Chavez returned to Las Vegas, where he afterward bragged about killing Col. Albert Jennings Fountain and his young son Henry. A problem with the confession, however, was that the murders had occurred in 1896, while Chavez was in jail.
Various accounts say Chavez died at Milargo, New Mexico, on July 17, 1923.
.366 BILLY THE KID; FOUNTAIN, ALBERT JENNINGS; LINCOLN COUNTY WAR
CHENOWTH, Howard (a.k.a. Carl Martin) (1881-1947)
At just 23 years of age, Howard Chenowth, the son of a prominent Arizona family, made his memorable mark during a drunken rampage at Silver City, New Mexico. Otherwise-aside from these horrific killings-he led a long and peaceful life.
After spending two years in college, Howard Chenowth skipped all further education and did what some youngsters do best-he became a cowboy, working for the Diamond-A Cattle Company in southwestern New Mexico.
On the night of August 27, 1904, Chenowth, his boss Pat Nunn, and several Diamond-A cowhands were winding up festivities in the Silver City gin mills. At about two o'clock in the morning, Nunn yelled that it was time to ride back to camp. Chenowth's cowboy buddy, Mart Kennedy, started arguing. What started out as a heated verbal exchange between Nunn and Kennedy ended up as a fight. Deputy Sheriff Elmore Murray rushed into the fracas, intent on separating everybody. That brought Chenowth into the fray. He grabbed Nunn's sixshooter and began to shoot at its owner. Three times Chenowth fired at Nunn. One bullet missed, one shattered Nunn's watch, and the last carved a nasty but not fatal furrow across Nunn's forehead. Nunn, blood streaming down his face, retired from the brawl.
As the commotion continued, Perfecto Rodriguez, a former Grant County lawman, rushed to aid deputy Murray, but Chenowth, drunkenly cocking and snapping the hammer, happened to snap it with Rodriquez in front of the end of the barrel. The former lawman dropped to the floor, shot through the heart, stone dead. Meanwhile, Murray persisted in doing his job, struggling with Chenowth, who by now had been joined by Kennedy. City Marshal W. H. Kilburn jumped into the melee but fell almost instantly with a mortal wound; the drunken Chenowth had snapped off another round. At this point, everyone fled.
Kennedy was soon arrested. Chenowth was caught hiding behind shipping crates. He refused to surrender and in the resultant skirmish was wounded by a charge of birdshot fired by Deputy Sheriff John Collier. Chenowth went to the hospital and then to jail, by now charged with the double murder of Kilburn and Rodriguez. Howard Chenowth was convicted and sentenced to 50 years in the penitentiary, but remained in jail at Silver City only until Christmas Day 1905. Then, with unknown assistance, Chenowth was liberated at gunpoint and disappeared.
Years later the story broke that Chenowth had been "rescued" by his uncles, that he had spent time hiding in Alabama, then worked for the famous King Ranch holdings in Brazil, where he became known as Carl Martin. He also married and fathered seven children. With the death of his wife in 1927, Chenowth returned to New Mexico, where after considerable effort he received a governor's pardon. Thereafter he worked for area ranches in New Mexico and Arizona until he passed away at Tucson in
1947 at age 65. Except for that one voyage on a whiskey river many years ago, Chenowth's life had been honorable and productive.
CHEROKEE Strip
By the time of the Civil War, most of what is now the state of Oklahoma was devoted to different Indian tribes. A strip of land 25 miles wide and roughly 200 miles long, having Kansas as its northern border, extended west in a straight line across northern Oklahoma from Missouri. The property's official name became the Cherokee Outlet. Directly across the line in Kansas, an equally long line-but this one only two and a half miles wide-bordered the northern portion of the Cherokee Outlet. Thus this narrow piece of Kansas land became known as the Cherokee Strip, effective as of a treaty of July 19, 1866.
The strip, with high grass and few settlers, became a major holding ground for Texas cattle, which paused here to be fattened up before being driven into one of several nearby cattle towns. Over time, various cattlemen started claiming and fencing in portions of the strip. This led to legal conflicts, first with the Cherokees, and then with the Boomerswhite people, generally farmers, who were short on funds and sought to settle on what they regarded as free land. The area, with so little government, attracted numerous renegades, some of them part Indian. By 1886, Boomers and others commenced setting vast regions of the prairie afire. The Cherokee Strip thus became lawless, dangerous area. Although the army repeatedly forced Texans, Boomers, and others out of the territory and tore down many of the fences, the momentum finally proved unstoppable. With Indians threatening to go on the warpath, the government gave up. Fences gradually started coming down, while others started going up, as the Cherokee Strip reluctantly gave way to legitimized settlement.
CHRISTIAN, William T. (a.k.a. Black Jack Christian) (1871-1897)
The desperado Black Jack Christian did not enter the historical record until April 27, 1895, when he and others killed deputy sheriff Will Turner near Burnett, Oklahoma. During Christian's escape from jail at Oklahoma City, two other men died during the shooting, and others were to fall during the breakout across Oklahoma, New Mexico, and into Arizona, where Christian formed a new gang. The desperadoes held up stores and post offices, graduating to stagecoaches and trains, killing people along the way before briefly disappearing into Sonora and Chihuahua, Mexico. On April 28, 1897, after Christian ventured out into Arizona again, someone, perhaps Tom Horn, shot him dead.
.36P, Co: HORN, TOM; MUSGRAVE, GEORGE
CHRISTIANSEN, Willard Erastus (a.k.a. Mormon Kid; Matt Warner) (1864-1937)
This Mormon desperado was born at Ephraim, Utah, around 1864 and at an early age learned to herd cattle and break horses. He fought a boy named Andrew Hendrickson when he was 13; he hit Hendrickson with a rock and thought he had killed him. It was time to leave, so he headed for Brown's Hole in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah, where he joined Elza Lay and Tom McCarty, taking the name of Matt Warner. He also met Leroy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy, and from this time on he was a Wild Bunch desperado.
Warner and Tom McCarty (who had married Matt's sister) likely held up the First National Bank of Denver on March 30, 1889. Warner, Cassidy, and McCarty hit the Telluride Bank on June 24. The outlaws then circled Jackson Hole and spent the winter at Star Valley, where the 25-year-old Matt married before robbing a bank at Roselyn, Washington.
In 1896, one E. B. Coleman, who claimed to have struck it rich in the Black Hills, hired Warner and one William Wall to protect him, claiming that three men-David Milton and Dick and Isaac Staunton-were harassing and threatening to kill him for his money. On May 7, 1896, Warner and Wall fired into a tent containing the three suspects, killing Milton and Dick Staunton. Warner and Wall then spent considerable time trying to convince the prosecuting attorney that it was self-defense, but they still spent three years in the Utah Penitentiary for manslaughter.
Upon being freed, Warner settled in Price, Utah. His first wife had died; Warner was accused of having abused her. He remarried, was elected justice of the peace, and might have settled down completely except that he read the book Outlwv Stc of Eut))) Cassidy and Wild Pun,--ky, by Charles Kelly. Kelly repeated the story of the wife
abuse, which so infuriated and depressed Warner that he reportedly drank heavily. He died in 1937.
-3615- 490: BROWN'S PARK; CASSIDY, BUTCH; WILD BUNCH
CHISHOLM Trail
The Chisholm Trail was the most-used Texas cattle pathway, long celebrated in song and story. Like most trails, it had feeder branches to small settlements. The Chisholm essentially wound from San Antonio, Texas, through Fort Worth and north across Oklahoma to Kansas, specifically to Caldwell, Wichita, Newton, and Ellsworth. A herd might range in size from several hundred head of cattle to several thousand. The Chisholm opened around 1866 and closed in 1884.
CLAIBORNE, William Floyd (a.k.a. Billy the Kid Claiborne) (1860-1882)
Most reports indicate that William "Billy" Clai
borne at some point in his youth stepped from the quagmire and swamps of one of the southeastern states and fine-tuned his cowboys skills in the employ of cattleman John Slaughter. Stories existed that he killed two men in Texas, but in any event he moved with John Slaughter to the territory of Arizona in 1879.
Shortly afterward he left the cowboy life behind and reportedly worked as a teamster, a miner, and even as a waiter in a Galeyville saloon. In 1881, in the tumultuous community of Charleston, he shot down a James Hicks (Hickey) at the Queen Saloon. The authorities jailed him, but "cowboy" friends bailed him out. He was ultimately acquitted of the Charleston killing.
By most accounts he was a good friend of the Clantons, as well as of John Ringo and the McLaury brothers. Although he did not get involved in the Gunfight at the OK Corral, he did testify during Justice of the Peace Spicer's preliminary hearing.
During the following year on November 14, 1882, in Tombstone's Oriental Saloon, he quarreled bitterly with Buckskin Frank Leslie, one of the thoroughly dangerous characters of Tombstone, Arizona. Apparently Claiborne was unarmed at the time, so he left the premises to get his rifle, mentioning to anyone who listened that he intended to kill Buckskin Frank. The two men met within the hour, and Billy the Kid Claiborne fired. He missed. Leslie did not miss.
George Parsons, who kept a journal of these Tombstone years, noted that Buckskin Frank's cigarette did not even go out during the encounter.
.Site {+19o: GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL; LESLIE, NASHVILLE FRANK; TOMBSTONE, ARIZONA
CLANTON, Newman Haynes (a.k.a. Old Man Clanton) (1816-1881)
Newman Clanton was born near Nashville in Davidson County, Tennessee. Following the War of 1812 the family moved to Missouri, where Newman acquired a farm and on January 5, 1840, married the 16-year-old Mariah Kelso. Three children were born: John Wesley, 1841; Phineas (Phin) Fay, 1845; and Joseph Isaac (Ike), 1847.
Newman H. ("Old Man") Clanton (Robert G. McCubbin Collection)
Although Newman joined the gold rush to California, he found no wealth and stayed just long enough to see his farm being sold for debt on his return. Clanton then took the family to Illinois, where Mary Elsie was born in 1852. The next stop was a farm and ranch near Dallas, Texas, where two more children were born, Esther Ann (1854) and Alonzo (1859). In 1861, the family moved to Hamilton County, Texas, where William Harrison (Billy) Clanton was born. Both Newman and his son John Wesley Clanton, Joined the Confederate army and had undistinguished, if checkered, careers. Newman was described as six feet one inch with blue eyes, fair complexion, and light hair. He deserted and reenlisted so many times that it appears he was joining just for the bonus money.
In 1865, the Clantons showed up in Fort Bowie, Arizona, but within a year left for California. Mariah died along the way. By 1873 the Clantons had returned to Arizona, settling in the Gila Valley; then they shifted to grazing land on the San Pedro River, not far from Charleston and Tombstone. Before long the McLaury brothers, Robert and Thomas, moved nearby. By now Newman had become "Old Man Clanton," and so far as is known, no one ever referred to him as anything else. By now a "Rustlers Trail" (actually a system of routes) extended up from Mexico through the San Pedro, Sulphur Springs, and Animas Valleys, across ranches, through mountain passes, and into towns and railroad stops.
The trails also produced other advantages as well. On August 1, 1881, Old Man Clanton, Ike and Billy Clanton, John Ringo, and a half dozen others ambushed a group of Mexican smugglers guarding a mule train of Mexican coins passing through Skeleton Canyon, about one mile south of the international border. The canyon walls ran red, and the killers divided the money.
Old Man Clanton in the meantime purchased stolen Mexican livestock-at a cut rate, of course, since it had cost the raiders nothing-and planned to sell them in Tombstone. However, Old Man Clanton and his riders (none of the Clanton children were along) were ambushed on the trail on August 13, 1881. The dead Mexican vaqueros were now avenged. By some accounts the ambush had been set up by the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday. The killings help explain the subsequent enmity between the Clantons and the Earps, an enmity that became a factor in the forthcoming Gunfight at the OK Corral.
Be that as it may, the family initially buried Old Man Clanton on a knoll inside the Gray Ranch in the Animas Valley. In early 1882, Ike and Phin Clanton reburied their father in the Boot Hill Cemetery at Tombstone.
SS'r' kc; BOOT HILL; BROCIUS, WILLIAM; COWBOYS; EARP, WYATT BERRY STAPP; GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL; HOLLIDAY, JOHN HENRY; RINGO, JOHN PETERS
CLEVELAND, George Washington (1860?-1884)
On November 24, 1883, George Washington Cleveland, a black cowboy, along with accomplices A. Mitchell "Mitch" Lee, Frank Taggart, and Christopher "Kit" Joy, robbed a Southern Pacific train near Gage Station, 15 miles west of Deming, New Mexico. They escaped with approximately $800 in cash plus assorted contributions from frightened passengers. In the process they killed Theopolis C. Webster, the train's engineer. A footsore brakeman finally stumbled into Gage Station and reported the holdup. That brought Grant County deputy sheriff Dan Tucker and a posse hastily to the scene, but as the newspapers later noted, "the desperadoes had too far a start and were too well mounted."
Wells Fargo and the Southern Pacific Railroad offered rewards of $2,200 per head for the capture of the outlaws, a sum bringing former Grant County sheriff Harvey Whitehill out of near retirement. Whitehill stumbled across a discarded edition of an out-of-territory newspaper, ultimately tracing the newspaper back to a legitimate subscriber, an area storekeeper who had wrapped foodstuff in the paper for a local black cowboy named George Washington Cleveland. The identification of Cleveland as a suspect also focused attention on his three known associates.
Whitehill tracked Cleveland to a restaurant in Socorro, New Mexico, where the suspect worked, and where Whitehill arrested him. Acting as if astonished Cleveland demanded to know why he was being jailed; Whitehill bellowed, "For killing that train engineer. I already have your partners and they talked." It was a bluff! A confused and bewildered Cleveland blurted out, "It wasn't me that killed him, it was Mitch Lee." Under the impression that his criminal cohorts were in custody, Cleveland made a full confession during his trip to Silver City, furnish
ing lawmen with the possible whereabouts of the remaining outlaws.
Frank Taggart was arrested near St. Johns, Arizona Territory, and Mitch Lee and Kit joy were snared in a line cabin near Horse Springs, New Mexico. All four of the desperadoes went to the Grant County jail pending trial, three of them very angry that their companion had confessed.
On March 10, 1884, the four train robbers, accompanied by a convicted murderer and a suspected horse thief, overpowered their guards, seized an armload of weapons, and escaped. A jail witness noted that Mitch Lee swore "they would do away with the negro Cleveland before they were many miles from town."
Pursuit started quickly. A short distance out on the Fort Bayard road, a posse overtook the outlaws, who immediately hid in the desert brush beside the road. As the posse scrambled to higher ground, they fired a withering fusillade into everything that moved, killing Cleveland and wounding Mitch Lee. However, Taggart and Spencer, out of ammunition, surrendered. Only Kit joy escaped, in the process ambushing and killing posse member and Singer sewing-machine salesman Joseph N. Lafferr. During the fruitless search for joy, the body of Chavez (the murderer) was found.
On their way back to Silver City, the posse decided to dispense with additional legal proceedings. It lynched Mitch Lee and Frank Taggart. Spencer was returned to jail. Kit joy was eventually captured and imprisoned.
S+'r' Lco! JOY, CHRISTOPHER; LEE, A. MITCHELL
COE, Philip Houston (1839-1871)
Phil Coe, born in Gonzales County, Texas, is best known for two things: he was one of the best known gamblers in the West, and he was the last person known to have been slain by Wild Bill Hickok.
On March 24, 1862, Private Coe enlisted in Company D, Wood's Regiment, Texas Cavalry. On September 21, he be
came a first lieutenant. A month later he was demoted to private and was listed as absent without leave. He reenlisted in December with another unit, where, after spending a month in the Houston hospital with gonorrhea, he became a lieutenant again.
Somewhere while in the army Coe met the (later) well-known gunfighter Ben Thompson. There is some evidence, but mostly conjecture, that Coe and Thompson briefly signed on with the Emperor Maximilian in Mexico.
After the war, Coe opened a gambling hall in Austin, probably in partnership with Ben Thompson. He moved around the area, getting to know gunfighter John Wesley Hardin during a trip to Brenham, in Washington County, Texas. Hardin liked to gamble almost as much as Coe, and it was Coe who gave Hardin the nickname of "Young Seven Up," the phrase stemming from a popular card game of the time. In his autobiography, Hardin described Coe as "notorious" but failed to explain further.
By spring 1871, Coe and Thompson were in Abilene, Kansas, where they opened the Bull's Head, a saloon and gambling hall. It was a profitable enterprise, since Texas cowboys and trail herds were already arriving at the railhead. However, Thompson may not have spent much time in Abilene that summer, due to injuries reportedly suffered in a buggy accident.
The Encyclopedia of Lawmen, Outlaws, and Gunfighters Page 11