Meanwhile, two train holdups took place, one on September 9, 1899, and the other on February 15, 1900. The first was successful, the second a disaster, as express messenger Jeff Milton shotgunned one of the bandits. The other bandits were soon rounded up, and one of them was Constable Burt Alvord. He went into jail but broke out on April 7 and fled to Mexico, although he returned in September and surrendered to the Cochise sheriff. Burt subsequently pleaded guilty to attempting to rob the U.S. Mail and received two years in the Yuma Territorial Prison. Before he could be transferred, however, he broke jail on December 17, 1903. He fled across the border into Mexico but for unexplained reasons kept returning briefly to the United States. On February 20, 1904, Sheriff Albert Lewis and a posse caught up with Alvord, shot him in the leg and wrist, and locked him in the Tombstone jail. Two weeks later they transferred him to the Yuma prison. However, his prison sojourn did not last long, and he was released on October 9, 1905. Meanwhile, his wife Lola had divorced him on grounds of desertion. They had no children.
With a few federal charges still pending against him, Burt changed his name to Tom Wright and fled to Panama, where he worked on waterfront piers before drifting farther south to work on a railroad project near the Amazon River, where he contacted malaria. He was shipped to British Barbados for rest and recuperation. He died there on November 23, 1909.
ANDERSON, William C. (a.k.a. Bloody Bill Anderson) (1840?-1864)
Bloody Bill Anderson was born in Jefferson County, Missouri, fated to become one of the most bloodthirsty outlaws of the Confederacy. His story did not start so much with him as with his sister, Josephine Anderson. Union brigadier general Thomas Ewing Jr. decided that one of the best ways to root out Missouri guerrillas was to jail women who provided them with food, shelter, and comfort. So he rounded up a dozen or so female relatives and incarcerated them on the second floor of a dilapidated Kansas City building. The floor collapsed, and five women died, including Josephine (some accounts say three of these women were Anderson sisters). When brother Bloody Bill Anderson-riding with William Quantrill-heard the news, his frail hold on sanity grew even weaker.
He rode into Lawrence, Kansas, with Quantrill and participated in the notorious bloodletting of August 21, 1863. Then the psychotic Anderson followed Quantrill into Texas, where the bushwhackers-man killers who hid behind bushes and
"whacked" their victims with rifle bullets-spent much of the winter quarreling among themselves. Anderson caroused in Sherman, Texas, with a saloon girl while his followers drank and argued. When Quantrill, trying to exert discipline, had one of Anderson's men shot, a rift opened that became unbridgeable. Anderson and 20 horsemen subsequently broke away from Quantrill and rode toward Bonham, Texas, with Quantrill trying to coax them back. In the end, both groups returned to Missouri by separate trails.
During the summer of 1864, near Huntsville, Missouri, Anderson's men shot and scalped two Union soldiers. A month later they killed seven soldiers, scalping four and slitting the throats of three. On September 26, Anderson and his "army" rode into Centralia, Missouri, and burned the town. Several bushwhackers poured whiskey into their boots and forced townspeople to drink it. Learning that a train was due, they piled ties on the track, stopped the train, and ordered everybody out, including 25 unarmed federal soldiers on their way home. The soldiers were ordered to strip and were shot as they stood naked on the railroad platform.
A few hours later, as word of Anderson's presence reached him, Maj. A. V. E. Johnston led his 100 Union recruits in pursuit, but the wily guerrilla sprung a trap. Most of the recruits died, including Johnston, who was shot through the head by a 17year-old boy named Jesse James. The bodies of the recruits were mutilated.
However, on October 26, 1864, still another Union column overtook Anderson, this time near Orrick, Missouri. He and his bushwhackers charged, as usual, and they broke through the line, as usual. But this time Anderson did it the hard way-he carried two Union bullets in the back of his shaggy head. Bloody Bill was dead before he hit the ground. That same head was chopped off and placed on a spiked telegraph pole at Richmond, Missouri.
.5'r=+' also: JAMES BROTHERS; QUANTRILL, WILLIAM CLARKE
ANGEL, Frank Warner (1845-1906)
Frank Angel was born in Watertown, New York, and in 1868 graduated with a degree in law from the Free Academy of New York. He was admitted to the bar in 1869. From April 15 through October 5, 1878, he served as a special investigator for the Department of Justice in the murder of Englishman John Tunstall during New Mexico's bloody Lincoln County War. During this same period he was appointed assistant district attorney for the eastern district of New York. He later became fire commissioner for Jersey City, New Jersey. Angel died in Jersey City on March 15, 1906.
.S61e CgLIZO LINCOLN COUNTY WAR
ANGEL, Paula (a.k.a. Pablita Martin; Pablita Sandoval)
Not much is known about Pablita. She lived a few miles north of Las Vegas, New Mexico, somewhere around the Sapello River. Early in 1861 she stabbed and killed Juan Miguel Martin, her husband or perhaps boyfriend. A judge sentenced her to hang on April 26, 1861.
Paula wasn't particularly likable; the Miguel County sheriff, Antonio Herrera, by some accounts, reminded her each afternoon of the number of days remaining in her life. At the time of execution, Herrera did not even bother tying her hands, so when the wagon rolled out from under her, she reached up, grabbed the rope and simply swung back and forth. The sheriff tried to pull her hands away and even added his own weight, grabbing her around the waist and swinging along with her. By this time the crowd, developing sympathy for her, began yelling that enough was enough, that she had been hanged, and that was all the law demanded. At that moment, however, another person in the crowd reminded the audience that the death warrant called for her to be hanged by the neck until dead-and she wasn't dead. Following that assessment, the sheriff wrestled her back inside the wagon, tied her arms securely, and once more led the wagon out from under her. This time Paula went without a fuss.
ANTRIM, William Henry Harrison (1842-1922)
William Antrim was born near Anderson, Indiana, on December 1, 1842. He worked as a teamster in Philadelphia and then served with Indiana volunteers during the Civil War. Antrim filed a successful court action against the government for drafting him when it wasn't supposed to. In later life he lived in Kansas, New Mexico, and California, becoming essentially a wanderer, a man best known as the stepfather of Billy the Kid. He died at Adelaida, California, on December 10, 1922.
See [ i0: BILLY THE KID
APACHE Kid (1860?-?)
The Apache Kid was likely born around 1860 in a wickiup near the Gila River in Arizona. He probably belonged to the group known as White Mountain Apaches. His given name was Haskay-Bay-NayNtay. Somewhere around 1875, the government rounded up his family and others and moved them to the San Carlos Reservation, in eastern Arizona. There he learned to speak fair English and essentially adopted the white man's ways, becoming a cowboy and wearing boots, spurs, and hat. No white man could pronounce his name, so everyone called him "Kid." The name became more distinctive by broadening it to "the Apache Kid." Al Sieber, chief of scouts at San Carlos, made the Kid a scout, and he served almost continuously from 1882 through 1886. In 1887, he became first sergeant of the Indian police, but he was dishonorably discharged a few months later for drinking too much at a party and then killing a man allegedly involved in some kind of a triangle with the Kid's mother.
Apache Kid (Robert G. McCubbin Collection)
Apache Kid (Robert G. McCubbin Collection)
The Kid and others returned to San Carlos, where Al Sieber attempted to place most of the scouts, including the Kid, under arrest. During the resultant uproar and confusion, the Kid shot Sieber in the left leg below the knee. At that instant the Apache Kid and 16 cohorts were on the run. The cavalry pursued, but after a few days the Kid sent word to Gen. Nelson Miles that he and the others would surrender if Miles would call off the troops. Miles agreed. A court-martia
l followed, and all the scouts were dishonorably discharged, forfeiting pay and allowances. The Kid got 10 years. Troops escorted him to Alcatraz, where after a brief period he was released and allowed to return to San Carlos.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court, in a decision known as Tie United Stct+es ri. stipulated that Indians found guilty of crimes would serve their sentences in territorial prisons rather than federal ones. Arizona and the military then concocted a plan to retry these Indians and sentence them to "ter ritorial" prisons for crimes for which they had already served time.
The Apache Kid was retried and given seven years in the territorial jail at Yuma. However, on November 2, 1899, a coach hauling prisoners was moving uphill toward a railroad, and the sheriff ordered everyone to walk up the grade. The Indian prisoners and lawmen piled out, but the Indians then overpowered and killed the two lawmen, shot the stage driver, Eugene Middleton, and disappeared. The army tracked down a few and captured or killed them. Someone even allegedly chopped off an Indian head and displayed it on a pole at agency headquarters.
Over time, rewards for the Apache Kid alone totaled $15,000. He was accused of murders, rapes, and thefts. Travelers across the Southwest were heavily armed. Boundary employees at the U.S.-Mexico border traveled together for safety. But what happened to the Apache Kid, no one knows. He kept southwestern travelers scared and walking on their toes for years, but no one ever caught sight of him. Did he go to Mexico? Did he die in the wastelands? The fate of the Apache Kid is as mysterious and controversial today as it was a century ago.
.Sr'r' akO; HOLMES, W. A.
ARIZONA Rangers
On March 13, 1901, the Arizona legislature, favorably impressed by the success of the Texas Rangers in curbing lawlessness, created the Arizona equivalent, the Arizona Rangers. The unit consisted of a sergeant and 12 privates, usually former cowboys, since the job required considerable time on horseback. Their commander was rancher Burton C. Mossman, who had drafted much of the enabling legislation and agreed to serve only one year. The state paid the privates $55 a month. The sergeant received $75, and Mossman $120.
In 1903, the ranger unit expanded to 26 men. The units served without uniform, although everyone had a badge. For the most part they carried .30-40 leveraction Winchester rifles, model 1895, and used single-action Colt .45 revolvers. On October 8, 1901, rustlers killed Pvt. Carlos Tafolla, the only Arizona Ranger ever slain in the line of duty. How many outlaws were killed by the Arizona Rangers is unknown.
Thomas H. Rynning took over from Mossman, after one year, but Rynning resigned in 1907, and Harry Wheeler, who had come up through the ranks, replaced him. Arizona Republicans had created the unit, and altogether 107 men served before Arizona Democrats, having achieved the necessary power and numbers, disbanded the lawmen on February 15, 1909.
S66 co: 11SALLISON, WILLIAM DAVIS; WHEELER, FRANK S.; WHEELER, HARRY
ARMSTRONG, John Barclay (1850-1913)
This renowned Texas Ranger was born in McMinnville, Tennessee, the son of a physician who moved to Missouri and Kansas, and then Texas. John became a member of the Travis Rifles during the 1870s, and on May 20, 1875, he signed on with the Special Force of Texas Rangers, led by Leander McNelly. He took part in the so-called Las Quevas War, fighting Mexican bandits along the Nueces Strip. After being promoted to sergeant, he chased cattle thieves along the Mexican border, and in December 1875 he killed John Mayfield in Wilson County.
John Armstrong was the famous Texas Ranger who captured noted outlaw John Wesley Hardin (Author's Collection)
After McNelly stepped down, Armstrong moved up to second lieutenant under Lee Hall. In particular, he worked the Eagle Pass area, frequently crossing the Mexican border in pursuit of outlaws, and in April 1877 arresting the noted gunman/lawman/outlaw John King Fisher. Then, in Goliad, Texas, Armstrong accidentally shot himself in the groin. While recovering he tracked the noted outlaw and gunman John Wesley Hardin east from Texas to Pensacola, Florida, where on August 23, 1877, Armstrong caught Hardin on board a train, clubbed him to the floor, put him in chains, and returned him to Texas. A year later, in July 1888, Armstrong rode with the Rangers into Round Rock, Texas, where the lawmen shot and killed the outlaw Sam Bass.
Armstrong was afterward stationed in Cuero, Texas, where he retired from the Rangers, thereafter becoming a U.S. marshal. Not long afterward, he turned away from law enforcement, for nearly 20 years earlier he had married Mollie Durst. They had seven children. In 1882, he established a 50,000-acre ranch in Willacy County. John Armstrong died on May 1, 1913.
S66 (4190; BASS, SAM; HALL, JESSE LEIGH; HARDIN, JOHN WESLEY; MCNELLY, LEANDER H.; TEXAS RANGERS
ARRINGTON, George Washington (1844-1923)
This famous Texas Ranger and rancher was actually born John C. Orrick Jr. in Greensboro, Alabama. At 16 he enlisted in the Confederate army but rode with Mosby's guerrillas. When the war ended, he tried to join Maximilian in Mexico but failed. In 1867, he allegedly murdered a black businessman in Greensboro, then moved to Texas, where he became George Washington Arrington. (His mother's maiden name had been Arrington.) Following that he farmed briefly, worked in a business house, and as a cowboy trailed a herd of livestock to Brown County. There, in 1875, he joined the Frontier Battalion of the Texas Rangers, and tracked down so many fugitives that he quickly rose to sergeant and then first lieutenant.
In 1877, he became captain of Company C and within a brief period broke up a vigilante movement at Fort Griffin before moving into the Panhandle. There he established Camp Roberts and mapped much of the area, in particular the region around Yellow House Canyon. He brought law and order to such Panhandle towns as Tascosa and Mobeetie.
In 1882, Arrington resigned from the Rangers in order to do some Panhandle ranching, in the process also becoming sheriff of Wheeler County. In November 1877, he shot and killed John Leverton, whom he had accused of cattle rustling. Leverton's wife charged Arrington with murder, but a jury called it self-defense.
Arrington resigned as sheriff in 1890, preferring thereafter to devote his time to ranching, as he now owned considerable land-although many residents suspected he had used both legal and illegal methods to acquire it. He now joined the Masons and became a Shriner, although he remained involved in law enforcement. A man named George Isaacs had slain Hemphill County sheriff Thomas McGee; after a jury convicted him, Arrington escorted the prisoner to the Texas penitentiary at Huntsville.
During his final years, "Cap" Arrington practically always carried a gun. He suffered terribly from arthritis and often visited the hot baths at Mineral Wells, Texas. During one of those trips he suffered a heart attack. He died on March 31, 1923, and was buried in the Panhandle, at Mobeetie.
.366 aISO MCNELLY, LEANDER H.; TEXAS RANGERS
ATEN, Ira (1862-1953)
This Texas Ranger and Texas Panhandle lawman, the son of a Methodist minister, was born in Cairo, Illinois, but grew up on a farm near Round Rock, Texas. As a young man, he witnessed the demise of outlaw Sam Bass and himself became a Texas Ranger shortly thereafter, serving in Company D under Capt. Lamar P. Sieker. In 1877, Aten and famed Texas Ranger John R. Hughes trailed and killed outlaw Judd Roberts, allegedly a member of the Butch Cassidy gang, and a long way from home. Aten thereafter quickly rose to sergeant and was instrumental in putting down Fort Bend County's jaybirdWoodpecker feud.
He married in 1892, he and his wife living at a dugout ranch in Dimmitt, Texas. In 1893, he became sheriff of Castro County, organizing 20 local cowboys into a ranch police force. He and his family moved to California around 1904, and by 1923 he had become a member of the Imperial Valley District Board. In 1945, his memoirs were published in Froretoer Taxes which touted him as "the last
of the old Texas Rangers." On August 5, 1953, he died of pneumonia. His burial took place at El Centro's Evergreen Cemetery.
CASSIDY, BUTCH; HUGHES, JOHN REYNOLDS; JAYBIRD-WOODPECKER WAR; TEXAS RANGERS
ATKINS, David (1874-1945)
David Atkins, fated to be
an outlaw, was born in San Anglo, Texas, on May 8, 1874, the son of a buffalo hunter and wolf trapper who died of pneumonia in 1877. The family thereafter moved often, Dave becoming a cowboy at the age of 15 and marrying in December 1894. Marriage did little to settle him down. He and Tom Ketchum, plus others, shot and killed John N. "Jap" Powers, who lived south of Knickerbocker, Texas. Atkins and Ketchum were indicted for the crime. They fled the state but returned later, and no charges were filed.
On March 20, 1897, Atkins and a friend named Sam Moore were drinking in a Knickerbocker saloon. They had no sooner left, however, than shots rang out. Both men reentered the saloon, where they started arguing over whether Moore had done the shooting outside. As the discussion heated, a local merchant named Tom Hardin entered the saloon and complained about the gunfire, claiming that bullets were apt to shatter glassware in his store. Atkins then commenced arguing with Hardin, the latter placing his hand on Atkins's shoulder in an effort to reason with him. But the effort failed. Atkins shot Hardin twice in the head; he died within minutes.
As the bartender went to find the sheriff, Atkins and Moore rode out of town. Atkins headed for Mexico, although he changed his mind and returned to Knickerbocker, hiding out in the brush, or staying at the ranch of outlaws Dave and Will Carver. By mid-December 1897, Atkins had teamed up with the Tom "Black Jack" Ketchum gang. They rode north and west, robbing the Southern Pacific Railroad at Stein's Pass near the Arizona-New Mexico border. Ed Bullion, a gang member, gave up his life there.
The Encyclopedia of Lawmen, Outlaws, and Gunfighters Page 3