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The Gunfighters

Tom Tucker

James Stott and Hashknife cowboy Tom Tucker were arrested on a horse-stealing charge. The justice of the peace in Globe determined the horse's original owner was Jack Lauffer, but ruled: "There seems to be an entire lack of evidence to convict." Stott and Tucker were released, but suspicions had been planted in the minds of some prominent citizens of Tonto Basin who called themselves "regulators."

Tucker was a cowboy who readily became involved in feuds. As a rider for Arizona's Hash Knife outfit he fought in the Pleasant Valley War until he was nearly shot to death. Jim and Ed Tewksbury, Jim Roberts, and Joseph Boyer were at the Middleton spread when Paine, Hamp Blevins, Tom Tucker, Bob Glasspie, and Bob Carrington rode up. Paine repeated his ultimatum, saying the occupants hadn't left and they'd have to pay. According to Jim Roberts, Hamp Blevins reached for his pistol. Jim Tewksbury, deadly with a saddle gun, shot Hamp dead. Jim Roberts fired at John Paine, clipping his ear and splattering the side of his head with blood. Another Tewksbury bullet killed Paine's horse. He jumped away from his mount, but took only two or three strides before Tewksbury bullets dropped him lifeless near the body of Hamp Blevins. Tom Tucker was shot through the lungs; Glasspie and Carrington escaped untouched.

When he recovered, he went to New Mexico, hired on with Oliver Lee, and thus took sides in Lee's feuds with area ranchers. During the course of his career Tucker also wore a badge as a Santa Fe undersheriff, and he eventually died in Texas.

Ben Turner

Turner was a cowboy in the employ of the Horrell brothers when the infamous Horrell-Higgins feud broke out in Lampasas, Texas. He helped gun down three state policemen in Lampasas, and he assisted in a jailbreak in Georgetown. He then accompanied the Horrells to New Mexico, where further violence soon erupted. Ben Horrell, Turner's brother-in-law, was killed in Lincoln, and in the shooting that soon followed, Turner met his death.

Jesse Tyler

Jesse Tyler was a turn-of-the-century Utah lawman who operated against the Wild Bunch. As the sheriff of Grand County, Tyler was active in the pursuit of stock rustlers, but on one occasion he was sued by the wife of a horse thief for taking stolen animals from their corral. In 1900 Tyler was killed by outlaws while leading a posse.

Grand County Sheriff Jesse Tyler was shot and killed on May 26 1900 by "Kid Curry" Harvey Logan not quite two months after the Sheriff killed "Flatnose" George Currie. Sheriff Tyler and Deputy Samuel Jenkins were shot and killed in a shootout with the outlaw known as Kid Curry.

Kid Curry was suspected of being involved with the murders of five law enforcement officers: Sheriff Josiah Hazen of the Converse County Sheriff's Department, Wyoming; Deputy Samuel Jenkins and Sheriff Jesse Tyler of the Grand County Sheriff's Department, Utah; and Patrolman Robert Saylor and Patrolman William Dinwiddie of the Knoxville Police Department, Tennessee. Kid Curry was arrested after the murders of Patrolman Saylor and Patrolman Dinwiddie. He was convicted of the murders but escaped from the local jail before being transferred to a federal prison.

Frederick T. Wait ("Dash Wait," "Dash Waite")

A quarterblood Cherokee, Wait married an Indian woman and settled in Lincoln County, New Mexico. He was employed by English rancher John Tunstall just before the outbreak of the Lincoln County War. Wait followed Billy the Kid during the ensuing skirmishes, and when the Kid left New Mexico, Wait went with him to the Texas Panhandle. On one occasion, while riding alone in the Panhandle, Wait was jumped by a posse and escaped lynching only by flashing the secret distress signal of a Freemason. When the Kid and Tom O'Folliard decided to return to New Mexico, Wait went back to his home in the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory. There he served as a tax collector, dying in 1895 at the age of forty-two.

Joe Walker

Walker's father, a Texas rancher, died when Joe was still an infant. His mother had turned their property over to her brother, a Dr. Whitmore, to manage. About 1870 Whitmore merged the Walker herd with his own and moved to a ranch in northern Arizona, where he was soon killed in an Indian raid. Whitmore's widow sold out and migrated with her sons, George and Tobe, to Carbon County, Utah, where they became a prominent banking and ranching family.

When Walker's mother died, he went to Utah to make a property settlement with the Whitmores. They denied any relationship or property claims by Walker, and he found employment at local ranches and at a Huntington sawmill and began to hound the Whitmores.

After a shooting incident in 1895 Walker threw in with outlaws at nearby Robbers Roost and began to rustle cattle and horses. He frequently stole stock from the Whitmores, but on one such raid an accomplice named C. L. ("Gunplay") Maxwell informed the authorities of Walker's whereabouts after the two outlaws quarreled. Walker managed to escape only after a lengthy chase and siege. A few months later, on April 21, 1897, Walker cut telegraph wires and otherwise aided Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch in pulling off the eight-thousanddollar Castle Gate payroll robbery.

About one year later, following another raid on Whitmore livestock, Walker was chased by a nine-man posse in Utah. Encamped near the town of Thompson with a passing cowboy named Johnny Herring, Walker bedded down for the night with his gun in his blankets. But the posse surrounded the camp during the night, and when Walker stirred at dawn, the lawmen opened fire. Walker and Herring, who was assumed by the posse to be Butch Cassidy, were riddled with bullets and died in their bedrolls.

William Walker

William Walker and his father, David Walker, were leaders of a wild outlaw band that terrorized Christian County, Mo., in the late 1890s. They reportedly had as many as 400 members in their gang at one time and were known as the Bald Knobbers. Those who dared to testify against Walker and his clan were summarily executed by gang members. In 1888, five witnesses came forward to describe a robbery and several murders committed by Walker and his Knobbers, but these men were lynched by Walker and his men before they could testify in court. All five witnesses were mutilated, a large gash made on the forehead of each as a symbol of the informant. William and David Walker, along with John Matthews, one of their men, were convicted of killing Charles Green and Charles Edins. All three were sentenced to be hanged at Ozark, Mo., on May 10, 1889.

The three men were taken to a scaffold and, before a large crowd, were forced at gunpoint to jump off a crude gallows. The ropes around their necks were too long, and William Walker's rope ripped his neck, causing blood to spurt. He was dragged back to the top of the scaffold and forced to wait until his father and Matthews, their knees on the ground, had slowly strangled to death. As William Walker screamed in agony, causing the crowd to look away, another rope was affixed around his neck and the bandit was once again hanged. Walker was pushed off the scaffold and dangled for fifteen minutes before he, too, strangled to death.

Jack Watson

Jack Watson served the Confederacy during the Civil War and received a wound in his instep which caused a pronounced limp throughout the rest of his life. After the war he rode as a cowboy, enlisted in the Texas Rangers, and occasionally tracked rustlers on behalf of Texas ranchers. In 1884 he shot up Montrose, Colorado, and a six-hundred-dollar reward was posted for his capture.

Later Watson knifed a man in Crystal, a Gunnison County mining camp, and Sheriff C. W. Shores, who had once worked with Watson as a cowboy, arrested the fugitive. Watson was acquitted, then accepted a job as Shores's deputy. He served faithfully through 1890, when he was shot to death in Utah.

John Joshua Webb ("Samuel King")

Serving most of his adult life as a lawman, John Joshua Webb (J.J.) was also a hunter, teamster, surveyor, hired gun, and member of the notorious Dodge City Gang in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Born on February 14, 1847, in Keokuk County, Iowa, J.J. was the seventh of twelve children born to William Webb, III and Innocent Blue Brown Webb. Sometime between 1838 and 1840, the family moved to Sangamon County, Illinois, and in 1862, moved again to Nebraska. Webb traveled west in 1871, becoming a buffalo hunter and then a surveyor in Colorado. He then drifted from Deadwood, South Dakota to Cheyenne, Wyoming, to Dodge City, Kansas.

The 1875 census of Ford County listed J.J. Webb as a 28 year old teamster. Later he would serve as a business owner, peace officer, and a leader of Ford County's mercenary force on the side of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad in their battle against the Denver & Rio Grande railroad for right-of-way through the Royal Gorge in Colorado.

Numerous news articles from the Dodge City papers showed Webb to be a well-respected member of the Dodge City community. J.J. Webb was a deputized to ride in several posses during his stay in Dodge. In September of 1877, Webb went to Lakin, Kansas, with Ford County Sheriff Charlie Bassett and Under-sheriff Bat Masterson in pursuit of the Sam Bass gang who were heading south toward Texas. Bass and his gang had recently robbed a Union Pacific train of $60,000 at Big Springs, Nebraska. Their expected route home would lead them through southwest Kansas. The search was unsuccessful; Bass eluded numerous posses to finally meet his death July 21, 1878, in Round Rock, Texas.

On Tuesday, January 29, 1878, Webb was deputized along with two other men by new Ford County Sheriff Bat Masterson to aid him in pursuit of a six-member gang who had robbed the westbound train at Kinsley, Kansas, two days earlier. He and his accomplice Edgar West were caught within days by Sheriff Bat Masterson and his posse, which included John Joshua Webb. When Rudabaugh went for his gun, Webb stopped him and forced him to surrender. The other four accomplices were arrested later. Rudabaugh then informed on his cohorts and promised to go "straight." Rudabaugh's accomplices were sent to prison, but Dirty Dave was soon released, drifting to New Mexico and returning to thievery once again.

In September of 1878, considerable fear and excitement swept through southwest Kansas as Cheyenne Chief Dull Knife and his band were heading for their ancestral home in the Black Hills. Reports of killing and pillaging perpetrated by the Indians were flooding into Dodge City daily. As only nineteen soldiers remained at nearby Fort Dodge, the rest were out hunting Dull Knife and his starving band, the citizens of Dodge City wired the governor to send them arms and ammunition. The requested weapons were sent at once. Colonel William H. Lewis, Commandant of Fort Dodge selected J.J. Webb; Bill Tilghman; A. J. Anthony; and Robert Wright, and other experienced plainsmen, to scout the area. They brought back a report that 200 warriors were in the area. As more reports of atrocities continued to pour into Dodge, Dull Knife's band quickly swept out of the area and things again returned to normal.

It was in 1879 that Webb worked with as a hired gun for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad in their battle against the Denver & Rio Grande railroad for right-of-way through the Royal Gorge in Colorado. Soon, John Joshua Webb moved on to again to Las Vegas, New Mexico. Though J.J. Webb had been counted among the leading citizens of Dodge City, in Las Vegas, matters would take an entirely different turn. When he arrived many of his acquaintances were there from Dodge including Henry "Doc" Holliday, David "Mysterious Dave" Mather, Wyatt Earp, and his old nemisis, Dave Rudabaugh.

In 1880, Webb accepted the position of City Marshal. While City Marshal, he joined the Dodge City Gang led by Justice of the Peace Hyman Neill, known as "Hoodoo Brown." The Dodge City Gang was firmly in control of a criminal cartel bent on thumbing their noses at the law. For two years, the members of the Dodge City Gang participated in several stage coach and train robberies, organized cattle rustling, and were said to have been responsible for multiple murders and lynchings.

The Dodge City Gang was comprised of a judge, a group of peace officers, and several known outlaws with ties to Dodge City who were tormenting the citizens in and around Las Vegas at the time. The "gang" consisted of Justice of the Peace Hyman G. "Hoodoo Brown" Neill, City Marshal Joe Carson, Deputy U. S. Marshal and later Las Vegas marshal "Mysterious Dave" Mather, policeman John Joshua (J.J.) Webb, hard cases "Dirty Dave" Rudabaugh, Selim K. "Frank" Cady, William P. "Slap Jack Bill" Nicholson, John "Bull Shit Jack" Pierce, Jordan L. Webb (no relation to J.J.), and various other notorious gunmen. While Rudabaugh, Cady, Nicholson, Pierce, Jordan Webb, and the rest would commit acts of thievery, Neill, Carson, Mather and J.J. Webb, in their official capacities, were suspected of helping cover their tracks.

On March 2, 1880, Hyman Neill learned that a freighter by the name of Mike Kelliher was carrying about $1900 on his person. The Ford County Globe of March 9, 1880, reprinted the report from Las Vegas Daily Optic:

About four o'clock this morning, Michael Kelliher, in company with William Brickley and another man, entered Goodlet [a member of the Dodge City Gang] & Roberts' Saloon and called for drinks. Michael Kelliher appeared to be the leader of the party and he, in violation of the law, had a pistol on his person. This was noticed by the officers, who came through a rear door, and they requested that Kelliher lay aside his revolver. But he refused to do so, remarking, "I won't be disarmed - everything goes," immediately placing his hand on his pistol, no doubt intending to shoot. But officer Webb was too quick for him. The man was shot before he had time to use his weapon. He was shot three times-once in each breast and once in the head ... Kelliher had $1,090 [$1,900] on his person when killed.

Regardless of his status as a City Marshal, Webb was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang. On April 30th, Rudabaugh, along with a man named John Allen burst through the Sheriff's office to free Webb. Though the jail break was unsuccessful, Rudabaugh murdered jailer Antonio Lino in the process. Webb's sentence was appealed and commuted to life in prison. Rudabaugh soon fled Las Vegas along with Dodge City Gang member , hooking up with Billy the Kid and his gang. However, Rudabaugh, along with Billy the Kid were captured on December 23, 1880.

After Dirty Dave's conviction, he found himself in jail with J.J. Webb. Rudabaugh, Webb, and two other men by the names of Thomas Duffy and H.S. Wilson tried unsuccessfully to shoot their way out of jail on September 19, 1881. Duffy was mortally wounded and their attempt was unsuccessful. However, Webb, facing life in prison, and Rudabaugh, the threat of hanging, were determined.

Two months later, Webb and Rudabaugh, along with five other men, chipped a stone out of the jail wall and escaped out of a 7"x19" hole. Rudabaugh and Webb raced to Texas and then to Mexico where Webb disappeared and Rudabaugh was later killed. Later Webb returned to Kansas, where he took the name "Samuel King," and worked as a teamster. Somewhere along the line he moved on to Winslow, Arkansas working for the railroad. In 1882 he died of smallpox in Arkansas. John Joshua Webb never married.

Harry Cornwall Wheeler

Wheeler was the son of an army officer, and his career became one of public service in numerous capacities. An expert marksman with rifle or pistol, in 1903 he joined the Arizona Rangers, and two years later he succeeded Thomas Rynning as captain, serving in that capacity until the organization was disbanded in 1909. Later he was elected sheriff of Cochise County, and during a 1917 labor dispute at the Bisbee copper mines he led the group responsible for the "Bisbee Deportation," in which nearly twelve hundred strikers and sympathizers were forcibly removed from the area.

During the First World War Wheeler reached the rank of captain in the U.S. Army. After the war he was defeated for the Cochise County sheriff's office, and he drifted from job to job until his death in 1925.

Chauncey Belden Whitney ("Cap")

Whitney was one of the earliest settlers of Ellsworth, arriving in 1867, the year it was established by the railroad. He was the town's first constable, he built the first jail, and at various times he served as city marshal, deputy sheriff, and county sheriff. Twice he left Ellsworth on expeditions against Indians. In 1868, along with fifty other "scouts," Whitney fought at the celebrated Battle of Beecher Island; the following year he was elected first lieutenant of a militia company which manned a blockhouse near Ellsworth to guard against Indian depredations. Sheriff Whitney was killed in his thirtyfirst year by Billy Thompson in the streets of Ellsworth.

William R. Wren

Bill Wren owned a cattle spread in Lampasas County, Texas. Pink Higgins was a neighboring rancher who became embroiled in a bloody feud with the Horrell brothers, and when Wren lent his assistance, he became Higgins' chief lieutenant. Severely wounded in a street fight in 1877, Wren signed a truce at the urging of Texas Rangers Major John B. Jones and later used his gun only on the side of the law as a county sheriff.

Nathaniel Ellsworth Wyatt ("Zip," "Wild Charlie," "Dick Yaeger")

The son of an Indiana farmer, Wyatt moved with his parents and brother to Oklahoma in 1889. After his brother, Nim ("Six-Shooter Jack"), was killed in Texline, Texas, Zip turned bad. He was involved in several fatal shootings and began robbing stores, post offices, and trains. He took refuge in Indiana, but was tracked down and arrested by Chris Madsen. He escaped from jail in Guthrie, but in 1895 a posse surprised and shot him.

Bill O'Neal. Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters Norman OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979.

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