Outlaws and Peace Officers

by Stephen Brennan

  That was the way the Kid came to break out. He went back to the Reservation and later on he surrendered. He was tried for desertion, and given a long time by the Federal Courts, but was pardoned by President Cleveland, after having served a short term.

  During the time the Kid and his associates were hiding around on the Reservation, previous to his first arrest, he and his men had killed a freighter, or he may have been only a whiskey peddler. Anyway, he was killed twelve miles above San Carlos, on the San Carlos River, by the Kid’s outfit, and when the Kid returned to the Agency after he had done his short term, and had been pardoned by the President, he was re-arrested by the civil authorities of Oila County. Arizona, to be tried for the killing of this man at the Twelve Mile Point.

  This was in the fall of 1888. I was deputy sheriff of Oila County at that time, and as it was a new county, Reynolds was the first sheriff. I was to be the interpreter at the Kid’s trial, but on July 4th, of 1888, I had won the prize at Globe for tying down a steer, and there was a county rivalry among the cow boys all over the Territory as to who was the quickest man at that business. One Charley Meadows was making a big talk that he could beat me tying at the Territorial Fair, at Phoenix. Our boys concluded I must go to the fair and make a trial for the Territorial prize, and take it out of Meadows. I had known Meadows for years, and I thought I could beat him, and so did my friends.

  The fair came off at the same time as did court in our new county, and since I could not very well be at both places, and, as they said, could not miss the fair, I was not at the trial.

  While I was at Phoenix the trial came off and several of the Indians told him about the killing. (There were six on trial) and they were all sentenced to the penitentiary at Yuma, Arizona, for life. Reynolds and “Hunky Dory” Holmes started to take them to Yuma. There were the six Indians and a Mexican sent up for one year, for horse stealing. The Indians had their hands coupled together, so that there were three in each of the two bunches.

  Where the stage road from Globe to Casa Grande (the railroad station on the Southern Pacific railroad) crosses the Gila River there is a very steep sand wash, up which the stage road winds. Going up this Reynolds took his prisoners out and they were all walking behind the stage. The Mexican was handcuffed and inside the stage. Holmes got ahead of Reynolds some little distance. Holmes had three Indians and Reynolds had three.

  Just as Holmes turned a short bend in the road and got behind a point of rocks and out of sight of Reynolds, at a given signal, each bunch of prisoners turned on their guard and grappled with them. Holmes was soon down and they killed him. The three that had tackled Reynolds were not doing so well, but the ones that had killed Holmes got his ride and pistol and went to the aid of the ones grappling Reynolds. These three were holding his arms so he could not get his gun. The ones that came up killed him, took his keys, unlocked the cuffs and they were free.

  Gene Livingston was driving the stage, and he looked around the side of the stage to see what the shooting was about. One of the desperadoes took a shot at him, striking him over the eye, and down he came. The Kid and his men then took the stage horses and tried to ride them, but there was only one of the four that they could ride.

  The Kid remained an outlaw after that, till he died a couple of years ago of consumption. The Mexican, after the Kid and his men left the stage (they had taken off his handcuffs), struck out for Florence and notified the authorities. The driver was only stunned by the shot over the eye and is today a resident and business man of Globe.

  Had I not been urged to go to the fair at Phoenix, this would never have happened, as the Kid and his comrades just walked along and put up the job in their own language, which no one there could understand but themselves. Had I not gone to the fair I would have been with Reynolds, and could have understood what they said and it would never have happened. I won the prize roping at the fair, but it was at a very heavy cost.

  In the winter I again went home and in the following spring I went to work on my mine. Worked along pretty steady on it for a year, and in 1890 we sold it to a party of New Yorkers. We got $8,000 for it.

  We were negotiating for this sale, and at the same time the Pinkerton National Detective Agency at Denver, Colorado, was writing to me to get me to come to Denver and go to work for them. I thought it would be a good thing to do, and as soon as all the arrangements for the sale of the mine were made I came to Denver and was initiated into the mysteries of the Pinkerton institution.

  My work for them was not the kind that exactly suited my disposition; too tame for me. There were a good many Instructions and a good deal of talk given to the operative regarding the things to do and the things that had been done.

  James McFarland, the superintendent, asked me what I would do if I was put on a train robbery ease. I told him if I had a good man with me I could catch up to them.

  Well, on the last night of August, that year, at about midnight, a train was robbed on the Denver & Rio Grande Railway between Cotopaxi and Texas Creek. I was sent out there, and was told that C. W. Shores would be along in a day or so. He came on time and asked me how I was getting on. I told him I had struck the trail, but there were so many men scouring the country that I, myself, was being held up all the time; that I had been arrested twice in two days and taken in to Salida to be identified!

  Eventually all the sheriff’s posses quit and then Mr. W. A. Pinkerton and Mr. McFarland told Shores and me to go at ’em. We took up the trail where I had left it several days before and we never left it till we got the robbers.

  They had crossed the Sangre de Cristo range, come down by the Villa Grove iron mines, and crossed back to the east side of the Sangre de Oristos at Mosca pass, then on down through the Huerfano Canon, out by Cucharas, thence down east of Trinidad. They had dropped into Clayton, N. M., and got into a shooting scrape there in a gin mill. They then turned east again toward the “Neutral Strip” and close to Beaver City, then across into the “Pan Handle” by a place in Texas called Ochiltree, the county seat of Ochiltree county. They then headed toward the Indian Territory, and crossed into it below Canadian City. They then swung in on the head of the Washita River in the Territory, and kept down this river for a long distance.

  We finally saw that we were getting close to them, as we got in the neighborhood of Paul’s Valley. At Washita station we located one of them in the house of a man by the name of Wolfe. The robber’s name was Burt Curtis. Shores took this one and came on back to Denver, leaving me to get the other one if ever he came back to Wolfe’s.

  After several days of waiting on my part, he did come back, and as he came riding up to the house I stepped out and told him someone had come. He was “Peg Leg” Watson, and considered by everyone in Colorado as a very desperate character. I had no trouble with him.

  We had an idea that Joe McCoy, also, was in the robbery, but “Peg” said he was not, and gave me information enough so that I located him. He was wanted very badly by the sheriff of Fremont County, Colorado, for a murder scrape. He and his father had been tried previous to this for murder, had been found guilty and were remanded to jail to wait sentence, but before Joe was sentenced he had escaped. The old man McCoy got a new trial, and at the new trial was sentenced to eighteen years in the Canon City, Colorado, penitentiary.

  When I captured my man, got to a telegraph station and wired Mr. McFarland that I had the notorious “Peg,” the superintendent wired back: “Good! Old man McCoy got eighteen years today!” This train had been robbed in order to get money to carry McCoy’s case up to the Supreme Court, or rather to pay the attorneys (Macons & Son), who had carried the case up.

  Later on I told Mr. McFarland that T could locate Joe McCoy and he communicated with Stewart, the sheriff, who came to Denver and made arrangements for me to go with him and try to get McCoy.

  We left Denver on Christmas Eve and went direct to Rifle, from there to Meeker and on down White River. When we got to where McCoy had been we learned that he had gone to Ashley
, in Utah, for the Christmas festivities. We pushed on over there, reaching the town late at night, and could not locate our man. Next morning I learned where he got his meals and as he went in to get his breakfast I followed him in and arrested him. He had a big Colt’s pistol, but did not shoot me. We took him out by Fort Duchesne, Utah, and caught the D. & R. G. train at Price station.

  The judge under whom he had been tried had left the bench when McCoy finally was landed back in jail, and it would have required a new trial before he could be sentenced by another judge; he consented to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter, and took six years in the Canon City pen. He was pardoned out in three years, I believe.

  Peg Leg Watson and Hurt Curtis were tried in the United States court for robbing the United States mails on the highway, and were sentenced for life in the Detroit federal prison. In robbing the train they had first made the fireman break into the mail compartment of the compartment car. They then saw their mistake, and did not even take the amount of a one-cent postage stamp, but went and made the fireman break into the rear compartment, where they found the express matter and took it. But the authorities proved that it was mail robbery and their sentence was life.

  While Pinkerton’s is one of the greatest institutions of the kind in existence, I never did like the work, so I left them in 1894.

  I then came to Wyoming and went to work for the Swan Land and Cattle Company, since which time everybody else has been more familiar with my life and business than I have been myself.

  And I think that since my coming here the yellow journal reporters are better equipped to write my history than am I, myself!

  Respectfully,

  TOM HORN

  CHAPTER XV.

  EXPLOITS OF THE JAMES GANG

  By J. A. Dacus

  They used to say that the James Boys and the Younger Brothers might kill men who attempted to impose upon them, but they would not rob or steal. Those who rob men of life must be the greatest criminals, and the lesser crimes are included in the greater. The career they had chosen required the service which money alone can render. These men had need for money which their legitimate resources were inadequate to supply. Those who have taken many lives will not hesitate long to take a few dollars when their necessities require it. Such are the laws which govern human actions.

  Long before many of the very respectable citizens of Clay, Clinton, and Jackson counties believed it, the sons of the excellent minister whom they had known were the most unscrupulous and daring highwaymen who had ever followed the roads on this continent. They were bold, but cautious; skilled in the school of cunning; trained in the art of killing; shrewd in planning; and swift in the execution of their designs.

  They seldom attempted a robbery except in out-of-the-way places where the presence of robbers was not expected. Nor did they ever attempt robberies a second time at the same place. Their plan was to strike unexpected blows. This week they would rob a train at Gad’s Hill, next week at Muncie, Kansas; again, they would arrest a stage on the Malvern and Hot Springs road, and then again they would flag a train at Big Springs, Wyoming Territory, a thousand miles from the scene of their last exploit.

  It was a gray, raw day in January, 1874, when the regular stage running from Malvern, on the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railway, to Hot Springs, pulled out from the little town. This is a narrow dell, shut in by abrupt hills, clad with a dense forest of pine and tangled underbrush and evergreen vines. At this particular place the valley widens, and there is a beautiful farm and lovely grounds bordering the roadside on the east and north side of the stream. West and south the deep, tangled forest crowns the hills, which rise to a great height. Here is a favorite halting place for travelers along that way. The clear waters of the Golpha afford refreshing draughts to the wearied teams.

  It was a gray, raw morning in January. The long drive from Malvern over the stony roads inclined the passengers, as well as the horses, to rest. That particular Thursday morning the drivers had stopped, as usual, directly opposite the Gains residence, which is about two hundred yards from the road, toward the northeast. The spot is about five miles southeast from Hot Springs. A little beyond the stopping place the road crosses the stream at a ford. Beyond the creek the country is very rugged, and covered with forest trees. And in those trees a band of robbers were crouched, waiting the approach of the stage. The unsuspecting pilgrims were soon moving on, inwardly congratulating themselves on the near termination of their fatiguing journey.

  The stage had proceeded well into the wood on the Hot Springs side of the Golpha, perhaps half a mile from “the watering place,” when a strong, emphatic voice called out from the borders of the brush: “Stop! d—n you, or I’ll blow your head off!” Thus commanded, of course the driver of the stage brought his team to a standstill. The passengers naturally threw aside the flaps of the vehicles and thrust out their heads to ascertain what the strange proceedings meant. They saw at once. Cocked revolvers yawned before them, and stern, harsh voices exclaimed in chorus, “D—n you, tumble out!” “Certainly, under the circumstances, we will do so with alacrity,” replied one of the passengers, a Mr. Charles Moore.

  “Raise your hands, you d—d——.” Of course every passenger promptly obeyed the order. One passenger, a rheumatic invalid, alone, was left undisturbed. Then the leader cried out:

  “Come! Be quick, form a circle here!”

  The order was obeyed. Then two of the robbers, one of whom was armed with a double-barrel shotgun and the other with a navy repeater, mounted guard over the prisoners, and made many sinister remarks, doubtless intended to be jocose, but which kept the prisoners in a tremor of apprehension all the while.

  Then two of the brigands proceeded to examine the effects and pockets of the passengers.

  It was a very good morning’s work, and the bandits were so well pleased that they were inclined to indulge in a sort of grim facetiousness. One of them unharnessed the best stage horse, saddled him and mounted him, and after trying his gait by riding up and down the road a few times, called out:

  “Boys, I reckon he’ll do!”

  Another one of the band went to each passenger as he stood in the circle. John Dietrich was the first to pass through the ordeal of cross-examination.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Little Rock,” replied Dietrich.

  “Ah, ha!”

  “Yes, have a boot and shoe store there,” remarked Dietrich.

  “You’d better be there attending to it,” was the observation of the chief of the bandits.

  “Are there any Southern men here?”

  “I am,” replied Mr. Crump and three others.

  “Any who served in the army?”

  “I did,” said Crump.

  The leader then asked him what regiment he belonged to, and what part of the country he had served in. The answers were satisfactory, and then the robber handed Crump his watch and money, remarking as he did so:

  “Well, you look like an honest fellow. I guess you’re all right. We don’t want to rob Confederate soldiers. But the d—d Yankees have driven us all into outlawry, and we will make them pay for it yet.”

  Mr. Taylor, of Lowell, Mass., was examined.

  “Where are you from?”

  “St. Louis.”

  “Yes, and d—n your soul, you are a reporter for the St. Louis Democrat, the vilest sheet in the land. Go to Hot Springs and send the dirty concern a telegram about this affair, and give them my compliments, will you?”

  Then Governor Burbank felt encouraged to ask a favor of them.

  “Will you please return me my papers?” asked the Governor. “They are valuable to me, but I am sure you can make no use of them.”

  “We’ll see,” said the leader, sententiously, and took the packet and kneeled down to examine them.

  In a few moments he took up a paper with an official seal, that excited his ire, and before he paused to examine it sufficiently to enable him to determine its character, he
reached the conclusion that the bearer was a detective, a class which he held in the utmost hatred.

  “Boys, I believe he’s a detective—shoot him, at once!” was the sententious command. In an instant Governor Burbank was covered by three ready cocked dragoon pistols. The ex-Governor was on the border of time.

  “Stop!” cried the robber, “I reckon it’s all right. Here, take your papers.”

  And the ex-Governor felt that a mighty load had suddenly been lifted from him, and that a dark cloud, which but a moment before had enshrouded the world in the deepest gloom, had drifted away, allowing the bright sun to shine out on the scenes of time.

  The passenger from Syracuse asked for the return of $5, to enable him to telegraph home for assistance.

  The chief looked at him rather sternly for a few moments, and said:

  “So, you have no friends nor money. You had better go and die. Your death would be no loss to yourself or the country. You’ll get nothing back, at any rate.”

  All this while one of the robbers, said to have been James Younger, held a double-barrel shotgun cocked in his hand, which he pointed ever and anon at Mr. Taylor, the supposed Democrat reporter, making such cheerful remarks as these:

  “Boys, I’ll bet a hundred dollar bill I can shoot his hat off his head and not touch a hair on it.” And the others would respond with a banter of a very uncomfortable character, while the facetious bandit went on: “Now, wouldn’t that button on his coat make a good mark. I’ll bet a dollar I can clip it off and not cut the coat!” With such grim jests did he amuse himself and torment the captive.

  Having thoroughly accomplished their work, the bandits made the drivers hitch up their teams and drive away. The whole transaction was completed in less than ten minutes. The robbers did not linger. In a few minutes they scattered through the brush. Some “struck out,” as they expressed it, for the Nation, another for Texas, and one for Louisiana.