HIDETOWN, TEXAS: The BAD GUYS

The BAD GUYS

Billy the Kid- (ABOVE) in every way fitting the best descriptions of him, “... about five feet eight or nine, … slightly built and lithe,... clear blue eyes,... quite a handsome looking fellow, the only imperfection being two teeth, slightly protruding...” and a another fellow, perhaps sometime outlaw, sometime lawman Burt Alvord. We have no historical record of the two ever meeting or knowing each other, but it would not be unlikely. Eugene Cuningham noted that early in his "manhood" (which started when he was 10!) “Billito” (pronounced BE-YEE-TOE) joined up with a “nameless companion” and raided around Arizona, killing and robbing some Apache trappers, taking their horses and selling their pelts.

The Kid traveled around the West quite a bit, after being orphaned in Silver City, New Mexico, raising himself on the streets of mining towns, leaving a trail of mishaps typical for such a boy with no family or support. Billy and his older brother split up pretty quickly, and even though he often worked in concert with others, such as dead-end delinquent Jesse Evans, he once admitted, “I was for Billy all the time.”

And he had to be. Small and somewhat petite, with a impish smile and a “smart mouth,” Billy was often the target of drunks and saloon bullies, and in one case when a blacksmith decided to teach him some manners, and pinned him down, Billy took the man's own pistol and killed him with it. By the time Englishman John Tunstall hired him with notions of his rehabilitation, Billy had already killed several men. Tunstall had taken him in on the charitable recommendation of Dick Brewer, his foreman. The well-meaning new boss gave him a wonderful horse, a new gun and saddle, and Billy noted it was the first time anyone had given him anything. But it would not be enough. Every western image collector thinks he has a photo of Billy, and I have several. The one above is my best Billy doppelganger.

By this time, idealistic, tragically naive John Tunstall was already a marked man, and soon he and many of Billy's new friends would be dead. Tunstall's attorney, Alexander McSween had gotten embroiled in a controversy after he tried to recover a life insurance claim for L.G. Murphy & Co., some of Tunstall's arch business rivals. Bad blood had turned into an acid hailstorm. Murphy's partner had died unexpectedly while in Germany and “The Company” was the main beneficiary of his life insurance policy. "It's my money I want it NOW!" But business-like, and a little susupicious, McSween expressed cold feet in distributing the proceeds... As a responsible attorney, he could not dispurse the proceeds until all heirs could be identified, and so the frustrated Company accused him of procrastination and graft. When McSween stood his ground, he and all of his associates were suddenly sucked into a ruthless and irreversible machine.

Since McSween and Tunstall were partners in a ranch, the Company decided to move against them by seizing their property, their cattle and any valuables. It was probably just a threat, but it did not work. In a later deposition, McSween said in order to get their $8000 insurance settlement, they took $40,000 worth of property. In an obviously hostile and illegal overreach, over thirty men were sworn in by Sheriff Brady, known as the “Murphy Sheriff,” and were sent to “attach” the ranch. It seems everyone had sufficiently lawyered up.************* But Company bullets would soon solve the controversy.

Tunstall, convinced that he could win a court battle, (This was America, after all!) forbade that the ranch be defended by gun play. This greatly frustrated his men, who did not believe in the system, or at least the one active in the New Mexico Territory. He and all of his ranch employees were reluctantly abandoning the site, when a handful of deputized gunmen led by Billy Morton and Jesse Evans, Billy's old friends and some of the worst outlaws in the Southwest, came upon the hapless Englishman by himself, disarmed and then immediately executed him like a rabid skunk. Then they killed his horse as well. One witness on the posse claimed he heard them shoot Tunstall's pistol a couple of times, probably just in case, so they could claim self-defense. That was always a reliable antidote to any murder charge.

Enraged, Billy and Dick Brewer then reported the crimes and organized themselves, and Brewer was made a “special constable” and the others sworn in as his deputies, and began calling themselves “the Regulators.” Unfortunately, they proceeded to ignore all laws or procedures in law enforcement and set out to get revenge for the murder of their beloved, deceased English employer friend. Their brand of justice was swift. Soon some of the suspected murderers, members of Brady's posse, were found dead, and then the leader of the Regulators, Constable Dick Brewer was killed after a bloody, amateur arrest attempt. To even the score, Billy and the Regulators, now led by “Doc” Scurlock, assassinated Sheriff Brady.*********************************************** But they were soon to learn, corruption of the law never justifies more corruption.

People became afraid to come to Lincoln, and profits at Murphy & Co plummeted. Old man Murphy pulled out, and Tom Catron, a famously corrupt New Mexico Attorney and politician, and the lien-holder of the Company, took over the store. Powers were shifting and Pressures were mounting. Under Catron's iron foist, Peppin's posse enjoyed absolute legal protection, and the license to kill. They craftily ambushed some of the Regulators, and Frank McNab was killed, and two more taken prisoner.

As the death count grew, so did the concerns and insulted pride of the controlling powers of the state. The great Republican machine of New Mexico began to coalesce. The largely Hispanic “Santa Fe Ring,” led by Tom Catron, Governor Axtell, newly appointed Sheriff Peppin, and James Dolan, recently discharged from the Army and the top-gun of the Company, and a true villain if there was one in this scenario, collectively gathered their loins and declared an ALL**** OUT**** WAR.

And no war would be complete without an army. As it turned out for Catron, Dolan & Co., they had a real one. Enter Colonel N. A. M. Dudley and thirty troopers of the Ninth Cavalry. Dudley was a deeply compromised officer, already in debt to Catron, don of the Santa Fe Ring and his Santa Fe law firm, who had defended him in a recent court marshal. So Dudley chose to ignore military forbiddance of involving troops in local law enforcement affairs, and chose to support the Catron/Murphy-Dolan/ Republican faction, and did it with military flair, Gatling guns and all.

Everything came to a head when McSween, Billy and almost everybody they called a friend were surrounded by the Company's gunmen, Sheriff Peppin's deputies and the Ninth Cavalry while they desperately fortified McSween's home in Lincoln. A large Mexican militia under Martin Chavez came to lend moral support to Billy and his band, but soon evaporated as the conflict intensified. A lone rider came in to the house to help, young Tom O'Folliard. With so many of Billy's gang gone, he would serve as Billy's best friend, to the not-too-distant end.*******

Perhaps Dudley merely intended to set up right between the two opposing sides, hoping to keep the peace, but in effect, provided a military action to protect the Republicans, who now were able to move closer to McSween and company. Dudley then threw all caution to the wind, and threatened to blow the McSween home to kingdom come, if anyone fired upon his men... The game was set. History would call it the “Battle of Lincoln.”

For several days the Regulators watched as the forces around them multiplied, and fortified and then began to socialize and enjoy an old-fashioned barbecue. After the Army moved in, McSween did what lawyers always do, he tried to negotiate... and sent his twelve-year old daughter with a note explaining that his men, the Regulators, were sworn Peace Officers and had warrants for some of the men now besieging them, including Sheriff Peppin, and pleaded for Dudley's neutrality. When that failed to move the old soldier, Mrs. Susan McSween did what women always do, and ran to the Colonel, mistaking him for a man of reason, and passionately begged for him to be appropriately neutral, and provide protection for both sides, and help remove her husband and other family members and to de-escalate the confrontation.

Dudley ignored her and sent her away. It was obvious he had orders to follow, although they may not have been legal or military.

Emboldened by the military presence, Sheriff Peppin and his gangsters, some of them guilty of the very crimes the Regulators were formed to punish, set fire to the McSween home. Mrs McSween, positive that now Colonel Dudley would capitulate and help her, once again ran to his tent, begging again for their lives, begging for him to take charge and prevent a massacre. Drunk and stone-faced, all he provided to her was a military escort back to her house, now in flames.

It took some time for the house to burn, as it was made of adobe, an ancient mixture of mud and straw.... but it finally began to break down, and the Regulators made a run for it. They decided the only way for any of them to survive was to rush the lines all at once. McSween hugged his wife and led the charge, probably thinking that the soldiers and lawmen might not gun down a local lawyer. Harvey Morris, a young law student was right behind him, giving him support. They were both unarmed, and terribly foolish in their hopes. They were cut down in a hail of bullets, as the Regulators scambled out the back of the house and across the street and into the dark. But not before Francisco Semora and Vicente Romero were gunned down like ducks in a shooting gallery. Tom O. Folliard, fresh into his life as gunfighter, leaped out but mercifully stopped to comfort dying Morris, but he was instantly hurried on. Perhaps an act of the angels, the shooting seemed to inexplicably cease as he was lost in a moment of compassion. In the end, Billy, Doc Scurlock, Tom O. Folliard, Fred Waite, John Middleton and Charlie Bowdre managed to escape- To endless running, daily treachery, and sleepless nights. This was the life of the celebrated western outlaw.

The only mercy shown that day was to a missionary, Doctor Ealy, McSween's neighbor, who asked if he could move his cherished organ out of his home, as it was now on fire too. Even ruthless killers could appreciate the value of music and a musician on the frontier.

The gang regrouped. They vowed to one another to fight to the last man. The problem now was that it was them against the whole world... Several of the men were wounded. Tall and level-headed, Doc Scurlock was still the acknowledged leader of the gang, but not for long. Billy was on fire with murder in his eyes. He had already sworn to kill every man who had participated in the murder of his boss, and now that list had grown geometrically with the deaths of McSween and Brewer, and too many others to name.

Charlie Bowdre was still healing from the Regulator debacle where Dick Brewer and two of Murphy's posse had been killed in a shoot out between "Peace Officers". Whatever hell-raising he had done before, most historians agree that he was marked for hanging when he killed Deputy Buckshot Roberts while trying to arrest him at Blazer's Mill. In pain and shaken, his resolve was beginning to weaken. He was just a humble Mississippi cowboy who had actually tried to make it in his own business. This kind of trouble had never been in the picture. Having partnered with Doc Scurlock in a small cheese factory, he had gotten married to a sweet loving wife who just wanted him to stay at home. And he wanted to. In a chance roadside encounter, Bowdre had been encouraged by Pat Garrett to give it up and turn himself in, and take advantage of the governor's generous amnesty offer. He declined for the moment, (worst mistake of his life) but later He wrote a letter explaining that he had decided to accept it... But then a posseman's rifle mistook him for the Kid... and he was suddenly out of the cheese business. Half-Chickasaw, handsome Fred Waite (Wayte) had just wanted to be a cowboy, and liked working for John Tunstall, but was looking for a quick exit lane from the war he had fallen into, now a death trap he was slipping into out of loyalty.

Tom O. Folliard, was the newest recruit, but just a young man, with little gunfighting experience. Born in Uvalde, Texas, like Billy he grew up an orphan, and was raised in Mexico after both of his parents perished from smallpox. Later his uncle retrieved and raised him, but outlaw fantasies generated by dime-store novels led him to runaway while still a teenager to New Mexico, where he took up cattle rustling (an old Texas tradition... really!). When he heard of the siege at Lincoln, he rushed to the aid of his idol, Billy the Kid. It had to have been the worst decision he made in his short life, for it would soon be ended, with a bullet in the chest.

The gang flew and found temporary refuge in Texas, rustling and selling stolen horses to Panhandle ranchers, trying all the while to figure out their next step. The Lincoln County War was not over. They stayed out of trouble, and nursed their wounds, and some even took jobs. Henry Brown took a job as a deputy in Tascosa. This would be the beginning of his apparent rehabilitation... until he was hung for bank robbery in Kansas years later.******* John Middleton tapped out, still suffering from his wounds, and wandered out of this trouble into new ones, eventually joining Belle Starr and her gang. After everything that happened, Fred Waite decided to return to the reservation in the Indian Territory. He would escape his outlaw past and be elected to the Choctaw/Chickasaw Legislature and Senate, and served as Speaker of the House and Attorney General of the Chickasaw Nation. With far less ambitions, the rest of the gang split up and agreed to meet up in Ft. Sumner, and continue their depredations. They would spend the rest of their lives getting even.

Back in New Mexico, John Chisum and Jim Dolan led a citizen's committee to elect a new man to be Lincoln County Sheriff- somebody they had great confidence in... an easy going but deadly gunmen when necessary; a tall buffalo hunter, Indian fighter, bartender and even a friend of Billy the Kid's, named Pat Garrett (BELOW). His main job, and little did he know his destiny, was to be the man to bring Billy in.************ Dead or Alive.

Billy and Tom O'Folliard filtered gently back into Ft Sumner, New Mexico. The Kid had added three more notches on his pistol butt, and was hoping to find some girls and keep a low profile until things cooled down. He renewed his friendship with Pat Garrett, who served him drinks at a Ft Sumner wet spot, for the last time. Now his gang was smaller, and with raw recruits like Tom Pickett and O'Folliard, he needed a real shooter, and added “Dirty” Dave Rudabaugh, once the prime target of Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson in Kansas. Doc Scurlock and Charlie Bowdre found them, and they were soon raiding John Chisum's pastures with a vengeance.

Pat Garrett was elected as Sheriff, and quickly deputized under the old sheriff, putting him in the field early. He moved to Roswell, and knew that things had suddenly changed. Poles had shifted. The next time he met Billy it would be to end his criminal career, whatever thet took. Meanwhile President Hayes tried to address the mess in New Mexico with a new territorial governor, former Civil War General Lew Wallace, who had become a serious writer. Idealistic, distracted on a book he was writing named Ben Hur, and totally unprepared for the challenge, Wallace kicked off by granting a general amnesty to all parties of the Lincoln County War. Like a parent who cannot assign guilt among the children... he either had to imprison or exonerate everyone.

This seemed reasonable. Unfortunately, right before he arrived, Jim Dolan and a drunk gunslinger murdered a fearless and pesky attorney named Chapman, another naive idealist who believed in the American judicial system, and a former partner of McSween's who was planning on prosecuting Colonel Dudley and others responsible for the bloodshed in “the Battle of Lincoln.” He was shot down in the street like a mangy dog and set afire. You can't make this stuff up! Now the murderers of this recent outrage HAD to be punished regardless of the governor's pardon.

As it turned out, incredibly, coincidentally Billy was just down the street, and had just had a drink with Jesse Evans and Bill Campbell, a few yards away in what was probably an effort to prevent his involvement. They had just convinced him to “bury the hatchet,” to end the long-standing feud which had nearly consumed them all, then Campbell walked out and presided over the notorious scene with poor Chapman which ended so horribly. Furious, and doubtful of their sincerity about the promises just made between them, Billy let the governor know that he would gladly testify against these murderers. Soon he was negotiating his own pardon in a confidential rendezvous with Governor Wallace, as he promised to turn state's evidence against Evans, Campbell and Dolan.

Soon the Lincoln County war would devolve from a mess into a travesty. The Governor would betray Billy, the murderers would be set free, Billy would flee for his life, and he and his gang would be hunted down and captured and prosecuted. Charlie Bowdre and Tom O'Folliard would be killed in the chase, and Billy would escape again, killing two more men and demanding Garrett's utmost perseverance, and something he always had when he needed it: Hunter's luck. Thus began the most famous manhunt in American history.

John Wesley Hardin was the worst of the West. If the body count was not enough to qualify him, his narcissism, remorselessness and impetuousness would have tipped the scales.

Much to his disappointment, “Wes” missed the fighting during the Civil War. He was a preacher's kid, and felt frustration from his father's pacifism, and he carried deep resentments about the results of the war, and spent most of his life working through these issues. It would be easy to try to psycho-analyze him, but twenty-eight self-confessed killings should convince the most skeptical that Hardin had a huge “chip on his shoulder,” and a low regard for human life. Although he claimed that he always faced his targets, most of his victims never saw it coming. His morbid legend grew even worse, if it could be, than his criminal record, and what survived was one of the most accommodated and celebrated bad men to ever terrorize Texas.

Hardin's troubles started early, and at that age when other men learned to control their tempers, he freely satisfied his. His mortified father tried to make excuses and protect him, which only made the carnage grow, so by the time he was fifteen he had already killed four men. And Wes would have provided, what were to him, very justifiable reasons; A Black man threatened him; Some “Yankee” lawmen tried to take him to the Federal authorities in Waco... It was either he- or them.

Texas was full of such incorrigibles, who hated Northerners and resented Blacks, and who had learned to shoot before they had learned to think. The Civil War had turned fortunes and families upside down, and many Southern malcontents started their life-paths in such turmoil. But Wes Hardin chose the most violent solutions to every confrontation, and made his life's work that of taking no crap and killing all who dished it out.

After a string of deadly disputes, Wes needed to vacate the Lone Star State, and joined some cousins, the Clements boys, who were driving cattle up to Abilene, Kansas. On the drive he killed a few more sassy bullies, and by the time he arrived in Abilene, he was a cocky, gunslinging sociopath. Enjoying encouragement from his admiring peers, he cunningly looked for edgy situations where he could make matters worse. Everybody in Abilene was anxious to see how this youngster measured up to the town marshal, Wild Bill Hickok, who was a living legend by then. Fellow Texans Phil Coe and Ben Thompson, now Abilene saloon owners and known to despise Hickok, did their best to pit them against one another.

The two had come to know the trigger-happy nemesis in Brenham, Texas, where his needless local killings were all the rage, as they conversed and gambled away their last few dollars. Wes Hardin had become the town bully, and had many friends who saw him as a Southern avenger. Thompson, a former soldier in the Confederacy and a mercenary in Maximillian's army in Mexico, was a veteran gunmen already, and fairly short-tempered. Since he was on a losing streak, and their egos were bound to clash, he avoided a conflict and partnered up with Coe and vacated Texas. They planned on starting a gambling dynasty in the wild and woolly cattle towns of Kansas... The match-up between these two notorious killers would have been any westerner's most memorable moment. And now here was Hardin again, in Kansas; The perfect person to either get rid of Hickock... or die trying. Thompson was trying to settle down and rake in a fortune at his new Saloon and gambling house, and so he used every opportunity to steer the loose Texas cannon towards the former Union sniper whom any southerner could hate.

Then one night, after outwitting and taming Marshal Hickock, Wes supposedly had to kill a knife-wielding prowler in his Abilene hotel room. As fearless as Hardin claimed to be, he fled town barefoot and in his underwear, afraid that the marshal was out of patience with him, and would shoot him on sight. It may well have been that Hickok had sent the dagger-man to permanently silence the troublesome youth. Suddenly Hardin's bravado had melted away and he was desperately flying out of town, unarmed and vulnerable, headed for his cowboy friends waiting for him on the prairie. He may have been brave but he proved to possess an amazing grip on common sense.

In his highly dubious account, once back in camp, Hardin managed to dress and arm himself, arrest, disarm and disrobe the deputies trailing him, obtain a warrant for arresting a different killer who had killed one of his fellow cowboys, form a posse, track down and kill the murderer, and return to Abilene a hero. John Wesley Hardin was a superhero in his own impossible adventure story. This tale alone makes Hardin either the luckiest punk or more likely, the biggest liar in the West.

After many more wanton killings, many of them confessed in bis autobiography, Wes went too far for even Texans when he killed Deputy Sheriff Charlie Webb in an explosion of gunfire in a Comanche, Texas saloon. Hardin turned himself in but soon realized that there would never be a fair or legal trial and slyly escaped. Here his popular campaign to right the wrongs of Reconstruction went awry, and the citizens of Comanche, Texas went berserk. An angry mob overpowered the sheriff and hung his brother and two cousins who had sought refuge in the jail. Eventually eight of his friends and family members were hunted down and exterminated without the benefit of a trial. This wanton disregard for the legal process eclipses even Wyatt Earp's so-called “Vendetta Ride.”

Wes Hardin became famous for knowing how and when to kill, but he stayed alive by knowing when to get the heck out of town. Wes left Texas and found refuge in distant parts east.

He was finally captured in Alabama , tried and convicted, and sent to the prison in Huntsville for twenty-five years. In sympathetic Texas that meant fifteen... Hardin forbade his wife from ever visiting him, confident he would soon be out. At first he thought he would make a daring escape, and tried several times, but many say he was eventually beaten into submission. The secrets of the Texas prisons would inspire a million nightmares. Wes Hardin had never before been bested by any system or institution. After years of suppression, depression and illnesses and various trainings in the prison shoe and tailor shop, Wes went to the library and studied... law. And he began to campaign, very effectively, for his release.

Thirteen years into his incarceration, Wes boldly demanded that authorities show their cards concerning a killing he could still be prosecuted for. He arranged a hearing in Cuero, and even a reunion with his faithful little wife, and more importantly, forced a settlement that basically gave him an additional two years, but most importantly they were to run concurrently with his sentence. If he could get out, he would actually be a free a man. He wrote friends and even begged the governor. The Parole Board began to consider his case. Then, a little over a year before he would successfully obtain parole, Jane passed away, at just 36 years of age, making orphans of his children.

Wes went mad, his scheme crushed, while he was still contained by prison walls 25 feet high. They buried his wife without him, and farmed out his children, and the Texas Parole Board took its time. He sought refuge in several ways; sulking, organizing petitions for his release, raising hell among the inmates. About this time he interfered with prison guards during a disturbance and unnecessarily got his release postponed indefinitely. Terminally short-sighted, the worst of the West became his own worst enemy.

Then one day the prison gates opened and he walked out. Everyone agreed that he was a far different man than the one who went in. Wes hung his lawyer shingle in Gonzales and tried to make it as a regular guy... He remarried, to a terribly immature teenager of 15, then abandoned the relationship. He finished and published his adventures, to capitalize if not monetize his name, which had grown to cult-hero status. Most of his published autobiography reads like Jack and the Beanstalk with guns, and Wes is Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. Then he took a case in El Paso defending a cousin.

It was a messy business, but lucrative, getting murderers off and extending the gratuitous killings in the streets. Wes fell in with the local lawmen, much like he had done in Abilene, and became an El Paso saloon fixture. The border town was just crazy enough to appeal to him. The flames of the wild West were dying to just a flicker, but men still carried handguns in El Paso... concealed of course. Saloons, gambling halls and whore houses were still the main attractions, and things were wonderfully edgy on the edge of the United States.

Hardin took up with a flamboyant prostitute named Beulah M'Rose, who had a bothersome husband who need killin,' and who was hiding out across the border and fighting arrest and extradition for cattle rustling charges... Soon his lawman friends, George Scarborough and Jeff Milton arranged a welcome party for the rustler one night when he tried to sneak across the Rio Grande to see his lovely little wife. In a convenient set-up, Wes got the girl and they got the reward money.

But then a jealous and stupid young lawman accosted Beulah on the streets and Wes forgot himself. The officer's father was another notorious Texas gunman, John Selman, who had been a cattle rustler, a hired killer, and a lawman at different times. Papa Selman became concerned about his son's safety... and a little jealous if his son got to kill Hardin instead of himself. Older and wiser, and with less to lose, he looked up Wes at his favorite gambling house and shot him from behind, several times to make sure.

The worst man in the west was finally dead, but the legend was just getting started. Beulah sniffled and caught the train to the west coast. Selman's lawless act was understandable but considered cowardly and despicable and it was not long until Deputy U. S. Marshal George Scarborough found an equally dubious excuse to put holes in him. But it took decades for historians to put sufficient holes in John Wesley Hardin's relentless, sociopathic yarns. He was a famous liar. But in the end, he was probably telling the truth about most of his killings. Wes Hardin really was the worst in the West.

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The BAD GUYS

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