The Encyclopedia of Lawmen, Outlaws, and Gunfighters

by Leon Claire Metz

  Although he received criticism regarding the appointment of deputies Bass Outlaw and George Scarborough, who were under indictment for murder, "Dick" Ware was well respected throughout Texas and was remembered for his commitment to law and order. He died in Fort Worth of heart trouble on June 25, 1902.

  .S66 akO BASS, SAM; CANNON, A. B.; GRIMES, ALBERT CALVIN; HAROLD, GEORGE; OUTLAW, BASS; TEXAS RANGERS

  WATSON, Ellen (a.k.a. Ella Watson, Cattle Kate) (1861-1889)

  Ellen Watson likely was born near Ontario, Canada, but her family later migrated to Lebanon, Kansas, where she married a farmer named William Pickell. They later divorced, and Kate, as she was now generally known, began drifting about, by most accounts living as a prostitute, waitress, housekeeper, cook, whatever it took to stay alive.

  Sometime during the mid- to late 1880s, she showed up in Sweetwater Valley, Wyoming, where she teamed up with James Averell, a saloon keeper and homesteader. The couple might also have married, although if so, both seem to have retained separate, although side-by-side, ranches, which they stocked with stolen steers from nearby large outfits. One story has it that the voluptuous Watson swapped sex for cattle; if so, her bed must have been constantly warm.

  Whatever, the big ranchers charged her and Averell with cattle theft, and Averell retaliated with letters to the editor, all bitterly attacking the Wyoming stockmen. Meanwhile, Averell and Cattle Kate, as she was becoming known, seemed to have plenty of money and lots of livestock until their good fortune came to a violent end on July 20, 1889, when neighboring ranchers rounded up both Kate and James Averell, loaded them into a buckboard, drove them to the banks of the Sweetwater River, and lynched them from nearby cottonwood trees. By some accounts their hands were not tied; if so, they slowly strangled while desperately trying to free themselves.

  See C119o; CANTON, FRANK; JOHNSON COUNTY WAR

  WEBB, John Joshua (1841-1882?)

  This lawman/desperado seems to have been born in Keokuk County, Iowa, and to have worked as a hunter and teamster for surveyors before drifting into other occupations by the time he reached Dodge City, Kansas, in 1877. There he served as an occasional policeman as well as a sometime posse mem

  her for Bat Masterson. He rode with lawmen during a futile pursuit of the outlaw Sam Bass.

  By 1880, he had drifted south and west to Las Vegas, New Mexico, where he became a special officer as well as city marshal in early 1880. While wearing the badge, he attempted to hold up a business house and killed Michael Kelliher during the botched robbery. A jury thought he ought to hang for that, but Governor Lew Wallace commuted the sentence to life. In the meantime gunman David Rudabaugh killed a jailer during an unsuccessful attempt to free Webb.

  Webb and Rudabaugh were now in the same San Miguel County jail; they and two others, on September 19, 1881, attempted to break out. Guards thwarted the escape, in the process killing an unidentified prisoner. On December 3, Webb, Rudabaugh, and five others did escape. Rudabaugh was likely slain later in Chihuahua City, Mexico, during a drunken cantina fight. Webb disappeared, one report saying he died at Winslow, Arizona, of smallpox.

  .366 BASS, SAM; MASTERSON, WILLIAM BARCLAY; MASTERSON, JAMES; RUDABAUGH, DAVID

  WELLS Fargo

  In March 1852, a group of expressmen, among them Henry Wells and William George Fargo, organized a company to deliver mail, packages, and paper from the East to San Francisco. From there the shipments would be distributed to California mining camps. The business became so successful that Wells Fargo also entered banking, dropping off packages at the mining camps, purchasing gold dust for $15 an ounce, and later selling it to the U.S. Mint for $18.

  Since stagecoaches carried money as well as prosperous passengers, in addition to the driver, they also carried shotgun guards. The firm also utilized an extensive system of investigators and gunmen, people who operated on their own as well as in cooperation with local, state, and federal authorities. While the number of robberies, attempted robberies, and killings has never been tabulated, over a period between the late 1850s and early 1900s the numbers ran into the dozens. Without Wells Fargo, the West would not have been nearly as wild.

  By 1864, Wells Fargo & Co. (as it was known then), which already had financial interests in the Overland Mail Company, had plunged deep into purchasing stage lines throughout California and Nevada. It even operated a successful Pony Express route for faster, if more limited, service. By 1866, practically every successful overland distributor in the West had united under the name of Wells, Fargo & Co. Then in 1901, the company kept the same name, but under different management moved its headquarters to New York. In the process it merged with other firms such as the American Railway Express Company. Today Wells Fargo is a giant factor in American growth and history, although it is frequently remembered in terms of banks, stagecoaches, stagecoach robberies, and thrilling days of yesteryear.

  WELLS, Samuel (a.k.a. Charlie Pitts) (?-1876)

  This Independence, Missouri-born desperado joined the James gang, participating in the July 7, 1876, train robbery at Otterville, Missouri. Fresh from that he rode with the James-Younger bunch to Northfield, Minnesota, and participated in the First National Bank robbery of September 7.

  Along with the others, he retreated south through and across the Minnesota rivers and forests, sticking with the Youngers when the two groups split up. A posse trapped the Youngers, however, and Charlie Pitts died during the gunfight. One of the possemen cut off his ear. The body was sent to St. Paul, arriving in such a foul condition that the flesh had to be removed from the bones. Dr. Henry F. Hoyt kept the skeleton in his Chicago office for many years.

  .Se+' JAMES BROTHERS; NORTHFIELD RAID; YOUNGER BROTHERS

  WEST, Richard (a.k.a. Little Dick) (1865-1898)

  This Texas-born outlaw worked as a cowboy until 1892, when he met Bill Doolin, an Oklahoma outlaw whom West helped rob Missouri's Southwest City Bank on May 10, 1894. That wasn't the luckiest thing he ever did, as he suffered severe wounds while killing one man and wounding another, the dead man being a Missouri state senator, J. C. Seaborn.

  On April 3, 1885, Little Dick helped Doolin rob a train at Dover, Oklahoma, after which West dropped out of sight for 12 years until reappearing in Tecumseh, Oklahoma, as the organizer and head of the Jennings gang. But from here on, Little Dick's life was just one financial disaster after another; he continuously hit Oklahoma trains, but nothing happened. A

  successful robbery against the Rock Island on October 1, 1897, hardly brought in sufficient funds to feed the outlaws' horses. It was time for Richard West to go, and the law caught up with him near Guthrie, where a posse led by Heck Thomas and Bill Tilghman shot him to death.

  .366 OL30; DOOLIN, WILLIAM M.; TILGHMAN, WILLIAM MATHEW, JR.; THOMAS, HENRY ANDREW

  WHEELER, Benjamin F. (a.k.a. Ben Burton; Ben Roberston) (1854-1884)

  This desperado/lawman grew up in Rockdale, Milam County, Texas. He left Texas in 1878 after a shooting that left another man wounded, then moved on to Caldwell, Kansas, where be became City Marshal Henry Brown's assistant marshal.

  Not long afterward, he and Brown and others held up a bank in Medicine Lodge, Kansas, where Wheeler killed the cashier, George Geppert. The commotion aroused the town, the residents shooting Brown to death and capturing Wheeler and two others. All were promptly lynched.

  S66 aISO BROWN, HENRY

  WHEELER, Frank S. (?-1932)

  The early history of this Arizona lawman is obscure. He was born in Hazelhurst, Mississippi. By 1880, the family had migrated to Texas, settling at Vernon in Wilbarger County. Frank spent much of his youth as a cowboy and in 1900 moved to Arizona, where he joined the Arizona Rangers on September 10, 1902. He was a tall man, about six feet three inches, and as quiet as he was thin. Only one man ever stayed with the Arizona Rangers longer than Frank Wheeler.

  The Arizona Rangers were organized along the same lines as the Texas Rangers and in many respects were as much like a military organization as a police one. Wheeler
worked primarily in Graman, Cochise, and Pima Counties, with the majority of his investigations centering around Yuma. In 1905, he married Lenora Rieff. They would have 10 children.

  Many years earlier Kerrick had killed a sheepherder in California and got 20 years in San Quentin but was pardoned. In late June 1907, Wheeler and Yuma County deputy sheriff John Cameron trailed two horse thieves, James Kerrick and Lee Bentley, for five burning days toward the Mexican border. The lawmen tracked them down on June 30 at a water seep known as Sheep Dung Tanks in the western end of Pima County. Early in the morning, after the lawmen called on the two men to surrender, a gunfight erupted, and the two outlaws died.

  Later at an inquest, Ranger Frank Wheeler made the following statement:

  When we were sire they were dead we put them on their own horses and rode twenty five miles with them to the Ten Mile Wells, ten miles fro»z Aio, Arzona, We sent word to Sentinel to wire Pima County fora coroner. A coroner re fused to come, and a wire was sent to Silver Bell for the justice of the peace, and he refused to come. So it was all day Sunday and until 2 o'clock Monday when .Sheriff Pacheco {of Maricopa County] arrved, before we buried the men. We did not dare leave them on top of the ground any longer, on account of the heat, so I made boxes for them, and lowered them into the ground. Even when Pacheco got there the bodies were decorrrposed beyond recognition.

  Wheeler also noted that no rewards had been offered for the two outlaws.

  After the rangers disbanded in 1909, Wheeler became a full-time Yuma County deputy sheriff, a part-time guard at the territorial prison, and a night watchman for the Laguna Dam project. Meanwhile, Wheeler and his wife permitted two girls to live in a tent in their yard while attending school. For whatever reason, the arrangement went sour, for the girls' father and his brother-in-law, Frank Butts, attempted to remove the girls and their property. A fight subsequently started between Wheeler and the father and then between Wheeler and both men. A few days later Wheeler and Butts collided again at the Barrelhouse Saloon. This time Wheeler shot Butts; he almost died. Wheeler was fined and released.

  Within the next year or so, Wheeler developed bronchial asthma, and his health steadily deteriorated. He died of heart failure on December 20, 1932.

  .366 ARIZONA RANGERS; WHEELER, HARRY

  WHEELER, Harry (1875-1925)

  This lawman, who may or may not have been related to Arizona Ranger Frank Wheeler, was born in Jacksonville, Florida, the son of a career army officer. In 1897, he joined the U.S. Army, served in the cavalry in South Dakota as well as in Arizona Territory, and

  might have made a career of it except that a horse kicked him in the stomach on October 9, 1901. He took his discharge, then joined the Arizona Rangers as a private in July 1903. Three months later he made sergeant, and on the night of October 30, 1904, at about 11:30 P.M. in the Palace Saloon in Tucson, he tasted blood.

  Harry Wheeler interrupted a gambling game robbery, and he and outlaw Joseph Bostwick exchanged shots, Wheeler's being the more effective. Bostwick died of a chest wound, and Wheeler went on to other assignments. In July 1906, the Arizona Rangers promoted him to lieutenant.

  Not too many months after that, James A. Tracy married an already much-married woman. He left her when he found out, but distance and feelings were two different things; Tracy became aggravated when she married someone else. The brooding Tracy tracked down the two in Benson, Arizona, and threatened to kill them. Fortunately, Harry Wheeler happened to be around. His attempted arrest ended in an exchange of gunfire. Tracy shot Wheeler twice, and Wheeler shot Tracy four times. Tracy died.

  Soon afterward, Capt. Thomas Rynning resigned from the Arizona Rangers, and Lt. Harry Wheeler accepted promotion to his position. Wheeler became an exceptional leader and administrator, working in particular with Arizona lawmen like Cochise County deputy sheriff George Humm, the two of them going after George Arnett, a horse thief. At about 3 A.M. on the night of May 5, 1908, the officers stumbled onto Arnett in the dark. Both sides exchanged shots from horseback, and early the next morning, following the horses' trail, they found Arnett dead alongside the road.

  The Territory of Arizona dissolved its ranger force in 1909, at which time Wheeler became a deputy sheriff of Cochise County. In January 1911, he became sheriff.

  In 1917, the very patriotic Wheeler joined the army to fight in World War I, but he was found physically unfit and discharged that same year. He subsequently went back to work as sheriff of Cochise County, at the same time becoming very offended by the IWW, the International Workers of the World. It seems that the union had picked this particular time to call a strike, which meant that the United States during this period of war would suffer a reduction in copper production. Wheeler resolved the strike by rounding up dozens of strikers, most of them at gun point, loading them on a train, and shipping them into the middle of the Arizona-New Mexico desert, where they were turned loose to fend for themselves. The event-known as the Bisbee Deportations-created national headlines.

  With the deportation controversy raging about his ears, Wheeler Joined the Arizona 308th Cavalry, took officer training at Fort Myers, Virginia, and by July 1918 was in Brest, France. But he was ordered back to Arizona to face charges of "kidnapping and unlawful arrests" with regard to the Bisbee Deportations. Eventually, all charges were dropped, and Wheeler became a police officer in Douglas, Arizona. He resigned in 1920 and thereafter worked his ranch and participated in numerous charitable fund-raising activities. He died in Douglas, Arizona, of pneumonia on December 15, 1925.

  See Aqo; ARIZONA RANGERS; RYNNING, THOMAS H.

  WHITE, George E. (1831-1902)

  Cattle king George E. White was born in Lewis County in what is now West Virginia, but in 1849 he found himself in California with thousands of other Gold Rush dreamers. He opened a ferry service across the Sacramento River. Then, for whatever reason, he migrated to Missouri. By 1854, however, he had returned to California, settling in the beautiful Round Valley of the Sacramento River. Within three years (1857) he owned 5,000 acres in Yolla Bolly country and operated a ranching empire with 700 head of cattle. From that time on, digging for gold was behind him-gold was on the hoof. To make sure he hung onto it, White staffed and protected his empire largely with desperadoes who killed intruders on the spot. This did not keep him out of court, of course, but he did enjoy trials and their legal formalities.

  A physician once described White as a "tall, handsome man, uneducated, a person who spelled Cat with a K," but he "had a retinue of retainers who were as loyal to him as Highlanders to their Chief." White established a small town called Covelo, where he owned most of the buildings and many of the businesses. His murderous foreman, John David Wathen, better known as "Wylackie John," occasionally shot people at White's request and did his best to run off several of White's wives when the boss tired of them. Squatters and people who for one reason or another had aroused White's anger turned up

  either missing or dead. White usually confiscated their property, while Wylackie John burned the house and sometimes buried the bodies. Most had been shot; some had been poisoned. White got away with this primarily because he lived and operated in a remote, mountainous region.

  White went through wives in a hurry, usually accusing them of infidelity, and the courts went along with him. Some of the women countersued, charging that he and Wylackie John planned to kill them.

  The only woman White really trusted was a San Francisco spiritualist who went by the name of Mrs. Whitney. But even she did not foresee that Wylackie John would pull a gun on a friend. However, John was too slow, and the "friend" killed him.

  White replaced Wylackie John with a cattleman named Alfred "Jack" Littlefield, who had a fondness for other people's horses. Jack beat a horse-theft charge in open court, but a few months later, in September 1894, someone shot him in the back. He survived that only to be lynched, then cut down and tied to a tree, evidently by some of White's men. John had not only a broken neck from the rope but three bullets in him. />
  Although the court trial went on for years, and White was suspected as a co-conspirator, he never went before a jury. In fact, throughout his life, others had done his killing. He had been in danger only once, when he accidentally shot himself in the leg. He died later of stomach cancer and was buried on his own property in a huge, heavy, metal casket. The newspapers mentioned that even as he died, his last wife was in the process of suing him for divorce and demanding a lot of money. The Sara Frmra,_w,_- F_% rrxa aer recalled that "in the early days he had many quarrels with neighboring cattle men, and those who ventured too close to Round Valley never got away again, although no one was ever found who would tell what happened. In this way several men met sudden death."

  WHITEHILL, Harvey Howard (1837-1906)

  Harvey Howard Whitehill is most often mentioned as the first lawman to arrest Billy the Kid, doing so at Silver City, New Mexico Territory, when the future badman was a mere child.

  Whitehill was born at Bellfontaine, Ohio, on September 2, 1837. By the time he was 21 years old he was already a seasoned miner in Colorado, having prospected at such sites as Cherry Creek, Leadville, and Russell Gulch. A staunch Democrat, Harvey Whitehill served as sergeant-at-arms in the first Colorado territorial legislature. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Whitehill joined the Union army, spent most of his military career in New Mexico, and was discharged on December 19, 1865. In 1870, after a five-year stint prospecting around Elizabethtown, New Mexico, Harvey migrated to the area that would become Silver City. His son Wayne was born in that community.

  As one of the founding fathers of Silver City, Whitehill was appointed county coroner. When the incumbent sheriff, Charles McIntosh, disappeared into Mexico, Harvey assumed that position. It was while sheriff that Whitehill arrested "the Kid," ostensibly to teach the youngster a rehabilitative lesson. Billy failed to get the message.