Marshal Tom Smith

Several Kansas cow towns produced the West’s best known frontier marshals. Of these by far the most courageous was the one who had the shortest career. Thomas James Smith, the marshal of Abilene during its boom days as the original terminus of the Chisholm Trail. Tom Smith, more than any other, exemplified western fiction writer William MacLeod Raine’s (Raine is one of my favorite authors) description of frontier peace officers: “They usually were quiet men. They served fearlessly and with inadequate reward. Their resort to the six-shooter was always in reluctant self-defense. Early in the cattle season of 1870, Abilene had tried several marshals, but no one had lasted more than a few weeks. Finally, on June 4, the town trustees hired Tom Smith, a husky Irishman who had grown up in New York and been a successful marshal in Wyoming. His pay was $150 a month. One of his jobs was to enforce the ban on carrying firearms. Notices of this edict had been posted in public places, but cowhands from Texas had shot them full of holes. On Smith’s first Saturday night in Abilene, a town rowdy, known as Big Hank, decided to show up the new marshal. With his six-shooter in his belt, Hank swaggered up to Smith and begun to taunt him. “Are you the man who thinks he is going to run this town?” he asked. “I’ve been hired as marshal,” replied the officer. “I’m going to keep order and enforce the law.” “What are you going to do about the gun ordinance?” the bully inquired. “I’m going to see that it’s obeyed-and I’ll trouble you to hand me your pistol now.” With an oath, Big Hank refused. Smith sprang forward and felled him with a single blow on the jaw. Then he took the ruffian’s gun and ordered him to leave town at once-and permanently. Hank slipped out quickly, glad to escape the jibes of the street crowd. The new marshal’s first action impressed those who saw it, and news of what had happened spread to the cow camps on the prairies. In one camp on a branch of Chapman Creek, a braggart called Wyoming Frank bet that he could go into Abilene and wear his six-shooter. He rode in on Sunday morning and had a few drinks before Smith appeared. When Frank saw the marshal walking down the middle of the street, he went out and tried to engage him in a quarrel. Smith’s only answer was a request for the bully’s gun, which was refused. Smith, with steel in his eyes, advance toward Frank. The ruffian backed away, sidling through the swinging doors of a saloon where a crowd had gathered to see what might happen. Smith followed him inside and when Frank again refused to hand over his gun, the marshal pounced on him. With two swift blows, Smith knocked him to the floor, then took the gun and gave Frank five minutes to leave Abilene. The action so astonished the men in the saloon that, for a moment, they stood speechless. Then the shopkeeper handed Smith his gun and said, “That was the nerviest act I ever saw. You did you duty, and the coward got what he deserved. Here’s my gun. I reckon I’ll not need it as long as you’re marshal.” Others came forward offering their six-shooters. The marshal told them to leave the pistols with the bartender until they were ready to go back to their camps. Smith, who often rode up and down the streets on his gray horse, Silverheels, kept order so well that the town trustees raised his pay to $225 a month and gave him an assistant. He stayed on the job, without wasting any time drinking or gambling; and found no need to kill anyone, but with peace restored and the cowboys gone until next year’s drive, his job was discontinued.