BITE The Dust
To die, ordinarily to die quickly, unexpectedly, violently, and out in the open; to fall forward on one's face and die-although the term can (rarely) apply to a natural death, most people who bite the dust are victims of a gunfight or other forms of violence. Only men are said to bite the dust, the term not generally applying to women and children. Early western movies and books made this expression popular.
BLAIR, John (?-?)
As a member of the Double Dobie gang of cattle thieves, John Blair hung around Tombstone, Arizona. When he caught smallpox, however, his rustler comrades isolated him in an adobe shack remote from the outlaw hangout and paid a Mexican woman to care for him. Within a week he died. His epitaph at the Tombstone boothill reads: Johnny Blair Died srna44iox: and a cowboy threw a rope crier pis feet and draggers sir to kyis raze,
BLAYLOCK, Celia Ann (a.k.a. Mattie) (?-?)
Mattie Blaylock was probably a Dodge City prostitute who became the common-law wife of Wyatt Earp in 1878. She moved with Earp to Tombstone, Arizona, where Wyatt cast her aside and chose another woman, Josephine Marcus.
Mattie stayed with Wyatt's parents for a while, then returned to Arizona and resumed her former trade. She died in Pinal, Arizona, on July 7, 1888, from an overdose of laudanum (opium and alcohol). She was buried in Pinal.
See aLo; EARP, WYATT BERRY STAPP
BOLES, Charles E. (a.k.a. Black Bart) (1828?-1911?)
Charles Boles was reportedly born in England, his family taking him to New York in 1830. Boles (often spelled Bowles) grew weary of life as a farmer, so it did not take much coaxing to involve him in the California gold rush. When that didn't work out, he wound up near Decatur, Illinois, where he married and then joined the Union army. Following his 1865 discharge, he left his family and drifted up through Montana and Idaho, then back into California.
This time he went to work with a flour-sack mask and a double-barreled shotgun, performing his first stage holdup on July 26, 1875, somewhere around Sonora, California. He pulled two more stage robberies that same year, the task apparently becoming so much fun that on August 3, 1876, he not only robbed another California stage but left the driver a piece of poetry so awful it was almost good:
With the number of his stage robberies now numbering in the twenties, Black Bart was becoming quite a familiar figure to California authorities, who considered him polite. Oddly he was a bandit who traveled primarily on foot. He carried an axe for busting open strongboxes, plus a sharp knife for slicing mail bags.
Of course, robbing stagecoaches was a risky business, and Black Bart stopped a few bullets along the way, although nothing serious. His most grievous error turned out to be dropping his own handkerchief during a stage robbery on November 3, 1883. California private detective Harry Morse traced the laundry mark through San Francisco right back to Charles E. Boles. James B. Hume, a Wells Fargo detective, assisted by Morse and city police, arrested Bart at his San Francisco home. On November 21, 1883, he entered San Quentin for a six-year term, becoming a model prisoner. The state released him in January 1888. What happened to him after that is anyone s guess.
According to Wells Fargo, Black Bart had robbed them of about $7,000. No one ever estimated how much he took from the passengers.
S66 aS4: HUME, JAMES B.
BOND, Jim (a.k.a. Jack) (1853?-1881)
Jim Bond was a Texas cowboy who signed on with the Frontier Battalion, Texas Rangers, at El Paso. However, Bond and fellow lawman Len Peterson were terminated by Capt. George W. Baylor after Baylor learned that the pair had secretly given information to a band of rustlers led by Frank Stevenson, an outlaw later sent to prison. Bond and Peterson stole a "fine pair of carriage horses" from El Paso's mayor and fled west. Bond alighted in New Mexico's San Simon Valley, where he rustled cattle. During a riotous spree at Deming, Bond rode his horse up onto a porch separating the Harvey House Restaurant from the Wells Fargo & Co. offices at the railroad depot. Frightened patrons frantically hollered for help; Deputy Dan Tucker and his shotgun responded. When confronted, Bond jerked out his six-shooter, but Tucker blasted the would-be badman out of the saddle, killing him instantly. A newspaper
reporter chided Bond for his attempt to shoot it out, writing, "He failed to get there, and now he peacefully sleeps beneath the daisies."
S66 a&0: BAYLOR, GEORGE WYTHE; TUCKER, DAVID
BOOT, Joe (1871-1901)
Joe Boot has a claim to fame that nobody knowshis true name. Regardless of how his mother christened her son when he was born in Ohio, Boot goes down in the history books only as a 28-year-old stagecoach robber, and an inept one at that. When he finally made his mark, it was with a female outlaw named Pearl Hart. Pearl is how and why Joe Boot is remembered.
On July 15, 1899, Boot and Pearl robbed the Globe-Phoenix stagecoach. During their getaway, completely frazzled, the pair crawled into some brush for a quick nap. When they awoke they found themselves staring up at a dozen Winchester muzzles, with the grim eye of a posseman staring down each sight. Being captured so easily, however, was only part of Boot's embarrassment. Newspapers as well as the officers started poking fun at this desperado with a girl boss. Who could respect an outlaw like that?
Joe Boot received a sentence of 30 years in the Arizona Territorial Prison, but after two years, on February 6, 1901, he became a trustee and then escaped, presumably into Mexico. No one ever heard from him again, so maybe he wasn't so stupid after all.
See HART, PEARL
BOOT Hill
The name "Boot Hill" can apply to any cemetery where residents or visitors have died with their boots on. The hill usually refers to a hill of dirt covering a grave, but it can also refer to a hilltop where bodies are buried. The Boot Hill association requires, however, that death must have occurred by gunfire, hanging, or lynching. A locality can even have more than one Boot Hill.
The first and most famous western Boot Hill is in Tombstone, Arizona. Boot Hill is its actual name, although only a small percentage of its residents were gunmen. The same applies to the Boot Hill at El Paso, Texas. It is but a small chunk of Concordia Cemetery, because only a minority of residents buried there actually died with their boots on.
On any particular day in Tombstone, dozens of people can be found wandering past weatherbeaten graves scattered among the rocky mounds and sagebrush. Tombstone historian Ben Traywick expressed the scene perfectly when he wrote, "In this old cemetery ravaged by time and the elements of nature, are the last resting places of those who made Tombstone fascinating, colorful and exciting; the young and the old, the coward and the brave, the weak and the strong, the merchant and the gunfighter, the miner and the gambler, the murdered and the murderer, the prostitute and the wife, and the scripture reader and the drunkard."
S66 (MkO: GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL
BORDER Draw
Sometimes known as the "cross draw," in this technique the six-shooter is holstered on the left hip with the butt forward but reached with the right hand. (For left-handed people it would be just the opposite.) Such a rig would also be particularly advantageous for gamblers (or gunmen) sitting in chairs with arms on each side. It could be useful for anyone wearing a long coat while standing, riding, or walking. As a practical matter, however, while the border or cross draw looks good in the movies, few lawmen or outlaws practiced it.
BORDER Shift
A border shift is the passing or tossing of a six-gun from one hand to the other. This looks flashy in the movies and on television, and it sounds great in pulp fiction. Reality was something else, however. Longhaired Jim Courtright was the only gunman ever acknowledged to have used the border shift. He allegedly tried it on Luke Short, who shot him dead for his trouble.
S615- COURTRIGHT, TIMOTHY ISAIAH; SHORT, LUKE
BOUNTY Hunter
This term refers to someone who hunts outlaws for the bounty, the reward on their head, the money usually being paid by federal, state, or county officials, although bankers and railroad tycoons tended to get
involved also. The bounty was generally offered for capturing or killing the wanted individuals. Practi
cally all law enforcement officers, from U.S. marshals down to constables and Texas Rangers, considered bounty hunting as part of their job, a supplement to their income. Where life had little value, death often had a price. Thus came the bounty hunter.
BOWDRE, Charles (1848-1881)
Charlie Bowdre was a pal of Billy the Kid, but he was also a man caught between desires to be a fighter and to be left alone so he could farm. He was born in Mississippi around 1848. He and Josiah "Doc" Scurlock arrived in Lincoln, New Mexico, around 1875, and purchased (on terms) a ranch on the Ruidoso River. He married Manuela Herrera, probably of Fort Sumner, San Patricio, or Lincoln, New Mexico. Calling Charlie "indecisive" would be an understatement. He evidently tried to be a peacemaker, but he was to be as awkward at that as at being an outlaw.
Sheriff Pat Garrett and his posse, after ambushing the Billy the Kid gang in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, on December 19, 1880, and killing gang member Tom O'Folliard, closed in on Bowdre and others at an isolated, one-room rock cabin, in bitter cold, at Stinking Springs. The lawmen surrounded the building at about two o'clock in the morning of December 23. The structure had no door; the outlaws were sleeping inside, and their horses were tethered outside. As the sun came up, Charlie Bowdre stepped through the doorway, a nose bag in his hand, intending to feed his horse. Garrett and the posse members immediately commenced firing, hitting Bowdre in the leg and body. Bowdre reeled toward the lawmen, his hands outstretched, saying words like "I wish, I wish ..." Then he collapsed and died in the snow. The remaining outlaws surrendered.
Garrett sent a wagon for Bowdre's body and informed Manuela, Charlie's wife, of his death. Pat paid for a burying suit out of his own pocket. Charlie Bowdre is buried in the Fort Sumner cemetery alongside Billy the Kid and Tom O'Folliard.
.366 AR0 BILLY THE KID; GARRETT, PATRICK; LINCOLN COUNTY WAR
BOWE, Thomas (1847?-1884)
Bowe is an enigma, due to a dearth of data. Nevertheless, there is sufficient documentary evidence to reveal that Tom Bowe often reveled in unnecessary violence. A newspaper account offered a brief physical description, noting that Bowe "is about 30 years of age, five feet 5 or 6 inches in height, slim build, dark complexion with dark hair and mustache, generally goes with head and eyes cast down, and wears his hat low down on his forehead. He is Irish and talks with a slight Irish accent. Usually wears dark shirt and clothes, and goes without shirt collar."
An unsubstantiated rumor said he killed a man at Pueblo, Colorado, in 1872 and fled to Santa Fe, only to be run out of town for fractious misbehavior. Bowe next turned up in Arizona, where he was suspected of stagecoach robberies but was never arrested.
With two other ne'er-do-wells, Tom Bowe debuted in Silver City, New Mexico, during the winter of 1874. During the following spring, he entered Ward's Dance Hall and argued with Jack Clark. Tom jerked out his six-shooter and fired. Clark died on the spot. Although Tom fled to the surrounding hills, Grant County sheriff Harvey Whitehill and a squad of citizen volunteers soon had him in tow. However, all charges were dropped.
On the night of October 5, 1877, Bowe went on a gambling spree with the respected Silver City saloon operator Richard "Dick" Howlett. According to newspapers, the pair had been amicably consorting for several days, but on this particular night-during a card game that also included Grant County's first sheriffs, Richard Hudson and John Justice-Bowe's stack of chips dwindled. Unwisely, though in a jesting, friendly fashion, Howlett chided Bowe's cardplaying ability, behavior that Hudson cautioned him about. With a particularly large pot on the table, which Bowe was attempting to win, Howlett called Bowe's bluff. Bowe lost. Incensed at what he perceived as ridicule and agitated at his monetary misfortune, Tom Bowe pulled his six-gun and shot Richard Howlett dead.
Bowe fled to the nearby hills, where friends "helped him to a horse, blankets, food, arms and ammunition." Reportedly he fled to Mexico, then to California, and finally to New York City. Later he "tired of life in the metropolis" and left for Montana. Seven years after the murder of Richard Howlett, Thomas Bowe was arrested and extradited from Montana to New Mexico Territory, where his murder case was ultimately dismissed.
See (9k0: WHITEHILL, HARVEY HOWARD
BRAZELTON, William "Bill" Whitney (1851?-1818)
Bill Brazelton, originally from Missouri, by the age of 15 had reportedly killed a man. By the age of 26, this ex-circus performer had drifted throughout California and then down to Tucson, Arizona Territory, where he found employment at Robert Leatherwood's corrals. Exceedingly strong and a crack shot, Bill gained the admiration of several rough-and-tumble Tucsonites. He teamed up with a fellow employee at the corral, and the youthful pair left for work in a gristmill. But hardworking and industrious as the boys appeared to be, Brazelton had a secret occupation, that of stagecoach robber. Just over the territorial line in southwest New Mexico, this flour-sack-wearing bandit had been plying his trade. Nobody seemed to notice, or especially care, that Bill Brazelton was frequently absent from the gristmill.
Before long, however, investigative leads started pointing in the direction of Brazelton's buddy at the mill, David Nemitz. Nemitz was finally arrested, but he blamed Brazelton for the holdups and offered Pima County sheriff Charles Shibell a deal-he would help the lawmen trap Brazelton. On the night of August 19, 1878, the officers secreted themselves along the road in the surrounding brush. When Brazelton arrived to make preparations for holding up the incoming stage, the lawmen ordered him to surrender. Other stories indicate that they simply shot him. At any rate, shotgun blasts cut him to pieces, and he died on the spot. Further investigation implicated Brazelton in at least nine stagecoach robberies in Arizona and New Mexico. The coroner's jury exonerated the lawmen, and the outlaw was laid to rest on August 20, 1878. This time he did not wear his flour-sack mask.
BREAKENRIDGE, William M. (a.k.a. Uncle Billy) (1846-1931)
One of the West's most famous lawmen, Tombstone's deputy, William "Uncle Billy" Breakenridge, came out of Wisconsin, where he had been born on Christmas Day, 1846, became a deputy sheriff at Phoenix, Arizona, and then went to work as a civil engineer in the mines at Huachuca, Arizona. By January 1880 he had moved to Tombstone, Arizona, and become a deputy sheriff.
On the night of March 15, 1881, a group of highway men struck the Benson-bound stage, killing the driver, Eli Philpot, and a Montana passenger, a miner named Peter Roering. Two posses set out in pursuit, one led by two Earp brothers and another by the Cochise County sheriff, John Behan. Breakenridge rode with Behan. Neither group caught the outlaws.
On June 22, a whiskey barrel exploded in the Arcade Saloon, and half the business district of Tombstone burned. Breakenridge did as much as anybody to put out the flames and afterward became a founding member of the rescue hook-and-ladder company. By now Tombstone seemed alive with Cowboy/Earp factions, some of which Breakenridge managed to avoid while retaining his position as a deputy.
On the night of March 25, 1882, a group of Cowboys descended upon the Tombstone Mill and Mining Company to rob it, which they did, but they also killed employee Martin R. Peel. On March 28, Sheriff Behan sent Breakenridge and a posse to the Chandler Ranch in hope of bringing in Billy Grounds and Zwingle Hunt. Breakenridge reached the ranch, where his posse trapped both men inside a cabin. As the deputies shot it out with someone at the back door, Billy Grounds tried to escape through the front. He and Breakenridge commenced firing at one another; Breakenridge took a wound in the hand, but Grounds was still no match for the deputy's shotgun. Grounds died on March 30, the Torrthstcrap, noting that "he was an outlaw, a robber, and possibly an assassin, but that did not justify the undertaker in burying him in a perfectly nude condition, with the blood from the wounds in his head dry and clotted on his face."
Billy Breakenridge continued as a deputy, making numerous arrests, acting as census enumerator, and even unsuccessfully campaigning for Cochise County sheri
ff. After his defeat, his career as a deputy ended. During the late 1920s, with the assistance of author William Macleod Raine, he wrote an autobiography that appeared in 1928. It was entitled the Law to the Mesquite, an account definitely pro-Cowboy and anti-Earp. Its strength was its first-person commentary of events, points of view different from the norm; its weakness was a tendency to misstate, twist, or omit known facts. Uncle Billy Breakenridge died in Tucson at the age of 84 on January 31, 1931.
.366 o; BEHAN, JOHN; EARP, WYATT; GROUNDS, WILLIAM A.; HUNT, ZWINGLE
BROCIUS, William (a.k.a. Curly Bill) (1845?-?)
No one knows when or where Curly Bill Brocius (whose legitimate name may have been Graham or Bresnaham) was born or called home; some reports say Henry County, Indiana, others Missouri. It could have been in or around El Paso, Texas. On May 20, 1878, he and a man named Robert "Dutch" Martin attempted to rob an army stage carrying a Lieutenant Butler and two soldiers the 45 miles between El Paso, Texas, and Mesilla, New Mexico. In the process, the gunmen wounded the enlisted men, got no money, and were themselves pursued into Mexico, where the desperados were arrested by Mexican authorities and handed over to the Rangers. Lt. John B. Tays of the Texas Rangers described the outlaws as members of the John Kinney gang, operating north of Mesilla in the Rio Grande Valley. Tried and sentenced to five years in the Texas penitentiary for robbery and attempted murder, Brocius and his two accomplices dug under the adobe wall and escaped from the Ysleta jail on November 2, 1878. When next heard from, in the late 1880s, Brocius was in southern Arizona.
The Encyclopedia of Lawmen, Outlaws, and Gunfighters Page 7