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The Gunfighters

New York city policeman-turned-western-lawman. Thomas Smith.

John Selman

Selman's father was an Englishman who in America had become a schoolteacher, farmer, and small-scale slaveowner. John spent his early years on a farm in Arkansas, then moved with his family to Grayson County, Texas, in 1858. His father died, and John became responsible for his mother and four younger brothers and sisters.

After the Civil War began, John joined the Confederate cavalry and was stationed in Oklahoma. He saw no ac tion, however, and in 1863 he deserted and led his family to Fort Davis, Texas, about twenty miles northeast of presentday Albany. (This Fort Davis was a fortification erected and named by settlers threatened by Indians, and should not be confused with the Fort Davis established by the U.S. Army in West Texas.)

In 1864 Selman enlisted in the state militia, which was responsible for frontier defense, and was elected lieutenant by his neighbors. In August, 1865, he married Edna deGraffenreid, and in 1869 the Selmans and the deGraffenreids moved to Colfax County, New Mexico. Indians stole all their livestock, however, and the following year Selman returned to ranching in Texas, about eight miles from wild and woolly Fort Griffin. During the 1870's Selman twice became involved in Indian troubles and reputedly killed several hostiles in skirmishes. He also was widely thought to have murdered a local bully known as Haulph.

Selman established close relationships with two Fort Griffin citizens: Hurricane Minnie Martin, a local prostitute who became his mistress, and John Larn, a vicious gunfighter and rustler who served for a time as sheriff of Shackleford County and who became Selman's close friend and business partner. In Fort Griffin Selman also came in contact with such frontier notables as Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, Killin' Jim Miller, Jesse Evans, and Pat Garrett.

Selman owned property in Fort Griffin, including a saloon, but increasingly he and John Larn resorted to rustling. Texas Rangers and local authorities were pressured to stop Larn and Selman, and bushwhacking attempts were perpetrated by both factions. Larn was arrested and killed by a mob in 1878, and Selman, who had witnessed Larn's arrest from concealment, fled the country. Warrants were issued for Selman's arrest, and while he remained at large, his wife died carrying their fifth child.

With his brother Tom, Selman drifted into Lincoln County in the summer of 1878, and John became the leader of a gang of hard cases. "Selman's Scouts" were involved in robbing stores and rustling cattle, but pressure from the army caused the gang to break up. The Selman brothers returned to Texas, and by March, 1879, John had organized another band of rustlers which operated throughout West Texas. The gang disintegrated when Selman was bedridden with smallpox, and he then opened a butcher shop in the settlement adjacent to Fort Davis.

Selman soon began leading still another group of robbers and rustlers in the Fort Davis-Fort Stockton area, but in June, 1880, he was arrested in Fort Davis - two days after his second marriage. His brother and fellow outlaw, Tom Cat Selman, had been lynched when he was taken into custody, but when John was transferred back to Shackleford County for trial, he bribed his jailers and escaped.

Selman went to Chihuahua, Mexico, where he opened a saloon and gathered his family about him. After working a silver claim for a time, he returned to New Mexico, opened a saloon in Fort Bayard, and prospected in the mountains.

After a shooting scrape, Selman fled back to Mexico and sold John Deere farm equipment. Selman's second wife died, and when he received news in 1888 that he had been cleared of rustling charges in Texas, he and his two sons moved to wide-open El Paso. John peacefully went to work for a smelting company, but on one occasion an attempt was made on his life, and he was severely stabbed in the face. After recovering, he led a couple of cattle drives, then in 1892 was elected city constable.

The next year, at the age of fiftythree, Selman married a sixteen-yearold girl, who weathered their stormy marriage and wed three times after Selman's death. In 1894 Selman killed Bass Outlaw in the line of duty, and the next year he killed the famous John Wesley Hardin. A hung jury in the Hardin death caused a retrial to be scheduled, but Selman was slain before the case came to court. Selman was drinking heavily at this stage of his life, and he abrasively entered a quarrel with George Scarborough and was killed in 1896.

Lafayette Shadley

An Oklahoman law officer, Lafe Shadley, gained fame for his clashes with outlaws during the 1890s. In 1892, in Osage County, Shadley crossed the trail of bank robber and rustler Dan "Dynamite Dick" Clifton. When Shadley tried to take Clifton, a gunfight left Clifton wounded in the neck, but he escaped.

Lawmen around the Ingalls, Okla., area were informed that outlaw Bill Doolin and six of his Oklahombres gang members were tearing up the town. Two wagons of officers headed toward Ingalls. Coming in from the south at around 10 a.m. was Shadley, along with W.C. Roberts, Jim Masterson, Henry Keller, George Cox, Hi Thompson, and H.A. Janson. Their wagon circled Ingalls and stopped by a grove of trees near the residence of Dr. Pickering. At the same time a wagon driven by Dick Speed, accompanied by John W. Hixon, J.S. Burke, Tom Houston, Red Lucas and Ike Steel, rode in from the north. Men from the posse infiltrated the town and shooting began when Speed fired on Bitter Creek Newcomb. Arkansas Tom Jones, who was firing from a hotel window, fatally shot Speed and the injured Newcomb rode out of town. Doolin and four of the Oklahombres began shooting from inside a saloon and the gunfire became so intense that a local boy, Del Simmons, and a stray horse were both slain.

When Doolin and his gunmen raced to a nearby livery stable Shadley hid behind the dead horse and fired on the front door of the stable. Then Bill Dalton, Tulsa Jack Blake, and Red Buck Waightman came tearing through the door on horseback as Doolin and Dan Clifton rode out the back door. Jones' sniping fire wounded Houston and one of Hixon's bullets clipped Dalton's horse in the jaw. Dalton spurred the wounded animal on but Shadley dropped the horse with a bullet to its leg. Dalton grabbed some wire cutters and began ripping at a fence which blocked his way out of town. Shadley hid behind a storm cellar, crawled under a fence, and then was spotted by Dalton who pumped three bullets into his body. Dalton finished cutting up the fence, jumped up behind Doolin, and sprinted out of Ingalls. Jones surrendered after another hour of gun fire and the battle was over. Shadley and Houston were taken to Stillwater, along with Speed's corpse, and their relatives and friends were called in. Both lawmen died the next morning.

Oliver Shepherd

Ol Shepherd fought and plundered with Missouri guerrillas during the Civil War, then lost no time in joining the James-Younger bandit gang. He was active in several holdups before he was tracked down and killed near Independence, Missouri.

James D. Sherman ("Jim Talbot")

James D. Sherman, who went by the name "Talbot," helped trail a herd of cattle from Texas to Caldwell, Kansas, in the fall of 1881. Upon arrival he rented a house and installed his wife and two children. Noted as something of a desperado in Texas, Talbot and several friends spent the next few weeks drinking and carousing about the town. In December Talbot killed former lawman Mike Meagher, but he managed to escape apprehension for fourteen years. By that time he had moved to a ranch in California, and in 1894 he was arrested - possibly for the murder of a man he had killed in Mendocino County.

The next year a trial for the murder of Meagher ended in a hung jury, and a subsequent trial won him acquittal. He returned home to discover that his wife had taken a lover, and in 1896 Talbot was assassinated - probably by his amorous competitor.

Mike Shonsey

Of Irish and Canadian extraction, Mike Shonsey migrated to the cattle country of Wyoming from Ohio. Beginning as a cowboy, he soon worked his way up to foreman and served several outfits in that capacity. When the Johnson County War broke out, Shonsey sided with the big cattlemen and hired his gun to the Wyoming Cattle Growers' Association. On one occasion he had a fist fight with small rancher Jack Flagg, and twice he was forced to back down in clashes with Nate Champion; therefore, he willingly spied for the association and also killed Dudley Champion, Nate's twin brother. He left Wyoming for a few years, but eventually he returned and lived to an old age, one of the last survivors of the Johnson County War.

Cyrus Wells Shores ("Doc")

Born in a Michigan village near Detroit, Shores received both his Christian name and his appellation from the man who brought him into the world, Doctor Cyrus Wells. In 1866 the young man left home for Montana Territory, finding work at Fort Benton as a bullwhacker.

Shores briefly turned to hunting and trapping, but soon he bought a wagon and spent the next few years hauling ties for the Union Pacific Railroad, running freight to various mining camps, and carrying government supplies from Fort Hays to Camp Supply, Oklahoma. In 1871 he sold his wagon and bought a small herd of Texas cattle, which he drove up the Chisholm Trail, and for the next seven years he bought and sold cattle in Kansas.

In 1877 Doc married, and three years later the Shoreses moved to Gunnison, Colorado, establishing a freighting outfit which supplied the area's booming gold camps. In 1884 Shores won election as sheriff of Gunnison County, and he served for eight years. He continued his career as a deputy U.S. marshal and as a railroad detective for the Denver and Rio Grande, and in 1915 he was appointed chief of police in Salt Lake City.

Shores associated with men such as Wild Bill Hickok, Tom Horn, and Jim Clark, and among the numerous fugitives he apprehended was the notorious cannibal, Alfred Packer. The veteran lawman's first wife, an artist and poet, died in 1908, and he later remarried. Shores retired to Gunnison, where he survived to his ninetieth year.

Luke L. Short

Two years after his birth in Mississippi, Luke moved with his family to a farm in Texas. As a teen-ager Luke left home and hired on to trail cattle herds north to the Kansas railheads. After a few years of this rugged life he decided to seek a more pleasant and lucrative existence. In 1876 he drifted into Sidney. Nebraska, and soon joined up with some whiskey peddlers. The liquor merchants established a trading post 125 miles north of Sidney and began selling whiskey to Sioux Indians - a federal offense. Short later claimed that he killed six drunken braves on various occasions during this period.

Soon Short was arrested by soldiers, but he managed to escape and dropped out of sight for a couple of years. For a brief time in 1878 he carried dispatches and scouted for the army in Nebraska; then he was attracted to Leadville, Colorado, where he gambled professionally and engaged in a shooting scrape. In 1879 he moved to Dodge City and spent two quiet years as a house dealer in the Long Branch Saloon.

In 1881 Short gave booming Tombstone a look, becoming a house dealer in the Oriental Saloon along with Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. The three gamblers became known as the "Dodge City gang." While in Tombstone. Short killed a fellow gambler, Charles Storms, and after his release Luke returned to Dodge City and the Long Branch.

In 1883 Short bought an interest in the Long Branch, and shortly thereafter he became embroiled in the "Dodge City War." After a clash with reformminded city officials, Short had a gunfight with policeman and City Clerk L. C. Hatman and was promptly run out of town. Lawyers were consulted, there was a series of charges and countercharges, and Short recruited a gang of gunfighter friends - the celebrated "Peace Commission," which included Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson.

Eventually Short and his cohorts paraded into Dodge, but there was no violence, and Luke left town, ultimately settling his differences with the city out of court. Short then established his gambling residence in Fort Worth, buying a partnership in the White Elephant Saloon and acquiring a mistress named Hettie. Although gambling became illegal in the growing cattle town, Short went underground and made a fortune, frequently hobnobbing with the upper classes of Fort Worth society.

Always a fastidious dresser, Short regularly draped his small (five-foot, six- inch, 125-pound) frame in tailored clothes, and his right pants pocket was cut extra long and lined with leather to hold his six-gun. While in Fort Worth he had gunfights with Charles Wright and Longhaired Jim Courtright, with fatal consequences to both.

Short eventually developed dropsy, and as his condition worsened, he went to the mineral spa at Geuda Springs, Kansas, where he died in September, 1393.

Joseph Alfred Slade ("Jack")

Reared in Illinois, Jack Slade left home in the 1840's and soon volunteered to serve in the Mexican War. He saw action in combat, and after his release he married and found employment with the Central Overland Cali fornia and Pike's Peak Express Company.

By 1858 Slade was a line superintendent, and in his duties he ran afoul of a horse thief named Jules Reni, who nearly killed him. Slade recovered, resumed his duties, and a year later found and brutally murdered Reni.

Increasingly troubled with alcoholism, Slade became involved in a shooting in Wyoming and moved to Virginia City, Montana, where he tried to start a ranch. He soon fell into trouble in the booming mining town, however, and after a saloon quarrel citizens dragged him outside and threw a rope over a beam holding a sign. "My God! My God!" cried Slade. "Must I die like this? Oh my poor wife!"

Intending to bury her husband in his native Illinois, Virginia Slade sealed the corpse inside a tin coffin filled with raw alcohol. Upon reaching Salt Lake City, however, the body was so odorous that it was buried in the Mormon Cemetery on July 20, 1864 - more than four months after the lynching.

Bill Smith

Smith was a turnof-the-century outlaw who led a gang of rustlers and train robbers in Utah and Arizona. After the Arizona Rangers were created in 1901, Smith clashed with the small band of lawmen, gunning down Rangers Bill Maxwell and Dayton Graham in separate gunfights. But Graham survived and killed Smith in 1902.

Jack Smith

Smith was something of a desperado who was sentenced to a stretch in the Colorado penitentiary in 1880. Soon after his release he pistol-whipped a former lawman named Barrett in White Pine, then fled to Cripple Creek. There he led men in defiance of the authorities in the Bull Hill War, which resulted in riots, killings, and destroyed mines. During this violence, however, he was shot to death by the marshal of Cripple Creek.

Thomas J. Smith ("Bear River Tom")

Of Irish descent, Smith was reared in the Catholic faith. He was rumored to have been a member of the New York police force. By 1867 Smith was in Nebraska working with the Union Pacific Railroad. The following year found him engaging in the same type of work in Wyoming, where he became involved in the violent Bear River Riot. Next he served as marshal of several "end-ofthe-track" railroad towns before being appointed chief of police of Abilene, Kansas, in June, 1870.

Smith gained considerable renown for his adamant refusal to carry a gun, even during dangerous situations. On one occasion, for example, Smith marched toward a burly fellow named Wyoming Frank, who held a pistol on him. Unflinching, Smith slugged Wyoming Frank, seized his gun, then pistol-whipped him with it. But in November Smith was brutally killed when he tried to serve a warrant. He was buried with a solemn and sincerely grieving community in attendance.

Tom Smith

Smith was a Texan who entered law enforcement. He wore a badge in both Texas and Oklahoma, and at one time he held an appointment as a deputy U.S. marshal. In the late 1880's he was employed as a range detective by the Wyoming Stock Growers' Association, and he vigorously pressured area homesteaders and small ranchers on behalf of his cattle baron employers. On one occasion he killed a "rustler" and was indicted for murder, but the political connections of the association (which ultimately included the acting governor and both senators of the state) were sufficient to secure Smith's release.

During the spring of 1892 Smith was dispatched to Texas to recruit gunfighters for an all-out range war in Wyoming's Johnson County. He was authorized to offer five dollars per day and expenses, a three-thousand-dollar accident policy, and a bonus of fifty dollars to each gunman for any enemy shot or hanged. Smith enlisted twentysix men in and around Paris and headed north. Frank Canton had recruited a similar number of hard cases, and Major Frank Wolcott was appointed to head the expedition, with Smith in charge of the Texans.

A one-hundred-thousand-dollar "extermination fund" had been raised to pay for the invasion, and the "Regulators" were given a list of seventy troublemakers to kill. The plan fell apart, however, and the Regulators were arrested in Buffalo. Strings were pulled, and the Regulators were finally released, but most of them immediately left Wyoming. Smith returned to Texas, where he was killed within a short time.

John Sontag

During the 1890's John Sontag and his brother George owned a quartz mine near Visalia, California. In 1891 they ventured east and were responsible for train holdups in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Within months they had returned to California, where they robbed a train at tiny Collis Station.

Wells, Fargo and Pinkerton detectives were hot on the trail of the Sontags, and their efforts resulted in the capture of George. For nine months there was a widespread manhunt during which John and accomplice Chris Evans wounded a total of seven posse members. But in September there was a final confrontation which resulted in a marathon gun battle. Two deputies were killed, and both outlaws were finally shot and captured. John died of his wounds, and when his brother heard the news in Folsom Prison, he went berserk and was killed by guards.

Juan Soto ("The Human Wildcat")

Juan Soto, of mixed Indian and Mexican blood, was a large, ugly man who was a notorious California thief and murderer. In 1871 he was involved in a killing in Alameda County, and Sheriff Harry Morse made Soto the subject of one of his relentless manhunts. Morse found Soto several months later, and following a spectacular pistol duel, the fugitive was shot to death.

A. John Spradley

The oldest of nine children of a Mississippi farmer, A. J. Spradley lived with his family until 1871, when a local shooting scrape sent him scurrying to Texas. For a year he worked at the Nacogdoches farm of an uncle before accepting a job at a mill. In 1880 he was appointed deputy sheriff of Nacogdoches County, and a year later he stepped into the vacated sheriff's office.

In the following decades Spradley served thirty years as sheriff and four years as a deputy U.S. marshal. He was vigorous and shrewd in pursuing criminals, and on occasion he took the precaution of wearing a steel shirt beneath his clothing. He killed three men in gunfights, and twice he was nearly shot to death. As an extra source of income he owned an interest in a Nacogdoches saloon, but after a near-fatal wound he sold out and became an ardent prohibitionist. Following his retirement from law enforcement, Spradley farmed and took an active hand in politics until his death in 1940.

Jess Standard

A cowboy who worked for Pink Higgins during the 1870's, Standard became involved in the bloody Horrell-Higgins feud in Lampasas County, Texas. He later moved his growing family from the Lampasas area and spent the rest of his life as a farmer and carpenter near Tuscola, Texas.

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