Home : Gunfighters :

The Gunfighters

Nashville Franklin Leslie ("Buckskin Frank")

A colorful, versatile frontiersman as well as a deadly gunman, Buckskin Frank was given his sobriquet because of the fringed leather shirt he affected. Reported (in the usual exaggerated fashion) to have killed thirteen men, Leslie attained his greatest notoriety in Arizona. A one-time Indian scout in Texas, Oklahoma, and the Dakotas, he drifted into Arizona during the early mining strikes and eventually opened the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Tombstone. On occasion he wore a swivel gun, and he was known as an expert shot.

In the early days, Tombstone was known as the spider web from hell. What little law it had belonged to one feuding faction or another, and all manner of gunslingers called the place home. No one was particularly safe from the brawling, rowdy men who rode into town, and one of the worst of the miscreants was Nashville Franklyn Leslie, known as "Buckskin Frank" because of the fringed buckskin jacket he wore all the time..

Frank Leslie was good with his guns, a matched pair of six-shooters that he wore on each hip, and he took every opportunity to demonstrate this by shooting flies off the ceilings of the Allen Street saloons. Wyatt Earp once said that Leslie was the only man to compare to Doc Holliday's blinding speed. Leslie rode into town on a hot summer day in 1880, and he stayed for nine long years, shooting several men in the process, much to the annoyance of most of the citizens of Tombstone, who wished he'd move on.

Leslie was a consummate ladies' man, the most notorious one in the whole area. Although he had filed numerous mining claims and had much of the area under his claim markers, he much preferred the painted women and gambling halls to the hard work of mining. One of his favorite ladies was a black-haired beauty named Mary Killeen. She was separated from her husband Mike, but Mike told everyone he would shoot any man he caught around her. This suited Buckskin Frank just fine. The night Mike Killeen caught the two lovers on the porch of the Cosmopolitan Hotel, Leslie made sure he had Mike neatly deposited in Boot Hill by the next morning.

The widow Killeen and Buckskin Frank soon married, but Leslie could not control his drinking, and Mary finally divorced him. She remarried two years later, and moved to California. Leslie continued working as bartender in the Oriental Saloon and was even appointed a special deputy with the power to make arrests on the premises. One of his favorite night spots soon became the Bird Cage Theater, where he was attracted to a young singer there. One night in a fit of fury, he shot the boot heel off a cowboy who did not show the proper respect.

About this same time (1880), John Slaughter drove his cattle from Texas to the Tombstone country, and a young cowboy named William Claibourne rode with him. Going locally under the name of "Billy the Kid," William became a close friend of Johnny Ringo. When the feud between the Earps and the Cowboys led to the shooting at the O.K. Corral, Leslie somehow managed to remain neutral, but not Claibourne and Ringo. When the shooting started, Claibourne wisely decided it was not his fight and departed the scene.

Several months later, Johnny Ringo was found dead on the Galeyville trail. Billy promptly convinced himself that Buckskin Frank had killed Ringo. On 14 November 1882, Claibourne staggered into the Oriental, obviously drunk, and picked a fight with Leslie. As Billy grew more and more profane, Leslie finally escorted him to the door and heaved him out. It was the wrong thing to do. A short time later, a man entered the Oriental and informed Leslie that Claibourne was outside with a Winchester, saying he would kill Leslie on sight. Buckskin Frank wasted no time in going out the back door of the Oriental to Fifth Street, where the two men shot it out. Claibourne missed. Leslie didn't. The Epitaph read: "Billy the Kid takes shot at Buckskin Frank. The latter promptly replied and the former quickly turns up his toes to the daisies." Billy Claibourne became Buckskin Frank Leslie's second victim in Tombstone.

When public opinion against Leslie caused the Oriental to lose business, Mike Joyce sent Leslie to his ranch in the Swisshelm Mountains. From 1883 to 1889, he served as scout for the Fourth Cavalry, a mounted customs inspector, and a rancher. He took with him for companionship, a young lady from the Bird Cage named Blonde Mollie. She was also known as Mollie Bradshaw, but Bradshaw was her "promoter," not her husband. When he turned up dead, Leslie was accused of his murder. Frank never admitted it, but he never denied it, either.

Blonde Mollie was as much a drunk as Frank Leslie. Every night, they drank great quantities of whiskey, and every night they got into violent quarrels. On the evening of 10 July 1889, Frank Leslie pulled his gun and shot her in the head. One of the hands he had hired, a young man named James Neil, called "Six-Shooter Jim" because he was prone to recite fantastic tales of his ability with guns, witnessed the death of Mollie. Buckskin Frank promptly turned his gun on Jim and shot him, too.

Six-Shooter Jim did not die (an epitaph in Boot Hill states he was killed by Burt Alvord). Jim told on Leslie, who realized things were all over and confessed. He had killed thirteen men, but his fourteenth victim - a woman - sent him to Yuma prison for twenty-five years. Sheriff John Slaughter delivered him on 9 January 1890, where he was entered as convict number 632, height 5 feet 7 inches and weight 135 pounds.

Six years later, he was paroled for being a model prisoner. On 1 December 1896, he married Belle Stowell, and disappeared from Arizona. Reports were that he struck it rich in the Klondike around the turn of the century; that he became a land baron in the San Joaquin Valley; that he worked various San Francisco stores and pool halls. Leslie was last heard from in 1925 working in a poolroom in Oakland, California. But after six months on the job he stole the proprietor's pistol and disappeared. But the truth of the matter is that no one knows what really happened to Buckskin Frank Leslie. He vanished from history as if he had never been, possibly having committed suicide.

Seldon T. Lindsey

Reared in Louisiana, Lindsey demonstrated his violent inclinations by participating in a knife fight while a schoolboy. When his father returned from the Confederate army after the Civil War, the family moved to McClennan County, Texas, where the elder Lindsey established a law practice. In 1870 sixteenyear-old Seldon found work as a cowboy, and over the next few years he trailed cattle to the Kansas railheads. He also spent a couple of seasons hunting buffalo, twice meeting Bill Cody.

Lindsey was wed in 1881, and during their thirty-two-year marriage his wife bore him eleven children. He was appointed a deputy U.S. marshal in 1890, operating for many years out of Paris, Texas, and engaging in several shooting frays with outlaws.

John Long ("Long John")

Jack Long was first involved in shooting troubles in Texas, where he killed two men at turbulent Fort Griffin. He then gravitated to Lincoln County, New Mexico, managing to secure an appointment as deputy sheriff. Long inevitably became involved in the Lincoln County War; he was a member of the posse which assassinated John Tunstall, thus triggering the conflict, and he was a prominent figure in the climactic four-day battle in Lincoln. Following these violent events. Long apparently retreated from the gunman's role, for his name was connected with no further shootouts.

"Big Steve" Long, left, and the Moyer brothers, lynched.

Steve Long ("Big Steve")

Long's background is quite obscure, but the sixfoot, six-inch northerner established himself as a vicious gunman in Laramie. In 1867 he obtained a postion as deputy marshal of Laramie and participated in a pair of bloody gunfights within two months. Steve "Big Steve" Long, a professional gunfighter teamed up with brothers Ace and Con Moyer establishing a saloon in Laramie City, Wyoming. The Moyer brothers founded the town, appointing themselves as justice of the peace and marshal, respectively. Steve Long was made the deputy marshal.

Ruling with an iron hand, the trio meted out "justice" in the backroom of the saloon, ordering ranchers to sign over deeds to their lands and miners to hand over their claims. Those who refused were shot to death by Long on the pretense that the victim reached for a weapon.

Numerous others were killed when they objected to crooked card games run at the saloon. The townsfolk began to refer to the saloon as "The Bucket of Blood." Meanwhile, a local rancher by the name of N.K. Boswell began talk of forming a vigilante group to put the trio out of business.

Long also was in the habit of moonlighting as a thief and on October 18, 1868 he attempted to ambush and rob prospector Rollie "Hard Luck" Harrison. In the ensuing gunfight, Long was shot and he retreated. Back in Laramie City, Long's fiancée treated the wound but was incensed when Long told her how he received it. She told the vigilante group about Long's attempted robbery. Wasting no time the group stormed into The Bucket of Blood on October 28, 1868, seizing Long and the Moyer brothers. Dragging them to a partially finished cabin, they began to string them up to the rafters. But before he could be strung up Long asked the vigilantes to remove his boots. His last words were "my mother always said that I would die with my shoes on." They promptly hanged him from a telegraph pole with his bare feet dangling, and his fiancee erected a marker to his somewhat tarnished memory.

Frank Loving ("Cockeyed Frank")

Loving was the victorious participant in one of the most celebrated gunfights of Western lore. A professional gambler, he was attracted to Dodge City during the 1870's and ultimately became involved in a fatal encounter with a local rowdy named Levi Richardson. Loving moved his operations to Las Vegas, New Mexico, and in 1882 he transferred to Trinidad, Colorado. A few days later Loving was killed by Jack Allen in a shootout in Trinidad, leaving a widow and two young children.

Joseph Lowe ("Rowdy Joe")

Rowdy Joe Lowe and his wife Kate were natives of Illinois who wandered indiscriminately and notoriously throughout the West following the Civil War. Lowe, earlier an outright thief, was a rugged and prominent figure in Delano, a lawless and wide-open district just west of Wichita where he and Kate ran a combination saloon-dance hall-whore house. The Lowes also operated such establishments in Ellsworth and Newton during their railhead days, and in Newton in 1872 Rowdy Joe shot and killed a man named Sweet. The following year Joe killed Red Beard in Wichita, and although he surrendered himself to authorities, he soon escaped custody and fled to Osage Mission in Neosho County, Kansas.

In January, 1874, Lowe was arrested in St. Louis, but through bribery or some other device he was quickly on the loose again. This time he went to Tex as, where he spent time in Denison an( San Antonio. In the latter city he wa! fined one hundred dollars for assault ing Kate. He may have gone to thf Black Hills during the gold rush, bu eventually he drifted into Colorado where he was killed in 1899.

John McCall ("Broken Nose Jack")

McCall was reared in Louisville, Kentucky, with his parents and three sisters. At the age of eighteen or nineteen he left home and drifted west. He joined a group of buffalo hunters, continued to wander, and in 1876 was attracted to Deadwood, where he referred to himself as "Bill Sutherland." A few weeks later he achieved his only notoriety by murdering Wild Bill Hickok. He was captured and quickly (and somewhat extralegally ) brought to trial.

McCall testified that the day before the shooting he had gone $110 into debt to Hickok in a poker game. Then McCall "revealed" (falsely, of course) that he was the brother of Samuel Strawhim, who had been killed by Hickok in 1869 in Hays City. The jury thereupon acquitted McCall.

McCall journeyed as a freighter to Cheyenne, where he was arrested by a deputy U.S. marshal who overheard a drunken boast about lying to the Deadwood jury. McCall was sent to the federal court in Yankton, Dakota Territory, and was tried for first-degree murder. When asked, "Why didn't you go around in front of Wild Bill and shoot him like a man?" McCall replied frankly, "I didn't want to commit suicide."

McCall was convicted and sentenced to be executed. The hanging in Yankton was well attended, and newspapers reported that the twenty-five-year-old McCall "died game." The trap was sprung at 10:15 A.M., McCall gasped, "Oh, God," and he plunged to his death.

Arthur McCluskie

The brother of Mike McCluskie of Newton fame, Arthur's sole recognition as a Western gunman came from the bloody revenge he exacted from Mike's killer. Two years after his brother's death at the hands of Texan Hugh Anderson, McCluskie found Anderson in Medicine Lodge, at that time merely a handful of scruffy buildings. McCluskie called out Anderson, and the duel that followed resulted in the death of both men.

Mike McCluskie ("Arthur Delaney")

McCluskie's background is hazy and is obscured partially by the fact that he sometimes referred to himself as Arthur Delaney. It is known that he was employed by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad and that he eventually became foreman of a large crew. Known for his two-fisted ability to keep his men in line, he briefly moonlighted in Newton, Kansas, as a night policeman. His hot temper, however, embroiled him in two gunfights in Newton, and the second resulted in his death at the hands of Hugh Anderson. Two years later McCluskie's brother killed Anderson in a bloody fight in Medicine Lodge, Kansas.

Andrew McConnell

McConnell's background is vague; he is known chiefly as the killer of Abilene Marshal Tom Smith. A native of Massachusetts, McConnell came to occupy a Kansas homestead a few miles outside Abilene. In 1870 he killed a neighbor and subsequently clashed with local police officers, resulting in Smith's death and McConnell's imprisonment.

Thomas L. McKinney ("Tip")

Tip McKinney was a member of a noted Texas family. His grandfather, Collin McKinney, signed the Texas Declaration of Independence; Robert McKinney, Tip's uncle, died at the Alamo; and his cousin, Robert Moody McKinney, was owner and publisher of the Santa Fe New Mexcian. Tip's father, John McKinney, owned a stock farm in East Texas.

During the late 1870's Tip helped his father drive a herd of horses to Palo Pinto County, where they traded their animals for a cattle herd. They drove the cattle to New Mexico's Seven Rivers country, where they soon became involved in fighting with the "Seven Rivers Warriors."

Tip later spent some time in Uvalde, Texas, and finally settled in Roswell. Pat Garrett appointed him deputy sheriff, and he was with Garrett when Billy the Kid was killed. McKinney's greatest notoriety as a gunman came during a close-range shooting scrape two months before the Kid's death.

Sherman McMasters

McMasters was in Tombstone during the Earp-Clanton feud. He sided with the Earps, was sworn in as a deputy marshal to help Wyatt pursue stage robbers, and was present when Morgan Earp was shot from ambush while playing billiards. McMasters helped chase down and kill Frank Stilwell and Florentino Cruz, and when the vendetta ended, he drifted into the Texas Panhandle and Utah with Turkey Creek Jack Johnson.

Frank McNab

A cowboy by trade, McNab was employed by cattle king John Chisum and eventually became one of the foremen on Chisum's South Spring Ranch in New Mexico. When the Lincoln County War broke out, McNab naturally aligned with the Chisum-McSween "Regulators." He was instrumental in the revenge murders of Frank Baker, Billy Morton, and William McCloskey, and after Dick Brewer was killed at Blazer's Mill, McNab became a leader of the Regulator's. A short time later, however, he was shot to death by a large posse of his adversaries.

James Manning

Born on a plantation near Huntsville, Alabama, Jim Manning was one of four brothers - Doc, Jim, John, and Frank - who fought for the Confederacy, for Maximilian in Mexico, and against anyone who antagonized them. (Doc, for example, engaged in a bloody knife fight with the doctor who was his chief competitor in Giddings, Texas.)

After the Civil War the Mannings vowed never to shave until the South rose again, and then they moved to Texas' Gulf Coast. There they built a sloop, sailed to Mexico, and enlisted with Maximilian. Later they returned to Texas, settled in Belton, then restlessly scattered in various directions before reuniting in El Paso in 1881.

Jim, Frank, and John ran a ranch near Canutillo which became notorious as a haven for rustlers and other outlaws. The Mannings became involved in a bitter feud with lawman Dallas Stoudenmire, and Jim was largely responsible for killing both Stoudenmire and his brother-in-law, Doc Cummings, in separate gunfights.

Later, Manning was a saloon owner in El Paso and Seattle, and after an 1889 Seattle fire destroyed his business, he moved his family to Anacosta, Washington, and opened still another saloon. Soon he returned to the Southwest, investing in the silver and copper mines around Parker, Arizona. He died of cancer in Los Angeles in 1915, survived by his wife and many descendants.

Boone Marlow

Boone Marlow was a member of a restless and clannish frontier family who lived at various times in California, Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Mexico, and Colorado. Boone had four brothers - Charley, Alf, Epp, and George - and their father was a stock raiser, farmer, and doctor.

In 1886, while the family was living in Wilbarger County, Texas, Boone killed a man, and the clan then left for Colorado. Two years later the five brothers were arrested on stealing charges, but the charges were dropped. They then moved back to Texas, settling near Vernon.

At Vernon local authorities tried to arrest Boone for murder, but he shot his way to freedom. His four brothers were arrested for complicity, and although they soon sawed their way out of jail, they were quickly rounded up again. Only their courageous defiance kept a mob from lynching them, and it was decided to transfer them to a safer jail. A short distance out of town, however, a mob opened fire from the darkness. One lawman was killed, and two others were wounded, and Alf and Epp Marlow fell dead. A prisoner named Clift was hit in the leg, George Marlow was shot in the hand, and Charley Marlow was wounded in the chest and jaw. But even though each was wounded and shackled to a dead brother, George and Charley picked up their guards' weapons and fought off the mob, killing three and wounding another.

George and Charley lived to be old men, but Boone was quickly found and killed by a trio of bounty hunters. The three men - Martin Beavers, J. E. Direkson, and G. E. Harboldt - located Boone on Hell Creek, twenty miles east of Fort Sill, Oklahoma. They apparently poisoned him for the seventeen hundred dollars' reward and packed his body into Fort Sill on January 28, 1889.

more »

---

top of page

back a page