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Ben Thompson

There were few men on the western frontier who took part in more historical events or crowded more drama into a forty-three-year life-span than did Ben Thompson - Confederate cavalry officer, secret agent behind federal lines, major in Maximilian's army, Indian fighter, gambler in every cow town of the West, and a precise and ruthless killer. "It is doubtful, whether in his time there was another man living who could equal him with a pistol in a life and death struggle," wrote Bat Masterson who had worn a tin star in Dodge City during its wildest years.

Only his fellow Texan, John Wesley Hardin, equaled Thompson in the skill of handling a gun, and Kid Curry, Tiger of the Wild Bunch, was his only match for the casualness with which he viewed his own life and those of the men he faced in solitary combat.

Ben was born of English parents in Nova Scotia in 1843. When he was nine his family moved to Austin, Texas. His father, a former British sailor, spent most of his time in saloons. Before he was twelve, Ben and his younger brother Billy, were fighting daily battles with bullies who tormented "drunken Thompson" as he reeled home.

Men who knew Ben as a boy recalled him as "bright, handsome, full of promise and owning an explosive temper." He was thirteen when he shot another youngster in a dispute over his marksmanship. As a frontier newspaper account reported, the extent of the boy's wounds was picking bird shot out of his body while Ben "through some means got clear of punishment." Ben also fought a duel with shotguns in a dispute over some geese.

By this time Ben's father had gone to sea, never to return. He left Ben and Billy to support their mother, "a handsome English woman," and two sisters, by selling fish. Ben had earlier caught the eye of Colonel John A. Green, a prominent Austin attorney who sent him to Professor Swancoat's private school. Young Thompson proved to be a bright pupil and for two years took honors in every class until he was forced to return home and support his mother.

Colonel Green got him a job in the composing room of Austin's Southern Intelligencer where he soon became an apprentice printer. After a year he moved to the New Orleans Picayune. One day while riding a horsecar Ben noticed a young Frenchman "forcing his unwelcome attentions on a young woman." Ben interfered, there was a fight-and he threw the Frenchman off the car. The Frenchman, Emile de Tours, traced Ben to the newspaper office and challenged him to a duel with pistols or swords. But Ben, as the challenged party, had the right under the code duello to choose his weapons, so the young Texan shocked de Tours and his seconds by insisting they enter a darkened room with knives and fight blindfolded to the death.

After some argument de Tours agreed. One morning at dawn they were both blindfolded, each given a bowie knife, and guided into an abandoned icehouse on the outskirts of the city. Then the door was locked on the outside. The seconds waited in a tense silence. After a few minutes there was a knock and they rushed to open the door. Ben, still blindfolded, stepped out; behind him on the floor was de Tours's slashed lifeless body. That night de Tours's friends searched the city for Thompson but his friends had insisted he leave at once for Austin.

For a while he worked again in the Intelligencer's composing room, spending his spare time gambling. When he discovered he had a singular skill with cards and guns he discarded his printer's stick for the gambling tables. He became as good with a six-shooter as he was with cards. Once a notorious gambler with a reputation as a killer called Ben a cheat and challenged him to a gunfight. When the smoked cleared the gambler was dead.

Austin at the time was a rough frontier settlement. Beyond its borders lay the open wilderness, endless herds of buffalo, and the Comanche and Kiowa. It was not unusual for the townspeople to fight off raiding hostiles who swept into the dusty streets. Once when a party of warriors thundered into Austin to take five young girls as hostages, Ben joined the posse that finally caught up with the band. His marksmanship emptied the Indians' saddles until only one escaped and the children were rescued.

Records show Ben joined the Second Cavalry in San Antonio when the Civil War broke out. At Fort Clark he got into a brawl with a lieutenant and a sergeant and killed both. He was jailed but escaped to sign up with another cavalry outfit and took part in several engagements, including the disastrous Battle of LaFourche Crossing in 1863 when his regiment was decimated during a frontal attack under heavy fire. While on leave Ben returned to Austin and married Catherine Moore, daughter of a local farmer. He returned to duty as a lieutenant assigned to Colonel John (Old Rip) Ford's regiment patroling the Rio Grande.

Trouble and Ben Thompson were never far apart. In Laredo he killed two Mexicans in a gambling hall dispute and outrode a posse to return to Austin. A short time later he was imprisoned for killing a man named John Coombs, again over cards. He escaped and rejoined the army until the surrender at Appomattox. Back in Austin, Thompson found the war was not over. Federal troops occupied Texas and carpetbaggers controlled the law and the courts. Only a short time after he was reunited with his wife and brother Billy, both Thompsons were arrested and charged with the Coombs shooting.

Like many other prisoners in postwar Texas, Ben and Billy languished for months without a hearing. Their appeal for bail was denied; they were refused particulars of the charge and an opportunity to hire a lawyer. In Mexico Emperor Maximilian, struggling to retain his throne, had sent out agents to recruit former Confederate officers to help his failing army. Ben accepted a lieutenant's commission. His guards were bribed and one night he slipped out of prison to cross the Rio Grande into Matamoros, Mexico, where he joined the regiment of General Tomas Mejia.

Thompson's adventures as a mercenary were extraordinary. In June 1866, he commanded a company of fifty-eight infantrymen attached to a regiment escorting a "treasure train" headed for Camargo. On the way they were attacked by two Republican army brigades. Thompson, as he recalled, "fought as I have never fought before or since."

He was also present at Queretaro when the city was surrounded by Republican forces under Benito Juarez. Before his escape he witnessed the surrender of the generals, including Mejia, who were later executed. The role Thompson played in Mexico is not well known. For some reason he never mentioned that period in his life to newspaper or magazine interviewers. However, a short time before he was killed, he agreed to assist his biographer, William M. Walton, an Austin judge, "who has known him as a child." Thompson gave Walton a number of long and detailed interviews in which he told of his experiences in Mexico and on the frontier. Walton had the good sense to use the interviews as he had recorded them.

Thompson arrived in Austin to discover Congress had dismissed the newly elected governors and legislatures of southern states and ordered the military to retain order. Ben insisted to his biographer that, although he carefully avoided any trouble on his return, the Yankees had a long memory and he and his brother Billy were arrested as fugitives from justice, ironed and placed in the bullpen.

A military court was convened a mile from the pen; Ben and Billy were forced to walk the distance carrying their chain and ball, which weighed a hundred pounds. At the conclusion of a five-week trial, they could barely hobble because of the deep wounds caused by the leg shackles. The court returned a guilty verdict and both were sentenced to ten years at hard labor in Huntsville Prison. After serving two years they were released when a civil government replaced military rule.

Herds of Texas longhorn were now moving up the Chisholm Trail to the railheads of Kansas; by 1871 more than 600,000 steer were in the pens of Abilene. Returning drovers reported to Ben the town was wide open and a gambler's mecca. In June Thompson arrived in Abilene with only enough money to buy a night's lodging and breakfast.

Gambling houses, saloons, and brothels were open day and night, poker and monte games went on continuously with fortunes sliding across the tables. Ben pawned his six-shooter and sat in the first poker game he could find; when it ended several hours later he had won $2,583.

Another Austin gambler who arrived in Abilene about the same time was Phil Coe, a tall, slender, mild-mannered man who had served on the Rio Grande with Ben. Coe had several thousand dollars so they formed a partnership and opened the Bull's Head Saloon, the most notorious gambling house and saloon in Abilene's rowdy history.

Wild Bill Hickok wore the town's tin star; the flamboyant lawman, fresh from Hays City, controlled the wildest of Kansas cow towns with only two deputies and his reputation as the deadliest of gunfighters. He had the difficult task of keeping the wild Texas cowhands under control and still make sure they spent their money in the town.

The Texans found Wild Bill a formidable figure. A cowhand who had watched Hickok patrol Abilene's streets recalled: "He wore a low-crowned, wide black hat and frock coat. When I came along the street he was standing there with his back to the wall and his thumbs hooked into his red sash. He stood there and rolled his head from side to side looking at everything and everybody from under his eyebrows-just like a mad old bull. I decided then and there I didn't want any part of him."'

The Bull's Head was a booming success, patronized by the thousands of Texans who came to Abilene with the herds. The other saloon owners resented its popularity and the legendary tale is that they conspired with Wild Bill to kill Thompson.

From their first meeting Thompson and Hickok viewed each other with suspicion and hostility. Even without the Bull's Head as a source of disagreement, they would have been enemies on an open prairie. Ben hated Yankees and Wild Bill was contemptuous of Texans, particularly Texas gamblers.

City officials demanded that Thompson and Coe change the Bull's Head sign, an exaggerated painting of a longhorn's sexual organ. When the gamblers ignored their complaint, Hickok marched to the saloon and stood outside with a shotgun while painters made the necessary alterations. Hickok continued to harass the Bull's Head; a few weeks later he forced the owners to move their faro equipment out of the back room to the front of the saloon.

Ben and Wild Bill never had a confrontation, but tension mounted every night when the long-haired Hickok walked down Texas Street to enter the Bull's Head's crowded bar. Thompson thought his troubles were over when John Wesley Hardin came into town with a herd. The young Texan's reputation as a killer had reached the cow towns but instead of facing the young gunman with a six-shooter, Hickok wisely sat down with Hardin and, over a bottle of champagne, made him promise not to "embarrass the marshal" during his stay in Abilene. A few nights later Hardin killed a man in a fight and left for Texas.

Ben, lonely for his family, telegraphed his wife to join him. Kate and their six-year-old son arrived at Kansas City, Missouri, but with tragic results - their carriage overturned on the city's outskirts, severely injuring all three. Kate's crushed arm had to be amputated, their son's foot was broken, and Ben's leg fractured. Doctors treated them for the rest of the summer at the Lincoln Hotel in Kansas City until Ben decided he had enough of Abilene. He and Coe sold the saloon and in late September the Thompsons started for Texas, moving short distances by rail and stagecoach.

Ben and Billy Thompson arrived in Ellsworth in June 1873, and opened a gambling house in the rear of a saloon. Ben was popular with the cowhands and his "gambler's roost," as the town's newspaper called it, was a success. For all its boasting Ellsworth was not as wild as Abilene. Cowhands fresh from the trail would ride in shooting at signs and shattering windows and streetlamps but there were few gunfights. A force of deputies under Sheriff Chauncey B. Whitney, veteran of the Indian Wars, allowed the hands to blow off steam, then made them pay the damages and usually bought them a drink. More than once Ben helped Whitney disarm a drunken, would-be gunfighter and he and the sheriff became close friends.

On the afternoon of August 15, 1873, the famous Battle of Ellsworth took place. It began in a saloon when Ben asked Jack Sterling, another gambler, to pay off a debt. Sterling, who knew Ben was unarmed, struck him in the face. Ben went for Sterling but Deputy Sheriffs Happy Jack Morco and Edward Hogue held him off with six-shooters.

Later Ben and Billy went looking for Sterling and Morco. By Billy Thompson's own admission, he had been drinking heavily all afternoon and was drunk when he joined his brother. They met near the railroad depot with Ben offering Sterling and Morco a chance to fight. Sheriff Whitney, who had been summoned, tried to act as peacemaker. Unarmed, he walked toward the Thompsons, calling out: "Boys, let's not have any fuss or difficulty." "We don't want any trouble, sheriff," Ben replied, "but we intend to defend ourselves if they want to fight." "Put up your guns and I will see that you will be protected," Whitney promised. "I'm satisfied that you will," Ben told him. "Let's have a drink and get Billy to put his gun away."

The trio walked back up Main Street to Brennan's saloon, a popular meeting place for cowhands and drovers. Billy and Whitney walked in but as Ben was about to follow someone shouted: "Look out, Ben, here they come with guns!" Ben whirled about to see Sterling and Morco, guns drawn, advancing toward him. As he pulled his six-shooter, Sterling and Morco jumped into a store entrance and Ben's shot splintered the wood where they had been standing. Billy stumbled and killed Whitney when firing at Happy Jack. Billy disguised, drove cattle in and out of Ellsworth for several weeks, without being recognized, and in due time went off in perfect safety. The prosecution of both was dismissed.

A short time later Ben left for Kansas City. Whitney's death was followed by another gunfight between Cad Pierce, a popular Texas drover and a deputy. When Pierce died of his wounds a mob of Texans threatened to burn Ellsworth to the ground. This led to vigilante action. Bands of armed citizens patroled the streets, raiding hotels, saloons, and gambling houses, and giving "undesirables" only a few minutes to leave town "or be the guest of honor at a necktie party." As the Topeka Commonwealth commented: "The trains East are freighted with more infamy than is usually transported in one day … the day of August 12 will be remembered in Ellsworth for the exodus of the roughs and the gamblers …"

When he heard the gamblers had been forced to leave Ellsworth, Ben returned to Texas. He continued to open gambling houses in cow towns and boom mining camps. Dodge City knew him and so did Leadville, Colorado, when a major gold strike was made there in 1879. He also took part in the Colorado railroad "war" between the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe and the Denver and Rio Grande, joining forces with Bat Masterson to lead an army of professional gunfighters who were hired to protect the Sante Fe property.

Ben commanded a company of Texans assigned to guard a large roundhouse south of Pueblo. When the courts finally ordered the Sante Fe to surrender its property to the Denver and Rio Grande, a Pueblo sheriff and one hundred deputies surrounded the roundhouse and ordered Ben to surrender. Ben answered he had been hired by the railroad and would only give up the property upon written instructions. The sheriff then shouted he and his men had come "to disperse a mob" but Ben only replied there was no mob, "only construction workers."

The following day Ben was taken prisoner after he was lured outside on the pretext of holding a parley with the sheriff. With their leader in jail, Ben's "troops" surrendered. Masterson returned to Dodge City, and Ben, accompanied by a jovial sheriff who drove him to the depot, went back to Austin richer by $2,300 and several diamonds, which ironically would someday lead to his death."

By the 1870s Ben had the reputation as one of the most dangerous gunfighters on the frontier. Mythmakers credited him with killing twenty-one men, but coroners' inquests, yellowing newspaper clippings, and his many court appearances total his victims at about eight. Bat Masterson, who probably was a witness to more gunfights and killings during his lawman's career in Dodge City than any man in the West, recalled Thompson's skill with a six-shooter: "Thompson in the first place, possessed a much higher order of intelligence than the average man killer of his time. He was absolutely without fear and his nerves were those of the finest metal. He shot at an adversary with the same precision and deliberation that he shot at a target. A past master in the use of a pistol, his aim was as true as his nerves were strong and steady.”

By 1875 Thompson's reputation as a gunfighter had become so widespread that the editor of the New York Sun sent a reporter to Texas to ask Thompson to describe his gunfighter's technique: "I always make it a rule to let the other fellow fire first. If a man wants to fight, I argue the question with him and try to show him how foolish it would be. If he can't be dissuaded, why, then the fun begins but I always let him have first crack. Then when I fire, you see, I have the verdict of self-defense on my side. I know that he is pretty certain in his hurry, to miss. I never do.”

In the fall of 1879, Ben Thompson, gunfighter, killer, and gambler, ran for city marshal of Austin. His campaign circular was simple and direct. He challenged any man to prove he had ever been dishonest or had ignored the pleas "of the defenseless, timid and weak to protect them from the aggressions and wrongs of the over bearing and strong." The Robin Hood image failed to enchant the majority of Austin's citizens and he was defeated. However, at the next election he was elected, by slightly more than two hundred votes.

Curiously, Ben was an excellent police officer. White, black, or Mexican complainants or prisoners were treated alike. The crime rate fell and records reveal there wasn't a murder or burglary within the town's limits during his term. In the summer of 1882 Ben resigned after killing an old enemy, Jack Harris, a well-known Texas gambler and owner of San Antonio's Vaudville Theatre, probably the best-known nightclub on the frontier. Its patrons were mostly wealthy cattlemen who not only played for high stakes but also came to see the Irish and German comedy teams, magicians, gymnasts, and the theatre's celebrated high-kicking chorus line.

Ben and Harris had their confrontation at the latter's theatre on July 11, 1882, after an argument over the value of the diamonds Thompson had received as part of his payment in the Colorado railroad "war." Harris, hearing Thompson was gunning for him, prepared himself with a double-barrel shetgun. It was twilight when Ben approached the gambling hall. A screen stood between the entrance and the interior of the place. The theatre's band was blaring on the outside balcony as Ben peered through the blinds and saw Harris cradling his shotgun. There was an exchange of profanity and Harris swung around to fire but Ben, always fast on the draw, got off the first shot, then fired two more into Harris's body as the dying man vainly tried to pull the trigger of his shotgun.

Sober, Ben Thompson was soft spoken, courteous, impulsively generous, and fiercely loyal to his friends. Liquor completely changed his personality. Intoxicated, he became arrogant, belligerent, and ready to fight. Danger turned him into a calculating, nerveless killer. There was an inevitability about his death. He died as he lived by the gun in company of King Fisher, who has blustered his way into the folklore of the West as a handsome, dashing gunfighter, idolized by every young cowhand who made the trip north with the herds.

In reality Fisher was a six-gun bully, a swaggering killer who terrorized Maverick and Uvalde counties with a large band of rustlers, killers, and fugitives from every territory in the West. Napoleon A. Jennings, a Texas Ranger, recalled Fisher in his memoirs as a boasting menace who dressed in flamboyant Mexican clothes and carried two silver plated six-shooters. Ben Thompson deserved better company in death …

The shootings took place on March 11, 1884, in San Antonio. Although he had vowed never again to enter the Vaudville Theatre where he had killed Jack Harris - "it would be my graveyard," he was quoted as saying - Ben allowed Fisher to persuade him to go to the combined theatre, gambling hall, and saloon. He knew he had many enemies in the city and was aware that Joe Foster, Harris's partner, had warned the police there would be trouble if Thompson entered his place.

To this day controversy surrounds the death of Ben Thompson and King Fisher; every few years an article appears in a scholarly journal of Southwest history debating the details. There are two versions: testimony taken before the coroner's jury on the morning of the double killing and eyewitness statements obtained by reporters for the Austin Statesmen, which indicated both gunfighters had been ambushed and killed.

In Austin, Thompson's friends and admirers, who had given him a triumphal welcome following his acquittal from the Harris shooting, gave him a monumetal farewell. Crowds overflowed the church and the line of mourners stretched for blocks. One of the many carriages was filled with weeping orphans; it wasn't known until the funeral that Ben Thompson, the man killer, was providing for their clothes and food.

James D. Horan. The Authentic Wild West. The Gunfighters. Crown Publishers, Inc., New York. Copywright 1976.

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