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The Gunfighters

Burt Alvord

Alvord came West with his father, a justice of the peace, at an early age. As a teenager he worked as a stable hand at Tombstone's OK Corral, where he witnessed the famous shootout and, three years later, the lynching of John Heath. When John Slaughter was elected sheriff of Cochise County in 1886, the twenty-year-old Alvord became his deputy and right-hand man.

For the next four years Alvord helped Slaughter track down numerous thieves and rustlers, and, as an amiable frequenter of bars, he was particularly adept at ferreting out information concerning the whereabouts of various fugitives. During the mid-1890's Alvord drifted into Mexico and rustled cattle for a time, but soon he returned to the right side of the law as constable first of Fairbank and then of Willcox, Arizona.

Although respected as a lawman, Alvord used his position to mastermind a band of train robbers. After arrests in 1900 and in 1903 Alvord and Billy Stiles, his deputy and accomplice, managed to escape. Alvord spread a rumor that he and Stiles had been killed, and he sent two coffins to Tombstone. The ruse did not work: Arizona peace officers continued the search for the two bandit leaders.

Alvord was recaptured in 1904, but after two years in prison at Yuma he was released and went to Latin America. He reportedly turned up in Venezuela, in Honduras, and in Panama as a canal worker, and he died about 1910.

D. L. Anderson, ("Billy Wilson")

In his early teens Anderson, usually known as "Billy Wilson," moved with his family from Ohio to South Texas; after a short period as a cowboy he went to White Oaks, New Mexico, where he bought a livery stable in 1880. Within less than a year he sold his operation, supposedly was paid in counterfeit money, and began to pass the bogus bills in Lincoln. When he was indicted, he joined Billy the Kid's band of fugitives and rustlers.

Along with several cohorts, Wilson was arrested by Pat Garrett at Stinking Springs. Convicted in 1881, he soon escaped from custody in Santa Fe. Reverting to his real name, D. L. Anderson, he returned to Texas, started a ranch in Uvalde County, married, and began raising two children. Pat Garrett and others helped him to obtain a presidential pardon in 1896. He worked as a U.S. customs inspector for a time, then became sheriff of Terrell County, where he was killed in the line of duty in 1918.

Hugh Anderson

Anderson was a cowboy who helped drive a herd from Salado, Texas, to Newton, a raw Kansas railhead, in 1871. En route he helped three other men track murderer Juan Bideno to Bluff City, Kansas, but only Wes Hardin was involved in the shootout which resulted in the Mexican's death.

While Anderson was in Newton, a friend, Texas gambler William Bailey, was killed by a tough railroad foreman named Mike McCluskie. McCluskie left town, and Anderson led the Texans in vowing revenge if McCluskie ever returned. McCluskie was back within days, and Anderson, true to his word, shot him, igniting one of the bloodiest gun battles in the history of the West. A warrant was sworn for Anderson's arrest, but friends spirited the wounded Texan away - first to Kansas City, then home to Texas. Within a couple of years, however, he drifted back to Kansas. He was located in Medicine Lodge by Mike McCluskie's revenge-minded brother, and the two men killed each other in a gory duel.

Scott L. Anderson

Scotty Anderson was a fearless guard for the Northwestern Stage amd Transportation Company, guarding the firm's considerable gold shipments in the Dakotas. One particular run, the Deadwood-Pierre, S.D., was plagued by a bold band of bandits headed by an ex-company guard, Boston Joe. Several guards had been killed and more than $50,000 in gold shipments stolen. Anderson, a tough, unflinching hard case who carried two shotguns along with three pistols, was hired as chief guard to protect this run.

On his first assignment, Anderson and four guards, heavily armed and protecting more than $100,000 in gold, took the Deadwood-Pierre stage which was stopped by Boston Joe and his gang near Deadman's Creek. The bandits and guards opened up on each other, blazing away as the stage made a run for it. Boston Joe and his men dashed after it, firing as they attempted to catch the stage. Anderson, though wounded several times, managed to kill Boston Joe. The other guards shot three of the remaining outlaws dead in their saddles before two of the guards were killed and the driver wounded. Anderson brought the stage in safely to Pierre to report the end of the outlaw band.

William Anderson

Anderson was a drunken gunman who lived in Delano, the vice district of Wichita, Kansas, during the 1870s. He was forever getting into trouble with the law and, in the spring of 1873, he was involved in a violent argument in a Wichita livery stable. He pulled a gun, as did others, and a brief shootout occurred where one of Anderson's shots smashed into the forehead of a passerby, killing him. The death was ruled accidental and Anderson was released. A short time later, on Oct. 27, 1873, Anderson was lounging inside of Rowdy Joe Lowe's Delano bar when an enraged cowhand, Edward T. "Red" Beard, burst into the bar. He had been jilted by one of the saloon girls, Annie Franklin, and he sought revenge, pulling his gun and shooting the girl in the stomach. Lowe let loose with his shotgun and blasted Beard who fired back as he staggered outside. In the exchange of bullets, Anderson was caught in the crossfire, taking a load of buckshot in the head which caused him to become permanently blind, and ended his gunfighting days. Anderson spent the rest of his days sitting outside cowtown saloons, hat in hand, begging coins.

John Barclay Armstrong, ("McNelly's Bulldog")

The son of a Tennessee doctor, Armstrong left home as a youth and drifted to Missouri, Arkansas, and later, in 1871, Austin, Texas. He married and eventually raised seven children. In 1875 he enlisted in the Texas Rangers under the command of the famed L. H. McNelly and became known as "McNelly's Bulldog." He accompanied McNelly on excursions into Mexico which resulted in notorious and comparatively large-scale clashes with Mexican forces at Palo Alto and Las Cuevas.

In 1876 Armstrong, by now a sergeant, helped gun down four men during a night filled with three shooting scrapes. The next year his reputation as a gunman was somewhat dimmed when he wounded himself while carelessly handling his own weapon. But that same year he was promoted to lieutenant, and he promptly proved himself a highly efficient and dangerous law enforcement leader. Armstrong recovered stolen livestock, curtailed the activities of such lethal badmen as King Fisher, and, in his most famous exploit, captured elusive killer John Wesley Hardin.

Armstrong collected a reward of four thousand dollars for Hardin's arrest, and he used that stake to establish a fifty-thousand-acre ranch in Willacy County, Texas. He served for a time as a U.S. marshal, but business increasingly absorbed his time. He died on his ranch in 1913.

Ira Aten

Son of a Methodist minister, Ira and his family moved to a farm near Round Rock, Texas, after the Civil War. As a teen-ager Aten was in Round Rock when the mortally wounded Sam Bass was brought back to town and tended by Reverend Aten. Known locally as a crack shot, Ira joined the Texas Rangers at twenty and was assigned to border duty. After a fight with rustlers he was promoted to corporal and was sent to West Central Texas, where he was instrumental in breaking up widespread cattle rustling activities. In his handling of the arrests of Jim Epps and Rube Boyce he acquired a reputation for leniency as well as a further promotion to sergeant.

In 1887 a long manhunt by Aten and three shootouts resulted in the death of rustler-murderer Judd Roberts. In 1889 Aten was appointed sheriff of Fort Bend County during the violent feud between the "Jaybirds" and "Woodpeckers." Soon thereafter he was appointed sheriff of Castro County, where he took vigorous action against Panhandle rustlers. He next was superintendent of six hundred thousand acres of XIT ranchland from 1895 to 1904. After leaving the XIT he went to California with his wife and five children and resided there until his death in 1953 at the age of nearly ninety.

Clint Barkley, ("Bill Bowen")

Accused of a murder in Texas in 1873, Barkley adopted the alias Bill Bowen and fled to Lampasas to seek the help of Merritt Horrell, his brother-in-law. The five lethal Horrell brothers, all local cattlemen, gave Barkley shelter and a job, and when state policemen attempted to arrest him, the Horrells helped in gunning down the lawmen. Barkley next assisted the Horrells in staging a jail break, then accompanied them to New Mexico and further violence. He returned with them to Texas and fought actively in the Horrell-Higgins feud before dropping out of sight.

Seaborn Barnes, ("Scab," "Nubbins Colt")

Seaborn Barnes was a hard-bitten gunman who won notoriety as Sam Bass's chief lieutenant. Barnes's father was the sheriff of Cass County, Texas, but died when Scab was an infant. Scab was raised near the village of Handley (nine miles east of Fort Worth), where his widowed mother, with her five children, moved to be among relatives. The origin of his nickname is unknown. At the age of seventeen Barnes fell into trouble over a shooting and spent a year in a Fort Worth jail.

Early in 1878 Bass, having recently eluded posses in Nebraska, began organizing a gang of thieves in the Dallas area. Barnes joined the gang and became Bass's most trusted accomplice. That spring the band pulled four train robberies, which gained Barnes almost as much lead as gold. The train jobs yielded comparatively little loot, the robbers were frequently fired upon, and at Mesquite, Barnes was shot four times in the legs. A few months later he was gunned down in the streets of Round Rock and was buried in the cemetery near the gang's recent campsite. Three days later Bass died of wounds suffered in the same fight, and he was interred alongside Barnes. On Barnes's tombstone was inscribed: "He was right bower [sea anchor] to Sam Bass."

Edward T. Beard ("Red")

The son of the man who founded Beardstown, Illinois, Beard was well educated and married to a cultured woman from Virginia. Although he was a member of a prominent family and the father of three children, Beard abruptly pulled up stakes in 1861 and went West. He became a footloose and somewhat notorious character in California, Oregon, and Arizona before being attracted to Kansas by the cattle boom. In Wichita he established a disreputable dance hall, and in 1873 he engaged in a series of wild shootouts, the last of which caused his death at the hands of Rowdy Joe Lowe.

John H. Beckwith

Beckwith was a native of New Mexico who, along with his brother Bob, started a cattle ranch on the east side of the Pecos River in the Seven Rivers country of Lincoln County. When the Lincoln County War erupted, the Beckwith boys were deputized to fight Billy the Kid and the rest of the McSween "Regulators." Bob was killed during the climactic battle in Lincoln in 1878, and John was shot to death the following year by John Jones.

Robert W. Beckwith

Beckwith was the son of a Southerner who had settled in New Mexico and who eventually established a ranch in Lincoln County. By 1876 Bob and his brother John were running a spread of their own, but when the Lincoln County War started a couple of years later the Beckwith brothers became involved with the Dolan-Murphy faction. Bob received an appointment as deputy sheriff, but was killed before his twentieth birthday during the big shootout in Lincoln.

Juan Bideno

Bideno's known career as a gunman was compressed into a few violent days in the summer of 1871. Bideno killed his trail boss while herding cattle toward Abilene. A posse pursued Bideno, and he was killed in a shootout with John Wesley Hardin.

Doolin gang member Tulsa Jack Blake lies flanked by the lawmen who ended his crime career.

William Blake ("Tulsa Jack")

Blake was a cowboy in Kansas during the 1880's, but later he wandered south and became a member of the Doolin gang. Late on the night of April 3, 1895, the southbound Rock Island Passenger train was stopped and held up about 1 mile south of Dover, OK, near the Cimarron River Bridge. The five outlaws in on the robbery that night were William Blake, known as "Tulsa Jack", Charlie Pierce, George "Bitter Creek" Newcomb, "Little Bill" Raidler, and George "Red Buck" Waightman. All were members of the notorious Bill Doolin gang.

The gang ordered that the express car be opened but messenger J.W. Jones refused. The outlaws fired about 20 rounds into it with their 45-90 caliber Winchesters. In a shower of wood splinters and glass, Jones held to his station until random bullets struck him in the leg, arm and wrist. Fearing the bandits would kill the entire train crew, the conductor finally persuaded Jones to open the car. Jones, however, could not open the "through safe" which had been locked in Kansas City. It could only be opened by express agents at the final destination of Ft. Worth where a large amount of money in the safe was destined for a military payroll. While Charley Pierce and "Bitter Creek" Newcomb kept an eye on things outside the train, "Tulsa Jack" and "Red Buck" patrolled the three coach cars containing about 250 people. They ushered the train's porter along and collected the passenger's wallets, watches and jewelry in an empty grain sack. "Tulsa Jack" walked behind him holding a gun to his back while "Red Buck" walked backwards to cover the rear. They collected about $400 cash and some jewelry and rode away into the night. The train moved on toward Kingfisher, 10 miles south, where a report was wired to Deputy Marshal Chris Madsen's office about 25 miles further down the line in El Reno.

As the gang rode northwest, confident that a pursuit could not quickly be mounted, Madsen rounded up his deputies in El Reno and formulated a plan the gang did not expect. The Rock Island provided an engine with a boxcar hooked behind the tender. At about 3:00 A.M., with their saddled horses aboard the special train, Madsen and nine deputies pulled out of El Reno toward the robbery site in Dover, arriving at dawn within about four hours of the holdup.

After trailing the gang most of the morning, the posse split into two groups. Madsen led one west along the Cimarron and deputy William Banks, with six men, pushed on along a trail the bandits did not bother to hide. By mid-afternoon Banks and his men spotted the outlaws. They were barely 60 yards away in a grove of black jack trees, resting themselves and their horses. The deputies quickly shucked their rifles, dismounted, and called for the gang to surrender. "Tulsa Jack" Blake, who was apparently standing guard, spotted the lawmen and fired a first shot in their direction, alerting his slumbering comrades. "Tulsa Jack" Blake was Bill Doolin's "right hand man", and considered by many to be his most loyal and stouthearted follower. He worked as a cowboy in Kansas during the late 1880s before moving south to Oklahoma Territory where he met Doolin. Blake participated in many of the gang's bank and train robberies and was a key figure in the fight against lawmen at Ingalls, Oklahoma, on September l 1893. There, marshals had the outlaws trapped in a local hotel, but when gunfire erupted, three deputy marshals were cut down and killed. "Tulsa Jack" shot his way out of the building, ran to the stable, freed the outlaws horses, and led them back to the hotel where the gang mounted up and sped away through a barrage of gunfire.

In another incident, Blake, known to be "as quick with a gun as he was with cards", almost single-handedly enabled the gang's escape from a bank robbery in South West City, Missouri, on May 20, 1894. Armed citizen's added to the heavy gunfire of lawmen in a street shootout as the gang left the bank. Blake's deadly accuracy was responsible for wounding several gun-wielding citizens who fired at the gang as it thundered down the main street and out of town. The daring "Tulsa Jack" covered their retreat and was the last to mount up and leave, but he would be the first to fall following the train robbery at Dover.

In a fierce gun battle lasting almost 45 minutes, Deputy William Banks later estimated that more than 200 shots were exchanged that day in the sand basin along the Cimarron River. He reported that each bandit was armed with two revolvers and that their rifles were model '86 Winchesters in 45-90 caliber. Midway through the melee, "Tulsa Jack" scrambled toward one of the outlaw's downed horses. Deputy Banks took careful aim with his rifle and fired a shot that sent "Tulsa Jack" sprawling. He was killed instantly by a bullet that hit him in the back and came out near his heart. As the firing continued, two more bandits were wounded and another of their horses killed. The gang then withdrew; escaping down a hollow that could not be covered by the deputies.

The death of "Tulsa Jack" was just the beginning of a violent end to the Bill Doolin gang. A month later on May 2, "Bitter Creek" Newcomb and Charley Pierce were slain from ambush by reward seekers. A posse caught up with mortally wounded "Zip" Wyatt on August 3, 1895; he died in a jail cell one month later. On October 2, George "Red Buck" Waightman was also killed by marshals. By December 1896, 19 months after the Dover train robbery, both Bill Doolin and "Dynamite Dick" were fatally shot by marshals. "Little Dick" West died by gunfire in April of 1898 and "Little Bill" Raidler was crippled in a shootout with deputies, served prison time, and died a few years after his parole in 1903.

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