Legendary Lawmen

PEACEMAKERS OF The Arizona Rangers rode from 1901 to 1909

ON NOVEMBER 21, 1902, Augustine Chacon sat down to a large luncheon. Freshly shaved and neatly dressed in a new black suit, he could have passed for a wealthy rancher from Mexico if he had been in a restaurant in Phoenix or Tucson. But he was not in a restaurant and he was not a rancher. Augustine Chacon dined in a jailhouse in the southeastern Arizona town of Solomonville, waiting to die. His lunch was the last meal he would ever eat. At 2 P.M. his jailers informed him the time had come. Chacon left his cell and walked behind a sheriff and two deputies to the scaffold that had been erected especially for him. An estimated 50 people assembled for the occasion, and many more had climbed up the nearby trees to watch the execution of a man who bragged that he had killed 42 people in the course of his life. Yet once on the scaffold, Chacon dallied, not ready to die. Looking relaxed though a noose dangled behind his head, he decided to top off his lunch with a cigarette and a cup of coffee. Then Chacon addressed the gathering in Spanish for a half-hour, declaring that while he may have committed some crimes in his day, he was innocent of the one for which he was being executed.

THE TERRITORY

A few minutes after finishing his cigarette, he spoke to the crowd once more, almost apologizing for having to leave so abruptly. "Time to hang," he declared. The noose was dropped into place around his neck and the trap sprung open. Clearly, it was a bad day for Chacon. Just as clearly, it was a proud one for a recently formed law enforcement group known as the Arizona Rangers. Chacon's execution represented a turning point in Arizona's bloody history and the beginning of the end for Territorial bandits, thanks largely to the rangers. When Chacon started his career as a killer and thief during the late 1800s, the Arizona Rangers did not exist. The force was established largely because of the proliferation of criminals like him. As recently as 100 years ago, when most of the states on the East and West coasts were civilized settlements, Arizona remained sparsely populated. The Territory covered a lot of area at its widest points, 392 miles south to north, and 338 miles east to west. For a number of unsavory characters, that meant they could pretty much do as they pleased and, if pursued, could easily find spots to hide. The state of mind at the turn of the 20th century seems to have been that laws were merely suggestions and that the only law that commanded respect was the law of the gun. Not everyone felt that way, of course. Nevertheless, a certain amount of tension remained between people who wanted to live and people who wanted to steal and kill.

Hard-riding young men seeking adventure were easy recruits for the Arizona Rangers. Pictured here with Mexican lawmen, some of them rode to protect American citizens during a violent labor dispute 30 miles south of the border. ARIZONA STATE LIBRARY, ARCHIVES DIVISION The people of Arizona especially ranchers, railroad men and miners wanted help in deterring cattle and horse thieves. Lobbying for statehood, politicians feared that Arizona would never be admitted to the Union if congressmen perceived it as a wild place where murder and mayhem remained totally out of control.

Unfortunately, in portions of the Territory - especially southeastern Arizona's isolated country near its border with Mexico that description proved accurate. Rustlers would steal cattle and horses in Arizona and drive them across the border for sale in Mexico. Then they would steal cattle and horses in Mexico to sell in Arizona. There were many dirty hands in the transactions; occasionally those hands belonged to the sheriffs and deputies who collaborated with the livestock thieves for a piece of the action.

In 1901 the Territorial Legislature, at the urging of Republican Gov. Nathan Oakes Murphy, decided to do something about this mess. They passed a bill creating the Arizona Rangers, a small group that would bring peace to the Territory by using all of the unorthodox, legal (not to mention illegal) means available. The rangers, active from 1901 to 1909, made Arizona a much safer place in which to live.

In the beginning, the force consisted of 14 men 12 privates, a captain and a sergeant. The captain received $120 a month, the sergeant, $75 a month. Privates were paid $55 each. Eventually the force was expanded to 26. Members of this quasi-military force, who enlisted for one-year tours, had to provide their own gear, though A handsome bandido, Augustine Chacon boasted of killing both Mexicans and Americans as he eluded the law on each side of the border. [RIGHT] At his hanging, Chacon smiled and calmly said, “Adios todos amigos” (Goodbye to all my friends). BOTH FROM DEPARTMENT OF SOUTHWEST STUDIES, MARICOPA COMMUNITY COLLEGES the Territory would reimburse them for horses killed in action. The rangers wore no uniforms; their sole means of identification was a silver star worn inside a jacket and displayed only when making an arrest. The men had to be good riders and good shooters. Drawn from different parts of the state, each possessed an intimate knowledge of his home turf.

Gov. Murphy chose Burton C. Mossman as the first captain of the rangers. Mossman set as one of his top priorities the eradication of Augustine Chacon.

Mossman was native to Illinois, but his family's moves brought him to New Mexico when he was 15. He became a skilled cowboy, and by age 21, worked as foreman of a New Mexico ranch with 8,000 cattle. By 27 he managed another large ranch in Arizona's Bloody Basin area, and at 31, he became superintendent of the massive Aztec Land and Cattle Co., more commonly known as the Hashknife Outfit.

The Hashknife ran some 60,000 head of cattle over a barren area of 1 million acres on the Colorado Plateau. Its major problem, aside from drought, was cattle thievery. With the Hashknife, Mossman established a reputation as a fearless and efficient manager. On his first day, he reportedly captured three rustlers. Soon afterward, he fired most of the men on the payroll the Hashknife outfit had become, unintentionally, a haven for cowboys fleeing the law in other places and replaced them with trustworthy individuals.

Once named captain of the rangers, Mossman became obsessed with the hunt for Chacon, and he devised a convoluted plan for capturing him. Mossman set up the group's headquarters in the raucous copper mining camp of Bisbee, 10 miles north of the Mexican border and roughly midway between Tombstone and Douglas. Because of its proximity to the border, it proved a good choice, especially for hunting a notorious criminal who treated the international boundary as a swinging door. Mossman's next problem was to track down the wary Chacon.

For assistance, he turned to Burt Alvord and Billy Stiles, two former peace officers who both had a leg on each side of the law. Alvord, who had been deputized in 1886 by Cochise County Sheriff John Slaughter, later became a constable in Willcox. Alvord hired Stiles, a half-Mexican cowboy from Casa Grande, as his assistant. While working for the law, the pair took some time off to participate in a train holdup at Cochise Station. Later they helped plan, but took no part in, a stagecoach holdup at Fairbank. The two were arrested eventually and jailed at Tombstone.

Stiles, who had confessed, was given leeway to wander around the jail. Contemporary descriptions indicate Stiles was no genius, and he may have been viewed as relatively harmless because of his small brain. If so, that was a big mistake. On April 8, 1900, he took advantage of his jailhouse privileges to shoot the deputy in charge of the lockup. With the deputy incapacitated