “Calamity Jane” had the field to herself. These two women were noted characters in that part of Wyoming.

  Finally my crutch was discarded and we made another forty-mile ride to a dance at Fort Laramie. This time I danced, and pretended to fall in love with a young lady who lived at the terminus of the Cheyenne Northern Railway. I wanted to make the excuse of riding over to the railroad station to see this girl when my work was finished at the Keeline ranch.

  Reports were written, and much liquor destroyed, the same as on our previous trip.

  Soon after, Hall received a letter from Bill McCoy in New Orleans. He was ready to sail for South America. Hall had given him a letter of introduction to a dentist in Buenos Ayres, South America. This answered the purpose of a passport into a tough gang of outlaws in the cattle country 1200 miles from this seaport, Buenos Ayres. Hall showed me letters from one of the gang there. His name was Moore and he was a Texas murderer. He wrote that they were over one hundred strong, and that double their number of officers couldn’t come in there and arrest them.

  Hall had been reared at Austin, Texas, and had to skip out and change his name on account of a killing. He also told me of his ups and downs in New Mexico when he was a chum to the noted outlaw, Joe Fowler, who was hung by a mob at Socorro, New Mexico. He told how Fowler, after killing one of his own cowboys in Socorro, had placed the $50,000 received for his cattle and ranch to the credit of his sweetheart, Belle, and that on the day when the mob was collecting to hang Fowler that night, Belle drew $10,000 out of the bank and turned it over to him (Hall) so that he could bribe the jailer and liberate Fowler. Hall said he had the jailor “fixed” but when the time for liberating Fowler came, the mob was collecting and the jailer backed out for fear they would hang him, if Fowler was gone. Then Hall said he hit the “high places” and came North. I didn’t ask if he brought the $10,000 with him, but took it for granted that he did.

  It happened that I was already familiar with Joe Fowler’s crimes. He murdered Jim Greathouse, who was a friend of mine, and at White Oaks, New Mexico, in 1880, I knew of his murdering a cowboy whom he had never seen before. Two cowboys had a pistol duel in Bill Hudgen’s Pioneer Saloon. One of them was mortally wounded when Fowler, who had heard the shooting, came running in. He asked the cause of the shooting. Someone pointed to the wounded cowboy on the floor. Then Fowler pulled out his pistol and shot him through the head. The other cowboy was caught and hung to a tree by Fowler and his gang, and by the rope route Fowler’s life was ended.

  Finally, I struck out from the Keeline ranch to see my girl at the railroad station. There my horse and saddle were sold and I boarded the train for Cheyenne.

  The Grand Jury were in session and I appeared before them as a witness. Hall and his gang were indicted. The sheriff and a large posse surrounded the Keeline ranch at daylight one morning, and the Hall gang were arrested. I was told that Hall remarked when arrested:

  “That Henderson is at the bottom of this.” The fact that I did not come back had created a suspicion.

  They were all landed in jail at Cheyenne and I felt sorry for them, especially for Hall and McChesney. My sympathy was overflowing for Hall because he is a prince, and has a heart in him like an ox. The sympathy for McChesney was on account of having known him when a boy, and having known his father in Caldwell, Kansas, years later.

  I lay in Denver waiting to be called as a witness against Hall and his gang. But before the case was tried, District Attorney Skoll, who at that time was trying to get away with all the liquor in Cheyenne, had a row with the judge on the bench, McGinnis, and the cases were nolle prossed by Skoll. At least, this is the story told by my superintendent, who was in Cheyenne at the time. Thus my friends were liberated to my great joy, as I didn’t want to see them sent to the pen. I heard afterwards that three of the escaped convicts from Texas were returned there, but as to its truthfulness I do not know.

  CHAPTER III.

  SLADE

  from Roughing It

  By Mark Twain

  We passed Fort Laramie in the night, and on the seventh morning out we found ourselves in the Black Hills, with Laramie Peak at our elbow (apparently) looming vast and solitary—a deep, dark, rich indigo blue in hue, so portentously did the old colossus frown under his beetling brows of storm-cloud. He was thirty or forty miles away, in reality, but he only seemed removed a little beyond the low ridge at our right. We breakfasted at Horse-Shoe Station, six hundred and seventy-six miles out from St. Joseph. We had now reached a hostile Indian country, and during the afternoon we passed Laparelle Station, and enjoyed great discomfort all the time we were in the neighborhood, being aware that many of the trees we dashed by at arm’s length concealed a lurking Indian or two. During the preceding night an ambushed savage had sent a bullet through the pony-rider’s jacket, but he had ridden on, just the same, because pony-riders were not allowed to stop and inquire into such things except when killed. As long as they had life enough left in them they had to stick to the horse and ride, even if the Indians had been waiting for them a week, and were entirely out of patience. About two hours and a half before we arrived at Laparelle Station, the keeper in charge of it had fired four times at an Indian, but he said with an injured air that the Indian had “skipped around so’s to spile everything—and ammunition’s blamed skurse, too.” The most natural inference conveyed by his manner of speaking was, that in “skipping around,” the Indian had taken an unfair advantage.

  The coach we were in had a neat hole through its front—a reminiscence of its last trip through this region. The bullet that made it wounded the driver slightly, but he did not mind it much. He said the place to keep a man “huffy” was down on the Southern Overland, among the Apaches, before the company moved the stage line up on the northern route. He said the Apaches used to annoy him all the time down there, and that he came as near as anything to starving to death in the midst of abundance, because they kept him so leaky with bullet holes that he “couldn’t hold his vittles.” This person’s statements were not generally believed.

  We shut the blinds down very tightly that first night in the hostile Indian country, and lay on our arms. We slept on them some, but most of the time we only lay on them. We did not talk much, but kept quiet and listened. It was an inky-black night, and occasionally rainy. We were among woods and rocks, hills and gorges—so shut in, in fact, that when we peeped through a chink in a curtain, we could discern nothing. The driver and conductor on top were still, too, or only spoke at long intervals, in low tones, as is the way of men in the midst of invisible dangers. We listened to raindrops pattering on the roof; and the grinding of the wheels through the muddy gravel; and the low wailing of the wind; and all the time we had that absurd sense upon us, inseparable from travel at night in a close-curtained vehicle, the sense of remaining perfectly still in one place, notwithstanding the jolting and swaying of the vehicle, the trampling of the horses, and the grinding of the wheels. We listened a long time, with intent faculties and bated breath; every time one of us would relax, and draw a long sigh of relief and start to say something, a comrade would be sure to utter a sudden “Hark!” and instantly the experimenter was rigid and listening again. So the tiresome minutes and decades of minutes dragged away, until at last our tense forms filmed over with a dulled consciousness, and we slept, if one might call such a condition by so strong a name—for it was a sleep set with a hair-trigger. It was a sleep seething and teeming with a weird and distressful confusion of shreds and fag-ends of dreams—a sleep that was a chaos. Presently, dreams and sleep and the sullen hush of the n
ight were startled by a ringing report, and cloven by such a long, wild, agonizing shriek! Then we heard—ten steps from the stage—

  “Help! Help! Help!” (It was our driver’s voice.)

  “Kill him! Kill him like a dog!”

  “I’m being murdered! Will no man lend me a pistol?”

  “Look out! Head him off! Head him off!”

  (Two pistol shots; a confusion of voices and the trampling of many feet, as if a crowd were closing and surging together around some object; several heavy, dull blows, as with a club; a voice that said appealingly, “Don’t, gentlemen, please don’t—I’m a dead man!” Then a fainter groan, and another blow, and away sped the stage into the darkness, and left the grisly mystery behind us.)

  What a startle it was! Eight seconds would amply cover the time it occupied—maybe even five would do it. We only had time to plunge at a curtain and unbuckle and unbutton part of it in an awkward and hindering flurry, when our whip cracked sharply overhead, and we went rumbling and thundering away, down a mountain “grade.”

  We fed on that mystery the rest of the night—what was left of it, for it was waning fast. It had to remain a present mystery, for all we could get from the conductor in answer to our hails was something that sounded, through the clatter of the wheels, like “Tell you in the morning!”

  So we lit our pipes and opened the corner of a curtain for a chimney, and lay there in the dark, listening to each other’s story of how he first felt and how many thousand Indians he first thought had hurled themselves upon us, and what his remembrance of the subsequent sounds was, and the order of their occurrence. And we theorized, too, but there was never a theory that would account for our driver’s voice being out there, nor yet account for his Indian murderers talking such good English, if they were Indians.

  So we chatted and smoked the rest of the night comfortably away, our boding anxiety being somehow marvelously dissipated by the real presence of something to be anxious about.