Home : Gunslinger Sinners :The Two Lives Of A Professional Gunfighter
Henry Newton BrownOrphaned at a young age, Brown and his sister were reared on their uncle's farm, located near Rolla, Missouri. In 1875, at the age of seventeen, Brown left Missouri and headed west. For a time he worked on a ranch in eastern Colorado, then he spent a season hunting buffalo. In 1876 he killed a man in the Texas Panhandle, and subsequently he gravitated to turbulent Lincoln County, New Mexico. Brown signed on as a cowpuncher and rustler with Major L. G. Murphy and worked for eighteen months while a bitter feud developed between Murphy and three local competitors - ranching magnate John Chisum, lawyer Alexander McSween, and rancher John Tunstall. Early in 1878, disgruntled over a salary squabble. Brown switched sides and hired on with Chisum. About that time Tunstall was murdered, and Brown became an active participant in the all out war that followed. He was one of three men indicted for murdering Sheriff William Brady and Deputy George Hindman; he was present when Frank Baker, William Morton, and William McCloskey were killed; and he also participated in the Blazer's Mill shootout. There were numerous minor scrapes, and Brown finally found himself in the middle of the climactic battle in Lincoln. Afterward, Brown leagued with Billy the Kid and various other fugitives who formed a band of stock thieves. In the fall of 1878 the Kid, Brown, Tom O'Folliard, Fred Wait, and John Middleton moved a herd of stolen horses to the Tascosa area of the Texas Panhandle, but by October the Kid and O'Folliard were ready to return to New Mexico, even though they were wanted by the law there. Middleton and Wait wisely decided to return to their homes in Kansas and Oklahoma, respectively. while Brown elected to stay in Tascosa. For a while he was a cowhand for George Littlefield, but then he took a job tracking horse thieves. Next he wangled an appointment as a deputy sheriff of Oldham County, but he was soon fired because he "was always wanting to fight." In 1881 he again was hired by Littlefield, but he was discharged from that job, too, "because he was always on the war path." Brown then was hired by Barney O'Connor, foreman of a ranch in Woods County, Oklahoma, but shortly he drifted to Caldwell, a wild trail town just across the Kansas line.
Caldwell, KansasIn July 1882, two weeks after George Brown's death, a man named Henry Brown - so far as is known, no relative of the slain marshal - rode into Caldwell. A short, hard, blue-eyed man, he had come alone up the Chisholm Trail from the south, packing two ivoryhandled six-shooters and a well-worn Winchester rifle. Soon after his arrival in town, he dropped into the Mayor's office to ask for a lawman's job. "All right," the Mayor was reported to have said. "It's your funeral." Henry Brown became assistant marshal of Caldwell. He was to prove a classic example of the gunfighter turned lawman - but with an ending that rocked decent citizens everywhere. In announcing his appointment, the Caldwell Post could divulge little about Brown except that "it is said that he is one of the quickest men on the trigger in the Southwest." In fact, though the good people of Caldwell did not know it, their mayor had unwittingly hired one of the Southwest's most unregenerate hardcases. In Texas and New Mexico, Henry Brown was famous as a desperado. He was with Billy the Kid and some other friends during New Mexico's notorious Lincoln County War of 1878 when they murdered the county sheriff and cold-bloodedly slaughtered two deputies who were being held as prisoners. Brown had also stolen horses in the Pecos valley and run them into the Texas Panhandle. He had squandered his loot in one saloon and gambling hall after another. Then, about 1880, his life took a sudden turn when he served a short hitch as a deputy sheriff in Oldham County, Texas. Thus, when Brown hit the Chisholm Trail for a look at the cattle towns of Kansas, he was a seasoned gunfighter with a growing taste for the lawman's side of the business. In Caldwell, Henry Brown proved to be a superb peace officer and won the abiding affection of the citizens. Within six months the Mayor and city council moved him up from assistant marshal to acting marshal to marshal. In the latter capacity he killed two men - an Indian named Spotted Horse who was foolish enough to resist arrest, and a gambler, Newt Boyce, who was idiotic enough to try a shoot-out with Brown. But it was the mere fact of Brown's presence in Caldwell that counted most. With his own hand-picked deputy, a huge Texan named Ben Wheeler, he dominated the once-wild streets of the town. The incongruous pair - the sawed-off marshal and his towering right-hand man - rarely had to use their guns. Caldwell rejoiced in its head lawman -an exemplar of virtue who did not drink, did not gamble, and did not even smoke or chew tobacco. At one point, to replace his worn rifle, the townspeople presented him with a shining new, elegantly engraved, gold-mounted Winchester bearing the inscription: "For valuable services rendered the citizens of Caldwell." In March 1884, he further gladdened their hearts by marrying a Caldwell girl, Maude Levagood. Apparently she pronounced it "Lee-va-good," for in announcing the marriage, the Caldwell Journal noted the event with an atrocious pun ("he did not Lev a good girl at all, but took her unto himself for better or for worse"), before adding that the newspaper staff collectively "throws its old shoe after the young folks and wishes them a long and prosperous life." The newlyweds took an important step when Henry bought a house - an act that was rare indeed among Western gunfighters. Then, in late April, Henry decided to turn outlaw again - why, no one will ever know. Perhaps he needed money; perhaps married life was constraining; perhaps Caldwell had become too tame for him. In any case, at the end of April, Brown and his deputy, Ben Wheeler, rode out of town. Somewhere on the open range they picked up two Texas cowboy friends, Bill Smith and John Wesley. Together the four men headed west. Their destination, Medicine Lodge, was a settlement about 55 miles from Caldwell. It was a tiny place with few of the attractions of the rowdy cattle towns along the railroads - but it had a small bank with no one of the likes of Henry Brown to protect it. Medicine Lodge had undergone some bad days, according to an account by a local newspaper editor, when "a few swaggering ruffians took virtual possession of the town, howled about the streets and fired their revolvers until their wild and woolly spirits were satisfied and then left unharmed and went unpunished." After that demonstration of unopposed tyranny, the editor added, the place became known as a town whose "white-livered inhabitants" ducked into their houses when desperadoes showed up. It must have seemed the ideal spot for a quick, quiet, easy bank holdup. It turned out to be nothing of the kind. Though one newspaper described Brown's raid on the bank as an attempt at robbery that "for cold-bloodedness and boldness of design, was never exceeded by the most famous exploits of the James gang," actually it was a botched job. Neither Brown nor any of his confederates had ever robbed a bank. While Bill Smith acted as lookout, the other three entered the bank shortly after opening time. Within minutes they killed the cashier and mortally wounded the president. But the dying cashier locked the bank vault, and soon the empty-handed bandits were hightailing it out of town with a posse at their heels. Brown and his men knew little about the surrounding countryside. In a few hours they were trapped in a blind box canyon. They fought off their pursuers for a while, then gave up the futile battle. The aftermath was quick and brutal. At 9 o'clock that night a mob broke into the Medicine Lodge jail, overpowered the sheriff and his posse and swarmed over the prisoners. The four men made a break for freedom; Brown ran only a few yards before falling dead, riddled with buckshot and bullets. Wheeler, Smith and Wesley were hanged later that night from an elm tree east of town. Then the "white-livered inhabitants" of Medicine Lodge went home. Soon afterward they read this judgment of their behavior in the local newspaper: "Mob law is to be deplored under almost any circumstance, but in this case the general sentiment of the community will uphold the summary execution of justice by the taking of these murderers' lives." Caldwell, of course, was shattered. "When the news came," the Joumal reported, "it fell like a thunderbolt at midday. People doubted, wondered, and when the stern facts were at last beyond question, accepted them reluctantly." After a detailed account of the affair, the Journal editor addressed himself to the difficult task of composing an obituary for Caldwell's late lamented marshal. He conceded that Henry Brown had one fault as a peace officer - but only one: "He was too ready to use his revolver or Winchester." On the other hand, the editor went on, "He had gained the entire confidence of the people," and Brown and Ben Wheeler "had made two as good officers as the city has ever had. They had been given credit for honor and bravery." The obituary also quoted from a letter Henry Brown had written to Maude Brown a few hours before his death: Darling Wife: The people of Caldwell had hired Henry Brown in all innocence, ignorant of his past and his proclivities. The same could not always be said of other Western communities. Some towns not only accepted but frankly admired marshals who openly acknowledged their seamy records.
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