John R. Hughes, Texas Ranger (Robert G. McCubbin Collection)
Pat Garrett, the Dona Ana County, New Mexico, sheriff, rode into the ranger camp one day. Garrett was trying to solve the disappearance and likely murder of New Mexico's Col. Albert Jennings Fountain. Garrett sought a fugitive named Pat Agnew, loose somewhere in Texas-so the tall sheriff and Hughes struck a deal. Hughes would find and turn Pat Agnew over to Garrett if Garrett would use his influence to extradite Parra from the New Mexico prison. It worked, and Hughes helped (legally) hang Parra in the El Paso County jail.
Hughes continued to serve admirably, retiring after 23 years in June 1915. His ranger service was the longest in history, and he retired only because incoming Texas Governor James Ferguson announced a plan to sell ranger commissions.
Hughes never married. Always a frugal man, he bought river bottom land near Ysleta, Texas, the price of which soared after the creation of New Mexico's Elephant Butte Dam. Hughes then sold the land at a huge profit and used the funds to create the Citizens Industrial Bank in Austin. This man, who had been dubbed the "Border Boss," now led many Sun Bowl parades in El Paso, as well as the Texas Centennial Parade in Dallas in 1936. In 1928 he purchased a Model T Ford, driving it until he reached the age of 92. On June 3, 1947, he entered his garage at the home of his niece in Austin and committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. He is buried in the state cemetery in Austin.
SEE aISO; FENCE-CUTTING WAR; FUSSELMAN, CHARLES; GARRETT, PATRICK FLOYD JARVIS; JONES, FRANK; OUTLAW, BASS; TEXAS RANGERS
HUGHES Brothers, Ben and James
The Hughes brothers were born in Missouri but came early to Texas and lived near Strawn, in Palo Pinto County. To earn a living, they robbed trains with an associate named Sam Baker, a.k.a. Harvey Carter. On December 1, 1886, the gang robbed the Fort Worth & Denver train in Clay County, Texas. On January 29, 1887, they robbed the Texas & Pacific at Gorman, Texas, as it paused to take on fuel. On June 3, along with Baker, they robbed the Fort Worth & Denver at Ben Brook, Texas.
On August 14, authorities picked up the brothers, jailed them in Dallas, and tried them in Graham, Texas, in November. A jury found both boys guilty and sentenced each to 99 years at hard labor. However, a new trial set them free, a local newspaper reporting that "a speech made by James Hughes made a profound impression on the court." Shortly afterward, the Hughes boys joined their father, James Hughes, in Indian Territory (Oklahoma) but continued their nefarious careers while posses, including U.S. marshals and Texas Rangers, repeatedly tracked them back and forth. In a shootout near Checotah, Oklahoma, James Nakedhead, an Indian, a deputy with the Cherokee Indian Police and a guard at the Muskogee jail, took a Hughes bullet in the head and died on the spot.
No disposition of the resulting trial has been located, but the accused were apparently acquitted of train robbery. It remained for judge Isaac Parker, the famous "hanging judge" at Fort Smith, Arkansas, to try both men for the murder of Nakedhead. That proved a fiasco too; once more the Hughes luck held. Since the posse lacked train-robbery warrants during their assault upon the Hughes home and had not announced its presence and purpose prior to the shooting, the accused went free. They returned to their Oklahoma ranch, which subsequently became a rendezvous for additional thieves and murderers.
In 1903, Ben and Jim Hughes were again arrested, this time for participating in the lynching of Louis Houston, the brother of Ben's ex-wife. Both were acquitted. Finally, Ben was charged with grand larceny, and in 1911 he was sentenced to four years in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. He served five months. In 1923, his brother Jim was sentenced to four years for transporting a stolen vehicle across state lines. He served 37 months.
Uncle Ben Hughes died in 1945 at the age of 84. Jim Hughes died of natural causes in 1949 at the age of ninety.
PARKER, JUDGE ISAAC
HUME, James B. (a.k.a. James Hughes) (1827-1904)
Although born in New York, James B. Hume spent his youth in Indiana but as a young man migrated to California in 1850. As a speculating miner Jim was not overly successful, at least not enough to achieve financial independence and personal satisfaction. Therefore, Hume energetically turned to law enforcement, and there he stayed for the remainder of his life.
At Placerville, El Dorado County, California, on March 4, 1860, Hume was appointed deputy tax collector. Two years later he was appointed city marshal, and on April 21, 1863 Hume was elected marshal by a substantial margin. Then, longing for more meaningful police work than collecting fees, catching dogs, and arresting drunken miners, on March 4, 1864, Hume went to work as a deputy for Sheriff William H. Rogers.
Deputy Hume quickly began making a name for himself. He engaged in a shootout with jail escapees during May 1864, wounding Ike McCollum. During the following month he solved a Nachman Store robbery case. Come July of that same year, Deputy Hume chased stagecoach robbers who had murdered a lawman; the outlaws had given him the slip until Tom Bell Poole, a wounded outlaw who had been left behind, decided to talk. With his information in hand Hume arrested a whole cadre of accomplices, the newspapers nothing that they all claimed to be Confederate "freedom fighters."
In another case, Hume shot it out with rustlers, wounding one and capturing another. Because of his distinguished service to the county he was generally well liked, but not enough to become sheriff. He came in third in a three-way race. Undaunted by his political defeat, Hume went back to work, joining other officers courageously engaging outlaws Hugh DeTell and Walter Sinclair, and a man named Faust. During the gunfire exchange Hume was wounded. Faust died of bullet wounds, but Sinclair and DeTell were captured. A short time later, in November 1867, Hume arrested four suspects and solved the murder of Joseph F. Roland, a miner of French extraction.
With numerous, well-publicized cases to his credit, in the November elections of 1868 Hume was elected sheriff of El Dorado County, but he served only one term. Because of his fame as an investigator, Hume was hired in March 1872 to head the Wells Fargo & Co.'s new detective bureau, but he almost immediately requested, and received, a one-year leave of absence to serve a hitch as deputy warden for the Nevada State Penitentiary. Mired in political upheaval, plagued by terrible morale, staffed by ineffective guards, and populated wholly by unmanageable prisoners, the Nevada prison indeed needed work. Whether Hume's objectives as prison administrator were actually met is historical guesswork, but after a new warden had been appointed, Hume returned to his Wells Fargo assignment.
From the outset, his investigative expertise was in overworked demand for capturing notorious outlaws. Just as importantly, at least from the company's perspective, Hume's attention also focused on dishonest employees embezzling corporate funds. Hume successfully apprehended Richard Perkins, a.k.a. Dick Fellows, a.k.a. Richard Kirtland. He tracked down the Marysville-Downieville stage robbers, Ephraim White and George Rugg. He accurately deduced that Bob and Bill Hamilton had assisted "Big Jack" Davis in attempting to rob a stagecoach at Willow Station, 40 miles south of Eureka, Nevada-a robbery abruptly aborted when a shotgun blast killed Davis. Finally, he was triumphant in the battle of wits with the legendary stagecoach robber and highwayman Charles E. Boles, more widely known as Black Bart.
But for whatever reason, Hume was frequently characterized as a blundering victim of stagecoach robbers rather than their nemesis. On January 7, 1882, Hume was a passenger aboard the "Sandy Bob" stage when masked highwayman stopped it halfway between Tombstone and Contention in Arizona Territory. Nine male travelers, including Hume, were highjacked at the point of a shotgun. He lost two fine revolvers and $70 in cash.
The aging manhunter and detective accepted assignments as far east as Cleveland, but age gradually took its toll, although he continued working for Wells Fargo almost to the end. He died at 77 at his California home on May 18, 1904.
BOLES, CHARLES E.
HUNT, Zwingle Richard (a.k.a Zwing Hunt) (1858-1882?)
Zwing Hunt is believed to have been born in central Texas and later to have d
rifted to eastern New Mexico and western Arizona. He became a frequent presence around the Shakespeare mining community, as well as a close associate of well-known borderland rogues. He allegedly participated in numerous cattlestealing schemes and raids across the international border. Hunt was considered an excellent shot and utterly fearless. A newspaper writer once remarked, "Zwing would do to go tiger hunting with."
In 1882, a Cochise County, Arizona, cattle-theft warrant started circulating for Zwing Hunt. On March 29, 1882, murder joined the theft charge, and Hunt subsequently became involved in a furious gunbattle in which his partner, "Billy the Kid" Grounds, and a lawman were killed. Two posse members were wounded.
Hunt, shot through the chest, was hospitalized at Tombstone. Acquiescing to the desires of a renowned physician, Dr. George Goodfellow, who thought the wounded Hunt was too seriously injured to be
removed to the county jail, the authorities permitted the prisoner to remain at the medical institution pending partial recovery.
During the night of April 27, 1882, however, the prisoner's brother, Hugh, arrived from Texas and loaded Zwing into a waiting buggy. The pair simply drove out of Tombstone town. A posse later returned empty-handed. Then the rumors started.
Hugh reported that he and his brother had been attacked by Apache and that Zwing had been killed. Supposedly the scout Jim Cook had found Zwing's remains and buried the body beneath a juniper.
Reportedly a military command exhumed the body, made an examination and declared it was indeed the escaped prisoner. The soldiers reburied the body and departed what was then known as Russell's Canyon but is now known as Hunt's Canyon. (The story is unsupported by official documents, but the site is identified by an official historical marker). Other tales have Zwing managing to make it back to Texas, where he suffered forevermore from his wounds. All in all, it is now safe to say that Zwingle Richard Hunt is dead.
IVERS, Alice (a.k.a. Poker Alice) (1851-1930)
Alice Ivers was born in Sudbury, England, on February 17, 1851. Her family immigrated to America during her teens, and the petite blonde married Frank Duffield, a mining engineer who took her to the western slopes of the Rockies. There she watched her husband gamble, although she frequently participated. When he died in a mining accident, gambling was about all she knew. In fact, she became so proficient that she acquired the nickname of "Poker Alice." She gambled in Leadville, Alamosa, Georgetown, and at any other spot in the road wide enough to hold a gambling table. In Silver City, New Mexico, she broke the bank. She lived for a while in New York City, until her money ran out.
She gambled in Indian Territory (Oklahoma), at Clifton, Arizona, at Crede, Colorado, and wherever else she happened to land. As Bob DeArment, one of her biographers, says, "She took her booze straight, smoked cigars, packed a .38 on a .45 frame, and could cuss like a mule skinner." At Deadwood, South Dakota, she met and married W. G. Tubbs, and they settled down, almost. Tubbs caught pneumonia and died. Alice drove his frozen body to Sturgis, South Dakota, the nearest town, and pawned her ring to pay for the funeral. She then hired on at the nearest gambling hall and won sufficient money to redeem the ring.
Later she married George Huckert, who had previously been a hired hand working around her house. As she said later, it was cheaper to marry him than to pay him. He died within a few years.
"Poker Alice" Ivers (Robert G. McCubbin Collection)
Alice, in her seventies, with a cigar clenched tightly between her gums, operated a roadhouse between Sturgis and Fort Meade, South Dakota. Most of her patrons were soldiers. One afternoon she fired a gun through a closed door in order to quiet down a ruckus and killed a drunken soldier. A jury acquitted her, but the authorities closed down the roadhouse.
She died on February 27, 1930. The Catholic Cemetery at Sturgis, South Dakota, accepted her body.
IVES, George (1836-1863)
George Ives seems to have been born at Ives Grove in Racine County, Wisconsin, but turned to California
mining by 1850. Before long he took to gambling and drinking. Then he moved to Washington State, where he herded government mules before becoming an intense gambler, a rowdy, and a rustler. By 1862 he had drifted over to Montana, where he functioned as a lead thug in the Henry Plummer gang, operating around Bannack and Virginia City. During the following year, however, he and others held up a stage and within another month or two murdered Nicholas Tbalt, a young German. The vigilantes now took action, capturing Ives and taking him to Nevada City, Montana, where he was tried by an impromptu jury of 24 men and promptly hanged.
.366 aISO PLUMMER, WILLIAM HENRY.
JAILS and Prisons
To be jailed in the American West up until well after the Civil War often meant being tied or chained to a tree. At best, jails were little more than crude wooden buildings, which explains why so many prisoners could break free. It also explains why various townspeople often took the law into their own hands, either lynching lawbreakers before authorities could incarcerate them or simply approaching the jail, usually after dark, and removing the prisoners for execution. Most lawmen perhaps did not approve of mob action, but few lawmen put up more than a perfunctory resistance to it.
A sheriff's office was often built over a deep pit, perhaps an old cistern, locally known as "the hole." Deputies working the night shift often sat (or slept) in a chair over the hole, which meant that a prisoner could not escape without rousing the lawman.
Jails ordinarily lacked full-time security. They were usually heated (if at all) by wood or coal, and the fires were rarely stoked after dark. There was no running water, no toilet facilities, no recreation room, no cooling, no heating. Coal-oil lamps in a wooden facility were too risky, so inmates sat in the dark. Meals were skimpy and medical attention practically zero. Prisoners who were lucky had a jail mate to talk to; if they were unlucky they had too many jail mates to talk to, and so inmates had to take turns sleeping on the floor. The stench was awful. Very few jails had facilities for women.
"Rehabilitation" was unheard of. People were in jail, or prison, not to be reformed but to be punished. Such concepts as "prisoner coddling" were almost a century distant.
In 1868, the federal government built the Canon City, Colorado, territorial penitentiary. Twenty years later, it built another one at Rawlins, Wyoming. What made these detention buildings so different from others was that they had separate, individual cells, not particularly large but modern and humane according to standards of the time. For the first time, a prisoner had at least a touch of privacy, at least until the government started incarcerating two to three prisoners to a cell.
JAMES Brothers: Frank (1843-1915) and Jesse (1847-1882)
American history has few parallels to Frank and Jesse James. They were train, stage, and bank robbers; terrorists, guerrillas, and night riders; and national heroes. Both were born in Clay County, Missouri, Frank on January 10, 1843, and Jesse on September 7, 1847. Their Baptist preacher father died in California, where he had gone to mine gold; the mother married twice again, the last time to a gentle physician, Dr. Reuben Samuel. The clan supported the Confederacy, kept slaves, and believed it was their right. During the Civil War, both boys fought under guerrilla leaders William Clarke Quantrill and William "Bloody Bill" Anderson. The two James brothers shot their way through some of the bloodiest, most brutal, and fiercest guerrilla conflicts along the Missouri/Kansas border. In fact, they owed their later acclaim and success as colorful outlaws to this guerrilla training-the tactics of surprise, take no prisoners, swoop and shoot, get in and get out, and careful planning combined with the element of terror and surprise.
Jesse James (Robert G. McCubbin Collection)
When the Civil War ended, Jesse tried to surrender on April 15, 1865, but took a bullet through the lungs as he rode into Lexington, Missouri, under a white flag. After recovering, he and the James and the Younger brothers had the option of going back to farming or continuing as they had during the last few years. They agreed to take up bank and tra
in robbing. Oddly, although Jesse was the baby of the bunch, he was also the unquestioned leader. On February 13, 1866, the James boys and the Youngers robbed the Clay County Savings and Loan in Liberty,
Missouri. The only casualty was a 19-year-old boy who happened to run across the street at the wrong time. Otherwise, the bleak countryside swallowed up the outlaws. On October 30, they robbed a bank in Lexington, Missouri. Other banks also went down. In the confusion, no one could say whether the Youngers and James boys had been involved.
By now the Pinkerton National Detective Agency had been called in, and from this moment on, for a lot of reasons, bank robbery suddenly became a more dangerous occupation. Still, on December 7, 1869, Jesse, Frank, and Cole Younger hit the Daviess County Savings Bank in Gallatin, Missouri. Shooting started, people died, Jesse's horse threw him in the middle of the street, and Frank went back to get him. Everyone made it safely out of town. A bank robbery in Columbia, Kentucky, followed. Then as the countryside began concentrating on protecting banks, the gang changed its style by throwing in an occasional train robbery.
The Encyclopedia of Lawmen, Outlaws, and Gunfighters Page 28