Horse Thieves and Counterfeiters

Tom King was one of the best horseback riders in Oklahoma in the late 1890s. He was also a horse and jewel thief. Oh, and a woman named Flora Mundis. She is one of the twelve women I’m researching for a book about women outlaws of the Midwest. I’m always amazed when the Old West figures I’m writing about so parallel what I have witnessed in my own life. Before dressing in men’s clothing and robbing ranchers of their horses she worked at her own saloon in West Guthrie and was always adorned in stunning gowns. Men flocked to her side and she reveled in the attention. Doc Jordan was one man that was not charmed by her. All her attempts to gain his affections were a waste and she made him pay for it. Now, here’s the parallel – in mid-1892, Flora swore out a warrant for Doc Jordan’s arrest, charging him with assault with intent to rape. He hadn’t touched her but few people believed the teary-eyed beauty would make up such a story. He tried to tell the citizenry of West Guthrie she was a liar but no one wanted to listen. Rather than turn himself in to the authorities and risk being lynched by a mob who promised to do just that, Doc Jordan left the territory. While he was gone the truth came out and the case was eventually dropped. After that, no man in his right senses would patronize Flora’s place. So she stashed her gorgeous wardrobe, donned cowboy garb, and began stealing horses. There is no record of the extent of her lifting, rebranding, driving, and selling of stock, but during the spring of 1893, she allegedly took horses from field and pasture, off the streets of towns, anywhere, disposing of them across Hell’s Fringe. Floris Mundis aka Tom King was killed in late 1894 trying to rob a bank near Tombstone, Arizona. Lawman Heck Thomas told of the woman’s ultimate demise to a reporter for a Kansas newspaper and added that Flora had accused several men of the same crime she accused Doc Jordan. The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart – Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Ain’t it the truth, Al.