Evening Star Newspaper, September 21, 1930, Page 102

Ruthless Warfare In the Panhandle By William MacLeod Raine and WillL C. Barnes. HE first man to run cows in the Pan- handle of Texas was Charles Good- night. Caught in the panic of 73, he had salvaged out of the wreck of his property 1,800 longhorns. These he drove south from Colorado to the Palo Duro, where he made camp with his covered wagons, his herds, his family, and his retinue of re- tainers. Near the mouth of the Palo Duro Can- yon, Goodnight made a dugout and, with the aid of his young wife, started to rebuild their shattered fortunes. The valley of the canyon, miles wide and very deep, was an ideal range for cattle. Nature had fenced it with walls a hundred feet high. This was in November, 1876. Shortly after- ward, Thomas S. Bugbee became the next-door neighbor of the Goodnights. A mere 80 miles or so separated the families. The nearest set- tlement to the east was Henrietta, 200 miles distant. . Within two or three years, a score or more of cattlemen, a good many of them from “down in the skillet,” moved up into the watersheds of the Red River and the Canadian River. Near Tascosa, George W. Littlefield located with his brand, the L. I. T. Berry and Boice started the 777 ranch east of Buffalo Springs. The Scissors, the Turkey Track, the Diamond Tail, the T Anchor, and the Hat brands began to operate in the Panhandle. The only town in the western part of the Panhandle at this time was Tasocosa, and all of its inhabitants could have squeezei into a good-sized room. Clarendon had a dugout or two. Due east of Tascosa was Mobeetie, the official center of Wheeler County. Since Wheeler was the only one in the Panhandle that had been organized, the courts sitting at Mobeetie had jurisdiction over 26 other counties, into which were beginning to pour sheepmen, cattlemen and rustlers. The Panhandle was to become a country of immense cattle outfits. Goodnight formed a partnership in 1877 with Lord Adair, an Irish- man who invested $375,000 as against Palo Duro ranch and the experience of the Texan. The new organization was known as the J. A. Qutfit. The Prairie Cattle Co. the Spurs, the Matadors, were all taking up great quantities of land and pouring in longhorns. ITH the honest cowman came, of course, the riffraff and the rustler. It was a country where a thief could hole up easily and do a lucrative business in-other men’s cattle. Henry Fleming, a saloonkeeper and gambler, was elected sheriff. He had nerve of a high quality, and during the years of his incumb- ency arrested scores of desperate men without the necessity of killing. But the thieves grew bolder. A meeting of cattlemen was called at Mobeetie, and the Pan- handle Stock Association was organized with Goodnight as president. Fleming was succeeded by Cape Willingham, who was willing to humor cowboys on a bender, but found it necessary to let his sawed-off shot- gun roar occasionally. It was soon after he took office that the episode of Mrs. Turner’s ducks occurred. Fred Leigh and a group of trail men rode into Tascosa to get roostered. They were already well organized. Mrs. Turner, who ran a restaurant, was in her yard feeding some ducks. It is likely that Leigh did not see Her. He boasted that he could shoot the ducks through the head, and he made good his promise. He did not observe that Mrs. Turner keeled over in a faint. Tascosa would not have stood that sort of thing, even if Mrs. Turner and her daughter, *“¢ictoria, had not been popular. No man on earth could terrorize a woman in the cow country Sherift Willingham found Leigh in Jack Ryan’s saloon and told him he was under arrest. Leigh was not in a condition to understand why. He asked no questions but reached for the .44 in his belt. The sheriff’s work was faster, and Leigh dropped with a load of buckshot in his heart. He was buried next day, one of the first men (o find a resting place in the town's Boot “Hill, The funeral of Bob Russell, killed by Ju%: Howard, had dedicated the cemetery. In the years that followed it was used frequently as a _THE ' SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., SEPTEMBER 21, 1930. Though chained together and unarmed, the Marlows fought desperately, wrestling weapons from their guards to hold burial place for those who checked out with their boots on. Two factors combined to make Tascosa a lusty young offspring of the Panhandle, One of them was the fact that it was en the north- ern trail, the other that half a dozen big outfits were running cattle within riding distance. When the cowboys jingled in after the Spring round-up, Rome howled. Jim East, who had helped Pat Garrett cap- ture Billy the Kid, New Mexico’s notorious outlaw, became in due time sheriff of Oldham County. During his incumbency the town had its wildest night. Usually killings arose dut of a moment’s savage impulse. Bit this one had its origin in an anger that had been growing for some time. Among the L-S men were Fred Chilton, Frank Valley and Ed King. They had been hired, it was claimed, to ride the range with riffes on the lookout for rustlers. In the course of time they fell afoul of a group of hard-eyed men which included Charles Emory, Lem Woodruff and one known as the “Catfish Kid.” I’I‘ is aid that King came to town looking for those of the other faction. With him were Chilton and Valley. The men separated. If King was on the hunt for trouble, he certainly found it. Out of a peaceful quiet the night woke to a rear of guns, with Woodruff and Emory in the center of the stage. King fell, mortally wounded, but the iron of the frontier was in his blood. He half raised himself from the ground, took aim at Woodruff and wounded him severely. As Emory ran forward, a bullet stopped him in his stride. He stumbled and fell, badly hurt. “Fair enough,” gasped King hardily. “I'll teach those sons of wolves to bushwhack me.” With which comment, he ceased forever to take interest in mundane affairs. The word was carried to Chilton and Valley. They came a-smokin’. Jess Sheets indiscreetly ventured out to learn the cause of the shooting. Promptly the two newcomers killed him. Woodruff had taken refuge in a nearby cabin. The two gulnmen sent bullet after bullet crash- ing through the door. Woodruff returned the fire. Unknown friends rallied to the support of the besieged man. From a little hillside not far away spits of fire flashed in the darkness. Chilton and Valley were both shot down. Neither of them lived the night out. About this time Sheriff East, aroused from sleep, put in an appearance. He came on the run, in time to see from a distance the last of the battle. The men on the hillside vanished into the night sheriff found Emory, much the worse for a very serious wound. Some years earlier those two had been on the man hunt which netted Billy the Kid and others. Now the old comrades were on different sides of the fence There were two funerals next day when the four victims were buried. The innocent by- stander who had been the victim of his own curiosity was taken to the cemetery where went those who died in their beds. A scant dozen were in attendance, for at the same time the three L-S men were being planted at Boot Hill. Tascosa preferred the more dramatic ceremony. A dozen armed men, some attached to one party and some to the other, stood grimly at wary attention beside the graves. There was always a chance that some one might decide to renew the feud and drag out a gun. Emory claimed self-defense when brought be- fore a jury, and he and his friends were acquitted, In the Dodge City Times, April 6, 1878, may be read a news item not quite so innocent of sinister significance as it seems. Jesse Evans, it appears, was leaving Dodge with 50 riders to gather from the Pecos Valley range 20,000 cattle that had been bought by Evans and a man Woodruff surrendered. The' off their attackers. EDITOR’S NOTE—The annals of the Panhandle of Texas, famed for its huge cattle outfits and great cattlemen, are packed with melo- drama and bloodshed During the late ’70s and early ’80s of the past century, when cattle owners came pouring into the Panhandle seek- ing new pastures for their stock, the immense ranges of this wild streich of country became infested with bold cattle thieves who thronged from every direction to prey upon the roaming herds. For years the warfare between owner and rustler was waged with violent fury. One of the authors, Mr. Barnes, knows jrom personal experience those early days of the wild West, haviig been awarded in 1880 the Congres- sional Medal of Honor “for bravery in action with hostile Apache Indians.” The other, Mr. Raine, came from England to settle in the West as a boy, and is well known for his bocks of outdoor adventure. named Hunter from John S. Chisum of New Mexico. The paper failed to mention that the 50 riders were gunmen and that they expécted trouble before they got back with the cattle they were buying. Chisum had left behind him in Texas, before moving to the Pecos, some outlawed notes it had not been convenient to pay. Hunter bought these up for about 10 cents on the dollar. After the deal had been made for the cattle, Hunter rode in with Chisum to the nearest town and paid him with his own notes. Before the cat- tleman of New Mexico could gather his riders in numbers enough to stop the little army from Dodge, the forces of Evans were across the line and in the Panhadle. This was the kind of a joke that Texans could appreciate. Thousands of their stock were being run off by rustlers into New Mexico, and even a respectable cattle- man from that Territory was fair game. But it is said that Chisum did not find the transaction amusing. HE first humble ranch headquarters in the Panhandle, either dugouts or adobe, gave way to commodious frame houses. Barbed-wire fences began to appear. The end of the open range, of the free-grass days, was in sight for the cattlemen. In the early eighties the Capitol Syndicate Co. began to build the State House at Austin in exchange for a vast tract of land in the Pan- handle. This acreage bordered on New Mexico and lay in the tier of counties which ran down along the western edge of the State—Dallam, Hartley, Oldham, Deaf Smith, Castro, Lamb, Hockley, Cochran, Parmer and Bailey. It had never been surveyed, but was over 200 miles in length. Within two or three years the syndi- cate had put up 800 miles of fence. The first cattle put upon the range of the Capitol Syndicate ranch were brought to Buf- falo Springs from Tom Green County in 1884 by Ab Blocker. The general manager of the ranch, “Barbecue” Campbell, had not decided on what brand to use. Blocker suggested the X I T. It was easily made. It could be read at sight. It could not be readily blotted out. And, finally, it stood for “Ten in Texas,” the number of counties in the ranch. By this time the bonanza cattle days were at hand. Any one could make a fortune in cows. A man could sit at ease in San Antonio or Aus- tin and imagine himself in process of becoming a millionaire. The period of inflation was, of course, followed by a smash that was epic in proportion. But during the magnificent days when the boom was at its height, the cattle= man sat on the top of the world. He prospered, at least on paper, in spite of an encimous amount of thieving. There was a lot of fence cutting. Cattle were driven out of the immense pastures as easily as they could be from the open range. The foremen, and even the managers of some of the big outfits were stealing from their employers without scruple. It is charged that at one time most of the men working for X I T, from the boss down, were rustlers and crooks. Hair branding was an effective method of ace quiring ownership without the cost of purchase. Sometimes this was done at the round-up, with the connivance of a wagon boss. The man with the iron put it on the calf so lightly that the hair sizzled off without the skin being marked. More often the rustier did his hand branding in the chaparral. He chose a calf that had been overicoked in the round-up and cut the ear- marks of the mother. With knife held against the thumb, he plucked the hair from the skin so that the brand would be plainly seen by any cowboy riding the range. The calf became a “sleeper.” The thief watched it. If the animal got by at the next round-up without arousing suspicion, he fin« ished the job with a hot iron and a deft change in the ear marking. Usually the yearling passed muster now as the property of the hair brander, but sometimes a wide-awake boss discovered the fraud and rebranded, maybe with the guilty man sitting his horse not 10 feet away. The range rider and the cow thief matched wits, the one to get the evidence of guilt and the other to escape proof, Sometimes the honest waddy cut a small slit in the skin of a calf and slipped inside a marked dime or quarter. The cut was then sewed up. This did not ucually get the owner of the coin very far. He rarely ever saw the silver again. On one occasion a company went into court with this evidence and the jury set the-hair brander free. With amusing hardihood, the man de- manded the quarter and was given it by the judge. A few years later this cool customer had stolen himself into respectability and joined the live-stock association to protect himself against robbers. 1In his book, “The X I T Ranch of Texas,” J. Evotts Haley tells scores of stories of the fight made by the big syndicate ranch against the pestiferous rustler. On one occasion, Col. A. G. Boyce general manager of the X I T, was invited from the ranch house to talk with a gang of rustlers headed by one of his own wagon bosses. Boyce guessed they had come to shoot him down. He was a fearless, indomitable man, and he went out alone to meet them. His gaze ranged coolly over the outlaws hefore he began to curse them for a set of scoundrels, Hardily he asked them why they did not cut loose and promised that he would kill their leader if one nf_ them lifted a finger. Knowing he would keep his word, none dared to start hostilities. LD-TIMERS in the Panhandle will tell you : today that it never was a bad country, that its citizens held a high average of character. This is beyond question true. 'The incidental lawlessness was much less than that which ob= tained at the same time in the neizhhoring Territory of New Mexico. A horse thief was one degree worse than an illicit dealer in calves. This conviction was born of the frontier conditions. A cow was property, but in the Indian days, a man’'s horse might be his life. To set a rider afoot in the wilderness was at times equivalent to pronounc- ing a death sentence upon him. Therefore one’s right to his mustang became sacrosanct. A captured horse thief expected little mercy. The amazing story of the Marlows shows the depth and fury of this feeling. The drama centers at Graham, Young County, Texas.