history

Bad Men The Continuing Popularity of Old West Outlaws Belies Their Criminal History

More than a century has passed since the majority of the Old West badmen rode the back trails, and in that time, the legends and myths about them have accumulated like tailings from a strip mine. But as author Jay Hyams explains, "As hard as it is today to look back and believe, some of their stories are true." Still, to understand, much less explain, the world's love affair with these desperados is difficult.

After all, here were multiple photos of Old West badmen, actually carried in the saddlebags of a northern California sheriff. What was my problem? In a nutshell, the mug shots involved San Francisco badmen. To me they were not outlaws but urban criminals. This led to the following question from my wife: "Do you mean to say that if these same thugs were wearing hats with wider brims, and committing the same crimes, but on horseback outside the city limits way out on the desert, they would be transformed magically into courageous, aweinspiring outlaws?"

to the door. "All of you Old West nuts are certifiably crazy." Somewhat embarrassed, I turned to face my fellow book buyers. "Actually, she should know," I told them matter-of-factly. "My wife is a therapist." I didn't admit it that balmy day in the musty stacks of the Argonaut Bookstore, but my wife was right. I really can't defend my interest, nay, my passion, for Old West badmen. I can't even rationalize it. Perhaps you will allow me to try to illustrate it.

Killing Me Softly with Her Logic Several years ago, while visiting San Francisco, my wife and I dropped into a bookstore. Knowing my affinity for the Old West, she pointed out to me a slate of criminal mug shots from the 1880s. But, much to my wife's surprise, I took one look and said I wasn't interested. Her incredulous expression at my decision caused me to question my disinterest.

"Right as rain." "Bob, you are one crazy wacko." "Not you, sir," I told the bookstore owner, whose name also is Bob. "My wife is referring to me." "You're all wacko," she barked as she shook her head in disgust and headed out The West Itself Becomes a Star If you take almost any crime of the 1880s and put it out on the Plains, or in the Rocky Mountains, or on the flaming deserts of Arizona, add a "fleet horse" and a "trusty six-shooter," both of which "run together like molasses," you've got romance where mere criminality once stood. And, ironically, the romantic legends of

BILLY THE KID

An unemployed bus boy who has been arrested several times for stealing saddles, tack and horses around Camp Grant. Slippery when captured (he has escaped from the authorities numerous times). His real name is alleged to be Henry McCarty.

Description: 5' 7", 120 pounds, light brown hair, eyes have a roguish snap. Friends say he's so buck-toothed he could "eat pumpkins through a picket fence."

Aliases: Kid Antrim, Billy Bonney.

DOC HOLLIDAY

Troublesome, ornery, he is allegedly dying of consumption and is wont to seek a violent end to his life. He has been going out of his way to die with his boots on in Prescott, Gillette, Tucson, Contention, Charleston, and Tombstone. Has certain friends in law enforcement.

Description: 6'0", 135 pounds, tall and gaunt, sandy blond hair, speaks with a Southern twang, intelligent, belligerent when drinking (seldom sober). Aliases: too drunk to bother.

The Old West badmen emanated from the East. Each time another family moved from the farm to the city, the blossoming pulp industry seemed to gain more avid customers. These newcomers, who were streaming to the hard streets of the eastern metropolises, desired to read about people like themselves, rural heroes who defied convention.

So the outlaws' freedom in a land lavished with plenty of room to roam became especially compelling. In fact, the more crowded it got in the tenement slums of the eastern cities, the more they seemed to enjoy reading Wild West adventure.

Outlaws from Way Back

Long before the outlaws robbed and killed their way into American folklore, the Apaches had been terrorizing the Southwest for more than three centuries. Before the Spanish arrived in the Southwest, the Apaches roamed New Mexico and Arizona as nomadic bands whose largest pack animals were dogs. After a century of Spanish brutality and enslavement, the Apaches stole and bred enough horses to retaliate against their enemies with a vengeance that lasted almost continuously until Geronimo's final surrender in 1886. Labeled outlaws by the Spanish, Mexicans, and Americans, the Apaches survived because of their superior knowledge of their homelands. With cunning strategy they dared anyone to stop their raiding and acts of revenge. Theirs was a fitting legacy for the outlaws who followed in the mid-1800s.

Both outlaws and Apaches fed off the wide-open spaces, both used the same hit and run tactics (in fact, some outlaws left false clues at the scene of their crimes to implicate Indians). Both hid in the same places, and both raided for the same reason: to steal. Like the Apaches, the badmen left their marks on the landscape with place-names like Horsethief Basin, Gunsight, Sombrero Butte, Strayhorse, Rustler's Park, Two Guns, Moonshine Hill, and Outlaw Flats. And they held forth at outlaw towns with names like Galeyville and Contention, Goldtooth, Rough Rock, and Naco.

They were a rough bunch in a rough place. And they seemed right at home.

Dodge 'Em in a Vast Land

The Arizona terrain has always favored the pursued. Even with legendary lawmen and professional trackers, Territorial posses were up against it. In 1881 a Tombstone posse that included Wyatt Earp and his brothers swept out of Goose Flats, trailing two stage robbers. They locked on the trail, following signs north through the San Pedro Valley, west across the Rincons, through Redington Pass, skimming past Tucson, then north around the Catalinas, losing the trail, finding it again, retracing their way south along the San Pedro, then slanting out across the San Simon Valley, still following warm sign through Stein's Pass, where the trail turned south, hugging the Peloncillos, pushing onward, down across the Animas Valley, fading deep into the boot heel of New Mexico. Finally, after more than 300 miles, two states, four counties not to mention losing several horses the intrepid but weary posse limped back to Tombstone empty-handed. These lawmen were tough, but the men they were chasing were even tougher.

The Apache Kid

In the case of the Apache Kid, no one caught him-ever.

As a very young man, the Apache Kid came under the wing of Al Seiber, the famous Army chief of scouts. The Kid became a first sergeant and served the U.S. Army with distinction, but he was sentenced to seven years at Yuma Prison after a wild melee in which Seiber was shot in the foot and crippled for life.

NASHVILLE FRANK LESLIE Former Army scout, gambler, and bartender. He is known to be a good singer and fine company as long as he's not drinking. Recently shot and killed Billy "the Kid" Claiborne outside the Oriental Saloon in Tombstone. He is a known lady's man and reportedly used one of his girl friends for target practice. Description: 6' 0", 170 pounds, light complexion, handsome features, a bit of a dandy, and a dead shot. Speaks some Spanish. Alias: Buckskin Frank Leslie.

APACHE KID

Former sergeant under Army Chief of Scouts Al Seiber. Abused his rank by hunting down and killing several Apaches he blamed for his father's death. Spent a short time at Alcatraz, then retried and sentenced to seven years at Yuma. Escaped by killing his guards and currently is at large.

Description: medium height, athletic build, black hair and eyes. Piercing stare.

Aliases: Ski-be-nan-ted (sometimes spelled Haskay-bay-nay-tay), Zenogalache (the crazy one).

Jack Swilling died in Yuma Prison while awaiting trial. Tom Horn was hanged at Cheyenne, Wyoming, on November 20, 1903.

In November of 1889, as the Kid was being transferred from Globe to the railroad at Casa Grande, he and several others overpowered the guards, killing three and seriously wounding a fourth. All the prisoners escaped, and members of a posse sent out to track them found themselves stymied by a snowstorm that obliterated the outlaws' tracks.

From that point on, the Apache Kid became a slippery ghost. Sightings of him abounded for years, and his alleged raids became so widespread the Territorial Legislature offered a $5,000 reward for him dead or alive. Several Army officers received roving commissions to track him down. All failed.

On July 3, 1893, the residents of Tempe turned out with every pistol, rifle, and shotgun they could find when a rumor swept the area that the Apache Kid lurked nearby.

While New Yorkers read Vogue magazine and Chicagoans rode the Ferris wheel at the World's Fair, Arizona cattlemen and farmers were warned to go armed at all times because of rumors the Apache Kid was prowling in the nearby mountains.

In 1894 Hualapai Ed Clark suspected someone tried to steal his mules and engaged in a rifle duel with an unknown marksman at dusk, 15 miles outside of Mammoth. In the morning, he found an Indian woman dead and bloody tracks leading away. Clark believed he had mortally wounded the Kid, but there was never any proof. (See Arizona Highways, Nov. '95.) In 1899 Emil Kosterlitzky, the head of the rurales in Sonora, Mexico, reported that the Apache Kid lived peacefully in the Sierra Madre with remnants of his people. How and when he actually died is not known.

Arizona's Own

One of the first gunfights recorded in Arizona occurred because a local loudmouth exaggerated the state's population. In 1859 Edward Cross, the editor of the Arizonian at Tubac, accused Sylvester Mowry of fudging Arizona's population figures. They squared off at 40 paces, but their shooting ability proved as wild as the charges and countercharges. According to published accounts: "No blood flowed."

O.K. Corral Gunfight

The most famous gunfight in Western history took place in Tombstone on October 26, 1881, between the Earps and elements of the cowboy crowd. The participants - Wyatt Earp, his brothers Virgil and Morgan, Doc Holliday, father and son Ike and Billy Clanton, and brothers Tom and Frank McLaury have become forever linked in a kind of perpetual showdown.

Several of the participants, however, lack the credentials to belong in the upper echelon of Western badmen. Prior to the fight, Billy Clanton and Tom McLaury had no reputations as gunmen or, for that matter, as badmen. But the tragedy of their lives, that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, assured them a permanent place at the badman table. The details of the 27-second fight and its outcome are well known, but the political outcome of the incident is not.

Three months after the infamous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, a statewide election was held with the following results: Anyone who had anything to do with the Earps lost. Public opinion had so turned against them that the mere mention of their names, or their political affiliation (Republican), was anathema at the polls. So much for the bringing of "law" to Tombstone. That was for the legend-makers to gerrymander.

When the Law Was a "Puny Thing"

The hardy pioneers of Arizona, as a rule, showed little patience with the outlaws they could get their hands on.

JACK SWILLING

Known as "The Father of Phoenix" for spearheading the rebuilding of the irrigation system originally built by the Hohokam Indians, this former scout and Indian fighter is a stellar. member of the community when he is sober (which is increasingly infrequent). Recently acquitted of killing a man for slandering a woman and "scalped" another man for unknown reasons. Currently under suspicion for robbing the Black Canyon Stage.

Description: long brownish hair worn scout style, between 5' 6" and 5' 8", many battle scars, needle marks on both arms from morphine addiction.

Aliases: The Father of Phoenix, Ol' Son of a Ditch.

TOM HORN

An excellent scout, tracker, rodeo cowboy and assassin. A superlative roper, he won the steer-roping contest at Globe on July 4, 1888. Unfortunately Horn works both sides of the law and appears to be offering his services as a paid assassin to the Tewksbury side of the Pleasant Valley War.

Description: 6' 2" in height, deep-chested, erect, and of considerable strength. Light complexion, sandy hair, and blue eyes.

Aliases: James Hicks.

Makeshift Jails

Out on the frontier, Western sheriffs had to make do with what they had In Clifton, Arizona, mining interests paid for a jail blasted out of solid rock (note the two iron-barred windows). Ironically, the first person to be locked up was the man who blasted the rock. He was celebrating the completion and got a little too rambunctious.

Some towns, like the mining community of Wickenburg, didn't have funds for a jail, so they chained prisoners to a tree. The Wickenburg jail tree still stands in what is now downtown.

In some Mexican locales, iron was too expensive, so intricate wooden barred doors were built to secure lawbreakers. Unfortunately prisoners too often tried to burn them down, so an iron ring was added and put around the neck of a loved one to stop the practice. Most of the time it worked.

Lacking a jail, one creative lawman chained his prisoners to telegraph poles, which must have been entertaining and informative for new arrivals: "Excuse me, how far is it to town?" "Oh, about three more prisoners."

Throughout the West, mine shafts and natural holes in the ground often served as jail cells. Legend says the locally famous caverns in Nogales, Sonora, once held the notorious Geronimo.

For example, on July 3, 1873, Phoenix vigilantes hanged a thief for stealing a widow's cow.

Fed up with lousy to nonexistent justice, the residents of Arizona often formed vigilante groups to deal with the badmen in their district. The Vigilance Committee of Tombstone included many prominent citizens, including diarist George Parsons, who later revealed that the vigilante secret motto was "Kiss My Six-shooter." And when there wasn't time to form a committee, the citizens just mobbed.

In January of 1887, a Flagstaff mob broke into the jail and killed two pris-oners being held on a charge of murder.

Such incidents occurred across Ari-zona Territory as new communities sprang up with little or no law en-forcement at hand.

Desperados Waiting for Their Turn

The James Gang and other organ-ized outlaws had been robbing trains throughout the late 1860s and '70s, but the first train robbery in Arizona happened relatively late: on January 28, 1887. Two masked men robbed a Southern Pacific passenger train 17 miles east of Tucson and got away with $20,000.

And, once the first train was robbed, others got ideas.

In fact, much of the outlaw "boom" activity in Arizona came relatively late, as the plague of "late burn Texi-cans," as they were called, were run out of New Mexico and into the waiting arms of Arizona.

By 1905 Arizona became one of the last bastions of the badmen. First railroads and then the highways reduced the country's wide-open spaces to smaller and smaller pieces until the running room of the outlaws began to go the way of the wolf. Few places remained where a person could "get lost." But Arizona still had plenty of canyons and mountains that could swallow up almost anyone.

As the new century dawned, wild gun battles still broke out in remote saloon tents in the Bradshaws, and stagecoaches were still being robbed outside of towns like Florence and Winslow.

The well-known Arizona Rangers were not even organized until 1901.

In 1907 Arizona Ranger Harry Wheeler shot it out with an assailant on the main street in Benson.

But the End Was in Sight

In 1910 two boy bandits on horse-back held up a train south of Phoenix, but they were quickly run down by a sheriff riding - in a fast car.

Scattered attempts at the old ways continued: In January of 1912 (mere days before statehood), a gun battle between lawmen and a gang of out-laws terrorizing Phoenix ended with the badmen captured. Three days later, the fledgling town of 10,000 held its first auto show.

Only Anecdotes Remain

In the movies, the badmen must die at the end of the story. And, of course, they're all dead by now: the good, the bad, and the faithful horse. Time has rendered them all to dust and afterthought.

Today we who are fascinated by them fight over footnotes and minutiae. What colors were their hatbands and what was in their pockets when they fell? We have become nitpickers and whiners. It is doubtful that any of the real badmen would have a thing to do with us. I can picture Buckskin Frank Leslie reading this article and declaring: "Tell the author if I had some cartridges where I am, I'd do business with him."

CURLY BILL BROCIUS

The so-called "Captain of the Cowboys" is under suspicion for numerous forays into Old Mexico on stock-stealing raids. Known to wear "two belts of cartridges, a revolver and carry a Henry rifle in his hand." According to Tombstone Deputy Billy Breakenridge, Curly Bill is "a remarkable shot with a pistol," and can "hit a rabbit every time when it is running thirty or forty yards away."

Description: A husky six-footer with black curly hair, and a freckled face. Some who know him say he favors a "red tie." Cohorts claim he got his nickname from a cantina singer who ran her fingers through his hair and pronounced him "Curly Bill."

Aliases: William Graham, William Rogers.

RUSSIAN BILL

His real name is William Rogers Tettenborn, and he hails from a Baltic seaport, claiming Russian nobility in his lineage. Under suspicion for rustling cattle in the San Simon area. Operates with fellow badman Sandy King.

Description: a gangling man of blond complexion, standing over 6' 2" in height. Wears his hair long, swaggers, speaks with a thick Russian accent.

Aliases: None.