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Lawman Of The Old West

John Johnson

Moving from Missouri to Montana in 1870, John Johnson (Liver-Eating Johnson; CrowKiller) became a mountain man who trapped deer, bear, and buffalo and was considered the greatest hunter of his day. He maintained a cabin near Rock Creek, near Red Lodge, Mont., which William "Buffalo Bill" Cody used as a camp for his buffalo hunting expeditions. Johnson reportedly maintained a private war with the Crow Indians, who murdered his Indian wife and child. He killed dozens of tribe members over ten years. One Easterner who hired Johnson to take him into the hills to hunt bear witnessed Johnson creep up on an Crow camp and attack it single-handedly, wounding several Indians and killing two. He then casually butchered the two corpses and ate their livers, thus earning the sobriquet "Liver-Eating Johnson."

A large man who stood more than six feet tall and weighed 200 pounds, Johnson was a keen-eyed hunter and agile runner. He was also an expert knife-thrower, and he served for some years as an Indian scout for the U.S. Cavalry under General Nelson Miles. In 1880, he was appointed sheriff of Coulson, Mont., a rough-and-tumble town of mountain men and miners. He carried a rifle around town, never a six-gun. He always settled disputes with his fists and he later proudly stated that he never had to shoot a man to keep the peace. Offered princely sums to appear in Cody's Wild West shows, Johnson refused to travel to the East, stating that "civilization will kill you faster than God's great outdoors." Johnson maintained law and order for several years in Coulson before moving into the high mountains and disappearing.

Charles Basset

Charles Basset, a steady, level-headed officer who seldom displayed any kind of alarm no matter what the crises, became the first sheriff of Ford County and Dodge City, Kan., on June 5, 1873, and later served for many years as the town marshal. It was Bassett who appointed Wyatt Earp a deputy marshal. He was present at many confrontations between lawmen and outlaws, as well as shootouts between local residents. Bassett was not really a gunman but an officer who generally backed up such men as Ed and Bat Masterson and the Earp Brothers. Bassett helped Earp track down James "Spike" Kennedy, killer of beautiful Dodge City showgirl Dora Hand in 1878. It was Bassett who disarmed Cock-Eyed Frank Loving after his famous lethal duel in Dodge City with Levi Richardson on Apr. 5, 1879. On that occasion, the smoke still curling from the barrel of Loving's gun, Bassett arrived at the scene and calmly walked up to Loving without drawing his own gun. He reached out and took Loving's six-gun which was pointed at his chest, and then arrested him. Through the 1880s and 1890s Bassett served consistently as a lawman until his retirement shortly before the turn of the century.

Angus Brown

Angus Brown was the sheriff of Buffalo, Wyo., during the notorious Johnson County war. He took the side of the homesteaders against the cattlemen. Brown moved to Wyoming from Tennessee in the 1880s and was extremely well read, said to have one of the few libraries in the territory. He was later killed by two cowboys representing the cattle barons.

David Neagle

David S. Terry resigned as chief justice of the California Supreme Court in order to kill U.S. Senator David C. Broderick in a duel. The charges brought against Terry were dismissed, but he was ostracized. Only slowly did he regain a place in public life. As an attorney, Terry met Sarah Hill, who was suing U.S. senator William Sharon, a Nevada millionaire, to force him to honor a written marriage contract between them. When Senator Sharon died, Terry took charge of Hill's fight for the estate, and the two were soon married. In September 1888, Justice Stephen Field ruled against Sarah Terry, and a courtroom scene ended with both Terrys in jail. David Terry swore revenge. David Neagle, a former city marshal of Tombstone, Ariz., was appointed body guard to Justice Field. Though born in Boston Neagle grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, where he earned a reputation for being a handy man with a gun while roaming through the mining camps of the Pacific Slope. At various times, he was a gambler, politician, saloon keeper, and lawman. During the height of the Earp-Clanton feud in 1880, Neagle served as deputy sheriff of Tombstone. He remained unbiased in his dealings with both the Earps and Clantons, and succeeded in furthering his career with election to the city marshal's post in January 1882. However, he failed to win the shrievalty, and then moved on to other western boom towns. Then in 1888, Neagle, having re-established himself in San Francisco, became embroiled in the Terry-Field altercation.

The following August, the Terrys were among the passengers on a train from Los Angeles to San Francisco who had breakfast in the station dining room in Lathrop. There they spotted Justice Field. As Mrs. Terry rushed back to the train, her husband approached Field and slapped his face. Neagle drew his revolver and warned Terry, who nevertheless attacked the judge again. Neagle fatally shot Terry in the chest just as Mrs. Terry returned with a gun of her own. Neagle was arrested for murder, and at the insistence of Mrs. Terry, Justice Field was charged with complicity. The case against Field was quickly dismissed. After a month, the U.S. Circuit Court also dismissed all charges against David Neagle, who returned to San Francisco where he lived quietly. Mrs. Terry was later committed to a mental institution at Stockton, Calif.

Hamilton Bell

Hamilton Bell followed Bat Masterson as sheriff of Ford County, Kan. He was a rigid, stand-up lawman who seldom drew his guns and was known, after thirty years of law enforcement, as a sheriff who never shot a man nor beat one over the head with a pistol. Still, it was reported that Bell took more men into custody, using warrants, than any other lawman of the Old West. He retired about 1911 and, at the age of ninety, was operating a pet shop in Dodge City, selling canaries, his favorite bird.

Robert H. Paul

The election of a new president in 1888 also meant another turnover in the federal marshal's service. After Benjamin Harrison's presidential victory, Robert H. Paul, also a Republican, was named Arizona marshal on Mar. 4, 1890. Born in Massachusetts, Paul made his way west to California with the rest of the forty-niners in the Gold Rush. He served for a time as the sheriff of Calaveras County, Ariz., before signing on with the Wells Fargo Co., in 1872. During the marshalcy of Crawley P. Dake, Paul earned a reputation for himself as a resolute foe of the highwaymen who were running rampant in the Arizona Territory. In one famous case in early 1881, Paul made use of the steam locomotives to make an arrest in Yuma. The shotgun wielding lawman arrived in town to occupy a commercial establishment caught in bankruptcy proceedings. A year later he became a political foe of the Earp faction, and in 1888 he made the newspapers again after gunning down several bandits in Chihuahua, Mex.

Arizonians greeted his appointment with enthusiasm, for no single lawman had earned the respect of his peers as an incorruptible force against evil as had "Bob" Paul. Crime was on everyone's mind those days, as many of the law abiding residents of the territory who supported statehood feared that the lawless conditions would delay the inevitable entry into the union. The Arizona Daily Citizen noted that Paul was "known throughout the Southwest as a fearless man who has frequently taken his life into his own hands in pursuit of criminals."

Paul disappointed his supporters by his failure to pursue action against thirteen outlaw brigands who ambushed and robbed army paymaster Joseph Wham near Fort Thomas on May 11, 1889. The bandits made off with $29,000 in one of the most celebrated robberies to occur in the territory in many years. Deputy William Breakenridge, a former county official in Tombstone, and a close friend of Sheriff John Behan, became convinced that the robbers had fled to the nearby Mormon settlement of Pima. As a result of an informer's tip, Breakenridge arrested several Mormons for the crime. The elders of the church were convinced that these baseless arrests were another example of anti-Mormon persecution. Marshal William Kidder Meade, who occupied the office before Paul, was labeled the instigator of the trumped up case against the Wham defendants. The suspects in the grueling month-long trial were acquitted, which hastened Meade's demise.

Paul adopted a cautious wait and see posture regarding the Wham case. Anxious not to offend the Mormon community, the new marshal did little more than offer a $500 reward for the arrest of the suspects. While Paul vacillated, officials from Graham County arrested Mark E. Cunningham and Lyman and Warren Follett in May 1890, charging the men with robbery and cattle theft. The Folletts were eventually sentenced to a two-year prison term.

Government examiners who audited Robert Paul's office in April 1892, reported that the marshal abused the powers of his office by selecting unqualified veniremen or prospective jurors. According to the report, juries in Paul's jurisdiction were composed of "loafers, bar-room bums, and the `ragged reubens' of the community, especially about Tucson where the marshal resides." Unlike neighboring New Mexico, Paul was able to get away with this practice because the territory did not have U.S. commissioners to regulate the jury process. The examiners also found instances of financial impropriety. He "is not a successful businessman," complained the auditor, but he "manages to successfully manipulate the business of office ...to make his maximum fees." The inadequacies of the fee system lingered until the term of Creighton Foraker, when marshals were finally paid a steady salary.

Before Paul could make an accounting of himself, a political change necessitated his removal. When Democrat Grover Cleveland recaptured the White House in 1892, he selected a political ally, Louis C. Hughes, to serve as governor of the Arizona Territory. Hughes in turn, supported the re-appointment of William Kidder Meade to the marshalcy. Meade was appointed on May 8, 1893, and Bob Paul, who, more than anyone seemed to fit the popular image of the gun-slinging western lawman, was out.

Charles T. Connelly

Charles T. Connelly was the city marshal at Coffeyville, Kan., at the time when the Dalton gang raided two banks on Oct. 5, 1892. When the outlaws attacked the banks, Connelly was in an upstairs room. He ran to the street and tried to borrow a rifle from George Cubine, who was using the weapon to fire on the Daltons. Cubine told him to find a rifle of his own. Connelly finally managed to grab a rifle and he raced into the street, firing at Grat Dalton, who turned his horse about and raced down the street straight at Connelly, killing him with a single shot at a distance of twenty feet.

Joe Lefors

Joe Lefors was one of the toughest, most relentless lawmen in the history of the West. He was born in Paris, Texas, where his mother died when he was twelve. He and his father then moved to the Panhandle to ranch but were attacked and captured by Comanche Indians. A company of Texas Rangers rescued Lefors and his father. Lefors never forgot the experience, vowing to later become a lawman and emulate the Rangers.

At first Lefors worked as a cowboy and later as a cattleman. He drove herds from Texas and Wyoming to the railheads in Kansas in the 1880s and later worked for the Montana Livestock Association as a range detective. He was also hired as a railroad detective and led a fifty-man posse in a 1,000 mile pursuit of the Wild Bunch after its members robbed a Union Pacific train in 1900, but he failed to catch the elusive Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Lefors served as a deputy U.S. marshal in 1898 in Wyoming, and still later, in the same capacity, Lefors tracked down Tom Horn, lawman-turned-outlaw, and got Horn to indirectly confess to the killing of a young boy - a crime for which Horn was later hanged.

Jay Robert Nash. . Da Capo Press. 1989.

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