Vengence & Laura Reno

The research I’m doing on a book about women outlaws of the Midwest led me to a lady named Laura Ellen Reno. Laura’s brothers were members of the notorious Reno Gang. She was quite a character. According to historical records, Ellen was famous throughout the West for her beauty. She loved danger and adventure, was an expert horseman, and unerring shot, and as quick with her gun as any man. She worshipped her brothers, whom she aided in more than one of their criminal undertakings, shielding them from justice when hard pressed, and swearing to avenge them when they were hung. I like her. Not the criminal part of her personality, but the devotion to her brothers. On that level she wasn’t any different from some of the other famous people of the Old West who stood up for their brothers – Wyatt Earp, Bill Tilghman, Bat Masterson, just to name a few. There’s something very noble in that in my estimation. Naturally, my thoughts ran to my own brothers and how I want to avenge Rick. It’s become a preoccupation with me and it’s not healthy. I’m hurt and want to know the why. But hurt leads to bitterness, bitterness to anger, travel too far down that road and the way is lost. I think that’s what Laura Reno finally learned when she was burying her brothers. She never got over the hurt though. Her family said that on her deathbed she was crying because she felt she had let her brothers down by not protecting them from the “son’s of bitches who lied to make a case against them.” I feel your pain, Laura. On this day in 1874, gunman Chunk Colbert was feeling pain as well. He tried to bushwack Clay Allison after a horse race in the Indian Territory. After the two reportedly raced their horses and had dinner, Colbert had picked a fight with Allison. The two men entered the Clifton House, an inn located in Colfax County, New Mexico, where they sat down for dinner. Colbert had allegedly already killed six men and had quarreled with Allison several years earlier. Some say that nine years earlier, Allison had killed Colbert’s uncle in a gunfight. Whether that claim is fact or legend is unknown. What is known is that at some point during dinner Colbert attempted to raise his gun to shoot Allison, but the barrel hit the table as he raised it. Allison fired once, hitting Colbert in the head, killing him. Asked later why he accepted a dinner invitation from a man who would likely try to kill him, Allison replied, “Because I didn’t want to send a man to hell on an empty stomach”.