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The Gunfighters

Billy Thompson "For God's sake, Billy, you've shot our best friend," Ben reproached him after one shoot-out. Billy retorted, "I'd of shot him if he'd been Jesus Christ."

William Larkin Stiles

Billy Stiles was a young gunman (rumored to have killed his father at the age of twelve) who gained notoriety in the Southwest at the turn of the century. After assisting lawman Jeff Milton, he was hired by Burt Alvord, marshal of Wil]cox, Arizona. The two law officers soon organized a gang of train robbers, however, including Three-Fingered Jack Dunlap, George and Louis Owens, Bravo Juan Yoas. and Bob Brown.

Stiles and Alvord eventually were exposed, and the next few years brought a series of chases, arrests, and escapes. In 1904 Alvord was captured, but Stiles fled the country and worked his way finally to China. He soon returned to the United States, where he was killed while working as a Nevada deputy sheriff under the alias "William Larkin."

Frank C. Stilwell

The younger brother of noted lawyer and former army scout S. E. ("Comanche Jack") Stilwell, Frank Stilwell came to Arizona in 1878 and worked as a miner and teamster at Signal Camp in Mohave County. Soon he was attracted to booming Tombstone, where he became an associate of N. H. Clanton and his ring of southern Arizona cattle rustlers.

Stilwell managed to secure an appointment as deputy sheriff of Cochise County, of which Tombstone was the county seat. He operated out of the copper mining town of Bisbee, south of Tombstone, but seemed more interested in his business activities with a Tombstone resident named Pete Spence: a Bisbee livery stable and a stage robbing partnership.

After the Tombstone-Bisbee stagecoach was looted of three thousand dollars by two bandits, Spence and Stilwell were arrested. They were acquitted, but soon were arrested again by Wyatt Earp, who was hoping to impress the electorate sufficiently to be elected county sheriff. The pair once more were released, but they nursed a grudge which they paid off after the O.K. Corral fight. An embittered Ike Clanton apparently engaged them to wreak vengeance upon the Earps, and after Virgil and Morgan Earp were ambushed, the surviving brothers knew where to look. While still a deputy sheriff, the twenty-sevenyear-old Stilwell was gunned down by Wyatt Earp and four other men.

Joe Stinson

Stinson migrated to the California gold fields during the 1850's. During the Civil War he marched with the California Column into New Mexico, where he remained when peace resumed. He once again fruitlessly pursued the miner's life, building up just enough of a stake to open a saloon in booming Elizabethtown.

In 1871 Stinson killed gunman Wall Henderson, and soon thereafter he moved his saloon business to Santa Fe. There he fractiously became involved in four other shooting scrapes, although he caused no further deaths. By 1890 alcoholism had so seriously debilitated him that he applied for and received a ten-dollar-per-month veteran's pension. In 1895 he was admitted as an invalid to the Pacific Branch of the National Home for Disabled Soldiers near Los Angeles, where he died in 1902.

Port Stockton

Born the son of a Texas rancher, Port Stockton and his older brother Ike early demonstrated a tendency toward wildness. At seventeen Port assaulted a man and was charged with attempted murder, but Ike helped him to escape the law. Port drifted to Dodge City, then in 1874 he went to Lincoln County, New Mexico, where Ike had opened a saloon. Ike was raising a family, and Port soon married a Baptist preacher's daughter named Irma. But within two years the brothers had moved to Colorado and settled in Trinidad.

In October, 1876, Port got into a shooting scrape in Cimarron, New Mexico, and Ike had to spring him with a predawn jailbreak. Two months later there was another gunfight in Trinidad, and the Stocktons hastily moved to Animas City, Colorado. Port gambled for a while, then secured an appointment as city marshal. But he was run out of town after he angrily chased and fired at a Negro barber who had nicked him with a razor. He briefly held the marshal's job in Rico, Colorado, but he was forced to leave there, too, when his past caught up with him.

Port next moved his wife and two small daughters to a shack just outside Farmington, New Mexico. Port teamed up with a pair of hard cases named Harge Eskridge and James Garret, and the trio was widely suspected of rustling. Then the three undesirables shot up a New Year's Eve party after being thrown out, and hard feelings grew. Port was killed in the violence that followed, and Ike swore revenge.

There was an outbreak of rustling soon thereafter, and when certain area citizens were shot up, Ike was blamed and Governor Lew Wallace issued a reward for his arrest. In September, 1881, Ike was shot in the leg in the streets of Durango, and he died following amputation.

Dallas Stoudenmire

A member of a large Southern farm family, young Dallas Stoudenmire joined the Confederate army in 1862 and served through the duration of the Civil War, suffering numerous wounds in the course of his duties. For several years after the war he farmed near Columbus, Texas, before becoming a member of Company B of the Texas Rangers.

After a couple of years of Indian fighting, Stoudenmire returned to civilian life as a carpenter and wheelwright in Alleyton, Texas. Between shooting scrapes he engaged in sheep ranching in Oldham County and in the merchandising business in Llano County. He became the city marshal of booming, violent El Paso in 1881.

A tall, rangy, impressive figure, Stoudenmire ceaselessly patrolled the teeming streets of El Paso with a brace of six-guns tucked inconspicuously under his coat in a pair of leather-lined hip pockets. (He also carried a snubnosed revolver as a hideout gun.) Within days of his appointment as marshal he was involved in two bloody shootouts, and although he thus made bitter enemies, the city fathers were delighted with their new lawman. But Stoudenmire was an alcoholic, and his habits of drunkenly firing his guns in the streets - often in the dead of night - and of running around on his wife Belle soon dimmed his popularity. After a series of absences because of excessive drinking, Stoudenmire was censured, and Deputy Jim Gillett was groomed to replace him. Stoudenmire resigned after just over a year in office, and he then operated the Globe Restaurant, which his brother-in-law had willed him.

In July, 1882, Stoudenmire was appointed a deputy U.S. marshal, but he continued to drink and get into trouble. That summer he took a "cure" at the hot-springs bathhouses near Las Vegas, New Mexico, and by then he had developed such a severe tremor that a friend had to sign the hotel register for him. A short time later he became involved in a drunken saloon brawl in El Paso, and he was shot to death during the brutal gunfight which followed.

Samuel Strawhim

A frontiersman of vague background, Strawhim appeared in Kansas in the late 1860's and proved himself to be a troublemaker. He was warned to leave Hays City by local vigilantes, but he adamantly remained and engaged in gunplay with a vigilante leader. Sheriff Wild Bill Hickok shot him to death a few weeks later.

William E. Sutton

A native of South Texas, Bill Sutton served in the Confederate army and after the war moved his family to Clinton in DeWitt County. There he came into conflict with the Taylor clan, and the result was Texas' Sutton-Taylor feud. Texas Ranger Lee Hall held that the feud had begun a few decades earlier in the Carolinas and Georgia, but it flared anew in Texas in the late 1860's.

Sutton's band of "Regulators" at times numbered as many as two hundred and included such stalwarts as cattleman Shanghai Pierce, Indian fighter Old Joe Tumlinson, and vicious lawman Jack Helm. Aligned with the Taylors were the Clements brothers and their cousin from East Texas, the murderous John Wesley Hardin.

For several years there was a violent series of shootouts and ambushes which not even the Texas Rangers were able to halt. At last Sutton moved with his immediate family to Victoria, but Jim Taylor relentlessly sought him out and killed him in Indianola in 1874. The feud continued in bloody fashion until Taylor himself was killed a year and one-half later.

Bill Taylor

The son of Texas farmer Pitkin Taylor, Bill became involved in the bloody Sutton-Taylor feud when his father was gunned down in the summer of 1872. When Pitkin died of his wounds six months later, Bill supported his brother Jim in a vow of revenge. There were two unsuccessful attempts to kill Bill Sutton, leader of the opposition, and these clashes were followed by a bloody progression of ambushes, sieges, and street fights.

Jim rapidly became the more prominent of the Taylor brothers, fighting his way to leadership of his clan against the Suttons, but Bill took part in his share of the bushwhackings and murders. In March, 1874, Bill and Jim finally succeeded in killing Sutton in Indianola, although Bill was later arrested and thrown into the Indianola jail. Luck was with him, however; on September 15, 1875, a fierce storm struck the Gulf Coast of Texas, and during the resultant chaos and destruction in Indianola, Bill escaped-although before leaving he heroically rescued several people from the surging waters. The following December Jim Taylor was killed, and thereafter the fighting rapidly decreased.

Taylor's next notoriety came in 1877, when he was incarcerated in an Austin jail whose residents at the time included Wes Hardin, Mannen Clements, Johnny Ringo, and members of the Sam Bass gang. A year later rangers arrested Taylor in Cuero on charges of horse theft, assault, and forgery, but somehow he managed to evade imprisonment. In 1881 he was reported to be involved in altercations in Kimble County, but soon he left Texas and moved to Indian Territory. Relatives asserted that he became a law officer there and was killed by a criminal in the line of duty.

Hays Taylor

Hays Taylor was a young member of DeW itt County's Taylor family and an early participant in Texas' Murderous Sutton-Taylor feud. In 1867 he and his brother Doboy killed two soldiers and thus incurred the wrath of the authorities. Numerous members of the Sutton faction were officers of the law and were therefore able to take legalized action against the Taylors because of this and subsequent incidents. Hays was killed in an ambush near his father's ranch.

Jim Taylor

Jim Taylor was a young member of the large DeWitt County family which was embroiled with the Sutton clan in Texas' most violent feud. The Sutton-Taylor trouble had been raging since the late 1860's when, in the sunr mcr of 1872, Jim's father, Pitkin Tavlor, was lured outside his house by Sutton drygulchers ringing a cowbell. Pitkin was gunned down in his cornfield, and he died six months later.

At their father's funeral Jim and his brother Bill and several other relatives vowed revenge. Over the next two months Jim twice tried to kill Bill Sutton, and he did succeed in putting to death three Sutton men, including the vicious Jack Helm. The day after Ifelm's death a Taylor party attacked the ranch of Sutton stalwart Joe Tumlinson, but a posse soon arrived, and a truce was signed.

A few months later, in December, 1873, Taylor ally Wiley Pridgen was killed at Thomaston, and the feud again erupted. The Taylors immediately besieged the Suttons in Cuero for a day and a night, then were themselves pinned down when Joe Tumlinson galloped up with a larger band of gunmen.

Within months Jim and Bill Taylor succeeded in killing Bill Sutton and a friend, but the Suttons retaliated by lynching Scrap Taylor, Jim White, and Kute Tuggle in Clinton on June 20, 1874. But after a few other incidents - notably the escape of Bill Taylor from the Indianola jail and the assassination of Rube Brown, marshal of Cuero and new leader of the Suttons - the feud climaxed with the death of Jim Taylor late in 1875. For three years he had been the Taylors' most vigorous and aggressive leader, and when he was killed, the lengthy struggle rapidly subsided.

Phillip Taylor ("Doboy")

Creed Taylor, a veteran of the Texas Revolution, and his brothers Pitkin, William, Josiah, and Rufus were the elders of the DeWitt County family which battled the Suttons in Texas' bloodiest feud. Their sons were among the chief combatants of the murders and shootouts which lasted from the late 1860's until the middle 1870's. Phillip - always known as Doboy - was the son of Creed Taylor, and after the Civil War he was "wanted" by Reconstruction officials. (When he was married, the ceremony was conducted on horseback in the open prairie should flight be necessary, and he took his bride to the Taylor gang hideout for her honeymoon.) Doboy was involved in early shooting scrapes of the SuttonTaylor feud, and he was shot to death in 1871.

Edwin Tewksbury

Ed Tewksbury's family moved into Arizona's Pleasant Valley in 1880. The head of the clan was John D. Tewksbury, a restless wanderer whose Indian wife produced three sons - Edwin, James, and John, Jr. After he became a widower John married a Globe widow and sired two more sons.

The Tewksburys experienced difficulties with their ranching neighbors, the Grahams, and when the Tewksburys turned to sheep raising in 1887, a violent feud erupted. Ed was a frequent participant in the hostilities which followed, and he was probably one of the men responsible for the death of the leader of the opposing faction. After a long trial and two and one-half years' confinement in jail, Ed was cleared of all charges in 1896. Until his death in 1904 he served as constable of Globe and deputy sheriff of Gila County.

Jim Tewksbury

Jim Tewksbury was a deadly member of the half-Irish, half-Indian family who clashed in a vicious range feud with cattlemen in the Pleasant Valley War. In 1887 the Tewksburys, who for seven years had raised cattle near Globe, took on a herd of sheep and immediately fell into trouble with cowboys from the Hash Knife outfit and with a family named Graham. (The rumor persisted that a Graham added fuel to the fire by becoming involved in some way with a Tewksbury wife.)

After a Tewksbury collie was killed, the outnumbered sheepmen began sniping at their adversaries. The Grahams offered five hundred dollars for the death of any sheepherder and one thousand dollars for John Tewksbury, Sr. John and his son, John. Jr., were eventually killed, but Jim and other members of the faction extracted bloody vengeance. Jim did not long survive the feud, dying of consumption in 1888 in his sister's home.

William Thompson ("Texas Billy")

Younger brother of Ben Thompson, Billy moved as a boy to Austin, Texas, where the main occupations of his father were drinking and catching fish, which the two brothers sold around town. During the Civil War Billy enlisted in the Second Regiment of Texas Mounted Rifles - the celebrated "Horse Marines" - fought in Louisiana, and was assigned with Ben to border duty, where the brothers ran various monte games. In 1868 Billy killed a soldier and, aided greatly by Ben, escaped to the lawless Indian Territory.

Four years later Billy turned up in Abi(ene as a house dealer in the Bull's Head Saloon, co-owned by Ben. The next year Billy went with Ben to Ellsworth and took up with a prostitute named Emma Williams, who soon switched her affections to Wild Bill Hickok. Billy then began romancing Molly Brennan, who later was killed in the noted gunfight between Bat Masterson and Sergeant King. In Ellsworth in June, 1873> Billy and Ben shot their guns off in the street and the next day were fined for the offense. Graver trouble arose two months later when Billy, staggering drunk, accidentally shot and killed Sheriff C. B. Whitney. Friends helped him leave town, after which he dismounted, stretched out on the prairie sod, and slept off his drunk. That night he wandered back into Ellsworth and saw Ben secretly, then after hiding in the vicinity for four or five days, he made his way to Buena Vista, Colorado, where the local outlaw element elected him mayor of the community. The governor of Kansas offered five hundred dollars for Billy's arrest, but it was three years before he was apprehended, after having returned to Texas. Captured by Texas Rangers, he was extradited to Kansas and eventually acquitted of Sheriff Whitney's murder.

Billy returned to Austin, went to Dodge City with Ben, then drifted into Nebraska, where he was wounded in a shootout in Ogallala. He was delivered out of that hostile town by Bat Masterson, after which he wandered back to Texas.

Billy continued to be a heavy drinker, but he was sober the night that Ben and King Fisher were killed. Billy was in San Antonio and, by coincidence, just three doors away when his brother was shot. He rushed to the scene, but was unarmed, and he merely walked the night streets in aimless grief.

Little is known of Billy's later years: in 1882 he hid in El Paso for several months to escape a murder charge in Corpus Christi, and it is rumored that he was killed in Laredo about 1888.

Mike Tovey

Tovey achieved renown by serving Wells Fargo as a shotgun guard for twenty-eight years. The stage from Bodie to Carson City on the morning of Sept. 5. At the time of halting the stage, Jones fired two shots, killing one of the stage horses. Mike Tovey, then fired, killing Jones, who was drunk Milton Sharp then fired, seriously wounding Tovey in the right arm. Tovey, disabled, started for a neighboring farmhouse to have his arm dressed, when Sharp returned to the stage, demanded the box from the driver and robbed it of $700, while Jones was lying dead in the road and the stage detained by the dead horse still attached to the team. A veteran of numerous scrapes, he was involved in at least two fatal shootings, the second of which unfortunately resulted in his death.

A tablet, in memory of the many brave Wells Fargo messengers and stage drivers, was placed near Ione, caligornia, on September 8, 1929, which contains a replica of a 6-horse stagecoach with driver & guard. The tablet reads: Michael (Mike) Tovey, Wells Fargo messenger, was killed, and Dewitt Clinton Radcliffe, stage driver, injured on this spot June 15, 1893 by a lone bandit, who attempted to hold up the regular stage on the old Ione-Jackson stage road.

William Towerly

One Sunday morning on November 29, 1887, the two deputies found Smith with his gang, Lee Dixon, his brother-in-law, Dixon's wife and William Towerly in a tent near the Arkansas River. The outlaws had the advantage in numbers and firepower so they knew it was to their benefit to stand their ground in a gunfight. Dalton and Cole rushed the tent knowing the outlaws had very little protection from within. The lawmen were surprised when they ran into a heavy barrage of gunfire. Frank Dalton was the first to be hit as a slug tore into his chest driving him to the ground. Towerly, seeing the fallen officer ran directly toward Frank Dalton shooting him several times in the head as he passed over him. As the smoke cleared, Dixon also lay seriously wounded on the ground with Towerly making his escape.

Towerly made his mark as a gunman by killing two peace officers in separate shootouts, although he was himself shot to death in his last fight. Towerly's escape was brief for the lawmen were on his trail finding him near his home at Atoka, Choctaw Nation. Towerly fought to his death for he knew killing a deputy marshal meant a trip to Judge Parker's gallows.

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