Notorious Outlaws of the Old West

Notorious Outlaws of the Old West

By

James Creamwood

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Published by

James Creamwood at Smashwords

Notorious Outlaws of the Old West

Copyright © 2014 James Creamwood

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This new work is based on an original work titled The Story of the Outlaw, by Emerson Hough.

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PREFACE

That easily recognizable figure generally known in the West as the outlaw--is a character unique in our national history, and one who has not been seen in many other countries than this. It is not necessary to promote an absurd and melodramatic impression these bad men. The truth itself is thrilling enough without such embellishments. The lessons we learned in dealing with our bad men of the past can perhaps teach us the best methods of dealing with the bad individuals of today.

The following work has paid great attention to the greatest and most well-known instances and times where outlawry flourished. The story of the Lincoln County War of the Southwest is given as truthfully as possible for the first time, after a full investigation of the sources of information, which are now becoming inaccessible or fading away. The Stevens County War of Kansas, which took place, as it were, only a relatively short time ago, has had a garbled history; and as what might be said of many such border encounters, whose chief purpose heretofore has been to curdle the blood in novels and the movies.

An attempt has been made to maintain accuracy while sifting through the confusing statements made about such historic movements as the vigilantes of California and Montana mining days, and the later cattle days when wars were common between thieves and outlaws, and the law officers,--who themselves were not always duly appointed officers of the law.

No one man could have lived every place, and through every time period of the American frontier; and any work of this kind, therefore, must be a compilation from various sources, when it refers to matters of the distant past. In all cases where practicable, however, the historical records and stories from actual participants and eye-witnesses accounts are used. Captain Patrick F. Garrett, of New Mexico, (the man who shot Billy the Kid,) was a central figure in the border fighting of that era, and left his own account about the events that happened during that volatile time. Mr. Herbert M. Tonney, of Illinois, told his own story as a survivor of the typical county-seat war of Kansas, in which, he was shot and left for dead. Many other men have left valuable narratives about this turbulent period.

In dealing with any subject of early American history, there was no better authority than Mr. Alexander Hynds, of Dandridge, Tennessee, whose acquaintance with forgotten bits of early frontier history borders were impressive. This was also true of N. P. Langford, of Minnesota, who knew a great deal about life in the Rocky Mountain region during the period from 1860 to 1870. He was a pioneer of the Rockies, and a citizen of Montana and other Western territories, before the coming of the days of law and order. Many quotations are used from his work titled, Vigilante Days and Ways, which is both interesting in itself and valuable part of the historical records of that time.

The stories of train-robbing bandits and outlaw gangs were taken partly from personal narratives, partly from judicial records, and partly from works which were frequently more sensational than accurate, and required much sifting to verify the details presented there. Naturally, many sources about Western history have been used. Much of this labor has been one of love because the days and places concerned, no longer exist as they once did.

The total result of this project will, it is hoped, help in telling at least a part of the story about the wilder side of the old West, and of the frontier which was marked by human lawlessness, bloodshed, and a hang 'em up high attitude, that didn't place a lot of respect on human life.

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Chapter 1

The Outlaw

Each nation in the world has a propensity for producing its own brand of bad men--and, in time, other bad men come along to kill them for the general good of the population. In the past, there was little difference between the bad men and the good men who went out chasing after them as was frequently demonstrated by the early history the West. The religion of progress and civilization meant very little to the Western town marshal, who sometimes, or often, was made a peace officer mainly because of his proficiency with a six-shooter.

Who and what was the outlaw? He was a habitual criminal who was a fugitive from the law. Many people think of gunslingers and cattle rustlers when they hear the word, but it had it origins back before guns had been invented, and the crime of cattle rustling had even existed. The term outlaw was brought to England back in the eight century when the Vikings invaded there. It was used to refer to someone who had committed a criminal act and had his property confiscated by the king. Later during the middle ages, it began to be a more general term used to describe a broader range of criminals.

Where did the outlaw come from? He came from any and all places, and from all levels of society. What did he look like? He came in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and colors--just as all people do. His reputation, whether true or false, or just or unjust, became the hallmark of the bad man in due time. The killer from a Western town might become known throughout the state or in several states. His reputation might long outlast that of the able statesmen or other more honest citizens of the area.

What distinguished the bad man from his fellowman? Why was he better with weapons? What is courage, in the final analysis? We ought to be able to answer these questions in a purely scientific way. We have devises for monitoring relative quickness of thought and muscular action. We are also able to record the varying speeds of nerve impulse transmission in different individuals.

If a person was picking out a bad man, would he select one who showed a dilatory nerve response on this devise? Of course not. The relative fitness of a man to be bad, couldn't be predetermined by using these scientific measurements; however, they might be useful to predict who could become extraordinarily quick and skillful with firearms. Of course, there were no thought-machines in the early West, they usually used swift justice to send the guilty, and many times the innocent too, on a one-way trip to the graveyard.

The ability to use firearms quickly and accuracy was necessary to the occupation of the outlaw, and helped delay the inevitable day when he would face justice. This skill with weapons was a natural gift of nearly every man who attained a great reputation, whether it was as a killer of victims, or as killer of killers. Practice helped many gain proficiency with firearms, but a Wild Bill Hitchcock, or a Billy the Kid was born and not made.

Courage and fast nerve response usually develop in people living in a rough and harsh environment; however, this does not fully cover the case. A slow man from another type of environment, might also be a man that was able to develop great courage. However, if he went into the law or outlaw business on either side, he would likely suffer at the hands of a man who was just as brave as himself, but was a fraction faster with a shooting arm.

There were likely, a large number of potentially bad men, who died mute and inglorious after spending their lives behind a desk or a plow. They might have turned bad if the right circumstances had occurred. Each new war brings out its own heroes from unsuspected places, and each sudden emergency summons forth its own fit men to answer the call. Let's say that a man took up the use of weapons, and then found himself pleased with his growing skill in using them. He discovered that as the sword had lengthened the reach of human arm in an earlier age, so did the six-shooter--that epochal instrument, that make him and all other men equal.

The man felt his powers increase as did his skill with the weapon. Then after a period of time, he faced a moment of danger from an enemy, after being subjected to an insult or a challenge. Perhaps it was male against male in a matter that resulted in bloodshed. It might have been a matter of property, or perhaps it was some taunt insulting his own personal manhood.. Perhaps alcohol was involved, as was often the case. For one reason or another, it came down to deadly combat. It was the right of one individual against that of another. The law was not around—and couldn't be of any help.

Suddenly as the quicker man's nerves flashed into action, and his arm shots forward, and there is a point of flame reaching out, as once did the point of a sword during previous ages. The victim falls, his own weapon clutched in his hand, a fraction too slow on the draw. The law clears the killer, and rules that it was self-defense. It was an even break, his fellowmen say; although, they were more a little more reluctant to be seen with him.

It was an even break, the killer tells himself--an even break--him or me. But, perhaps, the repetition of these words couldn't help to blot out the mental picture. There have been bad man, who have said that they killed their second man, to get rid of the mental image of their first victim.

But this situation might happen again to this man; if fact, it might start happening rather frequently. Again, the man was the quicker of the two and kills his second and third victim. His self-confidence now begins to grow, and this becomes a crucial time in his life. He might go on now and become a truly bad man, or he might become a cheap imitation of a desperado. In either event, after killing his third man, he is left feeling still more confident. His courage and his skill in using a gun gave him a certain assuredness and ease as he strutted around the town. He was now becoming a specialist in the use of firearms. Time did the rest, until at last they placed him in a wooden coffin.

The genuine bad man of the old West rarely looked the part, which has been assigned to him in the popular imagination, by books and the movies. He was not the long-haired blusterer, speaking a dialect that never was spoken, but used frequently in the celluloid fictions about the West. The most dangerous man was apt to be quiet and have a soft-spoken nature.

A Western law officer with a well established reputation once said, while speaking of a recent altercation that he had been forced into:

I hadn't been in anything of that sort for years, and I wished I was out of it. Then I said to myself, 'Is it true that you are getting old--have you lost your nerve?' Then all at once the old feeling came over me, and I was just like I used to be. I felt calm and happy, and I laughed after that. I jerked my gun and shoved it into his stomach. He put up his hands and apologized. 'I will give you a hundred dollars now,' he said, 'if you will tell me where you got that gun.' I suppose I was a trifle quick for him.

The virtue of the quick draw was highly respected among bad men. However, sometimes men were killed because they were conviction that no man on earth was as quick as they were. What came near to being an incident of that kind was told by a noted Western sheriff who said:

"Down on the edge of the Pecos valley, a dozen miles below old Fort Sumner, there used to be a little saloon, and I once captured a man there. He came in from somewhere east of our territory, and was wanted for murder. The reward offered for him was twelve hundred dollars. Since he was a stranger, none of us knew him, but the sheriff's descriptions sent in said he had a freckled face, small hands, and a red spot in one eye. I heard that there was a new saloon-keeper in there, and thought he might be the man, so I took a deputy and went down one day to see about it.

"I told my deputy not to shoot until he saw me go after my gun. I didn't want to hold the man up unless he was the right one, and I wanted to be sure about that identification mark in the eye. Now, when a bartender is waiting on you, he will never look you in the face until just as you raise your glass to drink. I told my deputy that we would order a couple of drinks, and so get a chance to look this fellow in the eye. When he looked up, I did look him in the eye, and there was the red spot!

"I dropped my glass and jerked my gun and covered him, but he just wouldn't put up his hands for a while. I didn't want to kill him, but I thought I surely would have to. He kept both of his hands resting on the bar, and I knew he had a gun within three feet of him somewhere. At last slowly he gave in. I treated him well, as I always did a prisoner, told him we would square it if we had made any mistake. We put irons on him and started for Las Vegas with him in a wagon. The next morning, out on the trail, he confessed everything to me. We turned him over, and later he was tried and hung. I always considered him to be a pretty bad man. So far as the result was concerned, he might about as well have gone after his gun. I certainly thought that was what he was going to do. He had sand. I could just see him stand there and balance the chances in his mind.

"Another of the nerviest men I ever ran up against, I met when I was sheriff of Dona Aña county, New Mexico. I was in Las Cruces, when there came in a sheriff from over in the Indian Nations looking for a fugitive who had broken out of a penitentiary after killing a guard and another man or so. This sheriff told me that the criminal in question was the most desperate man he had ever known, and that no matter how we came on him, he would put up a fight and we would have to kill him before we could take him. We located our man, who was cooking on a ranch six or eight miles out of town. I told the sheriff to stay in town, because the man would know him and would not know us. I had a Mexican deputy along with me.

"I put out my deputy on one side of the house and went in. I found my man just wiping his hands on a towel after washing his dishes. I threw down on him, and he answered by smashing me in the face, and then jumping through the window like a squirrel. I caught at him and tore the shirt off his back, but I didn't stop him. Then I ran out of the door and caught him on the porch. I did not want to kill him, so I struck him over the head with the handcuffs I had ready for him. He dropped, but came up like a flash, and struck me so hard with his fist that I was badly jarred. We fought hammer and tongs for a while, but at length he broke away, sprang through the door, and ran down the hall. He was going to his room after his gun. At that moment my Mexican came in, and having no sentiment about it, just whaled away and shot him in the back, killing him on the spot.

"The doctors said when they examined this man's body that he was the most perfect physical specimen they had ever seen. I can testify that he was a fighter. The sheriff offered me the reward, but I wouldn't take any of it. I told him that I would be over in his country some time, and that I was sure he would do as much for me if I needed his help. I hope that if I do have to go after his particular sort of bad people, I'll be lucky in getting the first start on my man. That man was as desperate a fighter as I ever saw or expect to see. Give a man of that stripe any kind of a show and he's going to kill you, that's all. He knows that he has no chance under the law.

Sometimes they got away with desperate chances, too, as many a peace officer has learned to his cost. The only way to go after such a man is to go prepared, and then to give him no earthly show to get the best of you. I don't mean that an officer ought to shoot down a man if he has a show to take his prisoner alive; but I do mean that he ought to remember that he may be pitted against a man who is just as brave as he is, and just as good with a gun, and who is fighting for his life.

During these times, one man gambled his life against another, because it was the only way of solving hard personal problems. Those days and those conditions brought out some of the boldest and most reckless men the earth has ever seen. Before we criticize these men, we should try to fully understand them.

Chapter 2

The Imitation Badman

The counterfeit bad man, in as much as he has a place in literature, was largely produced by Western stories written for Eastern consumption. Sometimes, he was a person manufactured in the East and then sent out West. It is easy to see the philosophical difference between the actual bad man of the West and the imitation article. The bad man was an evolution in evil; whereas, the imitation bad man was an instantaneous creation, to supply to fill a popular demand.

They arose partly in the West and partly in the East, men who gravely and calmly tried to look the part. After assuming the role for a time, they in many instances, faded away and disappeared back into the Nowhere from where they came. Some of them took themselves too seriously for their own good. Of course, there existed the possibility that any one of these counterfeit bad men might run up against the genuine article.

There has always existed in the real West, a contempt for the West-struck man who was not really bad, but who wanted to appear bad. The bootblack bad man was a character recognized on the frontier--the city tough guy gone West with ambitions to achieve a bad reputation. Some of these men were partially bad for a while. Some of them, no doubt, even left behind them the impression that they had been really bad after their sudden funerals.

There was, of course, no great difference between the West and the East. The rest of America, as well as the West, demanded of its citizens nothing so less than genuineness. Yet the Western phrase, to stand the acid, was not surpassed in graphic descriptiveness. When an imitation bad man came into a town of the old frontier, he had to stand the acid or get out. His hand would be challenged by someone.

Bob Bobo, the famous Mississippi bear hunter, once said to a man who was doing some pretty bold talking, I have always noticed that when a man goes out hunting for trouble in these bottoms, he almost always finds it.

Two weeks later, this same loud talker threatened a peaceful looking man in simple jeans pants, who took then took a shotgun and blasted a hole through him. The West was pretty much made up of hot blooded men largely from the South, and the dogma of the Southern town was the same in the Western mining town or cow camp--the bad man or the would-be bad man had to show his courage--and the acid bottle was always close at hand.

The fact that there were various grades of counterfeit bad men was an accepted truth on the frontier. The imitation bad man discovered that it was comparatively easy to terrify a good part of the population of a town. Sometimes a false imitation of a desperado was exalted in the public eye as the real article. There was a time when four misled hoodlums from Chicago held up a street-car, killed two men, and stole a sum of money.

They sought shelter in a dugout in the sand hills below the city, and acted like the outlaws written about in the most dime-novel of the time. They were arrested by about one hundred men, but instead of being hung as should have been the case on the frontier, they were put in jail, written up in the newspapers, and worshiped by large crowds of individuals. These men probably died in the belief that they were truly bad men, but they were just cheap imitations, and nothing more than dirty little murderers.

Of course, we all like to feel that we would be able to spot one of these type people, but ever now and then in the West, there turned up something more difficult to understand. Perhaps the most typical case of an imitation bad man ever known, at least in the Southwest, was Bob Ollinger. He was killed by Billy the Kid in 1881, when the latter escaped from jail in Lincoln, New Mexico. The fact that Ollinger was a killer had been proved beyond doubt. He had no respect for human life, and those who knew him best recognized that he was a murderer at heart.

Bob Ollinger's reputation was gained through unfair contests where the other person never received an even break. Some claim that he killed a Mexican named Chavez, while he was holding out his hand in greeting. He also killed another man named Hill, in a similarly treacherous way. Later, when serving as a lawman, he was working with a deputy, named Pierce, to serve a warrant on a man by the name of Jones. Ollinger pulled his gun, without need or provocation, and shot Jones through the body. The same bullet that passed through Jones, struck Pierce in the leg and left him a cripple for life.

Later, Ollinger was working as a deputy for a noted sheriff, in pursuit of a Mexican criminal, who had taken refuge in a ditch. Ollinger only wanted to get into a position where he could shoot the man, but the sheriff crawled alone up the ditch, where he suddenly surprised his man and ordered him to surrender. The Mexican threw down his weapon and said that he would surrender to the sheriff, but that he was sure Ollinger wanted kill him. The man's fear was well justified.

The sheriff said later:

When I brought out the man, Ollinger came up on the run, with his cocked six-shooter in his hand. His long hair was flying behind him as he ran, and I never in my life saw so devilish a look on any human being's face. He simply wanted to shoot that Mexican, and he chased him around me until I had to tell him I would kill him if he did not stop. Ollinger was a born murderer at heart, I never slept out with him that I did not watch him. After I had more of a reputation, I think Ollinger would have been glad to kill me for the notoriety of it. I never gave him a chance to shoot me in the back or when I was asleep. Of course, you will understand that we had to use for deputies such material as we could get.

Bob Ollinger was the sort of imitation desperado who tried to dress in a flashy manner. He grew his hair long and wore the ultra-Western dress, which became so despised in the West. He was one of the very few men at that time who carried a knife on his belt. When he was in some town such as Las Vegas or Sante Fé, he delighted in putting on a buckskin shirt, spreading his hair out on his shoulders, and walking through the streets, while picking his teeth with his knife. Sometimes he would throw it in such a way, that it would stick in a tree or a board. He presented an eye-catching spectacle, and was indeed the ideal imitation bad man. That being the case, perhaps there is some interest in seeing how this fellow had to pay a very high price for his claim to fame.

Ollinger had made many threats against Billy the Kid, was very much hated by the latter. Together with Deputy Bell, Bob had been appointed to guard the Kid for the two weeks prior to his execution. The Kid didn't want to harm Bell, but he deeply hated Ollinger, who never lost an opportunity to taunt him every chance he could. Billy waited his chance, and when he got it, he killed both Bell and Ollinger. He shot Bob with own shotgun that he had so often threatened his prisoner with.

The Kid and Bob Ollinger, were perfect examples of these two classes of men. One was a genuine