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The Gunfighters

Cassius M. Hollister ("Cash")

Cash Hollister was born near Cleveland, Ohio, and lived there until he was thirtyone years old. In 1877 he moved to Caldwell, Kansas, and the next year he married and moved to Wichita. Late in 1878 he returned to Caldwell and began clerking in the St. James Hotel. The next year mayor N. J. Dixon died suddenly, and Hollister won the special election to replace him.

While serving as mayor, Hollister was arrested and fined for assaulting Frank Hunt, and in subsequent years he was intermittently in trouble for fighting. Hollister did not choose to run for reelection in 1880, but three years later he was appointed a deputy U.S. marshal. During the next several months he served as marshal and deputy marshal of Caldwell and as a deputy sheriff of Sumner County, and he was particularly active in chasing down horse thieves. During the course of his duties he was involved in various shooting scrapes, and he met his death in such an incident in 1884.

Tuck Hoover

Hoover was a South Texas rancher who was in and out of trouble during his career. He was shot to death about 1894, following a killing in which he had been involved. In Jake Biushell's saloon in Alleytown, a small village near Eagle Lake, Jake Biushell and some fellow Klansmen were sitting playing poker. The boyfriend of Tuck's daughter, Dora, was working in the saloon and overheard their conversation in which Jake said "I'm goin get Tuck if I have to burn the house down and kill the whole family." The boyfriend went and told Tuck the story. Tuck put his pistol in his belt and went over to the saloon to confront Jake. He walked in and there was only Jake and Jake's employee, the bartender there. Tuck walked in with his cocked pistol in his hand.

He pointed it at Jake and said "Jake, I hear you want to kill me." Jake moved his hand inside his coat apparently going for a gun. Thereupon Tuck pulled his trigger and shot Jake. Then Tuck pointed his pistol at the bartender and slowly backed out of the saloon. Tuck went outside and mounted his horse. As he rode away he passed the saloon and saw Jake in his death struggle. Tuck pulled his pistol and shot Jake again from his horse.

The next day Tuck surrendered to the sheriff in Eagle Lake. Tuck was tried for the murder of Jake Biushell and was given a 20 year prison sentence. But the sentence was overturned and a retrial was planned. Two years later in 1896, Tuck and his wife went into the general store in Alleytown to buy some supplies. Tuck had his baby daughter in his arms with his back to the door. He put his daughter down on the counter for a moment to pick up the bag of groceries he had just bought. At that moment in the room next door, a 19 year old gunman hired by the Klan, was aiming his shotgun through a knothole in the adjoining wall at Tuck's back. As soon as Tuck put his daughter down, the killer pulled the trigger striking Tuck in the back with 11 of the 12 balls of lead from the one shot. As Tuck fell an unknown accomplice shot Tuck in the neck with a 22. Tuck soon died on the general store floor. One of the killers was tried, but got off.

Benjamin Horrell

Ben Horrell worked for his older brothers on their cattle spreads in Lampasas County, Texas. He was present during the early stages of the notorious Horrell-Higgins feud, then left with his brothers to establish a ranch on the Ruidoso River in Lincoln County, New Mexico. Within a short time he was killed in a gunfight with a local peace officer, and his brothers responded with vicious acts of retribution which sparked another feud. It is worthy of note that another brother, John, had drifted to New Mexico in earlier years and had been killed in Las Cruces.

Martin Horrell

Mart Horrell served with his brothers Sam and Tom in Terry's Texas Ranger brigade during the Civil War. After the war he helped his brothers build a ranching enterprise in Lampasas County, Texas, where he soon became a willing participant in the Horrell-Higgins feud. He then moved with his family and violenceprone siblings to Lincoln County, New Mexico. While there, the Horrells briefly terrorized the countryside, then were run out of New Mexico by vigilantes.

After returning to Texas with his brothers, Mart fought until the feud with Pink Higgins subsided in 1877, only to meet death at the hands of a lynch mob the following year. Mart, Tom, Bill Crabtree, John Dixon, and Tom Bowen were suspected of robbing and murdering a Bosque County merchant, and the two Horrells were jailed in Meridian. A group of irate citizens broke into the jail and shot both men to death.

Merritt Horrell

A member of the violent Horrell clan of Texans, Merritt was present in Lampasas when the Horrell-Higgins feud broke out in 1873. He moved with his brothers to Lincoln County, New Mexico, and there joined with them in further shooting scrapes. The surviving brothers (Ben and John had been killed at different times in New Mexico) returned to Lampasas, and the feud quickly resumed. In 1877 Merritt was shot to death by Pink Higgins, leader of the opposing faction, in a Lampasas saloon.

Samuel W. Horrell

Named after his father, Sam Horrell was one of the quarrelsome group of brothers who fought together through the Civil War and through a variety of later conflicts. Following the war, John Horrell became the first of his clan to meet death in a shooting scrape, being gunned down in Las Cruces, New Mexico. In 1873 the remaining five brothers became embroiled in the Horrell-Higgins feud in Lampasas, Texas. Sam helped kill three state policemen in the initial battle, then temporarily left the country with his brothers and their families.

The Horrells tried to establish another cattle spread in Lincoln County, New Mexico, but almost immediately they became immersed in further violence. Ben Horrell was killed, and after his brothers took revenge they were chased back to Texas. They returned to a ranch ten miles southeast of Lampasas, and the feud resumed, climaxing after several gunfights in 1877. Sam was the only brother to survive the violence, and in 1880 he left Lampasas to make his life in New Mexico, peaceably rearing his two daughters and living a quiet existence.

Thomas W. Horrell

After the Civil War, Tom Horrell, a veteran of the Confederate army, established a ranch near Lampasas, Texas. Within a few years Horrell, aided by his four brothers, had built the ranch to the point that it was eclipsed in the area only by the nearby spread of Pink Higgins. In a joint drive to Abilene in 1872, Higgins and Tom Horrell had a saloon quarrel which almost led to gunplay and which did initiate a violent range feud. The conflict between the Higgins and Horrell factions erupted in March, 1873, and over the next few years there followed a series of gunfights and bushwhackings.

Late in 1873 the Horrell brothers - Tom, Mart, Sam, Ben, and Merritt - moved their livestock operation to Lincoln County, New Mexico, where they soon became embroiled in further hostilities. Ben was killed in Lincoln, and his brothers immediately sought revenge. Conditions soon grew so bad that the entire county became an armed camp, and a vigilante group was organized to overwhelm the Horrells. Early in 1874, therefore, the Horrells returned to Texas, where their feud with Pink Higgins soon was renewed.

The worst fighting was in 1877, but by August of that year John B. Jones, major of the Texas Rangers, had persuaded the two parties to sign a peace agreement, and major hostilities ceased. Tom and Mart were killed by a lynch mob the next year, following a robbery and murder of which they were suspected.

Tom Hueston (Houston)

During the early 1890's Hueston served as a peace officer in Oklahoma Territory. He was fatally wounded by Arkansas Tom Jones during the shootout at Ingalls in 1893. On Nov. 29,1892, in Orlando, Okla., Houston, accompanied by Chris Madsen and Heck Thomas, tried to apprehend bank robber Ol Yantis. They cornered him at his sister's farm, and after a brief exchange, Houston killed him. On Sept. 1, 1893, Houston and a large posse traveled to Ingalls, Okla., in search of the Doolin Gang. After a ferocious gun battle, the gang escaped, with the exception of Arkansas Tom Jones. Before he was arrested, Jones killed three lawmen, Dick Speed, Lafe Shadley, and Houston.

John Reynolds Hughes ("Border Boss")

John Hughes left his native Illinois at the age of fourteen and drifted to the Southwest to become a cowboy. A year later his right arm was shattered during a brawl, causing him to switch gunhands. He became so skilled as a southpaw marksman that few people could guess that he was right-handed.

Hughes helped drive several cattle herds from Texas to Kansas, and in 1878 he started a seventy-six acre horse ranch of his own near Liberty Iiill, Texas. In 1886 six rustlers stole nearly one hundred horses, eighteen of which belonged to Hughes, in the Liberty Hill area. Hughes tracked them for a year and finally killed three of the thieves, captured two others, and returned with the herd. In the process he traveled twelve hundred miles, used up nine mounts, and spent all but seventy-six cents of the forty-three dollars with which he had started.

Soon after his return Hughes helped a Texas ranger chase down and kill an outlaw, and shortly thereafter there were two ambush attempts on his life. On August 10, 1887, he journeyed to Georgetown and enlisted in the Texas Rangers. By 1893 he had reached the rank of sergeant of Company D of the famous Frontier Battalion. In June of that year Captain Frank Jones was killed, and Hughes was promoted to company commander.

Hughes was highly active as a ranger until 1915, when he retired following twenty-eight years of service. He became president of an Austin bank, although he continued to reside in El Paso, where Company D headquarters had been located through the years. In 1946, at the age of eighty-nine, the lifelong bachelor committed suicide.

J. Frank Hunt

Hunt attained a slight measure of notoriety as a gunman during a few months of 1880 in Caldwell's roaring boom period. Appointed a deputy marshal in 1880 by Mayor Mike Meagher, he was widely blamed for the death of former Marshal George Flatt and was assassinated a short time later in an apparent revenge killing.

Frank Jackson ("Blockey")

Orphaned in his youth, Jackson long worked in the Denton tinshop of Ben Key, his brother-in-law. Jackson killed a Negro in 1876, and in 1877 he joined a bandit gang being formed by Sam Bass. During the next several months he participated in frequent skirmishes while robbing trains and eluding posses. After the gang was decimated in an abortive bank robbery in 1878, Jackson managed to escape and disappear. He was rumored to have ended his days as a rancher in New Mexico, Montana, or Big Spring, Texas; as a drummer in Houston; or as a law officer in California.

Napoleon Augustus Jennings

The son of a Philadelphia merchant, N. A. Jennings was educated at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. At eighteen he journeyed to Texas to find adventure, and he worked variously as a farmhand, quartermaster's clerk for the U.S. Cavalry, and surveyor's helper. In 1876 and 1877 he served in the Texas Rangers under L. H. McNelly and John B. Armstrong, and it was during this period that he depended upon his gun for a living.

Jennings fought in border skirmishes with Mexicans and in scrapes with rustlers, and he was with Lee Hall in 1876 when the rangers tried to put a final halt to the Sutton-Taylor feud. In 1878 he left Texas upon the death of his father, but he soon went west again to ride as a cowboy, drive stagecoaches, paint signs, and prospect for gold. Finally, in 1884, he returned to the East to work the remainder of his life as a writer for magazines and newspapers.

Jack Johnson ("Turkey Creek")

A prospector and miner, Turkey Creek was attracted to the gold rushes in Deadwood and Tombstone during the 1870's. In Tombstone he became involved with the Earp faction, receiving a temporary appointment as a deputy marshal to help Wyatt chase stage robbers and later assisting in the revenge killings of Frank Stilwell and Florentino Cruz. After the Earp-Clanton feud subsided, Johnson drifted into Utah and the Texas Panhandle with Sherman McMasters.

William H. Johnson

Johnson, a Confederate captain during the Civil War, drifted to New Mexico after the war and married the daughter of fellow Southerner Henry Beckwith. By 1876 Johnson was part owner of a ranch with Wallace Olinger, but when the Lincoln County War erupted two years later, both partners entered the fighting on the side of the Seven Rivers Crowd. Johnson served for a time as one of Sheriff William Brady's deputies, and he survived the general hostilities only to be shot to death by his father-in-law as a result of a family feud.

Frank Jones

Jones was a native Texan who entered the Texas Rangers, eventually rising to the command of Company D. He was highly active on the Mexican border, running to earth rustlers, train and bank robbers, and an assortment of lethal hard cases. He felt no compunction to stop at the Rio Grande in pursuit of fleeing fugitives, although he stated that he "would not cross into Mexico where there are settlements and [where there] would be any danger of stirring up international trouble." He was killed in a shootout with Mexican rustlers in 1893, and he was succeeded as captain by the noted John Hughes.

John Jones

One of ten children of Heiskell Jones, John moved with his family from Iowa to Colorado in 1861, and five years later from Colorado to Lincoln County, New Mexico. The Joneses operated several different spreads and on one occasion sold out to the homicidal Horrell brothers from Texas. John became dissatisfied with the tranquil life of a cowhand, and by 1878 he had become involved with rustlers and with the Murphy-Dolan crowd during the Lincoln County War. He killed Bill Riley and John Beckwith in quarrels over land and cattle, respectively, but was himself gunned down by peace officer Bob Olinger in 1879.

Ed O. Kelly ("Red")

Kelly was from Missouri and married a relative of the notorious Younger brothers. Over the years he acquired a vague but apparently deserved reputation as a hard case. By the 1890's he had drifted to Colorado, where he encountered Bob Ford, the killer of Jesse James, in a Pueblo Hotel. Ford's diamond ring was stolen during the night, and Ford accused Kelly of the theft. When Ford returned to his saloon in Creede, he publicly repeated his accusations. Kelly promptly traveled to Ford's saloon, killed him, and soon found himself in prison. His life sentence was commuted to eighteen years, and he was released in 1900, but he managed to attract trouble and was killed in Oklahoma City four years later.

David Lyle Kemp

As a youth in Hamilton, Texas, Kemp killed a man named Smith. Kemp was sentenced to be hanged, and in panic he tore away from his guards and jumped out of a secondstory courtroom window. He broke both ankles in the fall, but somehow clambered onto a horse before being surrounded and recaptured. However, because of his age the governor commuted his sentence to life, then gave him a full pardon.

Kemp drifted into New Mexico, opened a butcher shop in Eddy (presentday Carlsbad), acquired an interest in a gambling casino in nearby Phoenix, and became sheriff when Eddy County was organized in 1889. He conducted his office in the interests of his gambling cohorts, and the county became quite rowdy. Dee Harkey was appointed deputy U.S. marshal to subdue the area, and Kemp and his friends threatened and on more than one occasion tried to kill the troublesome lawman.

Kemp also bought a ranch in the vicinity and turned to rustling to increase his ranching and butchering profits. He was cuaght red-handed by Harkey one night and agreed to leave the country. He stayed in Arizona for a few years, but returned when an old enemy, Les Dow, was elected sheriff of Eddy County. Kemp killed Dow, took up rustling again, and eventually returned to Texas to a ranch near Higgins. There he was shot and killed by his sister during the 1930's.

John M. Larn

Reared in Mobile, Alabama, Larn ran away from home while in his early teens and wandered into Colorado. A few years later he killed a rancher, fled to New Mexico and killed a sheriff, then hastily repaired to Fort Griffin, Texas. He signed on as trail boss for Bill Hays, a local rancher, and in the fall of 1871 led a violence-filled cattle drive to California.

Larn then established a ranch near Fort Griffin and began to raise a family. In 1870 he was elected sheriff of Shackleford County, and he frequently deputized his close friend, noted gunfighter John Selman. Larn and Selman became deeply involved in cattle rustling, and Larn, under increasing pressure, resigned his sheriff's position on March 7, 1877.

Local anger over Larn's rustling activities and ensuing violence resulted in his arrest at his ranch on June 22, 1878. He was carried to Albany, and that night a masked mob broke into jail and executed Larn with rifle fire.

Oliver Milton Lee

The son of a Forty-niner from New York, Lee was reared in tiny Buffalo Gap in Burnet County, Texas. At the age of eighteen Lee and his older half-brother, Perry Altman, led their widowed mother and the rest of the family to a ranch in New Mexico's Tularosa Valley.

Widely known as a crack shot, Lee first fired his guns in anger during a feud with a neighboring rancher named John Good. Good's son, Walter, or another Good henchman murdered George McDonald, Lee's closest friend, and a brief but bitter range war resulted. Lee procured the bullet which had killed McDonald and carried it on a watch chain, and he was one of four men charged with Walter Good's death. After Lee was released from custody, he began to make great strides in extending his ranching enterprise, eventually carving out a prosperous spread called the Dog Canyon Ranch.

During these years Lee secured appointments as a deputy sheriff and as a deputy U.S. marshal, but in the 1890's he increasingly came under suspicion in the dastardly and mysterious murders of A. J. Fountain and his eight-year-old son. After routing a posse led by Pat Garrett, Lee and fellow fugitive James Gilliland sought refuge at the Bar Cross Ranch of Eugene Manlove Rhodes. Eventually the two men surrendered and, following a sensational trial in Hillsboro, won acquittal.

Lee returned to ranching, selling out in 1914 to a group of businessmen but staying on as manager. Later he was twice elected to the state legislature, and he served as an officer and director of numerous business organizations until his death in 1941 of a stroke.

Bill Leonard

Bill Leonard was a jeweler who in the late 1870's practiced his trade in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Drifting into Arizona, he became associated with cattle thieves, including N. 13. ("Old Man") Clanton. In March, 1881, Leonard was involved in a bloody attempt to hold up a stagecoach near Tombstone, Arizona. He was wounded, but remained at large for three months until he was killed while attempting to rob a store in Eureka, New Mexico.

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