Journal Notes

The attorney admits he put an innocent man in prison and used his sister to persuade the falsely accused man to take a plea. It’s too late to make things right however. A long period of time in solitary confinement, beatings, and multiple rapes have left the once vibrant human being sullen, broken, and without hope. The people who once called him father do not miss him. Indeed they loathe him for something he didn’t do. Something only one says happened – one that has lied most recently about a child’s paternity. There were no witnesses – only the word of a known liar. The falsely accused shakes all the time now – his tremors are more pronounced. He can’t hold silverware. Eating anything is difficult. He needs teeth. He’s needed teeth for years. His eyesight is bad. The discount card from the eye glasses store in the mall sent out a reminder that it’s time he had new glasses. Without a doctor to diagnosis his need it won’t happen. And the ones who used to call him father do not miss him. Indeed they loathe him for something he didn’t do. They send out emails that read “until you get over your hatred toward my family I will not friend you.” Ironic since they helped kill a man because of their own hate and have had a cousin send death threats. I’m not without guilt. I’m the sister used to persuade the falsely accused man to take a plea. I wasn’t bold enough to take a stand. I let my brother down. I miss him and always will. I’ll fight to make it right but the damage has been done. And the ones who used to call him father do not miss him. They do not grieve for him. A great miracle is needed. It will take all I have and more to fix this. Still no amount of money can bring back the one I used to know as brother. That man is gone now. What can I do to make it right? I’m buried above ground.

Sheriff Perry Owen had learned long ago that reputation had its limits. It could help keep greenhorns from gunning for him. But sooner or later someone else would try. Owen, like other gunfighters, had developed a reputation he didn’t want. On a Sunday afternoon in Holbrook, Arizona in 1887, Owen was again headed for trouble. It had become his job since he had acquired his position as Apache County, Arizona sheriff. But today would be especially dangerous. He was on his way to arrest Andy “Cooper” Blevins who was suspected of murdering John Tewksbury and William Jacobs two days past. Andy Blevins was no ordinary suspect. He was at the center of a major Arizona feud at taking place at that time. A few years back two small time ranchers, John Tewksbury and Samuel Graham, and their families, developed a working agreement. They cut out mavericks from larger ranchers around them to develop their own stock. At this time this wasn’t always thought of as rustling. It was more like enterprising. Or at least that was the way small ranchers thought about it. The cattle the two families rounded up were grazed on Graham’s land. Part of the agreement said the Tewksburys could cut out their share anytime they liked. This worked for a while. It wasn’t long, though, before something went sour. One day Sam Graham secretly registered his brand and claimed all the cattle was his. The next time the Tewksburys tried to cut out their share, the Grahams stopped them and told them the new situation. The Tewksburys didn’t cotton to that. John Tewksbury took the next step. He encouraged the Daggs brothers to bring sheep into the Pleasant Valley area where Graham’s ranch was located. This got serious real quick. Sheep would trim the grass to a nubbin, leaving nothing for cattle. The small feud between the Grahams and the Tewksburys now turned into a major land war between cattlemen and sheepmen. Hashknife cowboys such as George Smith, Tom Pickett, Tom Tucker, John Paine, Buck Lancaster, Bob Glasspie, and George McNeal along with others interested in cattle joined with the Grahams. This included the Blevins family, who had long been suspected of rustling cattle. Other small landholders who had no interest in cattle joined with the Tewksburys. By February 1887 the first victim of this war died. A sniper shot and killed a Navaho sheepherder. Later some would suspect Tom Horn did the killing since he was in the area and knew the Tewksburys. In July Mart Blevins disappeared. Most believed him to be another victim of the war. August 10 Hampton Blevins and John Paine were killed. Tom Tucker, Bob Glasspie and Bob Charrington were injured. They had all been fighting the Tewksburys at the Middleton ranch. A week later a sheepman, James Houck, shot and killed one of Graham’s sons, William, age 18, in a horseback duel. Houck was also an Apache County deputy sheriff. Friday morning, September 2rd, Tom and John Graham along with Andy, Charles, and John Blevins plus others attacked the Tewksburys. That’s when John Tewksbury and William Jacobs were killed. So Sheriff Perry Owens had no illusions about what he was stepping into. But he had little choice. He represented the law of the land. His duty was to enforce it. And that’s what he intended to do on this day 125 years ago in the afternoon. It was nearing 4 p.m. It wouldn’t be the first gun battle he’d been in. He hoped it wouldn’t be his last. He’d left home when in his teens and worked as a cowboy for 10 years before ending up in Arizona working at a stage station. By then he’d already been tagged with a reputation as a dead aim shot against Indians. Later he’d started a horse ranch at Navajo Springs. The reputation that preceded him got him elected the Apache County Sheriff . He decided to dress up to fit the reputation. Some say his appearance rivaled that of Wild Bill Hickok. Owens let his curled blond hair grow long. He wore a wide-brimmed sombrero, fringed and hand-tooled chaps, a wide gun belt ribbed with two rows of ammunition, and a Colt .45 hung butt forward on his left side. But appearance as well as reputation didn’t hold water when it came to a showdown. And that’s what Owens was now facing. He arrived in Holbrook at 4 p.m. and left his horse at Brown and Kinder’s Livery Stable. He unsheathed his Winchester and carried it as he walked toward the Blevins’ clapboard cottage. One version of what followed says Owens walked up to the front door and knocked. Andy Blevins opened the door. “You’re under arrest,” Owens stated matter-of-factly. Andy slammed the door, drew his gun, and fired through it at Owens. Owens returned fire with the Winchester, the lead slamming Andy Blevins back across the room. Another version says Owens walked up to the house and spotted Andy Blevins with a drawn six-gun. Both men shot simultaneously but only Owens’ shot found its mark, knocking Andy back into the arms of his mother inside. One way or another Owens finished off Andy Blevins. John Blevins then fired at Owens from another door. Owens shot back hitting the second Blevins in the right shoulder. Owens then ran to the side of the house as Mose Roberts, a Blevin brother-in-law, leaped out a back window holding a gun. Owens drilled him with another shot, then wheeled around in time to nail 16-year-old Sam Houston Blevins in the heart. The youngster had run on to the front porch with gun in hand. John Blevins was the only one of the four to survive. This would not be the end of the Pleasant Valley War but it would put a damper on it. On Wednesday, September 21, Sheriff Perry Owens along with 16 posse members would shoot it out with both sides. John Graham and Charlie Blevins both died in this battle. The lawmen took in a number of members from both sides. This would stop the fighting for at least a year. Owens turned in his badge on December 31, 1888. He later worked as a detective for the Santa Fe railroad, then as an express messenger for Wells Fargo, before settling down in Seligman, Arizona, where he died on May 10, 1919. There’s nothing better or more satisfying than frontier justice.

More than 125 years ago the famous London resident author Oscar Wilde was touring the Old West and giving lectures in saloons and stage stops. Wilde loved the west and the people who settled it. He was well liked by most everyone he met but the rough frontiersmen did not know quite what to make of Wilde. His manner of speaking and the way he dressed confused them. Not many men outside of Boston wore shirts with lace collars and cuffs. “To the world I seem, by intention on my part, a dilettante and dandy merely –it is not wise to show one’s heart to the world-and as seriousness of manner is the disguise of the fool, folly in its exquisite modes of triviality and indifference and lack of care is the robe of the wise man. In so vulgar an age this we all need masks.” So wrote Oscar Wilde in 1884, long before his crowning achievement, The Importance of Being Earnest, opened in London. And for most of his life the Irish-born playwright’s cheerful, witty façade held up quite well. It has held up even better since he died, which probably is why Wilde still regularly shows up on lists of favorite historical Old West dinner guests. But in his last years Wilde was welcome at no tables in England. Though married and the father of two children, Wilde was for years involved with a younger man, Lord Alfred Douglas. Wilde’s double life proceeded without incident until soon after Earnest opened, when he received a calling card from Douglas’s eccentric father, the Marquees of Queensbury. It read, “To Oscar Wilde,” posing as somdomite [sic].” To maintain his mask Wilde felt he had to charge the Marquees with libel. And when the trial began in April 1895, Wilde charmed the jury with his punchy testimony. But the Marquees had hired private detectives, and when the evidence began to be presented Wilde abruptly dropped the suit. Later the same day he and Douglas were arrested for immorality. Wilde’s new play continued its successful run, but his name was removed from the program. At his own trial Wilde again maintained his witty upper lip. The first jury could not reach a verdict. But the second jury convicted him, and Wilde was sentenced to two years’ hard labor. He spent the time in solitary confinement, where he was poorly fed and slept on a wooden plank bed. He was put to work sewing mailbags. When he was released in May 1897, Wilde was bankrupt, his manuscripts had either been auctioned or stolen. Friends paid his way to France, where he finally settled in Paris. He wrote a little about prison life, including the famous Ballad of Reading Gaol, and continued to whisk his way through dinner engagements. But he confessed, “I don’t think I shall ever really write again. Something is killed in me.” He picked up boys more frequently than before and began drinking large amounts of absinthe, though doctors had told him it would kill him. Wilde laughed off the warnings, as did his constant worry about money, quipping, “I am dying beyond my means.” In October 1900, Wilde developed a painful ear infection from an injury he had suffered in prison when he fainted one morning in chapel and perforated an eardrum. Doctors performed surgery, but the infection spread and caused him to develop encephalitis, swelling of the brain. He was taken back to his hotel room, the last in a series of cheaper and cheaper rooms that he could barely afford. The legend is that his last words were “It’s the wallpaper or me-one of us has to go.” But Wilde did not depart with a clever remark. He grew delirious through the month of November. On the thirtieth two close friends near his bed could hear only a painful grinding sound from his throat. A nurse regularly had to dab blood that was drooling from his mouth. Slowly his breathing and his pulse weakened until he died at about 2 p.m. that afternoon.

Not everything of note that took place in the Old West involved six-shooters or gunslingers.  Some of the most important events that took place on the brave new frontier were quiet, unassuming advances that barely made the papers at all.  In late August, 1856, Gail Borden, recognizing the plight of mothers and their children on long sea journeys, worked on a progress for ‘the concentration of milk.’  The patent he received for the process, led to condensed milk, later used by the Union Army in the Civil War.  Also on this day in 1891, an early attempt at rain-making is successful in bringing rain to Midland, Texas.  The area had been dry for three years.  There won’t be much out of the ordinary for me today.  I’ll continue to work on two new books Love Lessons Learned by Women of the Old West and Women Outlaws of the Mid-west.  I’ll be on the road a lot next month researching and signing books and doing various video shoots for my new website which will be launch in October.  I received quite a few letters this past weekend from people anxious to read the story about my brother Rick.  That’s encouraging.  I promise the release date for The Plea is not far off.  Perhaps that is the reason the attorney I initially hired to help my brother several years ago has been viewing my site.  Not to worry.  I can assure him he will be portrayed as he presented himself.  In thinking of him right now I’m reminded of a joke that fits him perfectly.  What’s the difference between a lawyer and a vulture?  The lawyer gets frequent flyer miles.  Now, back to the Old West I go.

Calamity Jane may have dressed in buckskins, cussed with the roughest of men, and drank more than a few rough characters under the table, but there’s no question her heart was fragile. She fell for Wild Bill Hickok and hoped with everything she was that she could turn his head. Such would not be the case. One of the new titles I’m working on is Ten Love Lessons Learned by Women of the Old West. Under Calamity’s gruff mannerism and unfeminine like appearance was a woman who hoped to marry and have the famous lawman’s child. Of course she soon learned that acting like one of the guys would not get her the man of her dreams. Calamity had a rough life. Her parents died at an early age leaving behind several younger children for Calamity to care for. At the age of 14 she traveled from the mid-west to Fort Bridger, Wyoming where she adopted out all of her brothers and sisters. She just wasn’t able to be mother and father to the brood any longer. In order to make it in the rough and violent world of the wild frontier she adopted the look and mannerism of a man. She traveled the territory like other pioneers did and wasn’t about to go where no one had ever gone before in a dress. It wasn’t practical, but neither were her feelings for the dashing Mr. Hickok. She might have exaggerated their involvement with Dime Novelist, but there was nothing exaggerated about her reaction when Hickok was killed. Calamity wept bitterly. Her heart was broken. She never loved another in the same way. She vowed to kill the coward who shot Wild Bill. She warned Jack McCall, the man who shot Hickok in the head, that she would never stop looking for him. “When my name makes you cry in your sleep. When I’ve brought you to ashes – only then will I be through with you.” I couldn’t have said it better myself, Calam. I feel the exact same way about the cowards who cost me my brother. McCall was made to answer for his deeds at the end of a rope. Punishment comes one way or another.

It’s agonizing to love someone romantically who doesn’t return your feelings. The object of your affection sees you only as a friend and cannot be persuaded to view you as anything other than that. Your manner of dress doesn’t make a difference, how you defend yourself in a difficult time doesn’t turn their head, nothing makes a difference. There were a number of women in the Old West who were in love with men who didn’t love them back. These women had no choice but to live with broken hearts. In the mid-1860s such despondent females were referred to as being as “lonely as a teatotler in a saloon.” Although Calamity Jane was seldom by herself she was often alone. She was in love with a man who did not love her back. Wild Bill Hickok told her how he felt on more than one occasion, but her feelings for him never changed. Calamity was among the many mourners who attended the legendary gunfighter’s funeral in August 1876. The buckskin clad woman sobbed over his grave and for months after his passing was inconsolable. Jane kept company with various men from time to time and was even married once, but her heart belonged to James Butler Hickok. They arrived in Deadwood, South Dakota, in 1876 and were frequently seen together. Hickok maintained the pair were only friends, but Jane insisted they were more. On August 1, 1902, seventeen years after Hickok died, Calamity Jane passed away from pneumonia while staying at the Callaway Hotel in Terry, South Dakota. She was fifty-one. Her body was returned to Deadwood, where the town undertaker outfitted her in a white cotton dress before placing her in a cloth-lined coffin. Her last request was to be buried next to the man she was devoted to, Wild Bill. Her request was honored. It’s too bad Hickok didn’t love her. Guess she was too hard around the edges for him, too independent. Guess he thought she’d get over him and accept that he married someone else. Maybe he thought Calamity was such a strong woman she could handle a broken heart. He was wrong. Oddly enough Hickok’s wife, Agnes Thatcher Lake Hickok, is buried in Cincinnati, Ohio next to her first husband Bill Lake. Calamity once said of her feelings for Hickok, “Meeting him was fate, becoming his friend was a choice, but falling in love with him I had no control over.”

After more than two years of working on the book about lawman Sam Sixkiller it’s now complete and off to the publisher. The tentative title of the book is The Life and Hard Time of Captain Sam Sixkiller. Sixkiller was an amazing lawman and deserves to be remembered for his heroic efforts in the Oklahoma Territory in the 1880s. Published author, historian and history professor Art Burton wrote the foreword for the book. Burton did the first real work on Sixkiller so I’m proud he was able to add to the book. I completed Hearts West II: More True Stories of Frontier Mail-Order Brides today too. Both items will be released some time next summer. Next project – women outlaws of the Mid-West. Of course the women outlaws I know best have never served any time in jail…yet that is. August 19 was a significant day in Old West history. On this day in 1884 Doc Holiday shot Billy Allen in Leadville, Colorado over a five dollar gambling debt. Doc was arrested, tried and acquitted in that shooting. It was to be Doc’s final gunfight. And on this day in 1895 John Wesley Hardin was attacked and killed from behind by John Selman during a dice game in the Acme Saloon in El Paso, Texas. Long live the wild west.

Outside of Bodie, California one my favorite Old West locations is Ellsworth, Kansas. At one time is was known as the “wickedest cattletown in Kansas.” Ellsworth was a bustling cattle town for a time during the late 1860s but its cattle trade had dwindled down by the mid-1880s. The town was the setting for numerous killings following shootouts between drunken cowboys, and the town sported numerous saloons, brothels and gambling halls, with prostitution being rampant. Wild Bill Hickok ran for Sheriff there in 1868, but was defeated by former soldier E.W. Kingsbury. Kingsbury was an extremely effective lawman, but had to have the help of the local police to control Ellsworth itself, as he also had the county to deal with. Violence inside Ellsworth was commonplace. More than 137 years ago on this day, violence erupted at the one of the watering holes there and lawman Happy Jack Morco was shot and killed. Thompson would eventually become a lawman himself, but on August 16, 1873, he was deadly gunman and gambler arguing with another card player about how much they owed him. The argument got pretty heated and Ben’s brother Billie decided to settle the dispute. Billie drew his gun and fired on the card player giving his brother a hard time. His aim wasn’t true however because popular sheriff C.B. Whitney got the bullet. Ben came to his brother’s rescue and quickly sent him out of town before the law descended upon him. Wyatt Earp was the Sheriff at the time. Ben eventually turned himself into Earp. Whitney exonerated Billy Thompson on his deathbed and told Earp the shooting was an accident. When Billy was tried in 1877, he was acquitted. I like the fact that the brothers were willing to protect one another. I’m grateful to have four brothers that would all back one another’s play. A poem dating back to the early 1850s sums that dedication up nicely. “I sought my soul, but my soul I could not see. I sought my God, but my God eluded me. I sought my brother and I found all three.” In 1881, Thompson was elected marshal of Austin, Texas. He was a highly effective lawman but gave the job up the following the year after killing Jack Harris, the owner of the Vaudeville Variety Theatre in San Antonio. On March 11, 1884, fourteen months after he was acquitted of Harris’ murder, Thompson and his friend, John “King” Fisher, were watching show at the Vaudeville Theatre in San Antonio when Jack Harris’ two partners, Joe Foster and William Simms, started a gunfight in which Thompson was killed and Foster and Fisher were mortally wounded.

Three siblings are on the run in the Southeast right now. It’s been reported they’ve robbed a couple of banks. Their motivation for the crime spree has not been revealed as of yet. The news seldom if ever gets things right and I’m guessing the why isn’t as interesting to the talking heads as the act anyway. I’m not condoning what the sister and brothers have done, but a thousand hurts sometimes drives people to do unspeakable things. I can’t help but wonder what happened. Was it a lust for fame? What damaged their souls? If this were the late 1800s, Dime Novel authors would be scrambling to write about their exploits. Jesse James once said, “All the world likes an outlaw. For some damn reason they remember them.” The professional outlaws of the Old West planned their robberies just as efficiently as military high command plans an important campaign. To rob a train involved three functions, usually two men to each. One duty was the mounting of the engineer’s cab, covering the engineer and fireman, and throwing water into the firebox, thus “killing” the engine. Another was the covering and intimidating of passengers and train crew. The third and most important as far as proceeds and danger were concerned was the tapping of the express car, usually well-guarded by shotgun agents, some of whom would fight to the death. Of course, the quicker the surprise attack, the more successful the robbery. The Dalton Gang always gambled for these positions before each robbery, thus seeking to expel favoritism and jinxes. Probably the most sensational bank robbery the James-Younger gang ever pulled was at a small county-seat town named Corydon. Jesse had probably planned the whole thing minutely. He chose this particular day because there was to be a big gathering on the courthouse lawn for a political speaking. Now everybody turned out to things of that kind in those days – interest and people ran riot, anything was likely to happen. Loudmouthed orators bellowed to open-mouthed hypnotized audiences, and when the cheering started everyone went berserk. Seven young men rode into Corydon, dressed in their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes with potato bags slouchily flung across their saddle pommels ostensibly to buy provisions for the week and carry back to the farm. They had dressed up for the occasion of the speaking. That was all – that was what it looked like, and no one paid any attention to them. When the crowd became assembled on the courthouse lawn and some candidate began bombasting away with vehement gesticulations, three of the horsemen quietly entered the bank and found the cashier all alone. They covered him from head to toenail with six-shooters, took his keys to the safe, extracted some $40,000 which they dumped into the “potato” bag, bound the cashier and gagged him, and calmly walked out remarking about the weather. They, too, wanted to hear the speeches, or they wouldn’t have bound the cashier – they never did at any other of their robberies. They sat on their horses, as was common, on the outskirts of the crowd. When the speeches were over they made their get-a-way. The James-Younger Gang was motivated by their hatred for the north and the government as a whole. Man can be driven to do a lot that isn’t right when they feel pushed into a corner. Me, I’m just praying to get through the deep hurt involving my brothers. The only thing I’d be driven to do beyond reason is take my own life. I don’t want to hurt anymore. I don’t want anymore threatening emails sent to me. I want to be here only mildly more than I want to die trying to escape.

One of the most tragic figures in American West history has to be Thomas “Tom” Horn, Jr. (November 21, 1860 – November 20, 1903.) He was lawman, scout, soldier, hired gunman, detective, outlaw and assassin. On the day before his 43rd birthday, he was hanged in Cheyenne, Wyoming, for the murder of Willie Nickell. Horn’s exploits as an assassin far overshadowed any other accomplishments he made during his lifetime, including during his time as a scout in tracking Apaches in southeastern Arizona Territory, southwestern New Mexico Territory, and into the states of Sonora and Chihuahua in northern Mexico along the Sierra Madre Occidental. On July 18, 1901, Horn was once again working near Iron Mountain when Willie Nickell, the 14-year-old son of a sheepherding rancher, was murdered. Horn was arrested for the murder after a questionable confession to Joe Lefors, an office deputy in the US Marshal’s office, in 1902. Horn was convicted and sentenced to be hanged. In 1903 Horn escaped from custody in Cheyenne, Wyoming. He was quickly overtaken by townsmen after being grazed in the head by a shot fired O.M. Eldrich, and badly beaten during recapture. It is still debated whether Horn committed the murder he was convicted for. Some historians believe he did not, while others believe that he did, but that he did not realize he was shooting a boy. Whatever the case, the consensus is that regardless of whether he committed that particular murder, he had certainly committed many others. Chip Carlson, who extensively researched the Wyoming v. Tom Horn prosecution, concluded that although Horn could have committed the murder of Willie Nickell, he probably did not. According to Carlson’s book Tom Horn: Blood on the Moon, there was no actual evidence that Horn had committed the murder, he was last seen in the area the day before the murder, his alleged confession was valueless as evidence, and no efforts were made to investigate involvement by other possible suspects. In essence, Horn’s reputation and history made him an easy target for the prosecution. Steve McQueen portrayed Horn in a film released in 1980. McQueen was suffering with cancer at the time the movie was made and not feeling well at all. Linda Evans played the love interest in the film and had a great piece of dialogue that is resonating with me this morning. “Someday you’re going to have to pay for your way of life. You’re a bad person and God knows it.” I know at least six people I’d like to share that sentiment with. Some of them live in Greenboro, North Carolina and spent some time visiting the site yesterday. I suppose they’re curious about what’s going to happen to their family. It’s the calm before the storm, isn’t it. Nothing has changed. The storm is still coming. We’ll be in court soon. The people who framed my brother are bad people and God knows it.