This Day…

1892 – Nate Champion and Nick Ray were murdered by a hundred or so minions of the Wyoming Stockmens Association at the Kaycee Ranch in Johnson County, Wyoming.  Ray was gunned down at daybreak outside the cabin and heroically pulled to safety by champion.  Ray soon expired and Champion was put under siege inside the cabin.  When the cabin was set afire Champion made a break for it and was shot 28 times.  He left a detailed diary of events up to the fire.

1878 – McSween Regulators, headed by Dick Brewer, tried to arrest Buckshot Roberts at Blazer’s Mill, New Mexico.  Roberts was gravely wounded by Charlie Bowdre in the gunplay, but managed to wound George Coe and John Middleton and kill Brewer with a head shot.  The Regulators abandoned the fight to seek care for Middleton and Coe.  Roberts was left to expire at the mill and was buried beside Brewer.

1882 Bob Ford, that dirty little coward, killed Jesse James with a gunshot to the back of the head.  Right afterwards he scampered down the telegraph office to claim the reward offered by Governor Crittenden.

1857 – The Fancher Wagon train, led by Captain Fancher, leaves north-west Arkansas for California. The wealthy, well-equipped group comprises 50 men, 40 women, and 50 children. They will never arrive at their destination.

1887 – Mannen Clements was killed in a gunfight in the Senate Saloon in Ballinger, Texas by city marshal Joe Townsend.

1901 – Harvey Logan, constantly on the lam for his numerous mideeds, got into a heated argument with Oliver Thornton in Paint Rock, Texas.  Thornton was quickly dispatched with fatal gunshots.

1857- President Buchanan appoints Robert J. Walker, former Secretary of the Treasury, Territorial Governor of Kansas.  Walker’s inagural address will request cooperation from both pro-slavery and Free-State factions.  Walker promises that any constitution adopted will be submitted to a fair vote.

1882 – Wyatt Earp and friends gunned down Florentino Cruz at Pete Spence’s wood lot outside of Tombstone.  Cruz was innocent of any participation in the attacks on the Earp family.  Pete Spence and Indian Charlie were the men that the Earp posse were looking for, but they weren’t at the wood lot.  The Earp posse just killed Florentino because he was handy.

1882 – Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday gunned down Frank Stillwell at the train station in Tucson for his alleged part in the shoting of Virgil Earp.  Stillwell and Ike Clanton were both there to make yet another attempt on the Earp family.  Virgil was on the train escorting Morgan’s body to California for burial.  Clanton scamptered off into the night when he saw Wyatt.  It was the second time he fled from a fight with the Earps.

1882-Morgan Earp was shotgunned from an ambush and killed while playing pool in Campbell and Hatch’s Saloon in Tombstone.  Morgan liked to shoot pool about as much as like to shoot anyone.

1881-Budd Philpot, a luckless driver, and a passenger, Peter Roerig, were killed in a failed stage robbery outside of Contention City, Arizona, by Jim Crane and others of the “cowboy” stamp.  Robber Luther King was wounded and ratted out the others after he was caught.