The Encyclopedia of Lawmen, Outlaws, and Gunfighters

by Leon Claire Metz

  Doc Scurlock assumed leadership of the McSween fighting men during New Mexico's Lincoln County War; his name, however, never emerged as a household word. By late 1879, Scurlock began shifting away from his boisterous past. He had survived the fighting, although he did not mature as the most handsome of the Regulators-he had several missing teeth, the result of someone's bullets entering the front of his face and exiting without striking the backbone. A little disfigurement did not stop him from marrying 16-year-old Antonia Miguela Herrera. They had 10 children. The Scurlocks moved to Eastland, Texas, in 1919, where he farmed, wrote poetry, and joined the Theosophical Society. He died in Eastland, reportedly of a heart attack, on July 25, 1929. Scurlock never discussed his turbulent life and career.

  .366 t91Sr3; BILLY THE KID; LINCOLN COUNTY WAR

  SELMAN, John Henry (1839-1896)

  John Henry Selman was born in Madison County, Arkansas, the sixth child. In 1858, the Selmans moved to Grayson County, Texas, and two years later John joined the 22nd Regiment of Texas Cavalry, stationed at Fort Washita, Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory (Oklahoma). In April 1863, he deserted. By now his father seems to have died. John packed up his mother, brothers, and sisters and moved west to Fort Davis, near Albany, Texas (a community now extinct and not to be confused with the present Fort Davis). Here he ranched, farmed, and fought Indians. He also enlisted in the Stephens County company of the Texas State Troops. The 1870 census showed him working as a laborer in Colfax County, New Mexico, and as married with two children, John and William. Two years after that, he was ranching near Fort Griffin, Texas. He had also joined a group of vigilantes known as the OLM, meaning "Old Law Mob." Folks later called it the Tin Hat Brigade. For whatever reason, Selman killed a man named Haulph in Fort Griffin.

  Selman also became a deputy to Shackelford County sheriff John Larn. As a deputy, Selman killed a man named Shorty Collins. Meanwhile, the cattle herds of Larn as well as Selman unaccountably grew, causing suspicion and unease among their neighbors. Hides from their pens, with odd and blotched brands, turned up in the Clear Fork River. Selman and Larn claimed that the hides had been thrown into the river to frame them. On June 22, 1878, a group of men arrested Larn and took him to the Fort Griffin jail, where nine rifles executed him while he stood inside a cell.

  Selman, having gotten word of Larn's arrest, slipped away, showing up in Lincoln County, New Mexico, by the end of the month. There he and his brother Tom-known as Tom Cat-organized a gang known as Selman's Scouts. They raided the George Coe ranch on the Hondo River. Selman killed a man named Little Hart during a dispute over leadership. The gang committed murders and rapes. In November 1879, when New Mexico governor Lew Wallace issued an amnesty proclamation, it included about everybody except John Selman and his scouts. The gang at that point broke up, John heading for the (present) Fort Davis, Texas, where he came down with a full-blown case of smallpox. He survived, but it seriously pitted his face. The Texas Rangers arrested him and returned him to Albany, Texas, where cattle-theft warrants were still outstanding. However, no one pressed charges. Meanwhile, John's brother Tom had recently been apprehended and lynched by the OLM somewhere near or in Albany. By now, John's wife had died, so he married a Hispanic girl and disappeared with her and his two boys into Mexico. By April 1888, his second wife had died, so John and the two boys moved to El Paso, Texas. There on August 23, 1893, the 57-year-old Selman married 16-year-old Romula Granadine.

  On April 5, 1894, Bass Outlaw, a former Texas Ranger dismissed for drunkenness but now a U.S. deputy marshal, came to El Paso. He and John Selman visited Tillie Howard's sporting house, where Bass fired a revolver shot in the bathroom. Tillie rushed into the backyard blowing her police whistle, while Bass pursued her and tried to take it away. Texas Ranger Joe McKidrict attempted to break up the conflict, but Bass shot him in the back and then in the head. At that moment Constable John Selman reached the back porch and jumped off. He and Bass fired at each other. Selman's bullet struck Bass over the heart, while Outlaw's bullet whistled past Selman's head. However, the gunpowder burned Selman's eyes, and he staggered back, screaming "I can't see. I can't see!" At that instant, Outlaw fired again, the bullet striking Selman above the right knee, severing an artery.

  Selman stumbled off to bleed and be patched up. However, from that time on he could not see well, especially at night, and he walked with a limp, as well as a cane.

  Gunman and El Paso constable John Selman (R. N. Mullin Collection)

  At about this same time, noted gunslinger John Wesley Hardin came to town, hung out his law shingle on El Paso Street, and agreed to represent New Mexico cattle rustler Martin Mrose, who was hiding in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Hardin also coveted Helen Beulah Mrose, the wife of Martin, and since this presented problems, Hardin encouraged his client Martin to cross the Rio Grande on the night of June 21, 1895. To guarantee Martin's safety, Hardin had arranged for U.S. Deputy Marshal George Scarborough to protect Martin and lead him across the railroad bridge shortly after 9 P.M. However, on the north side, former El Paso police chief and now U.S. Deputy Marshal Jeff Milton and Texas Ranger Tom McMahan met Mrose and the three of them shot Mrose to death. John Selman was also likely involved in that murder, since he claimed afterward that Hardin had promised to pay him for his part in the Mrose killing but never had.

  Meanwhile, John Selman Jr. had become an El Paso police officer. He arrested Beulah Mrose one night and charged her with carrying a revolver and with being drunk and disorderly. She paid a $50 fine.

  The arrest and fine upset John Wesley Hardin, and he reportedly threatened John Selman Jr. Old John Selman, as he was generally called to distinguish him from his son, Young John Selman, now took up the cause. He and Hardin argued on San Antonio Street during the afternoon of August 19, 1895. Hardin said he didn't have a gun.

  That evening at somewhere around 10 or 11 o'clock, Hardin wandered down to the Acme Saloon at the northwest corner of San Antonio and Utah Streets. He passed Selman sitting on a barrel near the doorway, walked inside to the far end of the bar, later moved back closer to the door, rolled some dice, then said to a nearby grocer, "Brown, you have four sixes to beat."

  At that instant Constable John Selman stepped through the door, fired four quick shots, and Hardin was history. The first bullet hit Hardin in the back of the head. Selman was tried for murder. On February 12, 1896, the jury announced itself hung, 10 to 2 for acquittal.

  At this point things started to go wrong. On April 2, 1896, 21-year-old police officer John Selman Jr., and the 15-year-old daughter of the soonto-be Mexican consul in El Paso decided to elope and get married in Ciudad Juarez. When they could not locate a priest, they retired to a hotel for the night. When the girl's mother learned of events, she grabbed the Juarez chief of police, and they searched every hotel until they found the love bugs. The girl went home; young John went to the Mexican prison in Juarez.

  Four days later, on April 6, Old John, worried about his son and drinking too much, left the upstairs room of the Wigwam Saloon, took a stairway down into an alley, and encountered U.S. Deputy Marshal George Scarborough. Selman asked for Scarborough's help in getting his son out of the Mexican jail. Scarborough refused. One word led to another, and Scarborough put four bullets into Old John Selman, who died that afternoon on the operating table at Sister's Hospital (Hotel Dieu). John Selman is buried in El Paso's Concordia Cemetery.

  As for John Selman Jr., he broke out of the Juarez prison on May 7 and made his way across the Rio Grande into El Paso. Young John never saw his El Paso sweetheart again, as her mother immediately sent her to Mexico City. John subsequently joined the army and was wounded in the Philippines. In 1937, at the age of 67, he was playing cards one evening with friends in Rockdale, Texas. He suddenly stood straight up, shouted, "0 Lord, I don't want to die!" and fell dead across the card table.

  HARDIN, JOHN WESLEY; LARN, JOHN; MROSE, HELEN BEULAH; MROSE, MARTIN; OUTLAW, BASS

  SEVERNS, Harry (a.k.a. Harry Tracy) (1815-1902)

&nbs
p; Wisconsin is the state that Harry Tracy called home, although New York State and Missouri are also possibilities. For a while in his youth he worked as a logger and a railroader before burglarizing a house and going to the Utah State Penitentiary on July 11, 1897. He escaped three months later, on October 8, and put in appearances at Brown's Hole and the Hole-in-the-Wall in the Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah area, although he probably met only obscure members of the Wild Bunch.

  In Aspen, Colorado, he went to jail for killing Brown's Hole rancher Valentine Hoy. He again escaped, drifting to Portland, Oregon, this time with David Merrill, an escaped convict. Both were arrested in February 1899, charged with robbery, and sent to the Oregon penitentiary in March 1899.

  On June 9, 1902, both men escaped, killing three guards in the process and working their way into Washington State, where Tracy killed Merrill for reasons known for sure only by the two men. Tracy later said the two had drunkenly fought a duel, agreeing to step off 10 paces, turn, and fire. Tracy stepped off eight.

  Near Woodinville, Washington, two posses converged near a railroad stop named Wayne Station. One of them, with newspaper reporters Karl Anderson and Louie Sefrit along, stumbled upon Tracy. However, in the brief gunfight, Tracy killed policeman Charles Raymond and wounded Anderson. Moments later he killed Chief Deputy John Williams.

  Tracy now lurched toward Seattle, entering a farmhouse near the outskirts and forcing a Mrs. Van Horn not only to prepare him a meal but wash his clothes. She managed to tip off a grocery boy concerning her visitor, and the youngster informed Sheriff Ed Cudihee, who gathered a posse and surrounded the Seattle house. An hour or two later, Tracy left the house with two men in front as shields. When the posse screamed for him to surrender, Tracy turned his rifle their way, killed two, and fled. He slept that night in a cemetery, then twisted and turned for weeks as he worked his way out of the state. Farmers here and there noted his presence, but the fugitive always slipped eastward before the law could organize.

  On August 5, 1902, a five-man posse from Creston, Washington, converged on a barn where Tracy had been holding a family hostage after helping them repair the building. Tracy saw the lawmen coming, grabbed his rifle, and fled-not fast enough, because a bullet shattered his leg below the right knee, severing an artery as it passed through. From there he crawled into a wheat field, taking another bullet in the right thigh. He now shot himself in the head. One of the greatest manhunts in Western history had finally ended.

  The body was removed the next morning and transported to Davenport, Washington, where viewers whacked off bits of hair and pieces of clothing. From there the authorities transferred it to the prison graveyard of the Oregon State Penitentiary at Salem.

  .366 (9L50: BROWN'S PARK; HOLE-IN-THE-WALL; WILD BUNCH

  SHARP, John S. (1853?-?)

  Little is known about the origins, or in fact the ending, of John S. "Jim" Sharp, and possibly it really doesn't matter much. What is known about a smidgen of time in his middle years will suffice to take measure of his character, or lack of it. He stood about five foot three inches, and every inch was, by most accounts, bad to the bone. Most people suspected he came from Texas, but regardless, by his 30th birthday he had ambled into southeast Arizona Territory and had struck up something of a friendship with Curly Bill Brocius.

  On August 26, 1881, at Charleston, Arizona, Francisco Lara was exiting his adobe home when Sharp happened to ride by. Perhaps the men exchanged words, or maybe Sharp was feeling particularly mean. At any rate, he pulled his revolver and shot Lara dead. A posse, of course, went in pursuit, and within a few days the lawmen had Sharp tucked in the Cochise County jail at Tombstone. Sharp, of course, did not stay long. On October 24,

  two days before the Gunfight at the OK Corral, Sharp, accompanied by a cattle-stealing prisoner named Milt Hicks, and another thief named Charles "Yank" Thompson overpowered their jailer, Charlie Mason, and escaped. A posse composed of Sheriff John Behan, Deputy Billy Breakenridge, Buckskin Frank Leslie, and the Earp brothers, Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan, chased the men but came up empty.

  Sharp should have left the territory but didn't. Instead he acquired a partner named Bill Davies, and the two of them robbed a Contention, Arizona, saloonkeeper on September 7, 1882. This time Sheriff Behan probably took John Sharp into custody. A judge sentenced Sharp to 10 years in the Territorial Prison at Yuma, but even so the term proved only temporary. On January 26, 1883, Sharp broke out of prison and disappeared.

  eo BEHAN, JOHN; EARP, WYATT BERRY STAPP; EARP, VIRGIL; EARP, MORGAN; YUMA TERRITORIAL PRISON

  SHARPS Rifle

  The Sharps "Old Reliable" was a high-caliber, singleshot cartridge rifle, the most famous of its kind. Christian Sharp developed it. His rifles operated by throwing forward the trigger guard and sliding a block downward, uncovering the breech. Returning the trigger guard to its place closed the action. Cartridges supplanted the percussion cap after the Civil War. Most rifles were .45 caliber with 30-inch barrels, the weapons weighing between nine and 12 pounds. The Sharps would fire rapidly, making it a handy weapon when anticipating scraps with Indians or outlaws.

  SHEARS, George (?-1864)

  George Shears may or may not have been born in Montana, but he got there as quickly as he could. As it is, we know more about his death than his life, expect that he must have spent most of his life in outlawry. He rode with Henry Plummer, but only until the winter of 1864, when the vigilantes captured him. He reportedly cooperated with his captors, telling everything he knew, but they still made him climb to the top of a ladder, a rope having been tied around the top rung, the opposite end around his neck. While the vigilantes held the ladder upright, Shears reached the top, turned, and reportedly said, "Gentlemen, I'm not used to this. Shall I jump off or slide off? The vigilantes advised him to jump. He said goodbye, and leaped out into space, dying almost instantaneously when the slack went taut. "Shall I jump off or slide off?" from that moment on became a humorous and often-repeated vigilante expression.

  See riSO. PLUMMER, WILLIAM HENRY

  SHEDD, Warren H. (1829-1904)

  Born in New York, Warren H. Shedd meandered through several states before purchasing the San Augustine Ranch in 1881, on the eastern slope of the Organ Mountains in New Mexico. Due to its geographical location on the west side of the immense Tularosa Basin, and because of a dependable water source, the ranch became a required stop for travelers. It thus became both famous and infamous.

  With true entrepreneurial spirit, Shedd developed the ranch into a significant, although at times questionable, operation. Eventually, it contained a store, hotel, and restaurant, and quite naturally a saloon and whorehouse. However, what many uninitiated strangers didn't see was the undercurrent of criminality that made Shedd's ranch a focus for dubious characters, and from time to time the scene of wicked violence.

  Warren Shedd was on good speaking terms with nearly all the notables of the Lincoln County War, including Jesse Evans, Jim McDaniels, Tom Hill, Alexander McSween, John Tunstall, Jimmy Dolan, Dick Brewer, and most of the other players, as well as numerous territorial politicians and prominent personalities.

  Quite naturally, where liquor flowed as freely as refreshing spring water, tempers sometimes collided, such as when Chris Logan killed his tormentor; when Fred Bascom shot a fellow gambler out of the saddle; when Al Carver killed a guy named Cardwell; or when the horse-stealing Mes brothers were gunned down by a group calling itself a posse. Shedd, with considerable skill, would slyly wink and look the other way when outlaws or fugitives required commissary or a hiding place. A bill of sale for livestock transactions wasn't necessary. Business flourished. Warren Shedd had all the nefarious commerce on the west side of the Tularosa Basin pretty well locked down.

  In 1882, Shedd sold much of his real-estate interests to Benjamin Davies, a highly respected livestock breeder (president of the Dona Ana County Stock

  Association), and began devoting his efforts to minimum enterprises, which never proved successful. For a man wh
o had once been such a dominant figure in an untamed land, pictures of the past faded with times as did Shedd. Warren Shedd died on May 19, 1904, in the care of relatives at Elgin, Illinois. The ranch ended up in the hands of another southwestern powerhouse, William Webb Cox.

  COX, WILLIAM WEBB; EVANS, JESSE J.; GARRETT, PATRICK FLOYD JARVIS

  SHERIFFS

  Only a few sheriffs of the Old West would have fit the popular image of the straight-shooting law enforcer standing in the middle of the street and blowing away the bad guys. Sheriffs were politicians who went before the voters every two years, and whereas many were deadly with a gun, most depended upon their deputies for day-to-day law enforcement. However, since a sheriff was generally better known among the voters than his deputies and had the ultimate responsibility, he would be the one to raise posses, take charge, and lead them.

  In addition to considerable paperwork, his duties consisted primarily of keeping the peace. In this respect he and his deputies chased bank, train, and stage robbers; forced rowdies out of saloons; locked up drunks and local troublemakers; ordered unwanted individuals out of town; and resolved domestic disputes. The sheriff hanged the convicted or delivered them to prison, collected taxes, enforced quarantines, shot stray dogs when they became too much of a nuisance, organized fire brigades, kept order in the courtroom, and cleaned the jail. When he found a few minutes for reflection, he glanced at the calendar and decided it was time to start shaking hands with voters again. For all this he usually received a small monthly stipend, as well as mileage fees and rewards.

  SHIBELL, Charles Alexander (1841-1908)

  Unlike many of his contemporaries, Charles Alexander Shibell received a rather extensive college education in Iowa before he crossed the plains to California. As a bright, ambitious 21 year old, Shibell signed on with Col. James H. Carleton's California Column (Union) as a teamster and walked onto the Arizona stage in 1862.