The rope was already being readied when the first of them made a break for it. Henry Newton Brown had been in the Medicine Lodge jail for only a few hours, locked up with three other men after a bank robbery that had gone catastrophically wrong, and now a mob of several hundred citizens was storming the building. Brown had somehow worked his way out of his shackles, and when the jail door finally gave way, he made a mad dash for the street. For a moment, it actually looked as though he might get clear.

Then a local farmer named Billy Kelly raised a double-barrel shotgun and pulled both triggers. The blast nearly cut the former Caldwell city marshal in half. It was a staggering end for a man who, just weeks earlier, had been one of the most respected lawmen in Kansas. But the people of Caldwell had never known the truth about their marshal.

Had they been aware of Henry Newton Brown’s past, the news out of Medicine Lodge might not have come as such a shock. Henry Newton Brown was born near Rolla, Missouri, sometime around 1857. He and his older sister were orphaned at a young age and spent years being passed between relatives. While still a teenager, Brown headed west.

The details are sparse, but legend holds that he worked as a cowboy in Colorado before drifting to Texas to hunt buffalo. It was there, according to cowboy author Charlie Siringo, that Brown killed his first man. Siringo later wrote that Brown had “drifted into a cow camp in northern Texas, where he killed a man after firing three shots at him. ” What started the fight is unknown, but Siringo claimed the killing forced Brown to flee further west into New Mexico Territory.

Whether Siringo’s account is accurate is a matter of some doubt. Modern researchers have found no evidence that Brown ever hunted buffalo or killed anyone in Texas. But what is certain is that by the summer of 1876, Brown had arrived in Lincoln County, New Mexico, and taken a job with L. G.

Murphy & Company, the mercantile firm that would soon sit at the center of the bloodiest range war the territory had ever seen. Brown did not stay long, quitting after claiming he had been cheated on his wages. He went to work for cattle baron John Chisholm, then, by February of 1878, secured a job with a young Englishman named John Tunstall. That association changed everything.

The Lincoln County War was, at its core, a struggle between two factions fighting for control of the local trade. On one side stood the Murphy-Dolan faction, known as the House, which controlled the only store in Lincoln, held lucrative beef contracts with Fort Stanton and the nearby reservation, and employed a small army of outlaws as cattle suppliers and enforcers. On the other side stood Tunstall, his attorney Alexander McSween, and to a lesser extent John Chisholm. Tunstall had opened his own store, started a cattle operation, established a bank, and begun making deals with local farmers and ranchers, all of which threatened the House’s stranglehold on the region.

The tension between the factions eventually led to Tunstall’s murder. Brown was among the men riding with Tunstall on the morning of his death, accompanying the Englishman, Billy Bonney, and several others as they drove a small herd of horses. But Brown’s pony threw a shoe on the trail, forcing him to turn back. He was not present when Tunstall was assassinated.

He was present the following day, however, when Dick Brewer was sworn in as a special constable with arrest warrants for more than a dozen men charged with Tunstall’s murder. Brewer deputized Brown and several of his companions, including Billy the Kid and Doc Scurlock, forming the group that would become known as the Lincoln County Regulators. There was one problem: Sheriff William Brady was in the pocket of the very men who had ordered Tunstall’s killing. The Regulators knew any prisoner turned over to Brady would simply be set free, so they decided to take matters into their own hands.

On March 9, 1878, the Regulators killed Frank Baker and Buck Morton, both aligned with the Murphy-Dolan faction, along with William McCloskey, who was supposedly on their own side but had fallen under suspicion. Exactly what happened remains clouded. Dick Brewer claimed Baker shot McCloskey, and that the Regulators cut down Baker and Morton as they tried to flee. Another Regulator, Florencio Chavez, later insisted it was Brown who killed McCloskey.

Pat Garrett, years afterward, said it was Frank McNab. The truth was never settled. Less than a month later, Brown was present for the killing of Sheriff Brady and Deputy George Hindman. The Regulators slipped into Lincoln under cover of darkness and took up positions behind a wall near Tunstall’s store.

The next morning, when Brady and four deputies strolled by, the Regulators opened fire. Brady and Hindman died in the street. Justice of the Peace John Wilson, the very man who had deputized the Regulators a month earlier, caught a stray bullet in the buttocks. As for who fired the fatal shots, accounts vary.

Billy the Kid claimed he was aiming at Deputy Billy Matthews. Others credited Fred Waite with killing Hindman. Days later, the Regulators found themselves in another gunfight at Blazer’s Mill. They were eating lunch when a man known as Buckshot Roberts rode up on a mule.

Roberts had once ridden for the House, and while the Regulators had prices on their heads, Roberts was not there hunting them. He had recently sold his ranch and was at the mill to collect a check before fleeing the territory. It was pure bad luck that he arrived at exactly the wrong moment. In the fight that followed, Roberts killed Dick Brewer, shot Regulator John Middleton through the chest, and blew off one of George Coe’s fingers before the Regulators finally succeeded in killing him.

The deaths resulted in murder charges against Brown and his companions, along with additional indictments for the killings of Brady and Hindman. They were no longer legitimate deputies, and the violence continued unabated. Brown was present when George Coe shot a member of the Seven Rivers Gang in Lincoln on April 30, and just weeks later, Brown and the Regulators killed Manuel “The Indian” Segovia, another of the men who had helped murder Tunstall. The war ground toward its conclusion in July 1878.

On the fourteenth, Alexander McSween rode into Lincoln with roughly forty men, including Brown and Billy the Kid. The Regulators spread out through town and took up fighting positions. Sheriff George Peppin, Brady’s replacement, arrived with a posse that was quickly reinforced by Dolan gunmen and cowboys from Seven Rivers. The initial exchange wounded several men but quickly settled into a stalemate.

That changed on July 18, when Colonel Dudley arrived from Fort Stanton with a detachment of troops. Dudley claimed neutrality, but his presence shielded the Dolan men long enough for them to set McSween’s house on fire. With no other option, the Regulators came out shooting that evening. Brown and George Coe, holed up in a warehouse near Tunstall’s store, fled town under a hail of bullets.

The Battle of Lincoln effectively ended the war. Tunstall and McSween were dead, L. G. Murphy was dying, and many of the Regulators were wanted fugitives.

The mayhem was not over. Weeks later, Billy the Kid and several companions, including Brown, visited the Mescalero Reservation looking for fresh horses. By the time they left, Indian Agent Morris Bernstein was dead. Only a few Regulators were still riding together by then.

Rather than continue the fight, they stole a herd of horses and drove them to the Texas Panhandle, spending weeks selling the animals and socializing in the town of Tascosa. Eventually they went their separate ways. Billy the Kid and Tom Folliard headed back to New Mexico. Fred Waite went east to the Chickasaw Nation.

John Middleton tried his luck in Kansas. Brown remained in Tascosa, and, remarkably, pinned on a badge. A former outlaw arriving with a herd of stolen horses and becoming a lawman sounds absurd, but it was hardly unprecedented on the frontier. The job did not last.

Brown had a temper and was constantly butting heads with the locals. Sheriff Willingham found him “necessary to release him because he was always wanting to fight and get his mane up. ” He found work at a nearby ranch but was fired for much the same reason. The historian Philip Rasch put it simply: Brown was fired because he was always on the warpath.

He drifted north, working ranches in what is now Oklahoma, before eventually putting down roots in Caldwell, Kansas. Caldwell was not as famous as Dodge City or Abilene, but it was just as rough. The town’s first marshal was ambushed and killed in 1880. His successor, Frank Hunt, was shot to death in a Caldwell saloon a few months later.

The following year, another marshal died trying to arrest a pair of drunken cowboys. When things got bad again, the mayor swore in a new marshal named Bat Carr, with Brown as his deputy. The Caldwell Post introduced him in its July 6 edition as “one of the quickest men on the trigger in the Southwest. ”

This time the job stuck.

Brown and Carr made such a favorable impression that after just two months they were credited with cleaning up Caldwell. Brown even found a side job guarding strongboxes for the Cattlemen’s Association. What happened next is somewhat confusing. Carr left town for a few weeks and appointed Brown acting marshal.

Everything went well, and Carr resumed his duties upon his return. By December, however, trouble was brewing. Caldwell old-timers spoke of “peculiarities” in Carr’s personality, and he was removed from office on December 2. One local claimed Brown forced the removal, allegedly telling Carr he needed to resign, then reaching over and jerking the badge plumb off his vest when Carr refused.

Another account, from researcher Matt Kidd, holds that Carr was fired after shooting a prized German Shepherd owned by a leading citizen. However it happened, by late December 1882, Brown had stepped in as Carr’s replacement. Joining him as assistant marshal was another former outlaw living under the alias Ben Wheeler. Wheeler’s real name was Ben Robinson, and he had been a deputy sheriff in Texas.

It was there that Robinson surrendered a prisoner to a lynch mob. Not long after, he turned to crime and began robbing stores. He and his gang were captured in 1879, but rather than accept a long prison sentence, Robinson fled the state. He worked as a cowboy in Wyoming and Nebraska before abandoning his second wife, changing his name, and joining Brown in Caldwell.

Despite their criminal pasts, the two men did a remarkable job of maintaining the peace. The grateful citizens of Caldwell presented Henry with a fancy gold and silver mounted Winchester rifle as a token of their appreciation. A year later, he put it to deadly use, killing a gambler named Newt Boyce. Boyce had been on a bender, arrested the night before by Wheeler, and instead of sleeping it off, he kept drinking and making threats against both Wheeler and Brown.

Brown caught up with him on the boardwalk outside Phillip’s saloon. Boyce went for his gun. The marshal had the Winchester at the ready and put a bullet through the gambler’s right arm, shattering the bone before the slug passed into his side. Boyce lingered for a few hours and died at around three the next morning.

It was not Brown’s only deadly encounter on the job. Seven months earlier, he had killed a Pawnee named Spotted Horse. Spotted Horse periodically visited Caldwell, where, according to historian Bill O’Neal, he would “solicit business for one of his wives. ” One day, during one of these visits, he tried to break into someone’s house.

The owner tried to shoot him off, and the situation grew so tense that Spotted Horse drew his revolver. Cooler heads prevailed, but Brown was notified and eventually located Spotted Horse near the grocery store. When Spotted Horse reached for his pistol again, Brown followed suit. O’Neal described the scene: “Brown instantly drew his revolver and ordered his adversary to stop.

Spotted Horse continued to fumble in his blanket for a gun, and the marshal fired four rounds at the Indian. Despite the point-blank range and Brown’s exalted opinion of his talent, the first three shots had missed. Black powder clouded the air with a thick white haze, and Spotted Horse twisted away as Brown hurried his fire. Finally, the Indian located his gun and cleared the barrel from beneath the blanket, but at that instant Brown’s fourth bullet ended the fight.

The slug hit Spotted Horse in the forehead, sending him sprawling to the floor. ”

Not long after, Brown met a young woman named Maud Levergold. They married on March 26, 1884, and by all accounts, life was good. Brown bought a new house just a few blocks north of Main Street.

There was only one problem: he could not afford it. The marshal’s salary did not match his new lifestyle, and he was struggling to make ends meet. Rather than cut expenses or take a second job, Marshal Brown chose to make the greatest mistake of his life, one he would barely live long enough to regret. On Sunday, April 27, just over a month into his marriage, Brown told the mayor he needed time off to hunt for a murderer down in the territory.

The mayor agreed. Henry kissed his wife goodbye. And rather than heading south, Brown and Wheeler, along with two cowboys named William Smith and John Wesley, turned west toward Medicine Lodge. They arrived on April 30 during a heavy thunderstorm and dismounted behind the Medicine Valley Bank.

Smith stayed outside with the horses while Brown, Wheeler, and Wesley stepped inside. They ordered the bankers to put their hands up. Bank president E. W.

Payne reached for a pistol, and all hell broke loose. The robbers shot Payne and gunned down cashier George Gephart. But before he died, Gephart managed to work the vault’s combination, depriving the robbers of a single dollar. Across the street, a Reverend George Friedly heard the shots and alerted the town marshal.

The marshal recruited a small posse of local cowboys who had taken refuge from the storm inside a livery stable. One of them was a man named Barney O’Connor. As fate would have it, Barney had been one of Brown’s foremen on a ranch where he had worked before pinning on a badge. When Brown and his accomplices made their getaway through a hail of bullets, it was Barney who led the pursuit.

According to author and historian Bob Boze Bell, “Two and a half miles south of town, an outlaw’s horse gives out. Another robber picks him up and the outlaws ride into a box canyon to make a stand. Quickly surrounded by the impromptu posse, the robbers hold out for several hours but give up before more reinforcements arrive. As the outlaws are brought back to town, the citizens are shocked to discover that all the robbers were well-known in Medicine Lodge.

Incredibly, two of the outlaws are lawmen from a nearby county and one of them is the Caldwell City Marshal. ”

That evening, Brown sat down and wrote a letter to his wife. “Darlin’ wife, I am in jail here. Four of us tried to rob the bank and one man shot one of the men in the bank.

I want you to come and see me as soon as you can. I will send you all of my things and you can sell them, but keep the Winchester. It is hard for me to write this letter, but it was all for you, my sweet wife, and for the love that I have for you. Do not go back on me.

If you do, it will kill me. Be true to me for as long as you live and come see me if you think enough of me. If it does not kill us, we will come out all right after a while. Maud, I did not shoot anyone and didn’t want the others to kill anyone, but they did and that’s all there is about it.

Signed, H. N. Brown. ”

Whether Brown was telling the truth about not shooting anyone is open to debate.

A man named McNeal, who was with the bank president as he lay dying, claimed Payne identified the shooter as Brown’s accomplice, John Wesley. By that point, it hardly mattered. The good people of Medicine Lodge felt much the same way as Gus McCrae put it in Lonesome Dove: you ride with an outlaw, you die with an outlaw. Later that night, they formed a lynch mob and stormed the jail.

It was not a handful of men. Several hundred descended on the prisoners. Unbeknownst to them, Brown and the others had already slipped out of their shackles. When the mob pried open the door, Brown bolted.

For a second, it looked like he might make it. Then Billy Kelly’s shotgun blast nearly cut him in half. Wheeler made it about a hundred yards further before being shot multiple times. He was still alive when the mob caught up, so they jerked him to his feet and dragged him and the other two down to a grove of trees by the creek.

The wounded Wheeler whispered a confession and begged for his life, but his pleas were ignored. Wesley asked that his mother in Texas not be told how he died. Smith simply requested that his saddle be sold and the money sent to his mother, who also lived in Texas. Moments later, all three went swinging from an elm tree.

The citizens of Caldwell were horrified. At first, they refused to believe their beloved marshal had tried to rob a bank. When reality set in, they sent a formal apology to Medicine Lodge and held a public auction to sell the dead outlaws’ horses and saddles, the money presumably going to the victims’ families. As for Maud, she did not sell the Winchester.

She gave it away. She eventually moved to Indiana, where she took a job as a nurse in an asylum, rising in time to become superintendent of the entire institution. She wrote a short memoir near the end of her life, and the only mention of her late husband was a single line stating that she married H. N.

Brown in 1883 and that he had “passed away many years ago. ”

The prized Winchester eventually made its way to Texas, then passed to a collector. In 1977, it was donated to the Kansas Historical Society, where it can still be seen at the Kansas Museum of History in Topeka. There is something genuinely tragic about a man who survived the Lincoln County War, clawed his way up from orphan to respected lawman, and then threw it all away because he could not make the math work on a marshal’s salary.

Brown apparently wanted one more chance and never got it. But there were others to consider. Cashier George Gephart left behind a wife and at least one child. The local papers wrote after his death that he “had been a resident of our town for some 4 years past, and was widely known and universally respected by all of his acquaintances.

A man of excellent business capacity, he had already accumulated a handsome competence. In the prime of life and vigor of his manhood, with a most comfortable home and pleasant family, the future seemed to have in store for him abundant years filled with golden fruitage of happiness. The respect of his fellow citizens was shown by the fact that the business houses of town, we believe without exception, were draped in mourning. His death has aroused the deepest, the most general sympathy.

We have lost a most excellent man, a kind husband, father, and one of our most enterprising citizens. ”

Edward Payne, the bank president, also left behind a wife and several children, kids forced to grow up without a father. Henry Brown’s actions helped destroy at least two families.

In the end, the respected marshal of Caldwell, the man who had ridden with Billy the Kid and fought through the Lincoln County War, died in a hail of buckshot outside a jail in Medicine Lodge, Kansas, no richer than the day he had arrived, and remembered by his own widow in a single line.