The Mammoth Book of the West by Jon E. Lewis

Author:Jon E. Lewis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781780337005
Publisher: Constable & Robinson
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

What me, the descendant of old grandees of Spain, the owner of a land grant embracing millions of acres, the owner of gold mines and villages and towns situated on that grant of which I am sole owner, to steal a miserable, miserly lot of old cows? Why, the idea is absurd. No gentlemen, I think too much of the race of men from which I sprang, to disgrace their memory.

On another occasion, Hodges – protesting profound Republican sympathies – asked the governor to appoint him to a job as a livestock inspector. As one rancher put it, this was “like a wolf asking to guard the sheep pen.” Needless to say, Hodges’s application was turned down. A few years later, vigilantes caught Hodges and charged him with rustling. Unable to find definite proof, they satisfied themselves with a precautionary severing of the tendons in both Hodges’s ankles, thus crippling him.

Only rarely did American Indians turn outlaw. A number so classed – like the Apache Kid – were more accurately renegades, men too full of independent spirit to submit to the confines of reservation life. But a few were unmistakably criminal, and several became lovers of “bandit queen” Myra Belle Shirley. These were Blue Duck, Sam Starr – whose name Belle took – and Jim July. All were horse thieves and robbers.

Another Indian outlaw, Ned Christie, served with the Cherokee tribal legislature, before a seven-year spree as an outlaw in the Oklahoma Territory. In 1892 Judge Parker’s deputies finally cornered him and two accomplices in a log fort in Tahlequah. To assail the fortress, marshals Heck Thomas and Paden Tolbert used an army cannon. Thirty rounds of artillery fire bounced off the log walls, as did 2,000 rounds from rifles. The exasperated lawmen were reduced to blowing off the side of the cabin with dynamite. Christie came out fighting and was shot dead. A victory photograph was taken of the dead Indian, propped up on a photographer’s board, with his rifle cradled in his arms.

For 13 days in 1895, the Creek gang of Rufus Buck went wild in Indian Territory, setting a criminal record exceeding that of more famous, White outlaws. The five teenagers began by shooting a Black deputy marshal, John Barrett, near Okmulgee, then raped two women, held up a stockman, killing the Black boy accompanying him, stole horses and committed several more hold-ups.

Their reign of terror ended on 10 August, when they were surrounded by marshals and a posse of Creek Light Horse (Creek police) in a grove outside of Muskogee. At the end of their trial before Judge Parker, the gang’s despondent state-appointed attorney entered the shortest defence on record: “May it please the court and gentlemen of the jury, you have heard the evidence. I have nothing to say.” The five – Rufus Buck, Maomi July, Sam Sampson, Luckey Davis and Lewis Davis – were hanged together on 1 July 1896.

When the hangman had finished, guards cleaning Buck’s cell found a picture of his mother

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