The note arrived within hours of the badge being pinned to his chest. It was unsigned, but its meaning was unmistakable: get out of town, or within twenty-four hours he would follow George O’Conor, the last man to wear the marshal’s star in Leadville, Colorado. O’Conor had been shot dead by one of his own deputies, a man aligned with the criminal element that ran the booming silver camp. Martin Dugan read the warning, folded it away, and stayed.
He was used to such threats by then. Born in Ireland on November 10th, 1847, Dugan had come to America as a child, growing up in the Irish slums of New York City before his family pushed west, first to Nebraska and then to Colorado. By 1870, the census found a twenty-three-year-old Martin still living on the family farm outside Denver. What he did in the early 1870s is largely lost to history.
Legends claim he fled New York after the draft riots of 1863, but the family was already in Nebraska by 1859. Other stories have him captured by the Lakota, fighting against Red Cloud in Montana, breaking broncos in Salt Lake City, even performing in a variety act. None of it can be verified. What is known is that by the summer of 1875, he was prospecting for gold outside Georgetown, Colorado, and that winter he took a job as a bouncer at the Accident dance hall and saloon.
It was there that he made his reputation as a gunfighter. One evening, a patron drank too much and began shooting out the interior lights of the saloon. Dugan wrestled the revolver away and delivered a thorough beating. The drunk, battered but defiant, told Dugan he didn’t think he’d fare so well in a standup fight.
Dugan tossed the bloody revolver across the room, marched outside, crossed the street, turned, and waited. The drunk emerged moments later, pistol in hand. Dugan cleared leather and drilled him straight through the heart. A miner’s court convened and declared the killing justifiable.
The story was reported in newspapers as far away as Chicago. By 1878, Dugan had arrived in Leadville, a town so new it was still finding its feet. Within a year, its population would explode to around 18,000, supported by nineteen hotels, thirty-eight restaurants, three undertakers, eighty-two saloons, thirty-five brothels, and nearly two dozen gambling joints. The town had already burned through two marshals.
The first, T. H. Harrison, lasted two days before being beaten and chased out. His successor, George O’Conor, was shot dead by his own deputy.
With no other choice, the mayor and city council turned to Dugan, whose reputation had grown to include seven notches, though some of those killings may belong to a different Dugan, a man lynched a decade earlier for murdering prospectors. The local criminal element wanted nothing to do with him. No sooner had he accepted the job than the anonymous note arrived. Dugan later told a reporter: “Immediately after I was appointed marshal, I received a written notice from the roughs to leave town, and if I stayed for 24 hours, I would follow George O’Conor.
I paid no attention to the notice, but took every precaution to always be on guard. ”
He found the town full of thieves, thugs, and desperate characters, along with quarrelsome miners determined that no newcomer should hold authority over them. It wasn’t long before they tested him. One night, a group began tearing up a saloon, smashing furniture and raising hell.
Dugan arrived alone, identified the leader, and ordered him outside. When the man asked what would happen if he refused, Dugan told him to “say a Hail Mary because you’re a dead man where you stand. ” The saloon fell silent, and the troublemaker obeyed. Dugan ran a tight ship and brooked no dissent, even from his own men.
He fired deputies at the drop of a hat for the slightest infraction, pistol-whipped those who refused to follow orders, threatened to lock up the mayor for complaining about the arrest of a wealthy friend, and once marched a municipal magistrate out of his own office at gunpoint for being too soft on crime. When the judge demanded to know by what authority a mere city marshal could oust a judge, Dugan stuck his revolver under the man’s nose and walked him out. His courage was tested publicly one evening when a large group of vigilantes showed up at the jail, intent on lynching a prisoner. Dugan later recalled: “I started out alone to get ahead of the mob.
I stood out in the middle of the street with a cocked revolver in each hand and told them I would kill the first man who attempted to pass. I managed to make them understand that some of them were sure to be killed if they persisted. And from that time on, they understood that I would not do to fool with. ”
The scene repeated itself not long after, when a man named Jim Bush shot and killed an unarmed victim.
Vigilantes came calling again, but Dugan held them off long enough for Bush to be transported to Denver under heavy guard. When sober, Dugan was said to be well-mannered and soft-spoken. When drinking, he became something else entirely. A local paper described him as “the incarnation of devilry” with “as little regard for human life as a wild beast.
” Leadville historian George Wilson wrote that Dugan “swaggered about town, eager for a challenge. Quick with both fist and gun, he terrorized innocent and guilty alike. Boldly hunting out the most bloodthirsty desperados to force a duel and just as boldly assaulting innocent citizens on any or no provocation. But for all of his brutality and lawlessness, he was considered absolutely fearless, as well as being the only man in camp able to intimidate the various roughs and cutthroats.
”
The drinking eventually cost him his badge. When Dugan got drunk and severely beat a bartender while brandishing his sidearm, the city council temporarily took his star. The victim withdrew his charges, and Dugan was reinstated as if nothing had happened. When his term ended in April 1879, the council offered to reappoint him.
He declined, taking an extended trip with his wife to Michigan. Without him, crime shot through the roof. A newspaper reported that “there is a general feeling that every man must be his own bodyguard and be prepared to shoot down anyone who attempts to invade his personal or property rights. ” Bunkos, con men, had things their own way, and foot pads robbed men in broad daylight on the most public streets.
In late November, vigilantes stormed the jail and lynched two prisoners, hanging a placard around one victim’s neck that read: “Notice to all thieves, bunko steerers, foot pads, and chronic bondsmen for the same. And sympathizers for the above class of criminals. This is our commencement, and this shall be your fates. We mean business, and let this be your warning.
” It was signed “Vigilantes Committee” and added: “We are 700 strong. ”
The criminals mobilized in response, claiming they outnumbered the vigilantes, knew all their names, and planned to hang every one of them before burning Leadville to the ground. The city’s founders tracked Dugan to Michigan and begged him to return. “The city council telegraphed me at Flint, Michigan, asking me to come back at once and take the marshalship as they did not believe anyone else could prevent the roughs from running the town,” Dugan said.
“I came back at once. ”
He hit the ground running, firing the entire police force and setting about cracking heads and arresting thugs, apprehending such notables as Big Ed Burns and Billy Thompson, brother of the famous Texas gunfighter Ben Thompson. When his term ended in April 1880, he again refused reappointment, opening a livery stable instead. He never strayed far from the action.
Later that spring, a strike at a nearby mine turned violent. The owners rejected the miners’ demands and began raising an army of hard cases. The governor sent in the state militia, but most of the militiamen sympathized with the miners. There were even rumors the prospectors in the militia planned to join forces and attack the bosses.
The militia commander, General Cook, called in a local unit known as the Taber Tigers, made up mostly of gamblers, bartenders, and at least one livery owner named Martin Dugan. Dugan served as second in command, and his men arrested over two hundred people, helping bring about a peaceful resolution. Despite his role in calming the town, Dugan remained as quarrelsome as ever, especially when drunk. In late November 1880, he was delivering a sleigh to a brothel when a man named Lewis Lamb stepped in front of him, nearly getting run over.
The two had butted heads before, and the encounter quickly turned into an exchange of harsh words. Lamb walked away, but Dugan followed, cursing him all the way to the brothel. Lamb finally had enough, demanding an apology. When Dugan told him to go to hell, Lamb reached for his pistol.
In one fluid motion, Dugan jumped off the sleigh and put a bullet straight into Lamb’s mouth, killing him instantly. The killing was ruled self-defense, but Lamb had been popular, and Dugan’s livery stable began losing business. Lamb’s wife swore she would continue wearing her “widow’s weeds” long enough to dance on Dugan’s grave. When the stable went under, Dugan sold his home and moved to a mining camp called Douglas City, where he found work as a deputy sheriff.
In 1887, when several prostitutes were conned into buying fake jewelry by a traveling salesman, Dugan hunted the man down, gave him a thorough beating, marched him bruised and bloodied through the street to the dance hall, and forced him to return the money. The salesman pressed charges in Leadville. The judge found Dugan guilty of assault, fining him ten dollars plus court fees. Dugan demanded the salesman pay the fine for him and told the judge what to do with the court costs.
The salesman, sufficiently frightened, dropped the charges. Dugan returned to Leadville later that year as a police patrolman, but he never adapted to the changing times. Historian Robert Darman wrote: “If Leadville had discarded much of its wild roughness, Mark Dugan did not. He was constantly in trouble because of the heavy-handed approach to law enforcement that had served him well in earlier times and had brought him local fame and respect.
” In March 1888, he was fined twenty-five dollars for roughing up another traveling salesman. He resigned from the police force and went on an extended drinking binge. Two weeks later, still drinking, he got into a heated argument inside a gambling joint, verbally harassing a faro dealer. When the establishment’s owner, Bailey Young, intervened, Dugan invited both men outside to settle things like gentlemen.
They declined. It was around four in the morning, and Dugan was thoroughly drunk. His friends calmed him down and convinced him to go home. He agreed and staggered outside, making it only a few steps before someone slipped up behind him and shot him in the back of the head.
Miraculously, he survived for seven hours. He regained consciousness around sunrise and asked for a drink of water. When deputies asked who shot him, Dugan named Bailey Young, then lost consciousness again. When he woke later, he was questioned once more.
This time he said he had been struck down by “one of the gang. ” When the police asked if it was Young, Dugan said no, adding that he would die before he’d ever tell them. Those were his last words. He died that morning at thirty-nine years old, ten years to the day after he first pinned on the marshal’s badge.
Young and the faro dealer were arrested but cleared of all charges. Years later, the likely killer was revealed to be another faro dealer named George Evans, allegedly paid to murder the former marshal by a group holding old grudges. Evans left Colorado soon after his release and toured Mexico and Central America, reportedly funded by Dugan’s unnamed enemies. He was killed in a gunfight in South America in 1902, and only then did people begin opening up about his role in Dugan’s murder.
Dugan was buried in an unmarked grave at Denver’s Riverside Cemetery, depriving Lamb’s widow of the chance to dance on it. She did allegedly do a jig on the blood-soaked sidewalk where he was shot and left her widow’s weeds on Mrs. Dugan’s doorstep. It wasn’t until 2005 that Martin Dugan finally received a gravestone, paid for by a group of history enthusiasts in Denver who raised over two thousand dollars.
The group’s organizer, Gail Lindley, said: “This guy is an unsung hero. He really transformed a depraved Leadville. He brought law and order to a lawless town. As a fallen officer, he deserves the honor and respect of a memorial stone.
”
King Fisher was not your average Texas gunfighter. He once killed a circus tiger just to make a pair of chaps out of its hide. He boasted of killing thirty-seven men, not counting Mexicans and Indians. At the height of his career, he commanded over a hundred bandits and ruled all of South Texas as if it were his own personal kingdom, all while dressed in gold embroidered jackets, a rattlesnake hatband, bells on his spurs, and those infamous tiger-skin chaps.
John King Fisher was born in October 1853 in what is now Collin County, Texas. His mother died when he was young, and his father moved the family south after remarrying. King did not get along with his stepmother, and he was reportedly quite the handful, mischievous and, by his early teens, very popular with the young ladies. He started hanging out with the wrong crowd, getting arrested for stealing a horse at fifteen and again a year later for breaking into a house.
At sixteen, he was sentenced to two years in the state penitentiary, though he only served four months due to his youth. He drifted south and began working cattle in the Nueces Strip, a lawless region between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. Local ranchers, plagued by stock theft, formed a vigilante group and, according to historian Leon Metz, “employed Fisher to clean out the rustlers and his reputation soared as a man of courage. ” But vigilante justice never ends well, and Fisher’s gang eventually began stealing cattle themselves.
Fisher’s appearance was as notable as his actions. A Texas Ranger described him wearing an ornamented sombrero, a black Mexican jacket embroidered with gold, a crimson sash, crimson boots, and two silver-plated, ivory-handled revolvers swinging from his belt. Another ranger noted his beaver hat with a solid gold band shaped like a rattlesnake, his silk shirts and bandanas, and the chaps made from the skin of a tiger he had allegedly killed at a circus. He also wore bells on his spurs.
Physically, Fisher was not a big man, only five-foot-nine and 135 pounds, but he was deadly. He got into an argument with one of the leaders of his vigilante gang and shot him dead. When two of the dead man’s friends went for their pistols, Fisher killed them as well. From that point on, he was the undisputed leader of the gang.
He killed an additional seven men over the next few months. Ranger Captain Leander McNelly said Fisher ruled the entire area between Castroville and Eagle Pass with an army of at least a hundred men. He established a ranch along Pendencia Creek and placed a large sign on the road leading to it that read: “This is King Fisher’s road. Take the other one.
” The ranch served as headquarters for his gang’s activities, which mostly took place on the other side of the river. Texans crossed the Rio Grande to make off with Mexican livestock, and Mexicans did the same in return. Fisher even struck deals with Mexican counterparts, exchanging stolen livestock and selling them at a profit across the river. Most Texans didn’t blink an eye at buying cattle with Mexican brands, and vice versa.
Fisher’s deadly reputation grew. When four vaqueros arrived at his ranch looking for trouble, Fisher told them to leave. When they refused, he struck one in the head with a branding iron, killing him almost instantly, then pulled his revolver and shot the other three. On another occasion, a cowboy named William Donovan refused to buy him a drink in a saloon, so Fisher drew his pistol and gunned him down.
He was arrested and charged with murder but found not guilty. Over time, he faced over twenty indictments, mostly for murder and theft, all dismissed. He would brag: “You could not persuade a man in this whole country to testify against King Fisher or any of his clan. ”
In April 1876, Fisher married a woman named Sarah Vivian, who had a calming effect on him.
He began focusing on legitimate work, formed a new ranch, and even became a deputy sheriff in Uvalde County. Per Leon Metz: “With his talents now on the side of the law, King became a diligent police officer, tracking down Tom and Jim Hanahan, two accused robbers of the El Paso stage. When both men resisted, King killed Tom, captured Jim, and recovered the money. ” When the Uvalde County sheriff was indicted for embezzlement, Fisher took over as acting sheriff and began campaigning for the election of 1884.
In the spring of 1884, Fisher traveled to the state capital in Austin to learn about a new law making fence cutting illegal. While there, he bumped into his old friend Ben Thompson. Thompson was a remarkable character in his own right: born in England in 1843, he had fought for the Confederacy, served under Mexican Emperor Maximilian, nearly beaten his brother-in-law to death, run the Bulls Head Saloon in Abilene, and served as Austin city marshal before killing Jack Harris, an owner of San Antonio’s Vaudeville Theater, in a dispute over a gambling loss. The killing cost Thompson his job, and he likely held a grudge.
Thompson and Fisher embarked on a day-long drinking binge in Austin. By that night, they were on a train bound for San Antonio. Neither man would be alive come sunrise. There are different versions of why they went, but by the time they arrived, Thompson was thoroughly drunk.
He struck a train porter so hard that blood splattered over his hat. He pulled out a knife, cut the hat’s crown off, and stuck the knife in the brim. That is how he stepped off the train in San Antonio: drunk, sprinkled in blood, with a knife poking out of his crownless hat. They visited the Turner Opera House before moving on to the Vaudeville Theater, the same place where Thompson had killed Jack Harris.
They took a hack, despite the short distance, a sign of their level of sobriety. Unbeknownst to them, word of their arrival had preceded them. Telegraphs had been sent ahead, and a U. S.
marshal had been on the same train. The deputy rushed to warn the theater’s owners, and the city marshal sent six officers to keep the peace. The Vaudeville was now run by Joe Foster, one of the original owners, who had brought in Billy Sims as a partner after Harris’s death. When Fisher and Thompson arrived, they stopped at the bar for a drink before heading upstairs to watch the show.
Sims sent up a few working girls to keep them company. Thompson ordered another drink as Fisher lit a cigar. What happened next depends on which account you believe. According to one, Thompson spied Foster as they were leaving and tried to shake his hand.
Foster declined, and things escalated. Another says Foster and Sims joined them upstairs, where Thompson began making threats and jokes about killing Jack Harris. The bouncer and police officer Jacob Coy urged Thompson to keep quiet, but he refused, calling Foster out. Foster said he didn’t want trouble.
Everyone was standing by then: Foster and Sims by the door with Coy, and about four feet away, Fisher and Thompson. Coy urged calm, but Thompson jerked his revolver and tried to strike Foster with it. Coy managed to knock the revolver away, and all hell broke loose. When the smoke cleared, King Fisher was dead, his body riddled with at least thirteen bullets.
Thompson was dead as well, having received nine rounds. To this day, nobody knows exactly what happened or who killed whom. Both Coy and Foster had also been hit. Foster died of his wounds eleven days later.
An investigation that night found Fisher’s revolver still in its holster, fully loaded and undischarged. A Galveston News article noted: “Fisher’s pistol was found belted around him, undischarged and in its scabbard, a remarkable circumstance for one so quick in drawing and so self-possessed when in danger. ” A separate inquest on Thompson suggested the fatal rounds came from above and slightly behind, meaning either Foster or Sims had stationed gunmen on the upper level of the theater. Neither Fisher nor Thompson ever saw their assassins.
The alleged gunmen were never identified, and despite public outrage, nothing came of it. Fisher was transported by train to Uvalde the day after his death and buried on March 13th. He was just thirty-one. Legend has it he was buried in his tiger-skin chaps.
His widow Vivian lived another sixty-three years, passing away in 1946 at the age of eighty-nine. Two of their daughters lived into the 1950s. And the mother of Tom Hanahan, the man Fisher killed while acting sheriff, traveled to Uvalde every year for the rest of her life, built a fire over his grave, and danced around it on the anniversary of her son’s death. Tom “Bear River” Smith arrived in Abilene, Kansas with nothing but a badge, a banjo, and a pair of fists seemingly as large as the prairie itself.
Within days, he had one of the roughest cow towns in the West eating out of the palm of his hand, and he did it without firing a single shot. His story did not end with a quiet retirement. It ended with one of the most brutal killings imaginable. Little is known of Smith’s early life.
His birth year is debated, some sources suggesting 1830, others closer to 1845. Most historians agree he spent time in New York City before heading west, possibly as a police officer, and there is evidence he served with the 69th New York Infantry during the Civil War. He headed west in the mid-1860s, lured by promises of gold and adventure. He made a name for himself back east as a middleweight boxer, strong and scrappy, quick with his hands, but he also had an artistic side, spending hours playing traditional Irish and Scottish folk songs on his banjo.
Smith met his partner John Cony in 1865, and they spent the next couple of years working gold diggings in Montana and Idaho before moving to Wyoming’s South Pass City. According to author Roger Meyers, Cony noted there was no way of controlling the rough elements other than vigilance committees. When a miner was robbed and nearly murdered, and a suspect disappeared, the mine owners offered a substantial reward. That evening, Smith cleaned and loaded his Henry rifle and set out, his only authority a resolution passed at a miner’s meeting.
He brought the man in the following day, earning both the reward and a good reputation. About a month later, Smith was appointed marshal of Green River, about a hundred miles southwest of South Pass City. He ran for sheriff of the entire county but lost the election. Tensions ran high, and a local paper reported that Smith and a lawyer named Thurman began fighting as the results were announced, resulting in “a resort to knives and pistols.
” No one was killed, and Smith soon left for Bear River, another railroad town. He applied for the position of town marshal but was turned down, so he went to work for the Union Pacific on a grading crew. There was a newspaper in Green River called the Frontier Index, known as the “Press on Wheels” for following the Union Pacific as it advanced westward. There was a good deal of animosity between Smith and the Index’s co-founder Lee Freeman, animosity that escalated when the paper arrived in Bear River.
The town had incorporated, passed laws, and organized police who cracked down on the working man’s sins of drunkenness and disorderly conduct. Railroad hands, terribly exploited, resented the rigid law enforcement. In November 1868, the Frontier Index called for the lynching of three accused murderers, men who happened to be fellow rail graders with Smith. Smith organized a mob that stormed the jail, freed the prisoners, and burned it to the ground, then did the same to the Index’s office.
Troops from Fort Bridger were brought in, and when the smoke settled, at least fourteen men lay dead. Smith was badly wounded and reportedly near death but pulled through. Some sources claim Smith was helping to end the riot, but contemporary newspapers indicate he was a leader on the side of the rioters. He spent a few weeks in jail in Salt Lake City.
Years later, a former mayor of Abilene wrote: “I did not understand at the time why Smith should be leading rioters, and I have never fully cleared that up. I do know, however, that whatever part Smith played in those riots was to his credit. ”
After his recovery and release, Smith and Cony headed to Cheyenne, where Cony opened a restaurant and bowling alley. Smith wasn’t ready to settle down.
After six months, he headed to Denver and then to the tiny railroad town of Kit Carson, Colorado. The town marshal was a gunfighter named Pat Desmond, who made Smith one of his deputies. Smith did an excellent job, but what stood out was his unusual approach to law enforcement. He rarely pulled a firearm unless absolutely necessary, instead relying on his experience as a pugilist.
This earned him respect from both fellow deputies and the men he arrested. Meanwhile, about three hundred miles to the east, Abilene, Kansas had its hands full. The town started as a stage stop in 1857, originally known as Mud Creek, renamed Abilene in 1860 after a passage in the Gospel of Luke. The coming of the Kansas Pacific Railroad in 1867 proved pivotal.
After the Civil War, Texas was overflowing with cattle selling for just two dollars a head, while back east they brought twenty times as much. Joseph McCoy constructed a massive stockyard on the outskirts of town, capable of holding two thousand head. On September 5th, 1867, the first shipment of Texas longhorns departed Abilene by rail, bound for Chicago. Thousands more followed, making Abilene the first true cow town of the American West.
Along with the cattle came the cowboys. Per historian Joseph Rosa: “The cowboy’s arrival in town, sometimes after spending three months on the trail, was heralded by a chorus of shouts and pistol shots, and by the sound of galloping horses. The very first chance he got to let her rip, he did so. And once he had drink inside him, he often became an almost maddened creature.
” Cow towns attracted the same fringe elements: pimps, thieves, con artists, gamblers, and desperadoes. Abilene’s founders began shopping for a city marshal, and Tom Smith was one of the first applicants. The city officials passed him over. Abilene’s first mayor, Theodore Henry, recalled: “Successive marshals were tried, failed, and in turn resigned.
The chief of police of St. Louis was implored to send us a couple of men competent to come and run the town for us. In a few days, they appeared, vouched for to fill our order. Their identity and mission were soon known all over town.
Every device lawless devilry could contrive was let loose that day. The brace of tenderfeet, without tender in their farewell compliments, took the return midnight train from Missouri. ”
With nowhere else to turn, they sent a wire to Smith asking him to reapply. He was hired on June 4th, 1870.
Per Leon Metz: “Smith told the town council that Abilene would never be tamed until the cowboys surrendered their weapons before entering town. So when city fathers passed the necessary ordinance, Smith enforced it first against a bully named Big Hank. When Hank went for his gun, Smith knocked him unconscious with one punch. A week later, the marshal took another man’s weapon away from him and beat the surprised individual savagely about the head and body, punctuating the fight with an order to leave town in 5 minutes.
Turned out to be 3 minutes longer than needed. ”
Word spread. Abilene’s permanent residents, long used to avoiding the streets after dark, once again felt safe. The city gave Smith a raise.
He survived at least two assassination attempts during his first few months, but his strategy worked. Abilene finally had law and order, and Smith hadn’t drawn his revolver once. When winter came and the cowboys returned to Texas, Smith took a commission as a deputy U. S.
marshal and accepted a position as under-sheriff for Dickinson County. He tracked down a horse thief named Buckskin Bill Phillips, catching him at his home in Brownville, Nebraska, and taking him into custody without incident. The buyers of the stolen stock threatened Smith’s life rather than return the horses, but he stood his ground and retrieved most of them without firing a shot. He also cleared out a shantytown northwest of Abilene, a notorious cluster of brothels and gambling joints, giving the madams a simple choice: pack up and leave or face arrest.
Within days, the settlement was gone. On November 2nd, 1870, Andrew McConnell, who had recently killed a man named John Shea, was the target. McConnell had turned himself in, and his friend Moses Miles testified the killing was self-defense, so McConnell was released. Neighbors suggested Shea, who left behind a widow and three children, was not the aggressor.
Dickinson County Sheriff James McDonald asked Smith to accompany him to bring in McConnell. They arrived at McConnell’s dugout and found him with Miles. What happened next is unclear, but McConnell abruptly shot Smith through the right lung. Smith uncharacteristically pulled his revolver and returned fire, wounding McConnell, and the two began grappling.
Smith got the upper hand despite his wound, but then Miles joined the fight, clubbing Smith over the head with a rifle to little effect. Finally, he grabbed an ax, took a swing, and nearly severed Smith’s head from his body. Sheriff McDonald had run for help as soon as the first shot was fired. When the posse arrived, the killers were long gone.
News of Smith’s death stunned Abilene. The Kansas Weekly Tribune called for extrajudicial justice: “If the murderer is not caught and lynched forthwith, it will be a disgrace to the locality. ”
McConnell and Miles were arrested in Clay Center, Kansas. Miles was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to sixteen years.
McConnell pled guilty to first-degree manslaughter and received twelve years. Miles was pardoned after six years, and McConnell was released in 1881. Smith’s funeral took place on November 4th, 1870. Most of the town turned out as his beloved horse, Silver Heels, trotted riderless behind the hearse, his former owner’s revolvers draped over the saddle horn.
Abilene’s founders soon found a replacement: a lanky dandy named James Butler Hickok, better known as Wild Bill. With such a famous successor, Smith’s life was overshadowed. But not everyone forgot him. In 1904, more than three decades after his death, the town exhumed Smith’s remains and reburied him in a place of honor.
A massive red granite boulder weighing more than two tons was brought from Oklahoma to mark the grave, with a bronze plaque reading: “Thomas J. Smith, Marshal of Abilene, died a martyr to duty November 2nd, 1870. A fearless hero of frontier days who in cowboy chaos established the supremacy of law. ”
One of Abilene’s residents who grew up to become the 34th president of the United States never forgot him.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was raised in Abilene and graduated from Abilene High School just a few years after Smith was reinterred. As president, he visited Smith’s grave on multiple occasions, describing the marshal as a man who “almost never carried a pistol, but subdued the lawless by the force of his personality and his tremendous capability as an athlete. ”
David Allen Mather was born on August 10th, 1851, in what is now Deep River, Connecticut.
His father, Ulysses, abandoned the family in 1856 to become a ship captain and was murdered by his own crew in 1864. His mother, Lydia, died before he reached adulthood. By 1870, he was living in Westbrook, Connecticut, working as a laborer. Later that year, he and his younger brother Josiah followed their father to sea, but as soon as their cargo ship docked in New Orleans, the boys headed inland.
For the next few years, there is no record of what Dave Mather did. Rumors abound: hunting bison on the Kansas prairie, rustling cattle with Dave Rudabaugh in Arkansas, running a con game in Texas with Wyatt Earp. A Dodge City newspaper in 1879 named him as a regular associate of the notorious horse thief Dutch Henry Borne. What is certain is that by the late 1870s, he was running with the Dodge City Gang in East Las Vegas, New Mexico, a loose network of gamblers, saloon owners, and gunmen led by Hyman Neill, known as Hoodoo Brown.
Brown served as mayor, coroner, justice of the peace, and chief constable. His deputies included Dirty Dave Rudabaugh, Tom Pickett, Joe Carson, J. J. Webb, and Dave Mather.
On January 22nd, 1880, four Texas panhandle cowboys rode into Las Vegas intending to settle a score with Constable Joe Carson. A week earlier, Carson had questioned them about stealing a two-horse buggy. About 11 p. m.
, the four men entered the Close and Patterson dance hall, belligerently drunk and heavily armed. When Mather arrived, he asked them to check their sidearms. They refused and hurled insults. They turned their attention to Carson, saying no man could make them give up their pistols.
Without warning, Tom Henry drew and shot Carson in the left arm. Mather shot Henry, and all hell broke loose. A local paper reported: “The lamps in the dance hall were extinguished by the repeated concussions and then followed a scene that beggars description. At least 30 shots were fired almost simultaneously.
The lead and missiles of death flying as thick as hail-stones around the crowded room. ”
When the smoke cleared, Joe Carson was dead, riddled with no less than eight bullets. Randall lay mortally wounded, and James West was wounded. Henry and Dorsey escaped.
Mather received nothing more than a grazing wound. Three days later, on January 25th, he killed again, a railroad foreman named Joseph Castello who went for his pistol during an argument. A coroner’s jury ruled it self-defense. The citizens of East Las Vegas were growing weary of Mather and his associates.
The two cowboys who escaped, Henry and Dorsey, were apprehended and jailed with their wounded companion, James West. A couple of nights later, vigilantes took the prisoners to the town square, lynched one from a windmill, and forced the other two to stand on it while they were, as a Santa Fe paper reported, “perforated with bullets,” allegedly fired by Joe Carson’s widow. Whether Mather took part is unknown, but given his friendship with Carson and his position as constable, he likely turned a blind eye. In early March, another deputy, J.
J. Webb, shot and killed a freighter named Michael Kellaher in the Goodlet and Roberts Saloon. The official story was that Kellaher, intoxicated and heavily armed, refused to leave and drew his pistol. Webb fired a ball into his chest, then twice more.
But Kellaher had just finished driving a load of freight from South Dakota and had over two thousand dollars on him, close to sixty-four thousand in today’s money. Dirty Dave Rudabaugh was in the saloon, as was Mayor and Coroner Hoodoo Brown. Both declared the killing justifiable. Others maintained Webb assassinated Kellaher on orders from Brown, who skipped town shortly thereafter with the money taken from the body.
Webb was arrested and charged with murder. A month later, Rudabaugh and a buddy gunned down a respected jailer attempting to bust Webb out of jail. That was the last straw. The citizens formed a vigilance committee and put the remaining Dodge City Gang members on notice.
Mather wisely left for Dodge City, Kansas. He arrived just in time for the Dodge City War, a bloodless standoff between Mayor Larry Dyer and gambler Luke Short. Short assembled a team including Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and former sheriff Charlie Bassett. With support from the governor and pressure from the Santa Fe Railroad, the dispute was resolved peacefully.
The presence of so many noted gunmen made the citizens of Dodge nervous, which may be how Mather landed a job as assistant marshal. He held the position only briefly. A new mayor appointed Bill Tilghman as town marshal and replaced Mather with a former buffalo hunter named Tom Nixon. Mather was still a deputy sheriff for Ford County, and the following month he purchased the Opera House saloon with his friend David Black.
But he seemed to harbor a grudge against his replacement. Mather began renovating the saloon into a dance hall until the city council ordered him to stop, passing an ordinance outlawing “what is commonly known as a dance hall or any other place where lewd women and men congregate with the purpose of dancing or otherwise. ” But the ordinance wasn’t enforced fairly. Nixon also owned a dance hall, the Lady Gay, and was allowed to continue operating with no repercussions.
Mather fought back by lowering the price of beer to five cents a glass, less than half of what the Lady Gay charged. Nixon and the other saloon owners retaliated by pressuring wholesalers to cut off Mather’s supply. There is also evidence Mather may have had his eye on Nixon’s wife, Cornelia. On the evening of July 18th, 1884, Mather was standing on the steps in front of his saloon when Nixon, acting as assistant marshal, walked up and opened fire.
Per the Dodge City Democrat: “The bullet went wild and struck the woodwork of the porch. Mather’s face was considerably powder burned and the little finger of his left hand was injured by a splinter. ” Bill Tilghman’s wife, Zoe, later remarked prophetically that with a man like Dave Mather, you better shoot straight or not at all, because if you miss, he will get you. Tom Nixon got got.
A few nights later, as Nixon was making his rounds, Mather waited until he was walking by, called out his name, and according to the papers, “As Nixon turned around, Mather commenced shooting at him, firing four shots, killing him instantly. ” An eyewitness said Mather told Nixon he had lived long enough before finishing him off. Upon arrest, Mather claimed his only regret was not killing him six months earlier. He was tried for murder and, like so many Old West gunfighters, acquitted.
The sheriff testified on his behalf, as did Bat Masterson. The Dodge City Times reported the courtroom broke into applause. Mather wasn’t free for long. His brother Josiah joined him in Dodge, and in May 1885, they got into a shooting scrape at the Junction Saloon.
Mather and a gambler named Barnes argued over a game of Seven Up. When Barnes complained, Mather punched him. Barnes went for his pistol, and when the smoke cleared, Barnes was dead and two bystanders were wounded. Mather was arrested, but his pistol was found fully loaded, indicating he didn’t actually take part in the shooting.
Nevertheless, both he and Josiah were charged with murder. The pair escaped custody on July 29th and got out of Dodge. The brothers split up shortly after. Josiah went to Utah and then Idaho, living until 1932.
Dave made a brief stop in Topeka before reportedly taking a job as city marshal in New Kiowa, Kansas. The Dodge City Times reported this in August 1885, but it wasn’t true. Mather and his saloon partner David Black visited New Kiowa, but they were only in town a few days before Black was forced to flee after killing a soldier. A lynch mob formed, and when they failed to locate Black, they turned their attention to Mather, who also chose to leave.
That was the last verified sighting of Mysterious Dave Mather. One of the earliest rumors of his fate comes from Dallas, Texas in 1886, when reports surfaced of an unidentified man found dead next to the railroad tracks with a gunshot wound to the head. No official record ties the body to Mather. Another popular theory is that he drifted north and joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
This story seems to originate in a 1902 article in Everybody’s Magazine. According to the author, Mather not only joined the Mounties but robbed a stagecoach he was assigned to protect. When he was found out, he disappeared again. But the Mounties kept meticulous records, and there is no reference to a David Mather ever serving with them.
A story surfaced in the 1950s alleging he was serving as late as 1921, but there is no proof. One of the more believable stories comes from Long Pine, Nebraska in 1887, where people who knew Mather from Dodge City claimed to have seen him. Others said he moved to California and committed crimes under the alias Dave Taylor, or retired as a U. S.
customs officer in Washington State. His brother Josiah later said he was killed by moonshiners in the mountains of Tennessee, but he also told his children he never saw Dave again after they parted in Kansas. There is one other theory: that Mather was abducted by aliens. It first appeared in Frontier Times magazine in 1963 and was picked up by tabloids nationwide.
According to the legend, Mather was hunting cattle rustlers in northern Mexico in 1889 when he and his posse encountered what they described as a silver bowl in the sky. One member, a teenager named Jorge Hernandez, later claimed on his deathbed that the UFO stayed just ahead of them, darting back and forth. When the group split up to investigate, Mather went down a canyon alone and never came out. The strange craft was seen rising into the sky and vanished.
The posse found Mather’s horse, fully saddled and agitated, but no sign of Dave: no footprints, no blood, nothing. An indigenous tracker muttered something about “sky people” and rode away, refusing to speak of it again. There is no contemporary record of any of this. Nobody can say for certain what happened to Mysterious Dave Mather.
And in a way, that is fitting, given his nickname.
