My Favorite Outlaw

CLIMAX JIM, MY FAVORITE OUTLAW

Rufus Nephews was his real name. The cowboys of the Hashknife outfit in Northern Arizona gave him the name of Climax Jim. He always carried a plug of chewing tobacco beneath his shirt to keep it moist when he rode with them to look over the possibility for using his running iron in his cattle rustling activities. He was captured and indicted many times in Apache county, but never under his real name. Jim Thomas was an alias he used at times, but he had many more. Witnesses friendly to Climax would fail to appear in court against him, and the big cattle outfits were never able to convict him of rustling their cattle. Along with his art of changing brands with his running iron, Climax possessed an uncanny skill in removing handcuffs and leg irons. They were like putty in his nimble hands. and the clumsy locks on jail doors were but temporary barriers.

Old lawmen still living in the White Mountain country of northeastern Arizona knew Climax Jim during the 1890's when he was active as a cattle rustler, and I, too, knew him and wrote about his escapades. "How many Indian ponies and herds of cattle he drove out of Arizona and sold in New Mexico will never be known," Joe Pearce, now living in Eager. Apache county, recalled when I visited him recently. "He broke out of every jail in our country, and he got away from me once by a clever trick." Joe was a peace officer then.

Climax rode into Tucson in 1901 to gamble and enjoy a vacation from his arduous and hazardous vocation as a rustler. I met him there and he told me how he escaped from Ranger Joe Pearce. I wrote the story for the San Francisco Examiner. and in later years Joe Pearce read it in one of my scrapbooks.

"That's the way it happened," Joe said. "Climax came into my camp in the White Mountains crawling on hands and knees, his feet badly swollen. He had escaped from the sheriff at St. Johns by a clever ruse while two deputies were guarding him. Disrobing. Climax sat on his cot and feigned a fit of anger. He threw his boots against a wall, his jacket in another direction, and then he leisurely slipped off his blue jeans. The deputies tilted back their chairs and refused to be aroused by his antics. The jail door was open and one of the deputies sat nearby. Suddenly he was blinded by Climax Jim's pants hitting him in the face. The other deputy was aroused from his slumber to see Climax grab the pants and disappear through the door into the darkness. The evening following his escape from the deputies, Climax crawled into Joe Pearce's camp. He attempted to mount Joe's horse but Joe discouraged the attempt with the aid of his rifle. He placed Climax under arrest."

"It was a cold night, and the fire I had built was getting low," Joe recalled. "Climax, thinly attired, complained thathe was very cold. He got an armful of brush and threw it on the fire which blazed high with a surge of smoke which blinded me. When I recovered Climax had disappeared in the darkness."

"I'd planned it that-way." Climax told me when he was in Tucson.

Discarding his mountain attire and dressed in a neat black suit, a silk shirt and flowing tie, his trousers neatly covering his cowboy boots, and wearing a new Stetson, left scarcely a trace of the Climax Jim of the White Mountain trails. But there was one brand he could not obliterate, the unmistakeable stride of the cowboy. He spent his money freely in the gambling houses, and to the casual observer he was just another tin-horn gambler.

During the last year that Climax Jim operated as a cattle rustler he herded a dozen steers into Clifton and sold them to the mining company's butcher shop. He did not like the price paid him so he raised the butcher's check to a sizeable amount. He was arrested for this offense and taken to the Solomonsville jail. In the evening he picked the jail door lock and escaped. Mounting a cowboy's horse tied to a rack in front of Jerry Barton's saloon he rode south toward the Mexican border, skirting the edge of Alkali Flat to hide his trail in the slopes.

The setting sun was draping the mountains in glorious The setting sun was draping the mountains in glorious colors of purple and crimson, and the desert was wreathed in a delicate veil of velvety coloring extending to the foothills. Dusk, when the gophers and all timid wild life seek shelter. and the desert rats, the coyotes and owls come forth, found Climax Jim making his night camp on the southern slope of Alkali Flat, a vast desert waste close to Willcox. The shrill. ominous crying of killdeers, the night birds of the desert, had awakened the night life and the mournful barkings of coyotes echoed in the canyons. Climax tied his horse to a mesquite tree and used the saddle blanket for covering. He was soon fast asleep.

Crookneck Johnson, deputy sheriff and expert trailer, had cut the trail of Climax Jim which led him to Alkali Flat. There it ended. Straying cattle had obliterated the tracks of the horse he had followed. A mirage, for which Alkali Flat is famous, engulfed the basin with its bewildering illusions that early morning. It was a scene he had often witnessed but fleetingly in pursuing outlaws, but now it captivated him and he stood enraptured. The Chiricahua Mountains appeared as a table land in the distance, forests of elongated pine trees bordered the edge of a great lake with waves rippling on the shores. Here and there were cows many times their natural size grazing at the edge of the lake. Crookneck stood there a long time, when suddenly a spire of the mountains became illuminated by the rising sun, the water in the lake began to recede towards the south of Alkali Flat, and the bed of lava where he stood was gradually reappearing.

But far at the southern edge of Alkali Flat the mirage was in the zenith of its glory. As Crookneck scanned the new scene, the forest disappeared and the veil was lifted from the mountains exposing castellated peaks of flaming colors. In the dim haze of the lowland Crookneck's keen eyes saw a horse, its form elongated, and on the ground nearby was a man stretched out on the ground, a giant in length, entombed in the mazes of the mirage.

When Climax Jim awoke he saw a man riding fast towards him. He untied his horse and tried to saddle it, but his hands were numb for it was a cold morning and desert cold is very penetrating. The horse milled about as Climax clumsily struggled to saddle it. A rifle bullet sped close to his head, whining a message he understood. He knew Crookneck was not a killer and always gave a hunted man a signal that he was covered.

Raising his arms above his head, Climax Jim yelled: "Come on and get me."

Had it not been for the mirage that appeared that morning Climax might have made his way across the border into Mexico.

In the county jail on the Gila from which he had escaped, Climax was resting on his cot when the local minister appeared. A Chinese had just brought a plate of stewed beef and soggy bread for the prisoner. Climax laboriously chewed on the tough meat when he looked up and saw the preacher. "I came to pray with you," the visitor explained.

"Don't pray for me," exclaimed Climax. "Go back and pray for the sinner who cooked this damned food."

Handing the plate to the Chinese, Climax shouted: "Take it away, and don't bring me any more like that meat or I'll cut your tail off."

The Chinese had started to go when he leisurely turned and said: "Bime-bye you'll like it."

But Climax did not plan to linger in jail long enough to like it.

Then came the trial of Climax for raising the check. The matter of selling some stolen cattle was not pressed, for Climax had obliterated the brands.

Grizzled cowmen from the mountains, grim, stern settlers from the Gila valley, filed into the jury box. The county attorney plunged into a vociferous recital of the misdeeds of the accused.

"Gentlemen of the jury, the Territory of Arizona will prove to you that this defendant is the most dangerous criminal known from Hardscrabble Creek to the Mexico border. There is not a jail in this part of the Territory that has not housed him-but not for long, for he has broken out of every one of them.

"Listen to this from our local newspaper, the Solomonville Bulletin: 'Climax Jim, the notorious jail breaker, is exerting his arts and wiles to the utmost to absent himself from our jail. Confined in the steel cell with Climax were seven other desperate criminals, and the sheriff had them shackled in pairs. A horse-thief and Climax were bound together with handcuffs and legirons. The next morning when jailer Merrill entered the cell the two men were parading up and down their legs tied with a cotton string. The shackles were hanging on the cell PAGE THIRTY-EIGHT OF ARIZONA HIGHWAYS FOR APRIL, 1949 door, and the handcuffs were on the floor. Climax Jim is the most slippery bird in the Southwest. When confined in jail at other times it was impossible to keep him shackled.' "Now I say, gentlemen of the jury." continued the county attorney, "this defendant is a dangerous man in or out of jail. The place for him is in the Yuma prison where I know you gentlemen will send him when you have heard the evidence in this case.

"Peace officers have not forgotten the cruel treatment this defendant gave a highly respected sheriff some years ago. Taking him over a mountain trail and when they camped for the night, this defendant, who was handcuffed to the sheriff, slipped the irons off by means known only to himself. When the sheriff awoke in the morning he found his own hands cuffed and his prisoner gone.

"Aside from his skill in removing handcuffs and legirons, this defendant has a way of spiriting witnesses against him out of our reach, and he has never served a term in the Territorial prison.

"And there he sits, gentlemen of the jury, innocent looking, and planning some way to get out of this, but we have got him this time if you do your duty."

The judge ruled that the best evidence of guilt was the check which the Territory alleged was altered and cashed. A witness employed in the bank where the check was cashed was placed on the stand, and the county attorney attempted to introduce the check as evidence after it was identified by the witness.

"Object," whispered Climax Jim to the young lawyer who was defending him. "Spit 'er out 'till I twist yer tail."

The young lawyer jumped to his feet swinging his arms and shouting his objections. The county attorney cut in and a fiery argument ensued. He placed the check on the table to allow full use of his hands in clinching his argument.

The eyes of judge and jury were upon the speaker-but not the steel blue eyes of Climax Jim. From the folds of his shirt he drew a long, moist plug of chewing tobacco. He bit into it and laid the plug on the table as he nonchalantly stroked his shaggy moustache. A moment later he drew the plug of to-bacco towards him and slipped it into his shirt where he crumpled a paper that had adhered to it. Stroking his mus-tache he placed the crumpled wad in his mouth. As the argument progressed Climax sat complacently chewing, and when the judge ruled that the check was ad-missible, Climax quickly swallowed, and the prima facie evidence supporting the Territory's indictment disappeared down his throat.

Climax then settled down and became a respected citizen. He courted a school teacher, and he would take her for horse back rides into the foothills, pointing out the great expanse of the White Mountains that border Arizona and New Mexico. He would tell her about the bad men who holed up in those mountains, but he did not tell her he had been one of their kind for many years. Now he had buried his running iron and he was being branded by cupid's darts.

He filed on a homestead in the lower land near Morenci where a great mining camp was flourishing. He knew that some day the mining company would want his land and he waited patiently for some years. He finally sold it for $10,000.

With his school teacher sweetheart he went to California where they lived happily ever after.

"He was one rustler who made crime pay, for he always got away with it." concluded Joe Pearce.Now you will know why he was my favorite outlaw.