BARNETT, J. Graham (a.k.a. Bush) (1890-1931)
This mean-spirited man was born in Files Valley, near Fort Worth, Texas, and for unknown reasons moved even farther west into West Texas to become a cowboy. In Langtry, Bush Barnett and another hand, Reid House, took to arguing while rounding up cattle. It seems that Reid had only one good eye, and Bush shot it out. Some friends then hustled Bush on board a train to Del Rio, Texas, where he surrendered. A Jury in Fort Stockton set him free.
Within the year Bush shot three Mexican but nothing came of that either. By 1916 he had signed on for a brief stay with the Texas Rangers, and while on the job he killed a hack driver at Big Lake, Texas. Nobody complained, so it wasn't until December 6, 1931, that fate finally caught up with Barnett, in Rankin, Texas. Two accounts exist regarding this shootout. Some claimed that Bud Fowler, the Upton County sheriff, was trying to blackmail Barnett, while other accounts say Barnett was trying to blackmail Fowler. At any rate, both men were in town at the same time and driving Model As. At the town's one major intersection, they
happened to come eyeball to eyeball on a busy street. Bush Barnett got his six-shooter to cracking, but it was no match for Fowler's submachine gun. The feud was over.
BASS, Sam (1851-1878)
Sam Bass was born on July 21, 1851, on a farm near Mitchell, Indiana. His mother died in 1861, his father in 1864. The court appointed his uncle, David Sheeks, guardian of the seven children. In 1869, Bass left home. Before long he appeared in Denton, Texas, where he worked as a farm laborer for Sheriff Thomas J. Egan, better known as "Dad Egan." Around 1874, someone described Sam as about five feet eight inches tall, stooped in the shoulders, with a sallow complexion and dark hair. He rarely looked anyone in the eye and seldom spoke. When he did speak, it was in a sharp, nasal twang.
That same year he met Henry Underwood, five years older than Bass, a Union army veteran who had killed a man and then moved to Denton County, Texas. Meanwhile, Bass and Armstrong Egan, the sheriff's brother, plus Underwood, purchased a gray mare, historically known as the Denton Mare. But winning racehorses attract unsavory characters, as the owners found out when they brought in the 26year-old Joel Collins, who had previous indictments for theft on his record, as well as assault with intent to kill.
The group showed up in San Antonio during 1876, likely sold the Denton Mare, and then grabbed a herd of cattle that they promptly drove north and sold in the Black Hills. But the money they earned they just as quickly gambled and drank away in Deadwood, South Dakota. So they started considering other trades, notably stage and train robbery. The gang during these forays included Sam Bass, Joel Collins, Robert McKimie (Little Reddy or Little Reddie), Bill Potts, Jim Berry, Jack Davis, and Tom Nixon. They called themselves the Collins Gang.
First they stole saddle horses. Then on March 25, 1877, they hit the Cheyenne and Black Hills stage, killing the driver, John Slaughter. The only worthwhile thing that came out of this awkward holdup was that the outlaws weeded out Little Reddy, suggesting that he leave the group and join another gang. Meanwhile, stage robbing in the area proved epidemic; various other parties started practicing the same trade. The Collins Gang switched to trains.
On September 18, 1877, they stopped the Union Pacific a few hours out of Cheyenne at a town called Big Springs. The robbers beat one person senseless and rode away with several thousand dollars, much of it in passenger "contributions." However, although the robbery had gone off perfectly, someone had recognized Joel Collins. A week later, with posses scouring the countryside, the bandits divided the loot and split. A sheriff's posse caught up with Collins and Potts near Ellis, Kansas, and killed them. The law also caught up with Berry near Mexico, Missouri, and filled one leg with buckshot. He died of gangrene.
Within a month or so of the robbery, Sam Bass was back in Denton, Texas, renewing his friendship with Francis M. "Frank" Jackson and Henry Underwood. On December 22, 1877, the three men robbed the Concho stage. Underwood was quickly captured, but that did not slow Bass and Jackson. On January 26, 1878, they hit the Weatherford and Fort Worth stage. Meanwhile, Seaborn Barnes, a slender cowboy with a prominent nose, and Tom Spotswood, a cowboy with a glass eye, joined the gang. On February 22, the robbers held up the Houston & Texas Central at Allen, Texas, netting a few thousand dollars in cash. Although it was a successful robbery, the law captured Spotswood within four days.
On March 18, the gang robbed a train at Hutchins, and on April 4, around midnight, it struck the Texas and Pacific at Eagle Ford, Texas. The holdup netted only a few hundred dollars. Bass now planned a train robbery on April 10 at Mesquite, near Dallas, so he brought in two additional associates, Albert G. Herndon and Samuel J. Pipes. Even that proved insufficient, however, as resistance was heavy. Barnes was severely wounded, and Pipes received a minor wound. Furthermore, the Texas Rangers were getting active. Before long, Elijah Mayes, Herndon, and John Skaggs were in jail. Mayes was acquitted; Herndon got life in prison.
Bass no longer had time to worry about finding additional trains to rob; the Rangers had him concentrating on his life. Posses seemed to be everywhere. At Salt Creek, near Cottondale, in Wise County, the train robbers made the mistake of roping their horses together. Arkansas Johnson died as he tried to mount. The remaining outlaws fled into nearby thickets and escaped.
Following that fight, Bass switched his strategy to banks, not realizing he had a traitor near him. While
Jim Murphy toyed with joining the gang, he was sending messages to the Rangers regarding the outlaws' whereabouts. It was Murphy who suggested the Williamson County Bank in Round Rock as an easy place to rob. The desperadoes set the time for July 20 at 3:30 in the afternoon, after the day's receipts had been deposited. Shortly after noon, Sam Bass and friends casually rode into town-and the Rangers were waiting.
As Bass, Seaborn Barnes, and Jackson entered a store to purchase tobacco, Williamson County deputy sheriffs A. W. "Caige" Grimes and Maurice Moore also walked inside. Grimes stepped up behind Bass and asked if he was carrying a weapon. Sam jerked it out and started firing. Grimes was shot dead; Moore took a bullet through the lungs. The outlaws, uninjured during the fusillade except for Bass, who lost two fingers from his right hand, rushed outside.
By now the Texas Rangers were closing in, forcing Barnes, Jackson, and Bass down an alley. Ranger Dick Ware killed Seaborn Barnes, and Ranger George Harold gave Sam Bass his fatal bullet. Jackson nevertheless helped Bass mount. The two outlaws galloped out of town. The traitor, Jim Murphy, identified the dead Barnes.
Jackson and Bass rode three miles until Bass could ride no farther. Jackson went on without him and vanished. On the following day, the Rangers found a man lying under a tree who gasped as they rode up, "Don't shoot. I surrender." He admitted to being Sam Bass, and he died of his wounds on Sunday, July 21, 1878, his 27th birthday.
Sam Bass and Seaborn Barnes are buried side by side in the Round Rock Cemetery.
Se6 {"kO: HAROLD, GEORGE; WARE, RICHARD CLAYTON
BAYLOR, George Wythe (1832-1916)
George Wythe Baylor was born on August 2, 1832, in Indian Territory (Fort Gibson, Cherokee Nation), the eighth child of Dr. John Walker Baylor, an assistant surgeon of the Seventh U.S. Infantry. In 1836, the father left the military and moved to Natchez, Mississippi, where he died. The family then settled at Fort Gibson, where George went to school. Later he attended Baylor University before climbing on a mule in 1854 and striking out for the goldfields of California. There he killed a desperado during a gunfight near Santa Rosa. In 1856, he joined the San Fran cisco Vigilance Committee, but by the fall of 1859 he was living with his brother John Robert Baylor in Weatherford, Texas. The two men led a group of gunmen into Paint Creek, in Parker County, where they slew and scalped nine marauding Comanches. In the 1860 census for Parker County, Texas, George listed his occupation as "Indian killer."
On March 17, 1861, three days after the fall of Fort Sumter, George and his brother John joined the Second Texas Mounted Rifles, which marched on
West Texas. The force easily entered El Paso, friendly Confederate territory, then moved north along the Rio Grande and took Mesilla, New Mexico, which was Union territory. Baylor thereafter pulled out of West Texas and Joined Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee. It ended with Baylor holding the wounded Johnston in his arms as he died. The 30-year-old Baylor, now a colonel, returned to Texas and married 21-year-old Sallie Sydnor on April 22, 1863. Baylor then waged a successful cavalry assault against Union forces during the Red River campaign, receiving praise for his gallantry during battles at Pleasant Hill and Mansfield.
Baylor now anticipated he should be promoted to brigadier general, but instead he was ordered to serve under Col. David Smith Terry. Baylor refused and took his case on April 6, 1865, to Gen. John Austin Wharton. Wharton and Baylor exchanged insults at Gen. John B. Magruder's headquarters in the Fannin Hotel at Galveston. Wharton slapped Baylor, and Baylor shot and killed the unarmed Wharton. Baylor might have been executed, but the South surrendered soon thereafter, and the affair became a civilian matter. In 1868, a jury found Baylor not guilty of murder.
For the next three years Baylor did little but twiddle his thumbs, prior to writing Texas governor Oran N. Roberts in February 1879 and requesting a Texas Ranger commission. It arrived within days, and Baylor found himself on his way to Ysleta, Texas, the seat of El Paso County. For weeks Baylor and his Rangers chased Victorio, a prominent Apache leader, back and forth through the mountain canyons of West Texas, southern New Mexico, and northern Chihuahua-there apparently being no international problems about entering Mexico as long as it was Indians that Baylor pursued. Baylor even extended an invitation to the Mexican militia to ride north across the border and "kill all the reservation Indians they could find." On January 29, 1881, Baylor
caught up with six Mescalerao Apaches who had previously overrun a stage near Ysleta, Texas, killing the driver and a passenger. Because the Indians wore blankets, the Rangers could not make distinctions between male and female. So all of the Apaches were slain, except for one woman and child.
In 1882, Baylor campaigned for sheriff of El Paso County but fell short. In early 1883, Baylor's Rangers, operating out of their territory, broke up portions of the John Kinney gang of cattle rustlers operating around Rincon, in southern New Mexico. By late 1883, Captain Baylor had the El Paso jail so full of thieves and rustlers that some had to be chained to trees in the Ranger camp at Ysleta. Meanwhile, over in the Texas communities of Toyah, Alpine, and Pecos, Ranger forces were stretched thin enforcing the law. Nevertheless, Texas now needed Baylor at central Texas, northwest of Austin, where fence cutting had become epidemic. Baylor (who had been promoted to major) soon had the situation under control and returned to El Paso County.
On April 15, 1885, the Ranger unit in El Paso disbanded, and George Baylor resigned. Turning to politics, Baylor was elected to the Texas House of Representatives from El Paso in 1886. His bill created Brewster County, eventually the largest in Texas.
Baylor's bid for reelection failed in 1888. Thereafter he held various other political posts, such as district and circuit court clerk in El Paso County. He ran for mayor of Ysleta, failed to achieve it, and then slapped the man who did. A court fined him $5.45. In 1905, he commenced writing articles for the El Paso Dai& Heyald as well as the Galveston Da4y and the News. Baylor lived in Guadalajara, Mexico, for a while; following that, he moved to San Antonio, Texas, where he died on March 17, 1916. He was buried there in the Confederate cemetery.
-3615- CO! GILLETT, JAMES BUCHANAN; JONES, FRANK; KINNEY, JOHN
BEHAN, John Harris (1845-1912)
If-as is frequently believed-Wyatt Earp has been overrated as a frontier lawman, quite possibly his personal and political adversary, John Harris Behan, has been underrated and mischaracterized. Much of the primary source material soundly supports a conclusion that Behan, on balance, left a record of worthy achievements.
Born in Westport, Missouri, a jumping-off point for the Santa Fe Trail, on October 23, 1845, John Harris Behan, a man of medium height, the progeny of respected parents and grandparents, made his way across the plains. By 1863, the same year Arizona became a territory, he made it his home. John found employment in Tucson delivering freight to military installations. Around 1865 he moved north to Prescott and engaged in prospecting and real estate speculation. He also operated a sawmill. Newspapers made frequent favorable mentions (such as "nervy") of his Indian-fighting abilities. Yavapai County sheriff John P. Bourke appointed him as a deputy. He resigned later to campaign for county recorder and was elected. Behan served the community as a representative of the Arizona Territorial Legislature on two occasions. He married Victoria H. Zaff in 1869 and had a son, Albert Price Behan, on July 6, 1871. However, law enforcement was in Behan's blood, so in 1871 Johnny Behan became the Yavapai County sheriff.
In 1875, Yavapai County granted Victoria Behan a divorce on the grounds that her husband had "openly and notoriously visited houses of prostitution ... and that he did cohabit with the inmates." A judge ordered John Behan to pay $16.66 per month in support of Albert, their son.
When John moved to Tombstone in September 1880, he engaged in the livery-stable business and then became a Pima County deputy sheriff. Following the creation of Cochise County, territorial governor John C. Fremont appointed Behan as its first sheriff.
Behan is generally remembered for his role as Wyatt Earp's foil during the tragic events leading up to, and the aftermath of, the bloody confrontation usually dubbed the "Gunfight at the OK Corral." However, Behan's actual participation is usually skewed. On the night before the OK Corral gunfight, Sheriff John Behan, Tombstone chief of police Virgil Earp, Tom McLaury, and Ike Clanton played poker all night in the Occidental Saloon. While Behan was on speaking terms with Virgil, he apparently had hostile feelings toward Wyatt; the problem likely stemmed from Josephine (Josie, Sadie) Sarah Marcus, an aspiring actress by some accounts, an attractive saloon woman by others. She and Behan had had a common-law relationship that dissolved somewhere around July 1881, when her affections switched to Wyatt Earp. Some opinions indicate that Josephine left John Behan because of Behan's continuous philandering. Whatever, Wyatt welcomed her into his life, a fact that could not help but trouble future relations between the two men.
Sheriff John Behan (Ben Traywick Collection)
Be that as it may, on October 26, 1881, Sheriff Behan slept late and awoke to learn of impending trouble between the Earps and the cowboys. Behan shaved and found Virgil Earp on the street, where they discussed what was happening. Behan then went in search of the cowboys and found them near the corral-the fight did not take place in the OK Corral, although that was the closest identifiable landmark. He spoke briefly with them, then saw the Earps and Doc Holliday approaching and moved to them, obviously hoping to defuse the situation and prevent bloodshed. It was too late.
Behan later arrested Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, charging them with murder. Following that, he dropped out of most Tombstone affairs.
In October 1887, Johnny became assistant superintendent for the Arizona Territorial Prison at Yuma. Shortly thereafter he, along with others, performed heroically during a prison break in which several inmates were slain. He killed an escapee, and his quick action saved a guard's life. On April 7, 1888, Behan was elevated to prison superintendent, a post he maintained throughout considerable political turmoil until July 1890.
On June 3, 1893, Behan became an inspector of customs at El Paso, Texas. Shortly thereafter (March 12, 1894), he received a 50 percent pay increase and was promoted to Chinese exclusion agent. For the next several years Behan traveled extensively throughout the Southwest arresting illegal Chinese immigrants and performing investigative assignments relating to U.S. Customs violations.
At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, when he was 53 years old, Behan volunteered and became the corral master at Tampa, Florida. In Cuba he was promoted to superintendent of transportation. When the conflict ended, trouble in
the Far East erupted, and once again Behan (at age 55) served his country during an overseas entanglement. Some reports describe him as a "secret agent" during the Boxer Rebellion.
Back in the United States, Behan returned to El Paso and found employment as a purchasing agent for Texas Bitulithic, a firm engaged in street paving. While in El Paso (1908), Johnny Behan campaigned for sheriff but was defeated. On December 14, 1910, the acting governor of Arizona Territory commissioned Behan as a railway policeman for the Southern Pacific. In conjunction with this employment, Behan accepted responsibility for the Commissary Department during expansion operations in Mexico. Later, he supervised engineering parties repairing levee breaks on the lower Colorado River.
On June 7, 1912, he died of natural causes in a Tucson hospital and was buried in the Holy Hope Cemetery.
.3615. c; COWBOYS; EARP, MORGAN; EARP, VIRGIL; EARP, WYATT BERRY STAPP; GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL; HARTLEE, B. F.; HOLLIDAY, JOHN HENRY
BELL, James W. (a.k.a. Jim Long) (1853-1881)
The sudden tragedy that ended James W. Bell's life has overshadowed other aspects of his biography. In 1875, Bell, who was originally from Maryland, made
his way to the Lone Star State, where at the age of 22 he enlisted in Capt. Dan W. Roberts's Company D, Frontier Battalion, Texas Rangers.
Bell and two other rangers approached Captain Roberts for permission to visit Austin. Given the OK, the three rangers collected money from comrades willing to "pony up," their purpose being to purchase the relatively recent and highly prized Model 1873 Winchesters-$50 for a rifle, $40 for a carbine. The trip accomplished, J. W. Bell's marksmanship was noted when he returned from the river with "six or eight wild geese and a dozen mallard ducks." Otherwise, Bell rode on numerous scouts and led an exhilarating life.
The Encyclopedia of Lawmen, Outlaws, and Gunfighters Page 5
