The Spicer Hearing Testimony of H. F. Sills as it appeared in the Tombstone Daily Epitaph
A detailed comparison with the Tombstone Nugget and the Turner version

DAILY EPITAPH
November 22, 1881 FIFTEENTH DAY H. F. Sills1

Sworn for the defense: My home is in Las Vegas, New Mexico.2 By occupation I am a locomotive engineer.3 I saw four or five men standing in front of the O. K. Corral on October 26th, about two o’clock in the afternoon, talking of some trouble they had had with Virgil Earp, and they made threats at the time that on meeting him they would kill him on sight.4 Some one of the party spoke up at the time and said: “That they would kill the whole party of Earps when they met them.”5 I then walked up the street and made inquiry as to who Virgil Earp and the Earps were. A man on the street pointed out Virgil Earp to me and told me he was the city marshal. I went over and called him one side, and told him of the threats that I had overheard this party make. One of the men that made the threats had a bandage around his head at the time, and the day of the funeral he was pointed out to me as Isaac Clanton.6

I recognized him as one of the party I had seen at the O. K. Corral.7 A few minutes after I had spoken to the marshal. I saw him and8 a party start down Fourth street. I followed them down as far as the post office. Then I got sight of the party that I had overheard making those threats. I thought there would be trouble and I crossed the street. I saw the marshal9 go up and speak to this other party. I was not close enough to hear their conversation, but saw them pull out their revolvers immediately. The marshal had a cane in his right hand at the time. He throwed10 up his hand and spoke. I did not hear the words though. By that time Billy Clanton and Wyatt Earp had fired their guns off. The marshal then changed his cane from one hand to the other and pulled his revolver out. He seemed to be hurt11 at the time, and fell down. He got up immediately and went to shooting. The shooting became general, and I stepped back in the hallway.12 I afterward saw Billy Clanton, when he was dead, and recognized him as the one who had fired at the same time with13 Wyatt Earp.

November 23, 1881 FIFTEENTH DAY
H. F. Sills
CROSS-EXAMINATION

I came to Tombstone October 25, on the stage or bullion wagon of Wells, Fargo & Co. Another passenger, the driver, and myself. I don’t know as I would recognize them14 if I would see them on the street now. For the first few days I was in town, I stopped at a lodging house, below the stage barn, on Allen street, until I was taken sick.15 I don’t know the name of the party who keeps the lodging house. I staid (sic) there about ten nights. I then went to the hospital. I remained there ever since. Am stopping there now. I walked from the hospital here. I don’t know who the man was who I inquired of as to who the Earps were; it was just a man I met as I came up the street; I don’t think that I should recognize that man if I should see him now, because there were a great many men on the street at the time. When I told Virgil Earp of the threats I had heard,16 I told17 him it was a party of armed men I had seen standing on the street, because I did not know them at the time. The party consisted of four men. I can’t say that they were all armed because they were not so standing that I could see their arms.18 I saw that some were armed. They had pistols plainly in sight.19 I was within four or five steps of the party when I heard the threats.20 Men were walking up and down the street,21 and were standing fifteen or twenty steps back in the corral. One of the men I saw with arms was a youngish looking man; looked nineteen or twenty years old. I don’t remember his clothes; didn’t pay much attention. I don’t know the color of his hair; he was22 red complexioned in the face. I don’t know whether he shaved23 or not. I don’t remember what kind of a hat he had. Another man had a moustache looked to be about thirty years old.24 I think his hair was dark.25 I’m not certain whether his face was shaved except his moustache, but I think it was. I paid no attention to his clothes. The first one described was the taller of the two, to the best of my knowledge. There were not two with bandages about their heads to the best of my knowledge, at least I only saw one. I didn’t notice the color of the bandage.26 The man with the bandage was of a complexion I cannot say, because he was standing with his back toward me. I did not see his face at that time. I first saw his face the day of the funeral. I can positively say that the man I saw at the funeral was the man I saw with a bandage around his head, in front of the O. K. Corral, by his conversation, by his talk, his voice.27 I recognize him also by his appearance, by what I saw of him that day,28 and by hearing him talk, with the other party in front of the O. K. Corral, and with other parties at the funeral.

29
TOMBSTONE EPITAPH November 24, 1881 SIXTEENTH DAY Testimony for the Defense H. F. Sills30
Crown examination resumed:

Am 3531 years old; was born in Kingston, Canada; lived there until I was 20 years old; from there I went to Belleville32, Canada; lived there about three years; from there I went to Omaha, Nebraska; lived in Omaha; served my time in the Union Pacific shops, and was on the line of the Union Pacific33 road several years, in the neighborhood of eight or nine years. I was an apprentice in the machine shop, locomotive fireman on the road, and locomotive engineer. During the time I served my apprenticeship Mr. Congden was general mechanic,34 and Mr. McConnell was foreman. I was in the shops three years. Some of the time while there, about a year and a half, I boarded at the Pacific House, and about a year and a half my mother kept house for me. I think Jordan kept the Pacific House when I boarded there. I was fireman about six years on the road.35 I fired engine No. 23 and run engine No. 75. Engines were attached to freight trains.36 I ran between Grand Island and Omaha; I ran between Cheyenne and Laramie and between Laramie and Rawlins37. Cannot tell the names of all the conductors.38 One was named Frank Fuller; another named Kelly.39 I was about two and a half years on engine No. 75. The name of A. A. Bean is familiar to me; I think there was a man by that name either over or under Mr. Clark; as superintendent or division superintendent. I knew of General Kimball, the general superintendent.40 I did not know him personally.41 When I left that road I went to Las Vegas, New Mexico. I have been in Las Vegas since last March. I left the Union Pacific road last January. I did not engage in any business from then until March.42 Have been running a locomotive at Las Vegas since I have been there on the A. T. & S. F. R. R. from Las Vegas to Wallace, on a freight train.43 A conductor named Jones ran one train, another named Billy Agnew.44 I am still in the employ of the A. T. & S. F. R. R. I left there the 19th of last month. I went to Tucson, I had no business there;45 from there I came here; I had no business here. I am going back to resume employment on the A. T. & S. F. R. R. between now and the 10th of next month. My wages on the road were four cents a mile. The division is 100 miles long. Engineers are paid by the mile.46 I came here on October 25th on W. F. & Co.’s express wagon. There was another passenger beside the driver. I did not ask the driver his name. He was probably a middle-age man. He had whiskers on his face. I did not notice his eye.47 I don’t remember exactly the color of the horses; I think there was one white horse and one bobtail horse.48 I think the white horse was between Benson and Charleston. I would not know the man I traveled with from Benson; he sat in front of me. I am positive that I came here on that bullion wagon, on the 25th of October last.49 I am as positive of that as any other fact that I testified to. I stayed in Benson half an hour. I don’t think I would know the driver of the stage again if I were to see him.50 I had no conversation with the lady who kept the lodging house where I stayed nine or ten days in Tombstone about the difficulties concerning which I have testified to. On the night of the 25th of October I stopped at this lodging house I speak of. When I went up to Virgil Earp the first time I did not see anything in his hand. The place I saw him was on the corner of Fourth and Allen streets; on the further side51 of Fourth street this side of Allen street. I should judge it was about half an hour before the difficulty. I think there were four men at the corral. I saw no horses with them. I stayed three or four minutes.52

Did you see any other persons as near the parties as yourself?

There were men walking up and down the street by them. I did not know the parties then. When did you next see the parties? I saw them on Fremont street, between Third and Fourth streets, near the corner of Third, standing in a vacant lot.

How many did you see there?

There were five men in the party when I first saw them on Fremont street, and one of them walked off.

Doc Holliday

I saw the Earps and Doc Holliday when they went down Fremont Street. A. I was walking right along behind them; I went as far as the post office53 and crossed the street over to the court house.

54 Was that as near as you were during the actual difficulty?

A. It was.

Where are you working now, and for whom?

A. At the present time I am on a lay-off from the Atchison and Topeka railroad, and stopping at the hospital at the recommendation of Dr. Goodfellow.55

When and to whom did you first tell about the difficulty?

A. The first I spoke to was Jim Earp.56

Did you tell anyone at the hospital anything about the fight?

A. I did not.57

When did you first know that you were wanted as a witness in this case?

Friday or Saturday last.58 There was no one standing near to me at the court house.59 I was standing near the building.60

Where did the Earps and Holliday start from?

A. From the corner of Fourth and Allen streets.

Did you see or hear other parties at the time they started?

A. I did not.

When they started did you see a shotgun in any of their hands?

A. I saw the marshal picked up a shotgun from beside the building and handed it to Holliday; Holliday put it under his coat and handed the marshal his cane and then started down Fourth street towards Fremont and down Fremont towards Third street.61

During this time you were working in the machine shop and running on U. P. or A. T. & S. F. R. R had you a nickname? If so, what was it?

A. I did; they called me “Curly.”62

Where do you lay off and where do you stop at in New Mexico?

A. I lay off at Las Vegas and stop at my own house.

1 In the Nugget, the testimony is summarized with subheading Cross-Examination of S. H. Sills and he is also referred to as H. F. Sill. In Turner he is referred to as H. F. Sills. Modern writers have referred to him as H. F. Sills, but there is room for uncertainty as to the accuracy of his initials and last name as they have come down to the present . See Barra, Marks, Tefertiller.

2 Efforts to find an address for Sills in Las Vegas, NM have thus far proved fruitless. As a railway worker, he may have lived in railway barracks, or simply rented a place for which there is no record. He does not appear to have been present in Las Vegas for any census. Researchers Bob Palmquist and Jeff Morey have found one piece of corroborating evidence however, for Sills’ testimony. The LAS VEGAS (N.M.T.) OPTIC, dated Feb. 9, 1882, reported: “Engineer Sill, who formerly drove a locomotive on the Las Vegas division, is in California.” To date this is the only post-Tombstone mention uncovered anywhere for Sills.

3 The first two sentences are given differently in the Turner version of the testimony. Rather than Sills speaking his identification, Sills’ identity is reported in the third person.

4 In Turner, the statement and those that follow are given as responses to specific questions, whereas in the Epitaph version, his testimony appears to be in the form of a monologue. This causes several of the sentences to be rendered very differently in Turner.

5 It was this lack of knowledge of the identity of the individuals in a highly divided town that made Sills’ testimony so compelling. He appeared to lack any preconceived notions as to who was in the right in any dispute, and this apparent lack of bias was very important to Judge Spicer.
It also explains why the Prosecution tried so hard to break his testimony, and why subsequent writers and historians who don’t believe the Earp side of the story have had such doubts about whether Sills was actually who he claimed to be..

6 The phrase “that made the threats” is missing from Turner. Virgil Earp had buffaloed Ike Clanton earlier in the day.

7 The phrase “…I had seen at the O. K. Corral.” is not in Turner.

8 The words “him and…” are not present in Turner.

9 The words “and party” follow marshal in Turner.

10 This and other uses of the word “throwed” are changed to threw in Turner, perhaps indicating a troubling tendency for editing by Hayhurst or Turner.

11 Turner has “hit” instead of “hurt.”

12 Turner’s version adds the phrase “…along the side of the court house.” at the end of the sentence.

13 Instead of the word “with” the Turner version uses the word “at,” perhaps a significant difference.

14 In Turner, the phrase “I don’t know as I could recognize them…” is rendered as “I could not recognize them…”

15 Immediately preceding this sentence, Turner has Sills responding to the question: Where have you been since? with the response: “In Tombstone.” Both Sills’ illness and the hospital at which he stayed are unknown. Given speculation about his disappearance from recorded history following his stay in Tombstone, his disease may have been terminal.

16 These words at the beginning of this sentence are missing from Turner: “When I told Virgil Earp of the threats I had heard,…”

17 Turner adds the word “merely before the word “told.”

18 A problem for those analysts of the gunfight who believe Sills testified deliberately to favor the Earps, perhaps because he was a plant, is the question of why he did not use this question to indicate that Tom McLaury was armed. Although in his decision, Judge Spicer indicated the question of Tom’s being armed was not germane to the issue of whether charges of murder should be brought against the lawmen, such a position was unpredictable at this point in the hearing.

19 Turner renders this sentence as, “Of two, the pistols were in plain sight.”

20 Turner’s version eliminates the words “…when I heard the threats.” from the sentence.

21 Turner has this phrase as, “There were men standing back in the corral, …”

22 Turner has “seemed to [be]” for “was…”

23 Turner has “clean shaved…”

24 The words “had a moustache” are not in this sentence in Turner.

25 The words “I think…” are not in Turner.

26 Turner’s version adds the words, “…I only saw it hanging under his hat.”

27 Turner also adds the phrase, “by his appearance…”

28 The phrase, “by what I saw of him that day…” is not found in Turner. Several of the sentences at the end of this portion of Sills’ testimony are in a slightly different order in Turner.

29 Here Turner adds: [COURT ADJOURNED TO MEET AT 9:00 O’CLOCK A. M. NOVEMBER 23, 1881]

30 Turner introduces this section of cross-examination with: [WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 188, COURT CONVENED AT 9:00 A. M.] [CROSS-EXAMINATION OF H. F. Sills resumed]

31 Turner has Sills stating his age as 36. The Nugget agrees with the Epitaph as to his age being 35 years.

32 Turner has this location as Canille, a non-existent place. In fact, Belleville, Ontario is less than a one hour’s drive from Kingston today. The Nugget agrees with the Epitaph and has Sills stating Belleville.

33 The Nugget omits the name “Union Pacific.”

34 The Nugget has Congden as “general master mechanic.”

35 The Nugget reports that before this statement, Sills was asked if he had any room mates at that house, and if so, who were they? The question was objected to as irrelevant and too remote. The objection was sustained. This is to be regretted by modern researchers, who might have pursued any such name.

36 Turner renders these two sentences very differently, conflating them as follows: “I ran, as fireman, and as engineer, about six trains.” The Nugget reports this response was to the question as to whether the engines were attached to freight or passenger trains.

37 Turner has Rawlins as Rolling Springs, but in fact as “Rawlins.” The Nugget also had it as Rolling Springs. There was no Rolling Springs in Wyoming. There was a Rock Springs on the Union line but that wasn’t the town Sills mentioned and which someone translated into Rolling Springs. Why Rawlins? Cheyenne, Laramie, and Rawlins were all county seat towns with courthouses, creating heavy traffic for the trains. All three of the towns were important to the Post Office Department as they were known as classified post offices (rare in Wyoming Territory), meaning salaries were paid by the government and weren’t based on the business generated. All three post offices dispensed money orders and Rawlins was a “brass lock registry exchange office,” meaning it was an important point in the transfer of
valuable articles. A final point is that Rawlins was a railroad division town. Thanks to researcher Wayne Collier for this information.

38 The Nugget renders this response in language more likely to be spoken. Sills replies to the question as to who the conductors were on the train as, “It would be hard for me to tell.” There is indication from the Nugget that a Defense objection to this question was not sustained.

39 Turner has the words “I think” after Kelly.

40 The Nugget has these sentence in response to a question as whether he knew on that road, A. A. Bean and Gen. Kimball.

41 Clearly the Prosecution is trying to catch Sills in a contradiction, or in errors that would indicate he is not who he says he is. One can imagine the Prosecution lawyers checking his testimony by telegraph almost as soon as its given. Since it was never publically discredited, one can assume it was correct, else surely the Prosecution would have trumpeted anything in it that was untrue.

42 This sentence is not in either Turner or the Nugget.

43 This sentence does not appear in the Epitaph summary.

44 This sentence, with the names Jones and Agnew, are missing from the Epitaph report.

45 Conspiracy theorists wonder why he went to Tucson if he had no business there. The suspicion is that he went there to begin to work for Wells Fargo and spy on the cowboys. This would explain to such theorists his careful observations on the day of the gunfight, and his clearly pro-Earp testimony, testimony in conflict with other Prosecution witnesses.

46 This sentence is missing from the Epitaph report.

47 This sentence is missing from the Epitaph. One wonders who the Prosecution was thinking of, by asking if Sills noticed anything about his eye.

48 See photograph in Sills article. Unless there was an identical team of horses, almost too coincidental to be credible, a reasonable conclusion is that this is the team of horses that brought Sills into Tombstone.

49 Turner has it as the 26th.

50 The Turner version has this sentence as, “I stayed in Benson about half an hour, I do not think I would know the driver again, who drove the wagon I came in on, although I have seen him here on the street and spoke to him.” This seems somewhat of a contradictory answer.

51 The Nugget has this as “corner” of Fourth Street.

52 Turner and the Nugget both have Sills testifying “probably” three or four minutes.

53 Turner has Sills testifying that he “…went down behind them as far as the post office.”

54 Turner has Sills testifying that he “I then crossed the street in front of what I believe is the courthouse.

55 Turner has Sills testifying that “I am not working at all.” The sentence referring to Tombstone’s noted Doc Goodfellow does not appear in either Turner or the Nugget. The Nugget has him testifying that he went to the hospital on the “6th or 7th of this month.” 56 James Earp, brother of Virgil, Wyatt, and Morgan Earp. James did not participate in the gunfight. Turner and the Nugget have Sills’ response as, “The first word I spoke of it to anybody was to Jim Earp I believe.” Paula Mitchell Marks in And Die in the West writes that although the prosecution could not expose a chink in Sills’ story or the unbiased stranger in town, his acknowledgement that “the first word” he spoke of his knowledge of the incident was to Jim Earp was “interesting.”

57 This interchange about Sills not telling anyone at the hospital about what happened is far less clear in Turner. 58 Turner and the Nugget have Sills testifying “Thursday or Friday.”

59 The Nugget ends this Sills sentence with the words “when the shooting began.”

60 In response to a question not recorded, Turner has Sills responding instead: “I did not see any person on the side of the street I was on when the shooting was going on. I was standing close to the building and then stepped back into the hall when the shooting became general.”

61 Instead of, “Holliday put it under his coat and handed the marshal his cane and then started down Fourth street towards Fremont and down Fremont towards Third street.”- Turner and the Nugget simply have Sills testifying, “Doc put it under his coat and the marshal took his cane.”

62 Turner and the Nugget have this nickname spelled as “Curley.”

This is a photograph of Billy the Kid’s grave

Or is it?
Here he lies.
Frederick Nolan
Ever since Pat Garrett wrote finis to the Kid’s legendary career on that moonlit July midnight in 1881, people have been arguing about whether or not the marker over the grave is in the right spot, or indeed whether the Kid is actually buried there at all. As we pass the 121st anniversary of the actual burial, perhaps this might be as good a time as any to re-examine the evidence.
The most convincing (although not eyewitness) account of the Kid’s funeral was given in the 1930s by Jack “Lead Steer” Potter, who claimed he first heard it in Fort Sumner a few years after the event. There was a service at the graveside, Potter said, conducted by an old buffalo hunter named Hugh Leeper, who was known as the “Sanctified Texan” because “he was fairly well-educated and was an accomplished scholar of the Bible.”

In Potter’s account The Sheriff instructed several Mexican ranch hands to remove the dirt roof of an abandoned adobe building and pull out enough ceiling planks to make a coffin, as time was too short to have lumber shipped from Las Vegas. Late in the afternoon the corpse was loaded into old Vicente’s [Silva’s] wood-hauling wagon which proceeded to the government cemetery followed by every person in Fort Sumner, even the saloon keeper who rarely closed down his business. The Sanctified Texan, who believed in predestination, preached the funeral and said that Billy’s time had certainly come at last. They told me he made remarks about Billy “our beloved young citizen,” and read from the 14th chapter of Job – “A man that is born of woman is of few days and is full of trouble – he fleeth like a shadow and continueth not.” In closing he
said, “Billy cannot come back to us, but we can go to him and will see him again up yonder, Amen.”

The day after the funeral Pete Maxwell had his man pull a wooden picket from the parade-ground fence, saw off a foot or so, and nail it in a crossbar to the longer piece. Then he printed in crude letters “BILLY THE KID, JULY 14, 1881.” Later this marker was stolen by relic seekers and the second one, which replaced it, was also stolen … Back in 1930 when I began to write down my memories, I had a letter from John Roark, a stagecoach driver, who swore he saw the uprooted grave marker strapped to a feller’s luggage as he boarded a train back East.1
Strange though it seems, there are no other accounts of the event even though there must have been plenty of opportunities to get them – after all, Pete and Paula Maxwell, who would surely have been there, not to mention Deluvina Maxwell, Jesus Silva, Vicente Otero, Francisco Lovato and many other Fort Sumner residents could have described it in detail. And could there – just possibly – have been a photographer on the scene? One man certainly thought so, as older students of the Billy the Kid legend may recall.

In an article published in the December, 1960 issue of True West, artist Lea F. McCarty offered a photograph of four men which he claimed had been given to him by someone named “Tom Sullivan” an old man who ran the Billy the Kid Curio Shop at Fort Sumner. It had been taken, Sullivan told him, at the Kid’s funeral. McCarty took it to Ruidoso and asked Frank Coe’s grandson, a Mr. [Ralph?] Bonnell, if it was “the real thing.”

“Course it is. I’ve seen it many times,” Bonnell said. “Look at all of ’em holding their hats. Billy is in a cedar box out front of them and the picture was taken across the coffin. The man at the far right, for instance, is Miguel Otero, who was once Governor of New Mexico.” “And who is this fellow next to Otero on the right?” McCarty asked.
“That is Otero’s brother. You can see his hat is under his arm in respect for the Kid.” “And the fellow wearing overalls, second from the left – who is he?” Bonnell scratched his head. “That is Jesus Silva. The Kid was staying at Silva’s home the night he was cut down. He had come down from Frank Lobato’s sheep camp tired and hungry and wanted some beefsteak to eat. He was told by Silva to go over to Pete Maxwell’s house where they had just slaughtered a young heifer.”
And the man holding his hat up to his face? That, said Bonnell, was Hijinio Salazar, who was a great friend of the Kid’s and helped dig the grave as he wept shamelessly at the funeral.

2.

You’d think that perhaps McCarty might have taken a moment to wonder how Otero and his brother in Santa Fe, or Yginio Salazar, living even further away in Lincoln, could have got news of the Kid’s death at midnight on July 14 in time to get to the funeral by late afternoon of the following day, but clearly the thought never occurred to him.

If nothing else, the McCarty article shows us just how comprehensive a change there has been in researching such stories during the last half hundred years. We know now there was not, simply never could have been, a photograph of the Kid’s funeral, because if there had been one it would have surfaced long before Mr. McCarty embarked upon his quest. Quite apart from whether the mythical Mr. Sullivan (who was probably Ed Sweet) and Mr. Bonnell were simply pulling McCarty’s plonker, the “funeral” photograph was actually taken at the time the first marker was placed over the Kid’s grave in the early 1930s (see below).

So what is there by way of evidence to show the Kid was indeed buried where the marker says he was? Quite a lot, it transpires. The first “outsider” to examine the gravesite (that is to say, someone with no preconceptions and no ax to grind) seems to have been a “special correspondent” of the Las Vegas Daily Optic – all we know about him is his initials “I. N. P.” – who in January, 1882, visited what he called “The Bivouac of the Dead,” looking for the grave of Billy the Kid in the old military cemetery “to the southwest of the abandoned and decaying Fort Sumner.”

The cemetery itself, he reported, was surrounded by

“what was once a good adobe wall, but from decay and neglect is now merely an outline, surrounding an acre [sic] of ground.”
We enter on the north, walking over the remains of the once handsome gate. To the left, in the northeast corner, are the graves of four rustlers. Grant, killed by Billy the Kid; Ferris, who was killed by Barney Mason at the instance of the Kid, and O’Fallion and Bowdre … To the right of the entrance lies the grave of Billy the Kid, marked by a plain board, with the stenciled letters ‘Billy the Kid’ … The southwest part of the little burying ground is filled with graves of soldiers who were killed by Indians near the fort as the few legible headboards read ‘July 7, 1866.’
Over in the southwest [sic] corner lies the grave of Lucien B. Maxwell, once so famous in New Mexico.

3.

It all seems fairly straightforward: the Kid’s grave was to the right of the gate in the north wall, all the others in the northeastern corner. But visit the graveyard today and you find the graves of O’Folliard and Bowdre are adjacent to the Kid’s in the center of the plot and nowhere near “the northeast corner.” So who got it wrong: “I. N. P.” – who was there in 1882 – or Charlie Foor and the oldtimers in Fort Sumner who relocated the grave in the 1920s? You’d tend to think maybe the old timers. After all, as anyone who has read The Saga of Billy the Kid knows, by 1925 the site had reverted to wilderness and when Charlie Siringo mooted putting a marker over the grave a few years later, it was overgrown with mesquite. Even then, the actual location was ‘disputed’ as this item from the April 11, 1930 edition of The Fort Sumner Leader indicates:

MARKING GRAVE OF FAMOUS NEW MEXICO CHARACTER
An interesting step was taken by the DeBaca County Chamber of Commerce this week when that body gathered together here A. P. (Paco) Anaya, Vicente Ortega [Otero], and C. W. Charley Foor [and Jesus Silva] to make definite the disputed location [my italics] of the grave of New Mexico’s most romantic outlaw, Billy the Kid, in the little cemetery at Old Fort Sumner. These men located the grave in the old cemetery and a picture of them was taken, standing at the foot of the graves of the Kid, Charley Bowdry and Tom O’Phalion … a concrete curbing is in place around the three graves and a big concrete slab is to be placed over the grave of the Kid.

4.

So the first marker was not a marker at all but a concrete curbing with a flat slab on the actual grave. It wasn’t until a year or so later that the “Pals” marker which stands on the spot today was erected, as the same newspaper reported on October 31, 1931. .

MARKING BILLY’S GRAVE An order was made out this week for the grave stone marking the graves of Old Fort Sumner’s noted characters, Billy the Kid, Tom O’Phalion and Charley Bowdrie [doesn’t this kind of sloppiness make you sick?]. It is understood the stone is to have a suitable inscription, and covering all three graves, with pointers indicating each man’s resting place.

5.

Oddly enough, the newspaper doesn’t seem to have covered the actual installation of the gravestone, so we can only conclude that it was placed on the spot sometime between November, 1930 and October 1932, when the paper ran a further story complaining the monument was already being vandalized. This lack of coverage has left us with questions which have persisted until the present day: first, did they really put the marker in the right place? And second, were the graves of Charley Bowdre and Tom O’Folliard near that of the Kid, or in the northeast corner of the cemetery as “I. N. P.” claimed in 1882?

To answer those questions it is first necessary to establish some facts about the cemetery, and how it was laid out in the Kid’s time. To do that we have to go back to the U.S. Army records. These show that in October 1862, acting entirely upon his own authority (but ratified post-facto almost a year later by his superior, Gen. H. W. Halleck) General James H. Carleton ordered the establishment of Fort Sumner at Bosque Redondo on the banks of the Pecos River. Designed as a five-company post and named for Mexican and Civil War veteran General Edwin Vose Sumner, it was sited at the center of a projected forty-mile square, 1,024,000 acre reservation (read concentration camp) for Navajo and Mescalero Apache Indians, of whom, at the end of 1864, there were over 8000 living in 1276 “lodges” – crude living quarters – at or near the fort.

The Navajos, by far the larger part of the population, owned nearly 7000 sheep, 2757 goats, 143 mules and over 3000 horses, the presence of the latter doubtless one of the reasons that the village of Puerto de Luna, on the northern edge of the reservation, became and remained a horse-thieves’ heaven. Crammed into an area that had been shrunk by bureaucratic or military sleight of hand to 13,644 acres, the Navajos hated every moment of every day they were confined at Guelte as they called it; the soldiers whose duty it was to confine them probably loathed the place with equal passion. 6.
During the construction of the post by Army engineers, a plot was set aside for a military cemetery, at first unenclosed, and situated exactly one quarter mile due east of the flagpole. Between January 2, 1863, and February 1, 1868, the following twenty-two military burials were recorded at Fort Sumner. 7.
Name and rank
Pvt. Samuel Strunk Pvt. Marcus Cruiz Pvt Albertin Crutchfield Captain Robert Lusby
Regiment
1st NM Cav 1st NM Cav 1st Cal Cav AAG US Vols
Date of death
January 2, 1863 October 5, 1864 December 8, 1864 February 20, 1865
Cause.
Killed by Indians (not found) Intermittent fever Unknown Took poison by mistake
Pvt. Juan Chavez Hosp. Stwd Philip Walsh Captain Joseph Berney Pvt. William H. Daugherty Pvt. Juan Marcus Pvt. Patrick Toury Pvt. Patrick Johnson Cpl. Hugh Friel Cpl. William C. Edwards 2Lt. William J. Eckley Pvt. John Devine Pvt. James Cook Pvt. Edward White Pvt. William Kerr Pvt. John Lee Edward Johnson Pvt. Thomas Hedgecock Pvt. William H. Epple
1st NM Cav 1st NM Cav 1st NM Cav 1st Cal Cav 1st NM Cav 5th US Inf. 5th US Inf. 3rd US Cav 3rd US Cav 5th US Inf 3rd US Cav 3rd US Cav 3rd US Cav 3rd US Cav 3rd US Cav Civilian 37th US Inf 3rd US Cav
March 30, 1865 April 25, 1865 October 7, 1865 December 7, 1865 December 21, 1865 July 7, 1866
July 15, 1867 May 3, 1867 June 12, 1867 June 20, 1867 July 9, 1867 July 9, 1867 July 9, 1867 July 9, 1867 July 9, 1867 October 12, 1867 November 17, 1867 July 1, 1868
Pneumonia (not found) Delirium tremens (not found)
Congestive fever Pneumonia Apoplexy Accidentally shot by comrade Acute rheum
Shot by comrade near Puerto de Luna Cerebral congestion Killed by Navajos near Fort Sumner
“ “ “ “
Killed by Guard while resisting arrest

On April 20, 1866, just a few months before his mustering out after two years of service with the US Volunteers, Assistant Quartermaster Capt. Gus Artsman filed a report with the Quartermaster General’s office on the general condition of the cemetery from which it is clear that even then it was already in a rundown condition. Artsman made a number of recommendations for its improvement. To begin with, he wrote, the plot was open to the elements and suggested that it be enclosed by an adobe wall. “Headboards are at most of the graves,” he added, “[and I] will have them at the remainder soon.” 8. The office of Quartermaster General and Brigadier General Montgomery C. Meigs concurred. “The graves should be sodded,” it stipulated, “mounds erected and also headboards where necessary, and otherwise put in a good presentable condition. At this point, as well as at all others in the remote territories of the west where there are no towns, villages, or organized municipality the graves of citizens should receive the same care from government as those of soldiers.” 9.

Accordingly in 1867 the plot was enclosed by an adobe wall; readers of Walter Noble Burns’ Saga of Billy the Kid will recall that according to Charlie Foor there was also an arched gateway with a cross on top. 10. The entire cemetery at that time measured 156 feet [52 yards] east-to-west and 146 feet [48. 66 yards] north-to-south, which probably explains, although it was in fact slightly larger than that, why it later became known as ‘Hell’s Half-acre.’ On March 21 of that year Lt. Robert McDonald, 5th Infantry (whose display of “most distinguished gallantry at the battle of Wolf Mountain in Montana” the following year would earn him a Medal of Honor) reported that although because of the nature of the local grass it had not been possible for the graves to be sodded, the cemetery was “now enclosed by a wall built of Adobes five feet high and twenty-seven inches wide at the bottom, sloping to a point at the top. Trees have been planted throughout, the graves are in good condition, Head Boards placed at each and every grave.” 11.

The Lieutenant may have been telling headquarters what it wanted to hear rather than the truth; following the annual inspection of the cemetery a year later, Swiss-born Regimental Quartermaster Lt. Alexander Sutorius, Third Cavalry, reported on June 23, 1868 that he had had difficulty locating graves due to the absence of headboards and added “There are a few graves which I find impossible to have identified from the long period of interment.” 12. Among these appears to have been that of Capt. Joseph Berney, 1st NM Vol. Cavalry, who died October 7, 1865.

The Navajos were about to be delivered from their bondage. In 1867 Congress passed an Act creating the Indian Peace Commission. On May 28, 1868 General William Tecumseh Sherman and Samuel F. Tappan arrived at Fort Sumner with authority to negotiate a treaty with the Navajos. Sherman’s orders were to remove the Navajos to Fort Sill, but the Navajo leaders argued successfully to be allowed to return to their homes in the Four Corners region. The government acceded, promising $150,000 to provide the Navajos with transportation to their new reservation in northwestern New Mexico and northeastern Arizona, and to furnish them with 15,000 sheep and goats and 500 cattle to rebuild their livestock industry. On June 15, some seven thousand Navajos began the long trek to their new homes under the protection of two companies of US Cavalry commanded by Maj. Charles Jarvis Whiting, Third Cavalry; shortly thereafter the military decommissioned the post and in 1869 the decision was taken to abandon it. 13.

In 1870, following the sale of his ‘Maxwell Land Grant’, and after some dickering with the Army, Lucien B. Maxwell purchased the old fort buildings and irrigation ditches (called “improvements” in the documentation) from the government for $5000 (after they had been offered at a public sale on June 13, 1870 where, to the dismay of the Secretary for War, the best bid was $900) and when
the deal was closed in October, moved his center of operations from Cimarron to Fort Sumner. 14. According to a survey made two years later “the buildings had deteriorated in value greatly during the time they were unoccupied.” The surveyor also reported that since the purchase Maxwell had spent about $10,000 on improvements, which included enlarging one of the former officers quarters buildings into a spacious twenty-room private home, a hundred feet long and nearly fifty wide, for himself and his family. For a further $5000 he purchased two buildings situated on the west side of the Avenue which had belonged to J. A. LaRue, former post trader. By 1872, the population of Fort Sumner was estimated at 250 souls, almost all of them working for, or dependent upon, Maxwell. 15.

Between 1870 and 1880 the cemetery was regularly used for civilian burials. Nearly all of these were in ground east of the central path where there were already a few graves, believed to have been those of workers and artisans who had died during the building of the original fort in 1863-65. An October 31, 1907 War Department memorandum to the Secretary of the Interior confirms “that the post cemetery was used as a private burying ground subsequent to the abandonment of the post and that from 60 to 80 civilian remains were buried there …” 16. As if perhaps to distance himself royally from his employees and neighbors, the grave of Lucien B. Maxwell, who died June 25, 1875, is not among them but in the southwest quadrant of the cemetery, as is that of his son Peter, who died July 21, 1898.

Among the graves on the eastern side, as “I. N. P.” told us (although Charlie Foor claimed otherwise) was “Texas Red” Joe Grant, who thought he could sucker Billy the Kid and instead got suckered himself. The killing took place at Fort Sumner on January 10, 1880. Here’s how eyewitness Frank Lloyd described it to J. Evetts Haley in 1935. 17.

Texas Red said when he come there that that was his business, to kill the Kid and they talked and went out and had shooting matches at a mark for the whiskey all day and come into the saloon to take a drink. Tex was pretty drunk and Billy was full. Tex throwed his hand on his gun and says ‘Billy, I can draw the first blood for the whiskey.’ Billy says ‘I’ll go you’ and broke his neck in three places. He shot him in the mouth, under the chin and in the neck before he hit the ground. He had his hand on his gun and never got it out of the scabbard. I saw it. I was standing right at the bar. That was Teet’s [Beaver Smith’s] saloon.

Another unmarked grave holds the body of John Farris (sometimes given as Faris or Faires) who was certainly killed by Barney Mason as “I. N. P.” reported, but that it was at the behest of Billy the Kid is highly unlikely. Born in Mississippi in 1845, Farris was the oldest son of Solomon and Laurinda Farris, and had served with the rank of lieutenant in Co. H. of Baylor’s Regiment of Texas Cavalry until the unit surrendered at Galveston in June, 1865. He and his five brothers were peripherally involved in the Mason County troubles, although so far as has been ascertained to the present time, they were not directly implicated in any killings. In his book “Riata and Spurs” Charles Siringo mentions starting out up the Bascom Trail for Kansas with a cowboy named John Ferris, who borrowed $25 from him and $50 from the livery man and hit the road “… direct for Fort Sumner, where he was shot and killed by Barney Mason.” The Santa Fe Daily New Mexican gave such details as were available on January 19, 1880.

In a shooting affray at Fort Sumner on the 29th ultimo [December 29, 1879] John Farris was shot and killed by Barney Mason. Farris shot three times at Mason without any provocation, when the latter went off, got a pistol and returning to the store where Farris was, shot him twice in the breast.”

Another version suggests Farris got into a card game with Mason and Pat Garrett and a quarrel ensued during which Mason shot Farris in the back. 18. Whichever story is true, Farris was just as dead, and it’s highly unlikely he got even so much as a picket-fence marker over his grave. As for Mason, it was said that following the capture and death of the Kid, he badmouthed Pat Garrett for failing to share the reward for killing the Kid and other bounties collected by Garrett to which Mason’s spying had contributed, whereupon Garrett evolved a plan to get rid of Mason. “Barney knows too much,” he told Skelton Glenn. Shortly thereafter Mason came across a fine yearling, apparently unbranded; unfortunately for him he overlooked a small H brand between the forelegs which was used by Garrett; as a result, Mason was indicted on two counts, stealing an ox and altering brands, and on May 1, 1887 was sent to the penitentiary. On November 16 of the same year after he was pardoned by Governor Ross, Barney left New Mexico and never came back. 19.

In 1906, it was decided to remove the remains of the “approximately” 22 enlisted men and officers buried in the Fort Sumner cemetery to the National Cemetery in Santa Fe as part of an ongoing process of reburial of bodies from former military posts (Forts Stanton, Marcy, Grant, Wingate, and Craig as well as Fort Sumner) that had begun a decade earlier and would continue until 1920. On December 2, 1905, the specifications for this operation were issued and bids to conduct it invited. The successful contractor was required to “put the remains of each [person] in a dressed pine box 26 in. x 10 in. x 10 in., and where any disagreeable odor can be noticed, to place in the box a sufficient quantity of sawdust saturated with carbolic acid to destroy such odor. The graves in the old cemetery are to be refilled by the contractor and the ground left smooth and all the rubbish carted away by him.” 20.

There were only three bidders for the job, all from Santa Fe: Jose D. Sena and Pedro A. Sandoval were highest at $800, C. F. Dudrow put in the low bid, $300, and was awarded the contract. The bodies, which according to the military records were “on the western side of the cemetery” were accordingly exhumed by his workers, placed in boxes as stipulated, and reburied at Santa Fe on March 8 in military graves 674-695. A citation from his April 20, 1906 report to the Assistant QMG, US Army, Denver, indicates how meticulously Dudrow worked. 21.

As stated … it was impossible to identify the remains of any particular person. I spent five or six days traveling through the country in search of old residents who might be able to identify some one or more of these soldiers, but after a lapse of forty years it could hardly be considered possible to get reliable information … I had an interview with a Dr. John Gayheart [Gerhardt] whom I traveled fifty miles to see [at Los Ojitos] who was a caterer for the officers mess during the time of the post but he could remember nothing regarding names or anything of that nature. He was, however, able to tell me the part of the cemetery used by the military. He also told me about the wooden monument over the remains of one of the Captains but could not recall the name [Lusby]. I also found other parties who gave me practically the same information. At one time, I was informed, all the graves of the soldiers were marked with wooden head boards and when I did this work some of them were still standing in the first and second rows but all lettering entirely obliterated and not even legible under a magnifying glass. [The body in grave] No. 8 … was a Corporal of Cavalry which was apparent when the grave was opened as the re-enlistment stripes on the sleeve were visible for probably a minute before the color and material crumbled away from exposure to the air.
The identification of the officers was made from the shoulder straps and clothing. The list furnished me giving the names of these twenty two officers and men contained but one Lieutenant consequently I am thoroughly convinced that there can be no mistake as to these remains being those of Wm. J. Eckley as the Second Lieutenant Shoulder straps would indicate, and the other two officers being Captains.
As shown by the drawing the graves of the three officers were close together. No. 18 was the one burried in a metallic casket and over whose grave was the large wooden monument. From the position of the grave, date of death, and black trowsers without stripe found in this grave, I am inclined to believe that this was the grave of Capt. Lusby … From information received from several parties I am satisfied that the interments were made from right to left, and in my opinion it would be quite likely that the first officer to be burried should be in the center of the rows in the part of the cemetery used for military burials.
The identification of the remains removed was as certain as could be expected after the long lapse of time as signified by the remaining head boards which were all of the same pattern … and the finding of something of a military nature in nearly all of the graves. In nearly every grave with the exception of the three officers I found parts of the old government woolen sock. The boxes in which the remains were shipped were numbered to correspond with the numbers as shown on the drawing enclosed.

Dudrow’s statement that some headboards were still standing also suggests that the famous September, 1904 flood, even though it is supposed to have inundated the cemetery to a depth of four feet, did not do as much damage as might have been expected and therefore probably did not, as some writers have suggested, wash graves and bones away down the Pecos. So, given that they were all still there in 1906, the big question is, could Dudrow have accidentally exhumed any of the nearby civilian remains – and most especially the Kid’s – and mixed them up with the military ones? Some people think so. According to a newspaper article by one Kelly Rae Hearn in the Taos, NM El Crepusculo of June 2, 1955,

“a Catholic priest, Father Burke … was present at Fort Sumner when the bodies were taken from the burial ground there to be transferred to the Santa Fe National Cemetery. After completion of the operations, the grave formerly occupied by the body of the Kid was empty …”

22.

The mysterious Father Burke, if he ever existed at all, was never interviewed anywhere else, so the claim that he saw the Kid’s grave empty remains unsupported, and since elsewhere in the same article it is stated that 43 bodies from Fort Sumner were reburied in Santa Fe rather than the documented 22, we can hardly call it reliable. On the other hand, the War Department memorandum cited above is very specific: “There being no funds to cover the cost of disinterment of these [other 60 or 80 civilian] remains and there being no authority to re-inter them in a national cemetery … no steps have been taken by the Department looking to their removal.” 23. In other words, since Dudrow had no reason to move them and would not have been paid a red cent had he done so, it’s more than probable he did not, and that every non-military body that was buried there is still there.

Further support for the proposition that this is so exists in the form of a carefully and accurately scaled map that Dudrow drew up at the time of the exhumation, showing not only the locations of the graves from which the bodies of the soldiers had been taken, but also other graves in the cemetery, most notably those of two “outlaws, friends of Billy the Kid” and that of the Kid himself. In the northwest corner of the cemetery are shown the graves of five children, three ‘unknown,’ one the ‘child of Maj. Keyes’ and the fifth a ‘child of Bobien family,’ probably Felipe (the name often mistakenly given as Henry) Beaubien, believed to have been between ten and twelve years old, who was killed by one of the Henry Hawkins “Mesa Hawks” gang during the 1902 robbery of a Fort Sumner store owned by Philip Holdman and Charlie Foor. 24.

Others believed to have been buried in the cemetery but not shown on the Dudrow map – and therefore probably on the eastern side with those he simply identifies as “civilian dead” – include Francisco Gallego, killed by cowboy Tom Moran; George Peacock, killed by C.W. White in 1884; and John B. Legg, another forgotten character from the early days of New Mexico history, a saloon-keeper, gambler and hardcase who had served as a deputy U. S. Marshal, participated in the pursuit of the Black Jack Ketchum gang, and in August, 1894, killed a small time badman named William McElhany, a.k.a. “Portales Bill”. On March 22, 1899 he was himself killed by James Blanton in quarrel over a poker game at Fort Sumner. Also in there somewhere is Charles Wesley Foor (1850-1940), the man who most of all was responsible for identifying the location of the Kid’s grave and for ensuring that a marker was placed on the spot. 25.

Which brings us to the other big question: was the Kid’s grave where the present marker says it is? Charlie Foor said it was “three feet west of [the] path and thirty-one steps from the gate.” (Question: did he mean the original gate in the middle of the north wall, or the present day gate in the northeast corner?). 26. On the Dudrow map, the Kid’s grave is about 35 feet in from the gate and maybe 10-12 feet west of the central path. So did he misidentify it, too? In August, 1999, using the Dudrow map as a guide, Gregory Scott Smith, Monument Manager at the Fort Sumner State Monument, made some careful comparative measurements. He immediately discovered that today, the cemetery is some 187 feet across; which means the north wall (where the old entrance was) is some feet further north than it was in 1882; his conclusion was that “each time they’ve rebuilt the wall (or fence) they’ve moved it back from the existing wall or fence a little.” As a result, the total growth in north-south dimension has been around thirty feet, maybe half of that on the south side.

“It seems reasonable to assume,” Scott Smith wrote, “that the modern wall was built to replace the fence marked — – — on Dudrow’s diagram in order to include all of the graves [that had in the intervening years been buried between the barbed wire fence and the original wall].”

He then made some measurements from the cage which surrounds the Kid’s marker to other locations. 27.
At that point the cemetery is 166 feet wide (east/west). It’s a little less than 60 feet from the northwest corner of the cage to the west wall. The cage is 11 feet long and it’s a little more than 95 feet from the northeast corner of the cage to the east wall … Dudrow’s diagram indicates that the grave would be 45 feet from the 1906 fence line and I measured the current placement as 49 feet from the existing north wall. Dudrow’s diagram predicts a distance of 99 feet from the foot of Billy’s grave to the east wall, and I measure a little more than 95 feet. To summarize, I think the modern placement (based on information provided by Billy’s pallbearers in 1931) agrees almost exactly with the placement indicated by Dudrow’s diagram.

All of which, when taken together with the details at the “bivouac of the dead” recorded by the Optic reporter in 1882, strongly suggests the stone marking the location of the Kid’s grave is as near the right place, give or take a couple of feet, as anyone could decently have hoped for. And despite a century of legends of exhumation by skelologists, of his bones being hung in a doctor’s waiting room or washed down the Pecos or taken up with the military bodies and reburied in Santa Fe, the odds are the Kid is still in it. Which is more than enough for the sentimentalist in all of us: for just a few yards away from his grave is the stone which marks the last resting place of pretty little Paula Maxwell Jaramillo, the girl he loved enough to die for.

Under the wide and starry sky Dig the grave and let me lie, Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: ‘Here he lies where he longed to be Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill.’

—————————————————————————————————————————-
The author would like to thank Gregory Scott Smith, Monument Manager, Fort Sumner State Monument, for his invaluable assistance in the preparation of this article.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————
NOTES
1. Burroughs, Jean M. On The Trail: The Life and Tales of “Lead Steer” Potter. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1980. 105-107, 137-139.
2. True West, (8) 2. December, 1960. 6-9, 62-64. 3. “The Bivouac of the Dead” A Visit to an Old Burying Ground at Fort Sumner by a Special
Correspondent of The Optic. Las Vegas Optic. January 16, 1882. 4. The Fort Sumner Leader, April 11, 1930. 5. The Fort Sumner Leader, October 31, 1931. 6. Keleher, William A. Turmoil in New Mexico. Santa Fe: The Rydal Press, 1952. 502. 7. Record of Interments, Cemeterial Files, Fort Sumner 1863-68. Office of the Quartermaster General.
RG92, NARA. 8. General Correspondence and Reports Relating to National and Post Cemeteries, 1865-1890. Box
64: Steilacoom to Vicksburg. Office of the Quartermaster General. RG 92, NARA. 9. Ibid.
10. Burns, Walter Noble. The Saga of Billy the Kid. New York and Garden City: Doubleday Page & Co., 1926. 294.
11. Consolidated Correspondence, Fort Sumner File, Box 1093. Office of the Quartermaster General. RG92, NARA.
12. General Correspondence and Reports, op cit. 13. Keleher, op cit. 466-467. He says there were four companies of US Cavalry. 14. General Correspondence and Reports, op cit. 15. Survey of Fort Sumner Military Reservation by Robert B. Willison, 1872. Courtesy Gregory Scott
Smith, Fort Sumner State Monument, NM. 16. R. S. Oliver to Hon. Sec. of the Interior, October 31, 1907. US Dept. of the Interior. Courtesy
Gregory Scott Smith. 17. Haley, J. Evetts. “Interview with Frank Lloyd.” Tularosa, NM. August 18, 1927. Haley History
Center, Midland, Texas. 18. McAlavy, Don. “The Mysterious Death of John Farris.” The Outlaw Gazette (11) 1. November, 1998.
22-23; Siringo, Charles. Riata and Spurs. Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin Co. 1927. 119ff ; Santa Fe Daily New Mexican January 19, 1880; “Farris, John.” Biographical Files, Robert N. Mullin Collection, Haley History Center, Midland, Texas.
19. “Mason, Barney.” Biographical Files, Robert N. Mullin Collection op cit. 20. “Specifications for Disinterring and Removing Remains of Officers and Enlisted Men and Civilians
at Old Fort Sumner, New Mexico.” December 2, 1905. B. K. West, Lt. Col. Deputy Commissary
General, US Army. Denver, Colorado. Office of the Quartermaster General. RG 92, NARA. 21. C. F. Dudrow to Col. C. A. H. McCauley, AQM General, Denver April 20, 1906. Consolidated
Correspondence, Fort Sumner File. op cit.
22. Hearn, Kelly Rae. “Here Sleep the Dead Heroes.” El Crepusculo, Taos, NM. June 2, 1955. 4. 23. R. S. Oliver to Hon. Secretary of the Interior, October 31, 1907 op cit. 24. C. F. Dudrow to Col. C. A. H. McCauley op cit. 25. Research by Donald K. McAlavy, Clovis, NM.
26. Burns, Saga op cit. 297. 27. Gregory Scott Smith, personal communications August 5, 1999 and August 2, 2002.

Bob Martin: A Rustler in Paradise by Paul Cool copyright 2002

If he is remembered at all, it is as a footnote to the story of infamous badman Curly Bill Brocius. At this writing, his origins have not been revealed, nor his physical description, thoughts, manner of speech, and personality. Published old-timer recollections do not mention him, and at the height of his career he received little notice from newspapers. But in his heyday, the years 1879-1880, Robert Martin brought terror and near-ruin to northern Chihuahua. A two-year chain of letters at the highest levels of the U.S. and Mexican governments firmly establish his reputation as a successful and dangerous rustler chieftain.

Bob Martin’s early criminal career along the border appears to have been unremarkable, except in one respect. He associated with, learned his trade from, and perhaps served as “mentor” to a veritable “Who’s Who” of southwest outlaws, including Jesse Evans, John Kinney, Curly Bill Brocius, Dutch Joe Hubert, Jim McDaniels, Pony Deal, and, briefly, young Henry Antrim. He stole horses, robbed stagecoaches, shot it out with posses, and earned a generally bad reputation not much different than a hundred other border bad men. His participation in several crimes and as one of “the Boys” (the gang led by Evans) during 1876-77 has been mentioned in various secondary works, but these take little, if any, note of his later notoriety along the border.

Martin may have taken part in the El Paso Salt War. Ethnic tensions in that Texas county rose to a fever pitch when Charles Howard claimed the legal right to charge fees for salt extracted from dry lakes near the Guadalupe Mountains. When, in December 1877, a hastily formed Texas Ranger unit was besieged in the town of San Elizario by hundreds of Mexicanos from both sides of the Rio Grande, El Paso Sheriff Charles Kerber put the call out to New Mexico for help. About 30 so-called “Silver City Volunteers” responded to the plea, among them some of the worst gunmen in southern New Mexico. Although officially under the orders of Kerber, some took their cue from rustling kingpin John Kinney. For several weeks in late December 1877 and early January 1878, the “Kinney men” committed murder and mayhem against Mexicans, tejanos and anglos alike. Released from service on January 10, many “Volunteers” returned to New Mexico, but Kinney and some others remained in the area. According to a statement later made by local Texas Rangers commander Lieutenant James A. Tays, Martin was “part of the Kenny band who have been living in El Paso Mexico [modern Ciudad Juarez]….”

El Paso Fiasco

By May 1878, Bob Martin was riding with Curly Bill Bresnaham. Under the surname Brocius, Curly Bill would later receive considerable attention as “Arizona’s most famous outlaw.” Billy Breakenridge describes Brocius as a great travel companion.4

On 21 May 1878, Martin and Bresnaham attempted to rob a party of soldiers. The officer in charge was 2nd Lieutenant Benjamin I. Butler of the 8th Cavalry, son of Benjamin F. Butler, the Massachusetts politician and Civil War general.5 At about 4:00 p.m. on the 21st, Lt. Butler and two troopers of the 9th U.S. Cavalry, Charles Johnston and George Shakespear (no “e”), were en route from El Paso to Mesilla, when, according to the Mesilla Valley Independent (May 25, 1878), they were

“overtaken and passed near White’s Ranche, eight miles north of El Paso, by two mounted men, one of whom is said to be the notorious Bob Martin. About two miles further on, at a bend in the road, these same men, masked, sprang from the bushes near the road side and ordered the driver to halt, simultaneously with the demand they both opened fire on the men in the ambulance. The driver was struck in the shoulder the ball passing out near his spine inflicting a serious wound, the other soldier Johnson [sic] of Co. “G.” 9th cavalry was hit three times one ball penetrating his right lung, another entered his stomach and a third lodged in his right thigh, inflicting at least one mortal wound. As the wounded men fell back in the ambulance; Lieut. Butler grasped a carbine from the hands of one of them and sprang to the ground, whereupon the cowardly assassins fled through the brush and made their escape. Corporal Mathews with four men of the Texas Rangers came up shortly afterwards and followed the trail of the murderers to the River and discovered that they had crossed into Mexico. The wounded men were taken back to El Paso Texas where they now lie in critical condition. The object of the attack was undoubtedly robbery, it being supposed that Lieut. Butler had a considerable sum of money about his person. Lieutenant Butler reached this place about noon to-day (Wednesday.) The ambulance is riddled with bullets and stained with the blood of the wounded men.”

According to Lieutenant Tays, Butler and his men were met by Ranger First Sergeant Asberry C. Ryall a few minutes after the attack. Ryall detailed one man to help the wounded, while he and four rangers chased the bandits into Mexico, where authorities arrested them. Tays viewed the crime as fresh evidence that “The Lincoln Co. outlaws are coming down pretty plentifull [sic].”6

Within days, Mexican authorities turned the highwaymen over to the U.S. Army, whose officers paid a $75 reward out of their own pockets. Arrested with “Dutch Martin and Curly Bill” was a third man, Joe Haytema. He apparently was innocent of the crime, but as either Martin or Bresnaham had ridden his horse and carried his arms, he was swept up in the dragnet. It was just as well, as Buckskin Joe was wanted on a separate charge stemming from his attempt to kill Kinney in the latter’s own saloon.7

The arrest of Martin made news from Silver City to Santa Fe. In the Independent, Albert Fountain declared,

“There are several indictments against Martin in the U.S. and Territorial Courts of this county for stage robbing, larceny, & and should he escape the punishment he so richly merits in Texas we ask to have him sent up here where we will at least give him a through ticket to the Missouri penitentiary to join Dutch Joe, his old confederate in crime.”

8

Bob and Curly Bill sat in a makeshift jail in Ysleta all summer while they awaited trial. Indictments were handed down on September 2. The charge stated that Martin and Bresnaham did, on May 21st, assault with intent to kill troopers Johnston and Shakespear. The prisoners faced incarceration of two-to-seven years. The trial took place on the 11th. The details have not been found in surviving case files or newspapers, but the witnesses called included Johnston and Buckskin Joe. Lieutenant Butler was not called. That officer had taken a leave of absence on May 23rd, two days following the attack, and on June 1 resigned his commission. By September, the man who had foiled the robbery was far from Texas. The jury returned guilty verdicts on September 12, and District Judge Allen Blacker sentenced the prisoners to five years in the State Penitentiary at Huntsville.9

Defendants’ lawyers filed an immediate appeal on several grounds, including a verdict “too vague, uncertain and indefinite to support a Judgement or sentence.” They also claimed that a
material witness for the defendants had been prevented from attending the court by threats. According to the affidavit of Paul W. Keating, one Joseph Jerold had desired to attend the trial “but was afraid to do so because he had been three times notified by the Jeffe politica [chief government officer] and other Mexican authorities of El Paso Mexico that if he … did attend said trial as such that he would have to leave the country because he Jerold was only taking the part of the said defendants because they are Americans.” According to Keating, Jerold said he saw Martin at the time of the robbery attempt in El Paso, Mexico and conversed with him and that said Martin was at that time carrying horse feed on his horse.”10

T. A. Fahey, District Attorney pro tem for El Paso County, filed a motion to correct any defect in the legality of the verdict handed down. This still left the chance of reversal on the grounds of Jerold’s inability to testify. Unimpressed with their own arguments, the defendants escaped jail on November 2, 1878.

Officially, Martin and Bresnaham had been the prisoners of Sheriff Kerber. Unwilling to put them in the old county jail in San Elizario, and lacking a jail in Ysleta, the new county seat, Kerber had turned his prisoners over to Tays’ Rangers. The two bandits, as well as Buckskin Joe, a convicted rapist named Sam Kirkley, Hipoliter Talers, and several other prisoners, were kept in a one-room structure with one door and no windows. Families were allowed to visit their incarcerated relatives, and the lax security enabled someone to sneak the proverbial hacksaw inside the proverbial pie. In the darkened room, the prisoners were able to cut their shackles and dig their way out under the wall.

The prisoners may have been helped by a Texas Ranger. Tays’ unit, the Detachment of Company “C,” was plagued by such “inside men” during this period. The likeliest possibility is Sam Northcutt, who deserted the unit just a few days after the prisoners’ escape. Northcutt turned—or returned—to rustling, and was killed by the Rangers in January 1879.11

Martin and the others were gone only ten minutes before their absence was noticed, but the tracks led directly to the safety of Mexico. Authorities there promised Tays they would attempt to apprehend the escapees, but nothing came of it. Again Bob Martin escaped justice.12 Within days, he returned to his life of crime. Within a few months, he came to the attention of Mexican and American diplomats. Within two years, he was the subject of urgent correspondence throughout the United States Government.

“Martin… keeps the inhabitants in the greatest state of alarm”

Martin escaped from custody on November 2. Before the month was out he reportedly stole 68 head of cattle in northern Chihuahua. The rustler was later identified as “John Martin.” The description of him as “a noted robber on the Texas and New Mexico frontier, who escaped two or three months ago from the prison in Franklin” makes it clear that Bob was the culprit. Martin was said to be living in Silver City and a known associate of a D.K. Wardwell, whose Azcarati Ranche presumably was first way station for the beeves.13

That Martin had quickly organized a gang that ranged far and wide is apparent from this anxious letter from E. F. Walz, the Warm Springs Indian Contractor, to Colonel Hatch’s District of New Mexico headquarters in Santa Fe:

“I have a heard [sic] of Cattle on the road from Sullivan’s Ranch in the State of Chihuahua en route to the San Carlos Agency to be delivered to the Indians. The herd consists of 800 to 400 beef steers. I am just informed that there are some hostile Indians on the route which goes by the Hatchet Mountains and San Simon Also I am informed that quite a band of thieves under Bob Martin the man who shot Lt. Butler have threatened and are preparing to stampede my herd. I request that an escort or scout be sent to meet said herd at the Hatchet Mountains and escort them to the point of crossing the Arizona line. The herd is under the charge of John H. Riley.”

14

Initially, Bob Martin was one of several Americans accused by the Mexicans of rustling their livestock and bringing it north of the border, but his name quickly became the most prominent in their dispatches. From Chihuahua came a report that on February 9, 1879,

“an expedition of fourteen men left Janos (a major town in the northwest of that state) on account of the authorities having received information of a drove of stolen cattle passing in the vicinity, that in fact eighteen beeves were found hidden in the mountains without any herder, from which, on account of brands and other signs it was known that they had been left there by some Americans engaged in taking cattle from the ranche of Azcarate to be incorporated and crossed at the first opportunity to the United States, that the presence of Martin in that section and the frequency with which robberies have been committed in New Mexico and Texas near the dividing line keeps the inhabitants in the greatest alarm….”

15

In response to the first complaints forwarded by Mexican Foreign Minister Ruelas, the United States Government agreed to investigate the matter. There it ended.16
Martin’s activities were wide-ranging. The Las Cruces newspaper Thirty-Four reported on September 3, 1879, “Bob Martin, the highwayman, is again lurking around between here and Silver City.” Lt. George Baylor, the new Texas Ranger commander in El Paso, reported in late 1880 that,

“The man Martin… has been living in Mexico ever since [his escape], moving from one town to another in the northern part of Chihuahua, in Concepcion, Janos, & thereabouts, and I think with a mixed band of white men + Mexicans has been attacking cattle & horses in Corralitos, Casas Inandas, & that section and running them into Arizona + New Mexico.”

17

The greatest devastation was visited upon the town of Janos and the colony of Ascension in northern Chihuahua. In May 1879, the Administration of Frontier Justice at Janos reported the presence of bandits under the leadership of “a fugitive from the Franklin jail, where he was registered under the name of Bob Robert Martin.” In August 1880, Juan M. Navarro, the Mexican Chargé d’Affaires in New York passed along to the U.S. Secretary of State the Governor of Chihuahua’s report of June 9, 1880, that Martin,

“a bandit by profession who for some time past has been marauding on both frontiers, has succeeded in forming a gang of Texans and Mexicans who at present have taken refuge in the Sierra del Hache in American territory from whence they separate to commit their depredations, stealing large numbers of cattle, which pass on that side of the frontier.”

18

Martin hit Ascension twice within a few days. In reporting this fact, the Municipal President of Ascension advised the Governor of Chihuahua that Martin’s deeds were “attested by a person who had set out from San Simon and who knows the brands and saw the animals in the possession of the American Robert Martin.”19

In reporting Martin’s crimes to Secretary of State Evans, Navarro added,

“I do not think it essential to include in this letter further information concerning the existence of the gang of thieves under Robert Martin since they have public notoriety on both frontiers and this information will suffice, according to my judgment, to make the Department see the necessity of bringing before the Authorities of that part of the frontier the persecution of a gang of outlaws who have caused so much trouble, succeeding up to this time in eluding the vigilance of the authorities of both Republics.”

20

Even as Navarro drafted his August communiqué to Evarts, rustler attacks on Janos and Ascension threatened the very existence of those communities. On July 30, 1880, the Municipal President of Janos learned that cattle and horses were being stolen from Aqua Fria, about six miles distant, and that the thieves were driving the animals in the direction north. Fourteen volunteers were immediately dispatched, with sixteen more following “for the purpose of protecting those who had started first.”21

The first party overtook the rustlers at San Luis, to the south of the Sarampion mountains. Some of the bandits galloped ahead with eighteen stolen horses while others remained to defend their interest in 85 head of rustled cattle. The bandits

“made a stubborn resistance, opening fire upon their pursuers, so that the latter were obliged to assume a defensive attitude; a fight ensued, in which one horse was wounded in the foreleg; it being impossible to remove this animal, he was left in the field. It was observed that one of the thieves was severely wounded, and eighty- five head of cattle were abandoned [by the rustlers], together with a mule, a saddle and bridle, and some other articles of small value which had been abandoned by the wounded man above mentioned.”

Despite the measure of success, the Janos Municipal President begged his superiors to send a military force for their protection. “[F]or if this is not done the situation of our people is an utterly defenseless one.”22
Thwarted in their attempt to safely carry off the stolen beeves, Martin’s band was soon at it again. In early August, an American agent of Senor Ramon R. Lujan, owner of the “estate Corralitos” (located some 25 miles south of Janos), arrived at Janos with fifteen men in pursuit of American thieves believed to be a short distance away.

“Several persons volunteered to accompany him, and joined his party; after having been out two days, they came upon two or three Americans who were well fortified in a sort of stockade which they had built; these at once opened fire upon the pursuing party, who returned it, the result being a lively fight, in which Sabas Talamante and a Negro, who accompanied the man from Corralitos, were wounded; two horses were also wounded and one remained stuck in a mudhole. The American in charge of the party then resolved to return, finding that he would be obliged to expose the lives of some of the men who were with him if he persisted in capturing the outlaws….”

23

On this same rustling foray, the bandits ran into resistance from the colonists of Ascension. “It appears that several citizens of that town, who were in pursuit of thieves from the United States who had been stealing horses, overtook them, when a fight ensued, in the course of which several men and horses were wounded.” According to Luis Terrazas, the Governor of Chihuahua, who forwarded these reports, “the party referred to belongs to the band under the leadership of the notorious criminal Robert E. Martin.”24

While rustling Mexican livestock was certainly proving hard work with uncertain success, the reports indicate that the settlers were nearing the breaking point in the summer of 1880. On August 30th, the distressed colonists of Ascension authorized lawyer Juan M. Zuloaga to petition Governor Terrazas for help. It was impossible, wrote Zuloaga,

“to remain indifferent to the to the scandalous deeds which are constantly perpetuated by Texan outlaws, who, with entire impunity, and in considerable numbers, commit unheard of and premeditated outrages not only against the colony, but also the neighboring villages, to such an extent that, if the unblushing boldness of these bad men is not speedily checked, …the consequence will unquestionably be the absolute demoralization of these unhappy districts, or, what is still more probable, the total ruin of all inhabitants; for they have already lost all their horses, and the greater part of their meat cattle, and it may very easily happen that, being discouraged by their terrible situation, they may be forced to abandon their homes.”

25

Zuloaga then broke the heartbreaking news that Martin had been in Mexican custody, but had again escaped justice. “If the outlaw Martin, who is the leader of these Texans, had not been unjustly acquitted, we should now be at peace; though Martin was arrested by order of the Government, he was protected by the District Judge, and we, whose blood is now being shed, are today suffering the fatal consequences of that protection.”26

Rustlers’ Paradise

In moving his base of operations to the remote area marked by New Mexico’s Hatchet Mountains to the east and the Chiricahua Mountains to the west, Martin had found the perfect setup for rustling. Several factors are fundamental to the success of any livestock rustling operation. All were present in the area where New Mexico and Arizona Territories and the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora came together.
The first factor is the availability of a valuable livestock in numbers sufficient to be worth the hardship and risk in stealing. The Mexican States of Chihuahua and Sonora were notable for their river valleys, excellent soil, and abundant, unfenced cattle, ripe for stealing.27 The second is a ready market for the stolen stock. The U.S. Army, Indian reservations, and growing miner populations in the southern tier of the American territories provided this.

Weak law enforcement was the third key to Martin’s success. In this regard, he had found a bandits’ paradise. Both the Mexican army and state militia were weak along the border during the years Martin operated here.28 Towns and large ranches could organize pursuit posses but could not halt the hemorrhage of livestock. The boundary itself was not just a complication to effective law enforcement. A half century of mistrust prevented any effective cooperation between the two nations, making that invisible line a barrier to pursuit. Mexican authorities could do little more than plead with their U.S. counterparts to take action.

North of the border, the rustlers were virtually home free. Unlike Texas, New Mexico and Arizona territories fielded no ranger companies to bring large gangs to justice. Even when stock was stolen from the U.S. Army or an Indian Reservation, neither the U.S. Marshal for Arizona nor New Mexico had the resources to cope with rustling on the scale taking place along the Mexican border. In fact, all U.S. Marshals operated without any authorized funding throughout 1879 and into 1880 due to Congress’ failure to appropriate.29 Sheriff Charles Shibell of Pima County could assign a deputy sheriff to Galeyville, but lacked sufficient funds to put posses forever in the field. The same was true in Grant County, New Mexico, where Sheriff Harvey Whitehill could do little more than put a man in Shakespeare.

The U.S. Army was the one force powerful enough to deal with border rustling. It was barred from going after criminals by the restrictions of the Posse Comitatus Law, passed in 1878 in reaction to the army’s Reconstruction-era activities in the South.30 In September 1879, Colonel Edward Hatch, commander of the U.S. Army’s District of New Mexico, reported to General John Pope in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas:

“Referring to the Robbers who infest the frontiers, there are undoubtedly a great many of the worst characters. The military are powerless however to do anything with them when on U.S. Territory they are under the jurisdiction of the local laws of the states and Territories.”

31

Hatch’s comments were echoed by a junior officer commanding at Camp Rucker, located in the Chiricahua Mountains, just west of the New Mexico line. In August, 1880, Captain MacGowan reported, “[T]here is a band of horse thieves (40-50 strong) who make that pass their route with stolen stock….” He expressed confidence “that much of raiding that is charged to Indians is committed by this band; Custom House officer and Sheriff should be stationed there, as under existing laws the Mil. can do nothing.” MacGowan’s report was passed along by Brigadier General Willcox, Commanding General of the Department of Arizona, to the
Territory’s Acting Governor, John J. Gosper, who forwarded it on to U.S. Marshal Crawley Dake for filing.32

The fourth requirement was topography conducive to ongoing, large-scale criminal operations. The San Simon and Animas valleys, north-south highways marked by sufficient grass and water, were perfect getaway routes. The mountains flanking these valleys were honeycombed with canyons needed to hide stolen Mexican stock en route to new owners north of the international line. (The path also worked for rustled herds headed south.)

Geography served Martin’s purposes in other ways. This particular area of the border was remote from large towns like Silver City and Tucson with their civilized trappings, such as peace officers and newspapers. The nearest towns, Shakespeare, New Mexico and Galeyville, Arizona, served as rustler hangouts, and were small enough to welcome the rustlers’ cash, whatever the inconvenience of rowdy behavior and gunplay. Neither town was big enough to produce the rustlers’ natural adversary, a local newspaper with a crusading editor bent on cleaning up endemic crime. While the Grant County Herald and various Tucson papers reported what they could, the rustlers’ operations by and large remained below the radar. Not until John Clum started up his Epitaph in Tombstone did the San Simon and Animas Valley Cowboys receive the attention that Albert J. Fountain accorded the “the Boys” of Dona Ana and Lincoln counties in the Mesilla Valley Independent back in 1877.

All these factors, but especially the weakness of governmental authority in northern Mexico and the southwest United States, made it easy to construct a network of crime, corruption and dubious naïveté ranging from a stolen herd’s point of origin to its final destination. In addition to the “protection” of the occasional Mexican jurist, rustlers such as Martin could count on “foreigners and Mexicans in said villages, but principally in Ascension, who assist them in committing their robberies and in concealing the stolen animals.” From the valley of the Rio San Pedro or the Rio Casas Grande, thieves could drive their stolen property east and then north toward the border, located just 50 miles from Janos. Along the way, they took advantage of natural defensive terrain, as well as way stations like Wardwell’s Azcarati Ranche. Across the border, middlemen like “honest rancher” and rustler’s banker George Turner in the San Simon Valley found ranchers looking to build herds or contractors buying for the U.S. Government. One such beef contractor was Benjamin Shuster. Found to be in possession of 16 head of cattle stolen from Chihuahuan rancher Ramon Lujan, Shuster claimed that he bought the cattle from a San Simon rancher named Thompson, “without knowing that they were stolen.” Almost in the next breath, Shuster told Pima County Deputy Sheriff Howard C. Walker that Thompson was a cattle thief who sold the stolen beef “at exceedingly low prices” to contractors like himself from San Carlos to Silver City. With contractors allowing themselves to be “duped” by men they knew to be cattle thieves, it is no wonder that rustlers like Martin were able to stay in business.33

“I again invite your attention”

This then, was an enterprise seemingly everyone in the region knew about and no one did anything about. It did not hurt Martin that his base of operations was far from the concerns of politicians in Washington, Santa Fe, Prescott and Austin. Not only were outlaw gangs on the border relatively free from interference, but the area of Martin’s hideout was apparently not on anyone’s map. By concentrating his crimes in Mexico and basing his operations in the New Mexico boot heel, Martin was able, during the years 1879-80, to operate out of the U.S. Government’s sight.

The remoteness of Martin’s holdout in southwest New Mexico was illustrated by some unusual correspondence to and from Governor Oran Milo Roberts of Texas. On September 11, 1880, Secretary of State Evarts forwarded to Roberts the Mexican government’s complaint “that certain bandits headed by one Robert Martin have a haunt in the Sierra del Hacha, in American territory whence they enter Mexico and steal cattle there.” Evans reminded Roberts that, “The citizens of Texas have suffered so much from similar raids from Mexico [that Evans presumed] the authorities of that State will not tolerate or overlook similar raids from Texas on Mexico.” Evans then asked Roberts to use his authority to disperse Martin’s band or thwart his activities.34

Failing to get an answer, Evarts wrote to Roberts again on November 3, begging the governor to “exercise… the good offices of the State of Texas in suppressing these outlaws and bringing them to condign punishment, so far as they may be reached within its jurisdiction.” The secretary suggested that the bandits “could easily be broken up by the civil authorities.”35

With the receipt of this note, Governor Roberts sprang into action. He dispatched a letter through channels to Lt. Baylor in El Paso asking about Martin and his haunts in the “Sierra La Hacha.” In his reply dated November 20, Baylor advised Ranger commander Major John B. Jones, “There are no mountains named La Hacha in Texas between here + Presidio del Norte [southeast of El Paso] that I know of, except the Sierra del Capara is sometimes so called 25 or 30 miles south east of San Lucero in Mexico. But I was there with Gen’l Farasas in September last and there was no sign of any band of men being there. I am satisfied that this band of men are the same who stole cattle from Corralitas & were followed by men sent out by Major Geo. B. Zimpelman & 4 or 5 of them killed. I have written to the Sheriff of Pima Co. at Tucson Arizona about the matter and may hear something from him….”36 In short, Baylor did not know where the Hatchet Mountains were.

“The worst characters in the country”

Martin’s crimes did not go completely unnoticed on the American side. On December 2, 1880, the Silver City Mining Chronicle reported,

“There is a rendezvous of the worst characters in the country in the vicinity of the San Simon Valley. Murder, highway robbery and cattle stealing seems to be their profession, and it is about time they were hunted down and caged.”

The item added, for reasons explained later, that Bob Martin was ‘generally regarded as a bad character.”
While the following item from the Arizona Gazette of February 18, 1881 does not mention Martin by name, it accurately depicts the border crime wave and the climate of frustration and fear that he and his band fostered:

Cattle Thieves Scourging the Ranchers Across the Line Tucson, February 15.—Reliable information has been received from the San Pedro River
below the Sonora line that the San Simon cowboys are depredating fearfully upon the Mexican stock-raisers in Sonora. J[uan] M. Elias, whose lands extend some eighty miles along the line, is the greatest sufferer. The people are in arms. About 200 of these cattle thieves, mostly from Texas, are scattered along the border in bands from ten to twenty, and all cooperate. The Mexicans are arming themselves and say if the United States authorities will not interest themselves in punishing these invaders, they will not allow an American to cross the line along the locality of these ranches, as they are unable to distinguish between good and bad Americans. They claim the depredation of the Apaches were not half so destructive as the work of the cow boys. A prominent Mexican rancher arrived in this city to-day with a view of purchasing twenty
stands of arms to defend his property. He stated that if something was not done by the American Government to prevent these American marauders from invading their homes that serious complications must very soon arise. It appears that these cattle thieves are largely made up of the same bands who gave so much trouble on the Rio Grande [i.e., El Paso County, Texas and Dona Ana County, New Mexico] for years past. The cattle men of south-eastern Arizona are also loosing [sic] much stock from the same source….”

The terror instilled by the bandits’ activities were not soon forgotten, as this 1886 Silver City newspaper account makes clear:

“Along in ’79 and ’80 the rustler element had things pretty much their own way in the southwest. They were so numerous and had confederates in such high station that the honest cowman appeared powerless, for a time at least, to protect his own property. Men who were not molested by them were afraid to assist their neighbor, who had been robbed, lest they should be the next recipients of the rustler’s visit. The rustlers even went so far as to threaten assassination to those who opposed them or dared even to attempt to protect their own property.”

37

As 1880 drew to an end, Martin could look back on nearly two years of unfettered criminal activity. The evidence does not tell us how many crimes he committed, how many men he led, or in what manner he “led” them. But he was recognized as the leader of an outlaw band considered large by his contemporaries. How large? As with Jessie Evans’ “Boys,” the number probably varied. Don Elias’ estimate that border bandits operated in groups of 10-20 men may be conservative in Martin’s case. He certainly led enough men to be considered by Mexicans the greatest single American threat to law and order along their northwest border. Did he fall into this role because of recognized organizational skills? Was he the fastest with a gun or the edgiest sociopath? Was he simply there first to stake his claim? We only know that he was “generally regarded as a bad character,” bad enough to lead a feared band of criminals for two years.38

Who were the men who followed the outlaw Bob Martin or cooperated in his enterprise? One can only speculate, but candidates include Brocius, Pony Deal, and Sherman McMaster. All dropped out of sight during 1879, and the Hatchet Mountains were a good place to hide.39 We know much more about some of Martin’s associates than we do about Martin himself.

“and if the lurking place of said Martin be found”

Not until September 11, 1880, more than 18 months after the Mexican Government first complained of Martin, did the United States Government finally sit up and take notice. In response to the August 1880 communication from Juan Navarro, the Mexican charge d’affaires, Secretary of State Evarts wrote to Secretary of War Alexander Ramsay and Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz, (as well as Texas Governor Roberts) about the nature and severity of the problem.

Secretary Ramsay was asked “for such action… as the War Department can properly take.”40 Ramsay wrote through generals William Tecumsah Sherman, Philip Sheridan, and John Pope to Colonel Hatch, Commander of the District of New Mexico. Hatch reported only that

“bands of thieves infest the entire South West and plunder citizens in both countries. In all probability they would select the Hatchet Mountains, sometimes occupied in smuggling, at others in stealing. When not so occupied, they usually can be found in the lower towns on the Rio Grande and about Silver City.”

41

Hatch’s reply fell far short of the military action Mexico needed. Meanwhile, on November 24, the governor of Chihuahua telegraphed Mexico City, advising that the bandits

“led by the outlaw Robert E. Martin continues to commit robberies at Janos and Ascension, … and it is to be feared that, being exasperated at the loss of their property, [the settlers] may themselves undertake to pursue and punish the outlaws, in doing which they may be obliged to cross the boundary line, which may give rise to a conflict.”

With an international incident brewing, Mexico City instructed its Chargé d’Affaires in New York to plead with Secretary of State Evarts for “combined action for the capture of this band of thieves, who… have become the terror of those districts…. I do not doubt that the combined action of the forces of the two countries will put an end to the evils in question.”42

At this time, with Mexican temperatures near the boiling point, their complaints about Martin finally reached the desk of Arizona Territorial Governor John C. Fremont in Prescott. On January 4th, Fremont received a package from Secretary Schurz, requesting Fremont to “make inquiry in regard to this matter, and if the lurking place of said Martin be found within the Territory of Arizona, that you will adopt such measures as may be within your power looking to the breaking up of his band and the preservation and maintenance of peace along the frontier between the two countries.”43

Martin’s name and criminal activity were news to the Governor. He replied to that effect on January 16: “I have not yet obtained any information of sufficient importance to communicate to the Department, or to enable me to take any action….”44

Ten days later, Fremont could offer more:

“So far as I have been able to learn that number of men in the band known as Robert Martin’s is about one hundred and twenty. The operations of this band are carried out in Sonora and Chihuahua, and also within our own territories. If the Posse Comitatus Act is repealed we could we then obtain from General Willcox, commanding the Department, to break up or capture the band forthwith. I am informed that the object of Governor Wallace’s” visit to Washington is to endeavor to affect the repeal of this Act and further peace of the Territory. I trust he may be successful. The immediate affect would be to terminate all such raids and tranquilize the frontier.”

45

The source of Fremont’s figure of

“about one hundred and twenty” men in “the band known as Robert Martin’s” is unknown, but this number was in the mid-range of estimates of stock thieves infesting the region made by persons in a position to make informed guesses. Did Martin “command” 120 men? Certainly not, but he appears to have been considered first among them.

“Murder in the San Simon Valley”

So the Governor of Arizona was finally on board concerning the existence and extent of Bob Martin’s criminal activity along the territorial and international borders. By this time, however, Martin was no longer in business. The first word came in this report from W. J. Crosby, carried by the Arizona Daily Star on November 27, 1880:

“Horse and Cattle Thieves” SHAKESPEARE, N.M. NOV. 25, 1880
EDITOR STAR: - During the past month a number of horses and mules have been stolen at intervals from various sections of this country, the latest being eight head from Leiterdorf, and several head from San Simon, in Pima County; fourteen head were also stolen from the Stage Company at Mason’s ranch last week. A posse of Messrs. Turner, Marten [sic], Colt, Raymond, and a Mexican named Dominguez, started in pursuit on Monday last following the trail to near Dowing’s ranch, and after a hard fight, lasting from daylight yesterday until three o’clock in the afternoon, they succeeded in killing one of the thieves whose name is given as King, and seriously wounding another named Bill Smith. King was a cripple and leader of the gang, which were four in number. The posse captured 22 head of stock and returned with these. They will be well rewarded for the courageous action. They propose capturing the two remaining desperadoes and some 14 head of stock known to have been stolen by the same gang.
This may be a useful lesson to horse and cattle thieves throughout this section. Ropes and trees are very convenient in the neighborhood.”

Two days later, the Daily Star reported a new turn of events: Martin was dead, “Shot by Stock Thieves,” as the headline put it. According to a telegraph to the Star from Shakespeare dated November 24, Turner, Martin and their companions had indeed recovered 22 head of stock, but had not succeeded in killing any of the rustlers in the battle at Downing’s ranch, Animas mountains. Then, said the Star,

“Turner and Martin, when returning to San Simon from Shakespeare on Friday evening last, were ambushed at Granite Gap by King and his gang. Martin was killed instantly, being shot in the head. Three head of stock were shot down and killed in the affray. Turner escaped. A regular vendetta has been commenced in the San Simon valley and the end is not yet.”

Additional details regarding Martin’s death were provided on December 7 by the rival Tucson paper, the Arizona Daily Citizen, in an item entitled

“Outlawry”:
Cattle Stealing and Murder in the San Simon Valley – The Ranchers Organizing for Self-Protection” For some time past the settlers and ranchmen in the San Simon Valley in the southeastern
portion of the Territory, have been subjected to a regular course of theft, which resulted a short time ago in the murder of a man named Martin. On the night of the 22nd of November seven head of horses and mules, belonging to Turner and Lindeman, were run off by a gang of four outlaws, whose headquarters were in a portion of the valley where, with a good field glass, they were enabled to survey an extensive section of the country. A party of six settlers immediately armed themselves and started in pursuit of the thieves, and after following them into Cloverdale District, about 60 miles distant in New Mexico, succeeded in recapturing the stock, together with eight head that had previously been stolen from parties near Shakespeare. The stock was brought back to the ranch of Turner & Lindeman, which is on the road from the San Simon Station to the new California Mining District. Mr. Turner and a man named Bob Martin then left for Shakespeare with four of the stolen stock belonging to Mr. Fitzgerald of that place.
At the time of the recovery of the stock from the thieves a number of shots were exchanged, but so far as known, no one was wounded. The outlaws evidently dogged the party back to the ranch, and from their eyrie (?) in the hills observed the return of the stock. As Messrs. Turner and Martin returned from Shakespeare, they were ambushed in Stein Peak Pass by the outlaws, who were concealed in the rocks. At the first fire the horses of the two men were killed under them, and at the second round Martin was killed by a bullet through the head. Mr. Turner then fled from the road and concealed himself, and observing the horses of the outlaws at some little distance where they had been picketed, he commenced firing at them, hoping to dismount his assailants and thus stand a better chance of escaping from what he conceived to be his last ditch. He succeeded in killing one of the horses, when the fight got too hot for him and he again made off. The broken formation of the country aided his escape, and waiting till night, under cover of the friendly darkness he succeeded in reaching home, some ten miles distant. It was a close call, as there were several bullet holes through his clothes.
In the morning an armed party of settlers visited the pass with a wagon and brought Martin’s body to the ranch and buried it. Later the outlaws again visited the ranch above for the purpose of stealing stock, but were driven away. The settlers then organized a party, and succeeded in finding a retreat of the gang in the hills, but the occupants were away. The ranchers are now organizing to better protect themselves, and we may expect to hear of some neck-tie parties soon in the valley, if the discretion of the outlaws does not get the better of their valor.”

The bandits who trailed Turner and Martin to Stein Pass were identified by the Grant County Herald and Southwest as “Stiles, Leonard and King; [with] the fourth being a stranger.” Leonard and King may have been Billy Leonard and Luther King, two of the four cowboys who attempted to rob the Benson stage in March 1881, setting in motion events that led to the street fight in Tombstone near the O.K. Corral.

End of a “Bad Character”

One fact stands out from these Arizona reports. Death came to “a man named Martin,” and not to Martin “the highwayman,” “the thief Martin” or to “Martin, a bandit by profession.” There is no indication that he had been “lurking” about or “infesting” the region, and he is certainly not identified as the leader of a large band of stock thieves. This Bob Martin is clearly identified as allied with the ranchers in opposition to the outlaws. He is one of the good guys. Is this the same Bob Martin who preyed on Mexican ranches from Chihuahua to Sonora? Undoubtedly.

Evidence is found in a little-known New Mexico newspaper, the “Silver City Mining Chronicle”. On December 2, 1880, this paper reported that,

“The following telegram addressed to Sheriff Whitehill will give an insight into the condition of affairs in [the San Simon Valley].
Nov. 29, 80. Sheriff Whitehill: Myself and Bob Martin were waylaid on Friday by four horse thieves, and Martin killed. If possible send out four men to protect life and property. I will give $1,000 for the apprehension of these murderers. Geo. Turner

This little affair occurred somewhere between Shakespeare and San Simon. Bob Martin is well known in Southern New Mexico, and was generally regarded as a bad character. Deputy Sheriff [Dan] Tucker is now at the San Simon looking after these pests, and when the facts are collected we shall give the whole affair an airing.”

The reference to the deceased Bob Martin as a “bad character” is persuasive, but hardly conclusive. Additional circumstantial evidence points to the death of the outlaw Bob Martin in Stein Peak Pass. First, while cabinet level correspondence regarding Martin the outlaw continued for several months after the death of this “bad character.”—as late as April 1881, in fact—these letters were a continuation of the same thread that began with the Mexican complaints filed in the summer of 1880.46 I have been unable to locate any complaints of Martin operating inside Mexico after the date of his apparent death, and no reports north of the border. The outlaw leader who caused great tension along the international border simply disappears as an issue between the two governments. Although Mexican complaints regarding American bandits reached a peak in 1881, Martin himself was no longer mentioned.

Second, Martin’s companion in the fight at Stein Pass was George Turner, who was himself later killed while in the act of stealing Mexican cattle. Turner was one of those border rustlers who gained a veneer of respectability as a “rancher.” He made a living legally transferring cattle of dubious origin from south of the border to buyers north of the line happy enough with the cheap prices to ask few embarrassing questions, including the U.S. Army. It was Turner, says Breakenridge, who introduced the deputy sheriff to Martin’s old partner, Curly Bill Brocius. Breakenridge calls Turner the rustlers’ banker. While the exact nature of this relationship between Martin and Turner is unknown, it is apparent from their connection and from Martin’s continuing reputation “as a bad character” that Bob had not changed his line of work.47

The third piece of evidence pointing to the bandit Martin’s death is found in contemporary newspaper reports that clearly imply that the running battle was a squabble between men cut from the same cloth. The Arizona Daily Star reported on December 1 that “The combatants are largely composed of men who left Lincoln county some 12 or 14 months ago under warm pressure.” The Arizona Daily Citizen advised its readers on December 4 that the “dispute… over the ownership of some cattle” was a “war” among about “twenty of the Texas cowboys….”

One document points away from Martin’s violent death in November 1880. On December 19, Texas Ranger George Baylor reported to his superiors, “Bob Martin is the guest of a citizen of El Paso. I sent a man to aid Campbell round up the house but they did not get him. I am going with the American consul tomorrow and try and get him.” There is no further mention of Martin nor of any effort to round up the outlaw in Baylor’s correspondence with Austin.48 Baylor wrote his letter when the government’s interest in Martin was at its height. The lack of further correspondence seems to indicate that the sighting was an error.
The evidence strongly suggests that the outlaw Martin did die, and that his demise was the result of one set of rustlers stealing from another perhaps more “respectable” set. Internecine warfare over territory or spoils was a fact of life among the Cow-boys, as it is within any criminal population. Given the lack of honor among thieves, there was nothing unusual about Martin’s death at hands of Leonard, King and company.49

“At the mercy of cow-boys”

With the elimination of Martin, Curly Bill replaced his old jail-mate as the “most famous bad man” around. After Martin’s death, the Cowboys became more than bold in their crimes. They became arrogant. Traveling in packs, they committed murder in broad daylight, unafraid of witnesses.50 After Martin’s death, the level of conflict between the Cowboys and their adversaries escalated into bloody warfare. A series of skirmishes between rustlers and Mexican ranchers and smugglers in the summer of 1881 led the Mexican government to beef up its military presence along the border. Turner’s death was followed by that of Old Man Clanton and five other Americans ambushed and killed in Skeleton Canyon by a party thought to be Mexican soldiers. Their easy pickings denied, their paradise lost, the Cowboys turned their crimes north, bringing unwanted attention to themselves. Robbing from American ranchers and from Wells, Fargo & Co. put them in a spotlight that Martin had avoided, led them to clash with America’s most legendary lawman, and ultimately drew the attention of the President and the national press. All that was in the future.51

At the time of his death, Robert Martin had achieved the status of the most wanted American bandit in northern Mexico, a veritable bogeyman. The inevitable conclusion is that he was, by 1880, the most successful outlaw and the most successful leader of outlaws along this section of the border. No single rustler, not Old Man Clanton, not Brocius, not Ringo, completely inherited his mantle, as far as Mexican reports are concerned. Martin was not the whole problem in 1879- 80, but he was at the core of it.

His contemporaries understood what some writers have denied: the hydra-headed gang known as the Cowboys were organized crime. The colonists of Ascension and Sonoran rancher Don Jose Elias, both losing stock at an alarming rate to bands who worked in concert with one another, understood it well. So did the Earps, who, with their oaths and their lives on the line, swore to its existence and reach. And so did the Arizona Daily Citizen, which described the environment that Martin had done so much to create and foster:

THE COW-BOYS Depredations Committed by Organized Thieves Bad State of Affairs on the Border
[The] facts show a deplorable state of affairs near the border, where the ranchers are completely at the mercy of marauding parties of cow-boys, destitute of any protection from either the United States or Mexican Government. They are liable to lose all their stock at any time, and, in fact, they consider their present condition as far less safe than in former days, when Indians controlled that part of the country.
If this condition of matters continues long, many settlers will be compelled to abandon their homes and seek safety for their lives in the larger settlements.
Some steps ought certainly to be taken to rid the country of such elements of terror, else citizens may be forced to combine and offer a bounty for cowboy scalps as the people of New Mexico do for those of Indians.”

52

Acknowledgements: Museum Director Susan Berry of the Silver City Museum and Tom Bryant, identified key newspaper items on Martin. Mark Boardman, Peter Brand, Gary L. Roberts and Casey Tefertiller gave useful suggestions and support. My thanks to them all.
Paul Cool writes on the subject of southwest lawmen and outlaws. This is his third article for WOLA.
1 The earliest references to the U.S. Government’s interest in Bob Martin are in Robert D. Gregg, The Influence of Border Troubles on Relations Between the United States and Mexico 1876-1910 , Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Series LV, Number 3 (Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1937); Larry D. Ball, The United States Marshals of New Mexico & Arizona Territories 1846-1912 (University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1978; 2nd printing 1992), pp. 115-16.
2 In 1876 and 1877, Martin was a partner in highway robbery with “Dutch” Joe Hubert. Available accounts mention Martin’s participation in a stagecoach holdup at Cooke’s Canon, New Mexico Territory in May 1877, but court records also show that he was charged along with Hubert for a stickup at the same spot in January 1876. See Record Book A and Criminal Dockets, Cases 357, 359, 362 and 363, for Third Judicial District, New Mexico Territory, Record Group 21, National Archives and Records Service, Region 8, Denver, Colorado. Hubert’s trial and conviction were covered in the Mesilla Valley Independent on June 30, 1877. The story was picked up in the Silver City Herald on July 7, 1877. For a lengthy treatment of Hubert’s crimes and trial, see Howard Bryan, Robbers, Rogues and Ruffians (Clear Light Publishers, Santa Fe, 1991), pp. 41-53. For discussions of “the Boys,” see Grady E. McCright and James H. Powell, Jessie Evans: Lincoln County Badman (Creative Publishing Co., College Station, Texas, 1983) and Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Univ. of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1998).
3 James A. Tays to John B. Jones, May 31, 1878, Texas Ranger Correspondence, Adjutant General Records (AGR), Record Group 401, Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC), Austin. All correspondence to and from Major Jones is from RG 401, unless otherwise noted.
4 George Whitwell Parsons, A Tenderfoot in Tombstone: The Private Journal of George Whitwell Parsons: The Turbulent Years 1880-82 (Westernlore Press, Tucson, Arizona, 1996), p. 182; William M. Breakenridge, Hellodrado (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston and New York, 1928), p. 132.
5 Lt. Butler’s career had just begun. After graduating in 1877, ranking 54 out of 76 in his class, Butler spent seven months awaiting orders. These arrived in January 1878, posting him to San Elizario in the wake of the Salt War. Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point (1879m vol III Supplement), p 506, listing # 2694.
6 Tays to Jones, May 31, 1878; The source for the Mesilla Valley Independent’s report that it was Corporal Herbert Oliver Matthews, and not Ryall, who had chased Martin and Curly Bill into Mexico was probably Matthews himself. The corporal had been a regular correspondent to the Independent during the Salt War. Tays was in a position to know the truth.
7 Grant County Herald, June 1, 1878; Mesilla Valley Independent, May 18, 1878. 8 Mesilla Valley Independent, June 1, 1878. The federal case against Martin in New Mexico was continued on June
29, 1878. 9 El Paso County Archives, State of Texas vs. Robert Martin et al, Case #300; Grant County Herald, September 14,
10
11
12
13
14
15 16 17 18
19 20 21
22 23 24 25
26 27
28 29
1878. Keating was a private in the Texas Ranger unit holding the bandits. Was he south of the border securing the
affidavit as an “officer of the court,” or was he seeking evidence that would assist friends? The author has engaged in a lively discussion with historian Steve Gatto over whether Joseph Jerold or Joe Heytama might have been “Buckskin Joe.” I believe the jury is still out, but Mr. Gatto has given me a reasonable doubt that Heytama is the right man, as I asserted in the printed version of this article.
The prisoners’ incarceration and escape is more fully explored by Peter Brand in “The Escape of Curly Bill Brocius,” in the WOLA Journal, Vol. IX, No. 2, Summer 2000, pp. 21-24. The story of Northcutt’s death is found in Paul Cool, “El Paso’s First Real Lawman: Texas Ranger Mark Ludwick,” NOLA Quarterly, Vol. XXV, Nos. 3, pp. 42-55, and No. 4, pp. 33-45.
By now, Martin was now wanted for robbery of the U.S. Mails (4 counts), attempted murder, and even with federal violations on trafficking in liquor and tobacco without a license. As early as 1877, $5000 was posted for his capture.
Note from Senor Rueles, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Mexico to Mr. John W. Foster, Minister of USA to Mexico, April 22, 1879, enclosure to Dispatch #941, Foster to Department of State, 4/30/79 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M666, Roll 209); Letters Received by the Office of the Adjutant General 1871- 1880 (hereinafter “AGO”), RG94, NARA, Washington, D.C. Bresnaham (or Brocius) is not mentioned in any of these communications.
Walz to Loud, January 22, 1879 (NA Microfilm M1088, Roll 36); Letters Received by Headquarters, District of New Mexico, September 1865-August 1890, RG 393, NARA
Rueles to Foster, April 22, 1879. Foster to Rueles, April 30, 1879, Enclosure 2 to Dispatch 941 Baylor to Jones, November 20, 1880, TSLAC. Juan N. Navarro to William M. Evarts, August 28, 1880, Enclosure to Letter from Evarts to Alexander Ramsey,
Secretary of War, NA Microfilm M666, Roll 211, AGO, RG 94, NARA Ibid. Ibid. Municipal President of Janos to Political Chief of Galeana, August 1, 1880, copied and enclosed in Note from
Navarro to Evarts, October 18, 1880 (NA Microfilm M54, Roll 18); Notes from the Mexican Legation in the United States to the Department of State 1821-1906, RG 59, NARA.
Ibid. Municipal President of Janos to Political Chief of Galeana, Chihuahua, August 11, 1880, ibid. Luis Torrazas, Governor of Chihuahua, to Department of Foreign Relations, August 18, ibid. Juan M. Zuloaga to Governor of Chihuahua, August 30, 1880; copied and enclosed in Note from Navarro to
Evarts, November 15, 1880 (NA Microfilm M54, Roll 18). Ibid. Miguel Tinker Salas, In the Shadow of the Eagles: Sonora and the Transformation of the Border during the
Porfiriato (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997), pp.49-52, 71-72. “In 1879,less than fifty [Mexican] soldiers patrolled a two-hundred-and-fifty-mile border.” The federal force in
Sonora was increased beginning in 1880. See Salas, In the Shadow of the Eagle, pp. 72, 116. Larry D. Ball, The United States Marshals of New Mexico & Arizona Territories 1846-1912 (Univ. of New
Mexico Press, Albuqueque, 1978; 2nd printing 1999) P. 97.
30 The Posse Comitatus Act (passed June 18, 1878) reads in part, “From and after the passage of this act it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress; and no money appropriated by this act shall be used to pay any of the expenses incurred in the employment of any troops in violation of this section. And any person willfully violating the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or imprisonment not exceeding two years or by both such fine and imprisonment. U. S. Stat. at Large, Vol. 20:145, Chapter 263, Sec. 15.
31 Hatch to Pope, September 6, 1879, M666, Roll 210, AGO, RG 94, NARA. 32 MacGowan to A.G., Department of Arizona, August 25, 1880, Records of the Department of Arizona, Register of
Letters Received, LR 1880 #2745, RG 393, NARA 33 Deposition of Mariano Samaniego, January 11, 1880; enclosure to Note from Navarro to Evarts, September 22,
1880, regarding claim for damages against the United States filed by Ramon R. Lujan (NA Microfilm M54, Roll
18). Senor Lujan claimed the loss to American thieves of 1500 cattle valued at $27,000. 34 Evarts to Roberts, September 11, 1880, Records of Governor Oran Milo Roberts, Series 301-114, TSLAC. 35 Evarts to Roberts, November 3, 1880, Records of Gov. Roberts, TSLAC. 36 Baylor to Jones, November 20, 1880, AGR, TSLAC. Major Zimpelman might have been the American agent of
the “estate Corralitas “ mentioned in the earlier report from Janos. Zimpelman was in turns a Texas Ranger (Terry’s Rangers), Travis County Sheriff and Austin banker. It was Zimpelman’s purchase of the mineral rights to the Guadalupe Salt Lakes that triggered the El Paso Salt War of 1877. At some point in the 1880s, he was engaged in mining and surveying in Chihuahua. While it seems doubtful that an entrepreneur of his stature would have hired himself out as a rancher’s agent, the ex-Ranger and ex-Sheriff would have been an ideal man to pursue rustlers.
37 Silver City Enterprise, October 1, 1886. 38 This item appeared in the Arizona Daily Star on October 17, 1880: “Homicide at San Simon: Yesterday morning
as the train for Tucson was leaving San Simon, a number of Chinamen came on board without passes and offered no money but demanded passage. The conductor, Bob Martin, asked for fare and, upon being refused, commenced ejecting them, when they turned on him with clubs forcing him to use his revolver in self defense, and at the first fire he killed one of the Chinamen. Three is no arrest so far, and it is generally believed there is no necessity for any.” The shooter is described as a train conductor, not a passenger, but the coincidence of two gun-wielding, death-dealing Bob Martins in the San Simon area is intriguing.
39 Curly Bill Brocius has not surfaced in any reports for the period between his escape (November 1878) and the theft of some army mules from Camp Rucker in July 1880. It is probable that he was operating “below the radar” in the same remote turf as Martin. Charles Ray, alias Pony Deal (or Diehl) was a member of the same “fraternity house” as Martin (and Brocius) from the old days in Lincoln, Dona Ana or El Paso County. There are no reports of him throughout 1879. At some point in 1880 he was a bartender in Globe, Arizona, but he surfaced next in July 1880, as one of the Cow-boys wanted for the theft of those Camp Rucker mules. McMaster, the future Earp Vendetta rider was a Texas Ranger in the El Paso unit that incarcerated Brocius. The two men certainly knew each other, and Sherman first surfaces in the chronicles of Tombstone as an associate of Pony Deal.
40 Evarts to Ramsay, September 11, 1880, M666, Roll 211, AGO, RG94, NARA. 41 Pope to Adjutant General, United States Army, January 15, 1881, citing communication from Col. Hatch in
October 1880; M666, Roll 211, AGO, RG94, NARA. 42 Navarro to Evarts, December 27, 1880 (NA Microfilm M54, Roll 18). 43 Carl Schurz, Secretary of the Interior to Hon John C. Fremont, December 24th 1880 44 Fremont to Schurz, January 16, 1881 (M429, Roll 3) Interior Department Territorial papers: Arizona; RG 48,
NARA 45 Fremont to Schurz, January 26, 1881 (M429, Roll 3), RG 48, NARA 46 See Pope to Adjutant General, United States Army, January 15, 1881, citing communication from Col. Hatch in
October 1880; M666, Roll 211, AGO, RG94, NARA; Secretary of State Evarts to Secretary of War Ramsay, February 2, 1881; Mr. M Letter of April 13, 1881 M. de Zamacona, Ambassador of Mexico to the United States, to James G. Blaine, Secretary of State, April 13, 1881 (M429, Roll 3); Blaine to Sec. Interior Samuel J. Kirkwood, April 19, 1881 (M429, Roll 3).
47 Six months after Martin’s death, Turner and Galeyville butcher Alfred McAllister rode south of the border with two other men to obtain cattle for delivery to the U.S. Army. On the return route, near Fronteras, Sonora, Turner and his party were attacked and killed by Mexican citizens. According to Joseph Bowyer, a Galeyville mining
manager, “Upon the bodies of Turner and McAllister was found the money which they ostensibly took to purchase cattle; which amount, compared with what they were known to have started here with, proved that the cattle they were driving had not been paid for.” Bowyer was just one of several contemporary sources reporting that the death of Turner angered the “Cow-boys,” as the rustling element in the San Simon and Animas valleys was known by 1881. It was widely reported that the “Cow Boys” talked of raiding Fronteras in retaliation. In fact, Turner’s death was the first in a series of bloody border battles in the summer of 1881. See Bowyer to Gosper, September 17, 1881 (M689, Roll 21: Cowboy Depredations File); Letters Received by the Office of the Adjutant General 1881- 1889, RG94, NARA.
48 Baylor to Jones, December 19, 1880, AGR, TSLAC. A search of State Department, War Department, and Customs Service records also failed to reveal any subsequent federal records on the matter.
49 Only a few months after Martin was killed by Leonard and company, Leonard and Harry Head announced their intention to kill the Haslett brothers, whose Animas Valley ranch Leonard and Head wanted. The unlucky pair were themselves ambushed by the Hasletts. In retaliation, the Hasletts were killed by other Cow-boys. To gain Leonard’s ranch near Cloverdale (located in the Animas Valley just north of the Mexican line), Ike Clanton had been willing to betray Leonard, Head and Jim Crane for their part in the March 1881 Benson stage robbery.
50 An episode that took place at the same station eight months after Martin’s death provides an example. On June 17, 1881, a Cowboy shot and killed a Yuma Indian who had ridden up on the train to San Simon. In the altercation, the “Cow Boy shot and wounded [the Indian] first, then shot him through the heart [and] afterwards dragged him off.” The Indian did not die without a fight, as he “bit the cowboy’s finger nearly off.” The train’s conductor, W. L. Dickey, and brakesman, S.W. Merritt, witnessed the whole affair, but, with “17 or 18 Cow Boys present,” they and the few passengers were “afraid to do anything.” The murder was called “without provocation [and] a most cold- blooded affair.” See telegram from Major Arnold, Acting Assistant Adjutant General, Department of Arizona, to HQ, DA, June 30, 1881; Register of Letters Received 1881, Records of the Military Department of Arizona, Military Division of the Pacific, Record Group 393, NARA. This was the same station at which “conductor Bob Martin” killed the Chinese passenger.
51 See Casey Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1997) and Allen Barra, Inventing Wyatt Earp (Carroll & Graf, New York, 1998) for discussions of the post-Martin “Cowboys.”
52 Arizona Daily Citizen, February 13, 1881.