USA > Arizona > Arizona, prehistoric, aboriginal, pioneer, modern; the nation's youngest commonwealth within a land of ancient culture, Vol. II > Part 23
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The truth concerning the Cochise robbery came out a few months later (February 21, 1900) following a supplemental train robbery, that of the express car of a Benson-Nogales train, which was held up at Fairbank. The hero of the affair was Express Messenger Jeff D. Milton, who fought till incapacitated by a bullet wound that terribly shattered an arm. The wounded messenger who was given the highest praise for his defense of his trust, in previous days had been a cattle association detective, a customs inspector and chief of police of El Paso. The bandits numbered five. One of them was captured the next morn- ing six miles from Tombstone, where he had fallen from his horse and had been abandoned by his companions. He was Jess Dunlap, alias Three-Fingered Jack, a well-known cowboy horsethief. He died a few days later in the Tombstone hospital, having received in the body a buckshot load from Milton's shotgun. In a pass of the Dragoon Mountains Sheriff White captured three of the others, who proved to be the leader, Bob Burns, and John and Lewis Owens. With them was the booty, which consisted of only seventeen Mexican pesos. The robbers had expected that the Fort Huachuca payroll would be in the express car safe. Soon afterward the score was made complete by the arrest at Cananea of Tom Yocs, alias "Bravo John," who had been shot in the leg.
Before Dunlap died, he gave the officers the first authentic information concerning the Cochise robbery, implicating Burt Alvord, constable at Will- cox, and William Downing, a well-to-do cattleman. There was some humor in the situation, owing to the fact that Alvord had been one of the noisiest and most active pursuers of the train robbers. Later W. N. Stiles, deputy con- stable at Pearce, confessed the details of the whole affair. Hc and another cow- boy, Matt Burts, did the work alone, but the job was planned and supplies for it were furnished by Alvord and Downing. Alvord had provided the dynamite, secured by breaking into a Willcox powder house. Immediately after the job was done, the spoil was taken to Alvord and Downing at Willcox for division. Stiles received only $480 as his share and consequent dissatisfaction is said to have been the reason for his confession. It is evident, however, that Stiles suf- fered from remorse, though not for his crimes. Considered merely a witness for the Government, he was allowed some liberty. He repaid confidence in April, 1900, by entering the Tombstone jail and, after shooting the jailer through the leg, releasing Alvord and "Bravo John." Downing refused to leave, and
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Burts, who had been arrested in Wyoming, happened to be outside at the time with a deputy sheriff. So the trio hung upon them all the weapons they could find in the sheriff's office and took to the hills on stolen horses. They were next heard of at Alvord's ranch near Willcox, where they made announcement that they proposed to rob a few more Southern Pacific trains. When the Tomb- stone Prospector criticised the sheriff's office in connection with the escape, the sheriff's brother replied by hammering Editor Hattich over the head with a re- volver. In addition to various rewards offered by the sheriff and territorial authorities, W. C. Greene offered $10,000 for the capture of the two outlaws, who were understood to have especial animus against himself.
Alvord surrendered in 1902, tired of the free life of a roving bandit, and ex- pressed himself well pleased at being back where he would be sure of three square meals a day. He had been in the bandit business three years since he laid the plans for the great train robbery at Cochise. He had spent most of the intervening time in Sonora, where Captain Mossman of the Rangers followed and secured expression of a wish to return to the United States if assured of reasonable clemency. But it was to his old friend Sheriff Del Lewis that the surrender was made on the border near Naco. Alvord's way was made easier by the fact that he had assisted in the capture of Chacon, a notorious Mexican murderer. At Tombstone he was discharged from custody, owing to the events of the territorial statute that provided death as the only penalty on conviction of train robbery, but he was rearrested and taken to Tucson on the charge of interfering with United States mails. Alvord and Billy Stiles came into the limelight again in December, 1903, when they dug out of the Tombstone jail and for the second time escaped. A week before Alvord had been convicted on the charge of robbery of the mails. He had been held at Tombstone merely as a witness in the case against Stiles. Alvord later was taken at Naco, but had only two years' imprisonment, managing to evade arrest on other charges at the time of liberation at Yuma. He is said to have made his way to Panama, where he bossed Spanish-speaking laborers for a while, thence departing for Argentina.
When Downing was tried on a charge of train robbery he was acquitted for the reason that conviction would have meant hanging, but on another charge he served a seven-year term. Downing was happily removed from necessary and continuous consideration in Arizona by a pistol bullet in August, 1908. He had used bad judgment in defying Territorial Ranger Speed, after terrorizing Will- cox for months. After his death it was learned that he had been a member of the notorious Sam Bass gang of Texas and had been driven out of that state by Texas rangers. In Arizona he had served two penitentiary sentences, one for train robbery and one for shooting Robert Warren. Burts went to Yuma for a term and was followed by Stiles, who surrendered in the summer of 1900. The latter was reported killed in December, 1908, while working in Nevada, where he was known under the name of Larkin. The killing was said to have been assassination, the man shot in the back while leading a horse.
ONLY ONE LEGAL HANGING IN PHOENIX
Maricopa County in all its history has had but one legal execution, that of a Mexican boy, possibly 18 years of age, by name Demetrio Dominguez, who had murdered, in the Bradshaw Mountains, a wood camp foreman who had dis-
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charged him from employment with, possibly, unnecessary severity. Dominguez located his victim, a large and powerful man, in a stage coach on the Prescott Road, near Gillette and, in the middle of the night climbed into the stage and found his quarry, knifing him to death. The official surveyors of Yavapai and Maricopa counties had to jointly meet to determine the venue of the crime, which was established only a few feet south of the joint county line. The trial was held in Phoenix in the fall of 1880 and in November Sheriff Rube Thomas hanged the lad on a scaffold erected in the old cemetery, in the southwestern part of the village, very near to a grave that had been provided. The Mexican population resented the conviction, and so the cortege from the jail to the scaffold, a distance of over half a mile, had an escort of about fifty citizens, armed with rifles.
CHAPTER XL SOUTHWESTERN OUTLAWS
The Earps and Their Career at Tombstone-What It Cost to Take Sheep into Pleasant Valley-Justice as Rough Hewn on the Frontier-Arizona Rangers and Their Good Work-Arizona's Penitentiaries-End of the Wild West Era.
Among the most notable of Arizona's many exponents of the gospel of vio- lence unto all men were the Earps, who early placed Tombstone on the map as well deserving its cheerless appellation. Wyatt Earp in 1881 was a deputy United States marshal and Virgil was city marshal, offices that afforded legal standing in the affairs in which they were engaged. They were very much at outs with Sheriff Johnny Behan, with whom they divided the influence of the gamblers, who had much to say in those days concerning the administration of affairs. All the Earps had been professional gamblers. They were charged, first and last, with about half of the robberies that were of such frequent occur- rence on the roads leading out from camp. It is told that, while not actively participating, they were parties to a notable robbery of the Bisbee stage, that the actual work was done by Frank Stillwell, and that the primary cause of trouble betwen Stillwell and the Earp gang arose out of his refusal to divide up the spoils. Bud Philpot, a well-known stage driver, was killed on the box of the Benson stage, near Contention. Bob Paul, later United States marshal for Arizona, was riding with him at the time, as guard, and it is possible that the bullet that hit the driver was intended for the messenger. The Earps and Doc Holliday were absent from the town at the time of this particular episode, but returned soon after from a jaunt into the country. They were not arrested. The shooting of Philpot generally was charged to Holliday. John Dunbar remembers that that particular day he had let Holliday have a horse. If it was from stage robberies that the Earps derived the major part of their income, the money only served for the purpose of dissipation. Another factor was that the town really was terrorized and the larger part of the population simply was trying to keep out of trouble and said little of things of which many knew. So popular support was not given to any effort toward the enforcement of the law or the detection of criminals.
WARFARE OF THE EARPS AND CLANTONS
Undoubtedly the most notorious episode of Tombstone's early history oc- curred October 26, 1881. The Clanton gang of cowboys had refused to recognize the local supremacy of the Earps, and there was bad blood between the factions.
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On the night of October 25, Ike Clanton, a prominent, though decidedly not plucky, member of the cowboy faction, had been arrested by City Marshal Virgil Earp and had been fined $50 for disorderly conduct, which appears to have been merely in objecting to the marshal's abuse. On the morning of the 26th of the Clanton gang in Tombstone were Tom McLowery, Frank McLowery, Billy Clanton and Ike Clanton. They had appreciated the intimation that Tombstone was unhealthy for them and had saddled their horses to leave for their home ranch in the Babacomari Mountains. The horses were in the O. K. Corral, which fronted on two streets. Fearing trouble, they planned to leave by the rear gate, on Fremont Street. Ike Clanton and Tom McLowery were not armed, for both the evening before had had their pistols taken from them by the city authorities. The other two had revolvers.
The men were leading their horses out of the gate when they were confronted, almost from ambush, by four of the Earps, Virgil, Wyatt, Morgan and Jim, and by Doc Holliday. Virgil Earp, armed with a sawed-off express shotgun, and ac- companying his demand with profanity, yelled, "Throw up your hands." But he didn't wait for the action demanded and shot almost as soon as he spoke. Tom MeLowery showed his empty hands and cried, "Gentlemen, I am unarmed." Holliday answered with the discharge of his shotgun. Billy Clanton fell at the first fire, mortally wounded, but rolled over and fired two shots from his pistol between his bent knees. One shot "creased" Morgan Earp across the shoulder and he fell to the ground. Ike Clanton ran into a vacant lot and escaped. Frank MeLowery remained, fighting bravely, and, holding his horse by the bridle, fired four shots at the three Earps in front of him. One bullet hit Virgil Earp in the calf of the leg. MeLowery became aware that Holliday was shooting at him from the rear and had turned to answer the fire when his pistol hand was hit. He then raised his revolver with both hands and shot, striking Holliday's pistol holster. At the same moment Morgan Earp rolled over and shot from the ground, his bullet striking MeLowery on the temple, killing him instantly. The Earps and Holliday then marched back to the main part of the town and sur- rendered themselves. They were examined behind closed doors by Justice of the Peace Spicer, who discharged them as having acted as peace officers in the performance of their duty.
Thereafter Virgil Earp received a bad wound in the arm, shot one night by some unknown person concealed in a building. Soon after, Morgan Earp was killed in an Allen Street saloon, about 9 p. m., while playing billiards, his assassin shooting through a rear glass door, himself hidden in the darkness. The mur- derer was supposed to have been Frank Stillwell, a cowboy of the outlaw stripe. If it were Stillwell who did the shooting, he established a reasonable alibi by being in Tucson early the next morning. Ike Clanton already was in Tucson, under arrest for a stage robbery on the road between Tucson and Bisbee. A few days later, the Earps, Holliday and one Johnson, started for California in charge of Morgan Earp's body. The train, taken at Benson, arrived in Tucson about dusk. Ike Clanton, out on bail, learning of the presence of his enemies, secreted himself, but Stillwell, possibly to maintain his attitude of innocence, went to the depot and walked slowly along the train as it was drawing out. The next morning his body, riddled with buckshot, was found at the head of Penning- ton Street, possibly a hundred yards from the tracks, back of the railroad hotel.
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It was assumed that one of the Earps had jumped off, shot Stillwell and then regained the train.
At Rillito station, a few miles westward, all but Virgil Earp left the train. They walked back to Tucson, and, a short distance east of the town, flagged a freight train and on it went to Benson, where they got horses and returned to Tombstone. There Sheriff Behan received a telegram to arrest them. When the sheriff notified them that they were under arrest they directed him to a torrid region, secured fresh horses and rode out of town. They were next heard from in the. Dragoon Mountains, where they shot and killed a Mexican who was chopping wood for Pete Spence, one of their mortal enemies, possibly irritated over not finding Spence himself. Thence they rode to Hooker's Sierra Bonita ranch, where the owner gave them fresh mounts. They rode across country to Silver City, New Mexico, where they disposed of the horses and took a train for Colorado.
On hearing of the refuge of the Earp gang, Governor Tritle on May 16, 1882, issued a requisition on Governor Pitkin of Colorado, asking the return of Wyatt and Warren Earp, Doc Holliday, Sherman McMasters and John Johnson, all charged with the crime of murder. The requisition was refused on the grounds that the papers were defective in form and because Holliday already was under indictment for a crime committed in Colorado. June 2, Governor Tritle sent amended papers, to again meet rebuff, Governor Pitkin replying on the ground that he "did not consider it possible for any agent to deliver the parties named in safety to Tucson." Just the character of influence brought upon the gover- nor of Colorado does not appear at this late date. It is probable the people of Tombstone cared little, as the exile of the Earps was the first possible move toward a lasting peace, which then began to be felt.
PERSONAL HISTORY OF THE EARPS AND HOLLIDAY
Virgil Earp died of penumonia, in Goldfield, Nevada, October 19, 1905, aged 63 years, and was buried in Portland, Oregon, where a daughter lived. He had been married twice. Of the flood of reminiscences, brought up at the time of his deathı, much was made public beyond the more notable episode of his Tombstone career. He came to Arizona first in 1876, in company with his broth- ers, Wyatt and Morgan, and Doc Holliday. While Ed Bowers was sheriff, Pres- cott was visited by two cowboys from Bradshaw Basin, who enjoyed themselves in true cowboy fashion, shooting up saloons, finally riding out of town firing their pistols as they went. They camped at the Brooks ranch, and sent back word that they would remain in case the sheriff wanted them bad enough. Bow- ers organized a posse, of which Virgil Earp was a member. In a pitched battle that followed, Earp found one of the cowboys crouched under an oak tree, re- loading his gun, and shot him twice, one bullet passing through his heart and the other only about two inches from the first. It was remarked, when the body was taken away, that between the man's teeth was still a cigarette he had been smoking when shot. The other cowboy also was brought in prostrate, dying two days later. Virgil Earp came back to Arizona, to the scene of his old exploits in Yavapai County, and engaged in mining in the Hassayampa district. In 1900 he was nominated for sheriff, but failed to make the race. He had seen service in the Civil War in an Indiana regiment of volunteers.
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Wyatt Earp went to Colton, California, where relatives lived, and where he later was elected chief of police. He was given much publicity in his capacity of referee at the Sharkey-Fitzsimmons fight in San Francisco, in which his decision, awarding the battle to the former, was sustained by his reputation as a handy man with a gun. He was in Nome in its boom period.
Holliday died of consumption at Glenwood Springs, Colo. Warren Earp, the youngest brother, a stage driver, in the summer of 1900 met his end at Willcox, where he was killed by John Boyett in a way that a coroner's jury considered justifiable.
In 1882 conditions were so bad in Southeastern Arizona that President Arthur issued a proclamation calling upon bandits to disperse and threatening extermination at the hands of the military authorities and United States mar- shals. This followed a letter from Acting Governor Gosper to the secretary of the interior calling attention to the seeming inability of the territory to sup- press the outlaws.
Doc Holliday, the right bower of the Earp clan, possibly best was described by the equally famous Bat Masterson, who was interviewed on the subject, and whose history of the once-distinguished Arizonan, before his local advent, may as well be quoted:
I never liked him and few persons did. He had a mean disposition and differed from most of the big gun fighters in that he would seek a fight. He was a consumptive and physically weak, which probably had something to do with his unfortunate disposition. He was of a fine Georgia family and was educated as a dentist. He went West after shooting down several defenseless negro boys in a quarrel as to who should occupy a certain swimming hole. He made Dallas in the early seventies and hung out his shingle, "J. D. Holliday, Dentist," but he soon quit that for gambling. His shooting of the negroes became known and so he got a reputation as a bad man from the start and associated on equal terms with men of more notable record. He finally killed a man in Jacksboro and fled. Then he killed a soldier, and to avoid being caught by the military authorities made a desperate flight to Denver, across 800 miles of waterless, Indian-infested desert. He made Denver in '76. The law forbade him to carry a gun there, so he slipped a knife into his boot leg and presently carved up the face of one Bud Ryan, who bears the marks to this day. He then fled to Dodge City, where I first met him. He kept out of trouble in Dodge somehow, but presently wandered to Trinidad, Colo., where the first thing he did was to shoot and seriously wound Kid Colton. Then he escaped to Las Vegas, a boom town in New Mexico, where he disagreed with Mike Gordon and shot him dead in a doorway.
In their palmy days and even later the Earps had many friends, generally enemies of the even rougher element that the brothers opposed. It was claimed that in their former abiding place, Dodge City, Kansas, as well as in Tombstone, they were found opposed to the criminal element and that they never killed a man whom the community was not pleased to lose. Especially has been com- mended their good work in shooting "Curly Bill," who had considered him- self well above the law and left to go free after his cold-blooded murder of White, the first city marshal of Tombstone. Such a man as E. B. Gage has been quoted as stating that "Whatever Virgil Earp did in Tombstone was at the request of the best men in Cochise County."
OFFICIAL PROTEST OVER LAWLESSNESS
From 1879 to 1884 to the Indian atrocities was added the trouble caused by the advent of scores of outlaws, possibly driven out of other localities, possibly
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attracted by reports of Arizona's remarkable mineral development during that period.
In a message to the Twelfth Legislature, in March, 1883, Gov. F. A. Tritle sharply called attention to the "thefts, murder and general lawlessness" then prevailing in the southern part of the territory and especially in Cochise and neighboring counties. The Tucson Star of March 28, 1882, related: "The officials of Cochise County, with all the available strengthi they can muster, seem to avail nothing in putting down the bloodthirsty class infesting that county. Ex-city and United States officials have taken to the hills as so many Apaches. A lot of loose marauding thieves are scouring the county, killing good industrious citizens for plunder. The officials are out in every direction, but nothing is accomplished." In the following month the Tombstone Epitaph gave added testimony, summing up thusly: "The recent events in Cochise County make it incumbent upon not only officials but good citizens as well to take such positive measures as will speedily rid this section of that murderous, thieving element which has made us a reproach before the world and so seriously retarded in the industry and progress of our county."
The President of the United States was appealed to by petition of southern Arizonans to ask Congress to make an appropriation of $150,000 to be used to place a force of mounted police or rangers in the field to pursue and arrest criminals and prevent raids from hostile Indians. Citizens of Tombstone sub- scribed $5,000 for maintenance of a small body of special officers, led by Deputy Marshal John H. Jackson.
THE BLOODY PLEASANT VALLEY WAR
One of the bloodiest features of Arizona's oversanguinary history was the Pleasant Valley, or Tonto Basin, war. It began with the driving southward from near Flagstaff of several bands of sheep, reputed to have been the prop- erty of the Daggs brothers. Theretofore the Rim of the Mogollons had been considered the "dead line," south of which no sheep might come. There were allegations at the time that the Tewksbury brothers had been employed to take care of any trouble that might materialize over the running of sheep out of bounds. At first there seemed to be little active opposition, but early in 1885 a Mexican sheepherder was killed. The opposition centered around the Graham family, to which gathered a considerable number of cowboys and cattlemen.
Tom Graham later told how at first he tried to use a form of moral suasion. Not wishing to kill anyone, there would be a wait till the sheepherder began the preparation of his evening meal and then, from the darkness, Graham would drop a bullet through the frying pan or coffee pot. This intimation out of the night usually was effective in inducing the herder to forget his hunger and to move his band very early the next morning.
Several old residents of the Tonto Basin section, lately collaborating on the subject, decided that twenty-nine men had been killed in the war and that twenty-two graves of men of the Graham faction could be found in the vicinity of the old Stinson ranch. Only four of the Tewksburys died, but the most awful feature of all was the manner of the death of two of them. John Tewks- bury and one Jacobs had brought in bands of sheep, "on shares." Both were ambushed near the former's home and killed. Their bodies, in sight of the house,
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were left to be devoured by hogs, while members of the Tewksbury family were kept away by a shower of bullets from a hillside on which the Grahams watched. Finally Deputy Sheriff John Meadows entered the valley, to bury what was left, defiant of the wrath of the Grahams. The Tewksburys were half-bloods, their mother a California Indian, and it is probable their actions thereafter were based upon the Indian code of revenge. Few were left of the Blevins family of the Graham faction. The men shot at Holbrook by Sheriff Owens were active Grahamites. The elder Blevins was killed in the hills near the Houdon ranch and a skeleton found in after years is assumed to have been his. Al Rose was killed at the Houdon ranch by a party of a dozen Tewksburys, as he was leaving the house in the early morning. The favorite mode of assas- sination was from ambush on the side of a trail. One of the last episodes was the hanging of three of the Graham faction, Scott, Stott and Wilson, on the Rim of the Mogollons by a large party of Tewksburys. The three had been charged, possibly correctly, with wounding a Tewksbury partisan named Laufer and summary retribution was administered by hanging them on pine trees, hauled up by hand, with ropes brought for the purpose. John Graham and Charles Blevins were shot from their horses in the fall of 1886 by a posse from Prescott, headed by Sheriff William Mulvenon, as the riders were approaching under the impression that the officers had departed from a mountain store in which the visitors still were in hiding. Both were mortally wounded. Mulvenon made several trips into the Basin. There was a bloody battle at the Newton ranch, which had been burned and abandoned. Two cowboys, John Paine and Hamilton Blevins, had been killed at the Newton ranch, while William Graham had been ambushed and killed on the Payson trail. George Newton, formerly a Globe jeweler, was drowned in Salt River, while on his way to his ranch and it was thought at the time he had been shot from his horse, though this is not now believed. His body never was found, though his widow offered a reward of $10,000 for its recovery. Sheriff O'Neill of Yavapai County led a posse into the valley, but most of the damage then had been done.
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