Submitted to Genealogy Trails by K. Torp
CHAPTER III
THE JAW WAS SHOT
Although during the first summer of its
existance Beaver City had no more houses than
would in the east constitute a cross roads village there was enough of
what the cowboys called life about it to
satisfy the cravings of an Eastern metropolis. The trains of freighters
had passed up and down the old trail which
formed Douglas Avenue, the main street of the city, in undiminished
numbers, while the drivers tarried to rest
their teams, but not themselves, longer than before. The news that a new
city had been formed brought the cow boys
from every ranch and range within 100 miles and thus, while the population
numbered not more than twenty-five or
thirty souls, there was not infrequently a floating population of 100 and
upward, chiefly men. Floating is scarcely
the word to describe the population temporarily there, but the English
language contains no word fit for the occasion.
If they floated it was on a sea of alcohol. If they sailed or flew the
breeze that wafted them on was heavy with
the fumes of tobacco and the smoke of gun powder. If they drifted they
were stranded at the shortest of intervals
on bars not built of sand.
The cowboy as he reached the brow of a low hill to the south of the town
or crossed the Beaver to the north, spurred
his horse into his wildest gallop, drew his six shooter and with screams
and yells fired his weapon. Scarce checking
the speed of his horse the cowboy rode thru the open door followed by the
group of loiterers about the door and
not infrequently by larger groups from about other doors and thereupon the
new arrival ordered and generally paid
for enough liquor to irrigate the crowd. Irrigation in this kind of
climate makes a wonderful growth of vegetation
on the farm and the hilarity in the saloon. Having no more pleasing method
of working off their hilarity, the cowboy
generally went out on the street and drove everybody inside to shelter by
shooting their revolvers in all directions
about the street. Hundreds of bullets were sent flying about the streets
every day and night, and the front of
all the buildings that were standing in these days are cut and bored
through in many places by the deadly missels.
It is a matter of which, the Beaver City man always boasts, however, that
nobody was accidently shot in the town.
It was not until August that any one was purposely shot. The victim's name
was Richard Roberts,
though he was called
Dick Davis.
Roberts drove
up from Tascosa, Texas, bringing two young women for t he dance house. He
was one of
the wild west show cowboys, with long hair and no end of fancy trimmings
to his clothes and swagger to his gait.
He was around town for two or three weeks, and began to think he owned it.
However, while standing on the west
side of the street opposite the dance house telling how great he was, some
of his audience, disgusted with his
bragging, said "Shoot the Jaw."
There upon a man literally shot his jaw, there was a flash of a revolver
held by Soap Read,
also of Tascosa, and
a 44 calibre bullet crushed through both sides of Roberts lower
jaw. The bone was splintered into nearly a hundred
pieces, and every tooth but one on each side was knocked out of his mouth
and fell on the ground.
Roberts clasped
his hands to his face mumbling, "God, I'm shot", and fell fainting. The by standers caught
him and carried him into Jim
Donnelly's saloon, where Dr.
J. A. Overstreet, the first physician who
located in
No Man's Land, picked over seventy small splinters of bone out of the
wound and bandaged him up as well as possible.
Roberts was
kept at the expense of citizens for three months and then he was able to
leave town. His only reward
for those who cared for him was a return to the town where he jumped a
claim of Widow Poggenberg.
When notified
to "let out that job" he stole a couple of horses and es
caped the committee that followed. He is now
with a gang of horse thieves said to have their headquarters in Squaw
Canyon, near Rabbit Ear Mountain in the west
end of No Man's Land.
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Submitted to Genealogy Trails by K. Torp
CHAPTER V
THE FIRST EXECUTION
There is
no way of learning who was the first man killed in No Man's Land, for no
doubt a great many died here by violence at the hands of the Indians
before Beaver City was thought of. Very likely
a number were killed in the Strip by white men, but the first two who were
killed as a punishment for crime, and
as a warning to evil doers that the people of Beaver City might dwell in
peace were O. P. Bennet and
Frank Thompson.
They were, as the people here say, executed. To one who hears the story
from the executioner it seems as though
they were murdered and in a brutal and cowardly fashion, whatever their
previous crimes may have been, and that
some other motive other than the desire to preserve the peace of the
community animated the people who were dead.
As has already been told Bennet was
one of the proprietors of the first dance house in No Man's Land. The
business
died out before Christmas, in 1886 Bennett
and Charley
Tracy put in a stock of dry goods,
groceries, etc., in the
building which had been used as a dance house. The change of business did
not increase the popularity of the proprietors
with the young men, who had recently remembered the old business with
sorrow, nor did it improve the morals of
the proprietors. The first grievance against Bennett grew
out of his old business.
The first against Thompson
was the stealing of a rifle. Thompson
broke into a room occupied by Addison
Mundell
and took a Winchester Mundell had
Thompson's house
searched for it witout success, and Thompson swore
he would
shoot Mundell for
making the search. He met Mundell
in front of the post office one day and
got the drop on him,
but Rube Chilcott,
a stalwart frontiersman, grabbed Thompson's six
shooter before it was discharged. Rube was
anxious
only for the lives of innocent by standers of whom there were a number
including two or three ladies.
The next of which Bennett
was guilty was an attempt to steal a pair
of mules. The mules were brought down the trail
from Kansas with the harness on, and stopped at the livery stable for
feed. Tracy saw
them, and concluded they
were stolen and determined to "round them up." They let the man
ride away with the mules and an hour
later got on their horses and with six shooters loaded started after the
outfit. They followed the trail to the
farm of Thomas Pemberton.
The mules were in the corral there. "Is the owner of them mules he
re?" asked
Bennett.
"Yes," said Pemberton,
as he was standing in the door of his house. Well, we want him." "What
for," "The mules are supposed to be stolen and we want the man and the mules."
Pemberton disappeared
in the house. When he came out again he had a Winchester rifle at his
shoulder. "You
can have the man or anything else you want," said Pemberton.
They didn't want the man or anything else except to get back to town as
soon as possible. The man was a friend
of Pemberton and
had come down after a wagon he had borrowed.
Some weeks later Bennett and
Tracy drove
Mr. Hinton off
a couple of lots on which be was building a house because
Hinton would
not be blackmailed.
Bennett's last
act of this kind was after Thompson stole
Mundell's rifle.
He went upon a claim adjoining town on
the south side which George
Scranage had plowed around. Bennett
furnished Thompson with
such lumber as was necessary
to the building of a small dug-out, and in this age had no right to any
claim save the one he was living on elsewhere.
Thompson had
a perfect right to improve and live on this one, but Scranage wanted
it for a brother-in-law named
W. J. Kline.
As a matter of fact, Thompson wanted
merely to make Kline pay
blackmail for he did not move on the
claim until he heard Kline was
coming.
Kline and
Scranage took
the matter before the respective Claim Board, nominally, but really before
the business
men of the place. The meeting was public, was well attended, and everyone
was free to make speeches, a privilege
of which many availed themselves. Thompson pleaded
his right to take up any unoccupied claim. Scranage argued
that
Kline was
a settler in good faith, and Thompson a
boomer. Thompson said
(truthfully too) that Kline
had come merely
to get hold of a claim and never work the land. Bennett and
the two Tracys were
there to side in with Thompson,
but the citizens were almost unanimously against the four and for Kline and
Scranage.
The previous misdeeds of
Thompson and
his friends were retold with marked effect.
At the fifth meeting which was held on the night of March the 1st, 1887,
it was determined to oust Thompson from
the claim the next day and the determinations were carried into effect by
those who had rendered the decision against
Thompson.
About 11 o'clock on the mor-ning of the second Scranage and
Kline and
a chum of their named L.
N. McIntosh,
who had helped Scranage in
taking up claims to which he was not entitled, got a gang together, which
included Addison,
Mundell and
a tough of the toughest character named W.
P. or Billie
Olive. Bill
was as a matter of fact, himself
executed some months later.
Armed with rifles, shot guns and six shooters, the gang started up the
trail to go to the dug-out and drive Thompson
out. Mundell was
the last man to start up the trail and was some two hundred yards behind
the rest.
He says when going along the trail he heard his name called, and on
looking around he saw Thompson over
at the
house west of the trail, where he got his meals. Thompson had
come down for an early dinner, had put his pony in
the stable and was on his way to the house. Mundell said
that Thompson said:
"You ---, are you going to that claim? I'll stop you now," and r
aised the Winchester.
No one else heard Thompson say
that or anything else; and it is not likely that a man of Thompson's experience
would have been so slow with his rifle as he must have been to enable Mundell
to get in the first shot. Mundell
said he whirled around as he heard the words brought his rifle to his
shoulder and fired, shot Thompson through
the right knee, all while Thompson
was trying to take aim.
"I throwed my gun down and pulled as a man would shoot a bow and arr
ow," said Mundell in
telling about
it.
Two eye witnesses told the Sun reporter that when Mundell
saw Thompson come
from the stable door he ran behind
a low sod wall at the side of the trail, and thence shot Thompson,
who was walking unsuspiciously homeward.
When Thompson was
shot he fell to the ground but managed to crawl into his house. The woman
who was living with
him called Dr. O. G.
Chase. The doctor found the knee
completely ruined and amputation necessary. He therefore
temporarily bandaged the wound, intending to get Dr.
J. A. Overstreet to assist in cutting off
the limb during
the afternoon. He left the wounded man lying on the bed placed on the
floor, and went home to dinner.
Meantime, the report of Mundell's rifle
had brought Kline,
McIntosh and
Billie Olive,
and the rest back down the
trail. They had started out to run one man out of the country; they came
back determined to kill three men. The
wounding of Thompson,
instead of exciting their pity, whetted their thirst for blood. They went
down to the store
of Bennett and
Tracy,
but found only O. P.
Bennett there. They wanted Charley
Tracy very badly, but were too eager
to kill somebody to stop and hunt him up. Bennett
saw that danger was ahead but he was
taken by surprise and could
make no defense. He did not even have his six shooter with him.
"Yer partner, Thompson,
wants to see you," said Mundell to
Benett.
"He's been hurt, I want you to
take care of him."
They escorted Bennett out
to the house where Thompson
lay on the floor groaning with pain. The
door was open and
Bennett walked
in ahead of the rest. He was smoking a big meershaum pipe, and had just
put his right hand to it
to take it from his mouth that he might speak to Thompson,
when he heard the clicking of the hammers of the guns
in the hands of his executioners. Whirling partly around he threw up his
left hand as if to ward off the bullet.
Thompson stopped
groaning and began to beg for mercy. Then the posse fired. One bullet
pierced the hand that Bennett
had raised and passed through his head. He fell headlong with his pipe in
one hand and the other still raised.
Thompson was
shot full of bullets as he laid there on his bed. The two were killed very
much like wolves in a den.
There is but one man of the posse who will talk about the killing. Mundell
justified his killing of Thompson
even
when helpless, on the plea that Thompson had
already tried to shoot him at the post office. As for the others,
Billie Olive is
dead and the rest say nothing.
The possee then went back to the store for Charley
Tracy, but Charley had
jumped on a pony and fled for his life.
Pat Tracy was
then told he might close out the business. This he did inside of two
weeks. No one here knows where
he is now.
An inquest followed: Here is the verdict of the jurymen: "We the
jury appointed to view the remains of O.
P. Bennett and Frank
Thompson, find that they came to their
death from gunshot wounds received at the hands of
many law abiding citizens, thereby inflicting as near as possible the
extreme penalty of law as it should be in
such cases. The deceased were bad citizens-one having run a house of
prostitution and the other living in open
adultery in our town. Each was accused of stealing and receiving stolen
property, some of which was found on their
premises after they were killed. They had each been firing into houses,
holding a dozen or more claims and driving
honest settlers away from the country and their untimely end is but the
results of their own many wrong doings.
(Signed) J. A. Overstreet,
M. D., Laf Wells,
James Deveris,
Joseph Hunter,
H. D. Wright,
G. R Myers,
Jury. O. G.
Chase, Secretary.
While the charges against the deceased were all doubtless true, it is also
true that Beaver City at this minute
knew several of its most prominent citizens were doomed, were the death
penalty inflicted on all who have been
guilty of the same crimes.
After the inquest came the funeral. It was the first funeral service in No
Man's Land. The Rev. R.
M. Overstreet
officiated. His text was taken from the 8th and 23rd verses of the 94th
Psalm, as follows: Understand, ye brutish
among the people; and ye fools when will ye be wise? And He shall bring
upon them their own iniquity, and shall
put them off in their own wickedness: yea, the Lord our God shall cut them
off.
The sermon was very comforting to the posse that had "cut them off." Dr.
O. G. Chase says that after
the ceremony the preacher came to him and said: "We will mould pu
blic opinion, and let the young men do the
work."
The people here say that there were goods worth five thousand dollars in
the store, and that Bennett was
a third
owner, that Pat Tracy made
charges in the book that deprived Bennett's heirs
of the amount due. Bennett,
however,
had other property, such as horses and buildings, which brought at auction
$800 cash. The Rev. R. M.
Overstreet,
W. J. Kline and
W. M. Dow took
charge of the estate as administrators. They have never made any public
report of
what they did with the money. It Is said that one of the items of the bill
for funeral expenses was $20.00 for
hauling the corpse to the grave a mile and a half from town. Mr.
Dow says that the estate just paid the
expenses
of settling it.
Bennett's father
is a man of wealth in California. He came as far on his way to No Man's
Land after the death of
his son as Meade Center, in Kansas. He was afraid to come further. Mr.
Dow went up there and made a report on
the
settling of the estate. There was nothing left of the eight hundred
dollars.
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Submitted to Genealogy Trails by K. Torp
CHAPTER VII
THE SHOOTING OF BILLIE OLIVE
Among the
thirty-four men who signed the call for the mass meeting at Beaver City
at which were made the first crude efforts to establish some sort of law
and order in the territory was W.
P. Olive
It will be remembered that Mr.
Olive was one of the executioners of O.
P. Bennett and Frank
Thompson, and one of
the charges against Thompson;
was that he was living with a woman unlawfully. Mr.
Olive had been all along one
of Beaver's other citizens who were outraging good morals as Thompson had
been doing, but Olive nad
appeared among
those who wanted law and order, and thus had escaped the fate of Thompson.
He had found safety, as others did in
hypocrisy. He had come from Smoky River in Nebraska, where he had just
killed a man just to show that he was not
afraid to kill one and has lived with slight labor in Beaver City since
early in the summer of 1886.
His means in getting a living consisted chiefly in stealing cattle on the
range and slaughtering them and selling
the meat to citizens in Beaver City. This was his occupation during the
days when the good citizens were considering
the advisability of Killing Frank
Thompson and O.
P. Bennett for stealing a rifle and
jumping claims. But stealing
cattle on the range is a very different crime in the eyes of the people
here from stealing a rifle or jumping a
claim. There is, or was, a constant warfare prevailing between the
settlers and the Nomad cowboys. The cowboys
not infrequently drove their herds into settlers fields and destroyed
their crops. The theft of a few steers was
looked upon as a sort of providential retribution for the previous sins of
the cowboys.
Occasionally Billie went
out with some friends, rounded up a few wild horses that are still found
on the plains
west of here. Early in September, 1887, Billie went
away on such a trip as this and was gone a week. The woman
he lived with took advantage of his absence to flee from the country, for Billie,
when drunk, abused her shamefully.
Billie came
back, found her gone, and followed and overtook her at Cimarron, a station
on the Santa Fe railroad.
The woman, to escape Billie's wrath,
told him a lie. She said that William
Henderson, the saloon keeper in Beaver
City had told her that Billie was
not coming back. Billie took
her home and spoke to Henderson about
the woman's
story. Henderson denied
it. That night-It was the night of September 14, 1887- Billie with
John,
commonly called
"Lengthy" Halford,
another friend, went on a spree. They gambled and drank all night and the
next morning
went to Henderson's saloon.
Here Billie "
drew down his six-shooter on Henderson"
and said: "Set
up the drinks or I'll kill you."
Henderson set
them up without delay. While he did so Billie shot
the lamps and glassware to pieces about the saloon,
and fired several shots into Henderson's trunk
in one corner of the room. After drinking the crowd went out.
In a few minutes Billie appeared
through the back door of the saloon, Winchester in hand he ordered Henderson
to
throw up his hands. With his hands up, Henderson asked
what was wanted.
"Go down town," said Billie,
and thereupon Henderson marched
out the door and down the street, with his
hands above his head, while Billie walked
behind, striking him in the back with the Winchester.
Pretty soon Lengthy
Halford came along and both men pounded
the helpless saloon keeper. The business men and their
customers gathered at the doors and windows of the stores along the street
and looked on but did nothing.
Then Olive got
tired of pounding his victim, and aiming the rifle at him pulled the
trigger. The cartridge failed
to explode and Henderson began
to run. Olive pumped
a new cartridge into the chamber, and pulled again but neither
this one nor the third one exploded. People here regard Henderson's escape
as little, if any short of miraculous.
No other such failure of cartridge was ever known.
Meantime, Halford had
fired several shots at Henderson
from a six-shooter, but he was not a dead
shot as Olive
was. Henderson fled
across the Beaver river to the sand hills.
Several hours later fie returned. He was called on by about all of the
business men of the town and advised to
bushwhack Olive.
They determined that Olive and
Halford were
bad citizens and should die. Henderson got
a rifle
and with three other citizens started up town behind the buildings that
lined the west side of main street. He
was told that Olive was
prowling down the east side of the street with Halford,
pistol in hand looking into every
saloon for he had heard of Henderson's
return. As Olive
stopped to look into the building now
occupied by Frank
Palmer, so Henderson,
peeking around the back end of a building across the street saw him, and
drawing his rifle
up behind the wall he was concealed behind, shot Olive through
the heart.
It was by this time sun down. Halford fled
to Nichols store
near by and escaped the men who were with Henderson.
He got a girl who was living with him and putting her on the horse,
mounted another, and the two fled down the
bottom lands of the Beaver river east of town. It was not long until the
citizens found his trail and were in hot
pursuit. Four hours later they overtook him. Leaping from his horse, he
dodged the volley of bullets which were
sent after him and escaped by crawling away in the tall prairie grass,
although his pursuers rode up and down for
hours in the search.
There was no inquest. Olive's body
was sent to his mother, who came from Nebraska, as far as Dodge City,
Kansas,
to get it. Within a year she had also to bury her husband, who was also
shot to death and with much the same reason
as Billie.
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THE LAST BLOOD SHED IN BEAVER CITY
When the
story of two deliberate and cowardly murders has been told and record of
life taking in Beaver City will be complete to date. The murder and result
in other parts of the territory which
averaged not more than fourteen a year among the seven or eight thousand
people, are illustrated by those done
here. In all five men have been killed here and two wounded. The first two
of these last killings is interesting
too, from the fact that the murderer was put on trial before a No Man's
Land Court, and although really guilty
was acquitted for want of evidence.
About February the 1st, 1888, two strangers drove into town and registered
at the hotel as Eugene
Brusher and Andrew
H. Morris of Beloise, Kansas. It was
afterwards learned that the real name of Morris was
John A. Clark.
They said
they had come to locate stock ranches, and as they had money, they were
welcomed by everyone. Part of the welcome
was numerous invitations to drink, all of which were accepted. The men
stayed in town several days making several
trips into the surrounding country, meantime to look up claims, but
returning each night to Beaver, when they invariably
went on a spree.
On the night of February 3, they were in Jim
Donnelly's saloon next to the hotel with
a number of others, apparently
having a good time. In the crowd was Dr.
J. R. Linley. The doctor wore a silk hat.
He was the only man in town
allowed to wear a hat of this kind, and it was only his reputation as a
good fellow that saved the hat from being
a target for the six shooters of the cowboy. "Shoot the hat"
was a business rather than a slang phrase.
In the course of the horse play before the bar Dr.
Linley exchanged hats with Brusher.
Without an instance delay
Clark drew
a revolver and shot Brusher through
the head, the bullet entering just below the hat brim. Brusher fell
dead in a heap before the bar. Clark called
for another drink, and then began to screw up his face in an endeavor
to cry.
City Marshal Mundell,
who was playing poker in the back room of the saloon and did not realize
that any thing serious
had happened until a boy came from the front room and said nonchalantly,
in answer to a question about the noise,
that a man had been killed.
Clark surrendered
his pistol at Mundell's orders,
saying that he had intended shooting the hat. Next day Clark
was arranged before Mayor
J. Thomas and the jury on a charge of
murder. The trial lasted for three days and at
the end City Attorney E.
E. Brown, was obliged to accept the plea
of guilty of criminal carelessness, Clark was
fined $25 which he paid. Clark
was advised privately to leave town, but
remained and so lost his life.
A few days after the shooting came William
Brusher, a brother of Eugene.
He had never seen Clark.
After going over
the testimony in the case he pretended to be satisfied that the shooting
was unintentional, and at once made friends
with Clark.
On the evening of February the 8th the two were in Jim
Donnelly's saloon where Eugene
Brusher had been
killed. They were shaking dice for the drinks at ten o'clock when Brusher excused
himselft and stepped outside
the front door. There was one unpainted pane of glass in the front window,
through which Clark could
be plainly
seen. Brusher drew
a heavly revolver, aimed it carefully, fired and shot Clark through
the heart. Then he jumped
on his horse, which he had standing there ready all the time and galloped
out of town. A posse pursued but never
overtook him.
He was afterwards heard from at Rush Center, Kansas, but the civil
authorities of No Man's Land made no effort
to expidite him and try him for his crime.
Clark had
been the owner of a hotel at Beloise, Kansas, which he burned for the
insurance money, and Brusher was
the sole witness of the crime. Clark
had induced Brusher
to come to No Man's Land with the
intention of getting
rid of him and had taken the first opportunity to do him up.
Clark was
buried beside Frank
Thompson and O.
P. Bennett, and his part of the traveling
and camping outfit which
he and Brusher had
brought were sold to pay the expenses of the funeral.
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CHAPTER XI
COUNTERFEITERS AND MOONSHINERS
Very
little can be learned here about the making of silver coin and of
moonshine whiskey
in No Man's Land. There is a distillery, they say, over on Clear Creek,
and the product is brought here and taken
elsewhere about this Territory and sold. Two men ventured to "bootleg
it" into Kansas, and got caught
by prohibitionists, and are now in the State prison. None of the saloon
keepers here pays a license, although all
of them did so until Dr.
Chase went to Washington as a delegate
and learned that there was no law under which they
could be punished if they refused to pay. The counterfeiting was done in a
sod house in the northeast corner of
No Man's Land not far from Englewood, Kansas. There were two men in the
business and they got on very well for
a time by dodging back across the line when-ever the officers got after
them in Kansas. But they ventured over
once too often and were caught and are now in prison. Had they come to
Beaver and got caught they never would have
been sent to prison.
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