Be that as it may, undisclosed hard feelings arose between Coe and Abilene city marshal Wild Bill Hickok. On Thursday evening, October 5, Coe and 20 or 30 friends had been wandering the evening streets, sometimes dragging friends into saloons and forcing them to buy drinks for the crowd. At other times, they walked into the bars and tossed those not offering to buy drinks over the counter.
Sometime during that evening, probably not long after dark, Coe shot at a dog. Hickok came on the run, a confrontation arose ... and a gunfight started. When the smoke cleared, Mike Williams, a special deputy hired by the Novelty Theater, lay dead, shot by Hickok by mistake. The marshal had a bullet hole in his coat where a bullet passed through. Another bullet had passed between his legs. As for Phil Coe, he lay moaning, a bullet in his stomach; he would die in agony three days later. The remains were shipped to Brenham, where he today lies in the Prairie Lea Cemetery.
See (91190; ABILENE, KANSAS; HARDIN, JOHN WESLEY; HICKOK, JAMES BUTLER; THOMPSON BEN
COGHLAN, Patrick (1822-1911)
Pat Coghlan, an Irish immigrant who reached American shores in 1845, enlisted in the U.S. Army and was discharged in 1852 at San Antonio, Texas. For a while he tried his hand at farming and trading cattle in the Texas counties of Mason and Menard. By
1873, he had migrated to New Mexico Territory, settling at Tularosa, where he began acquiring land at Three Rivers, 20 miles north of Tularosa, on the western slope of the Sierra Blanca Mountains. By whatever questionable means, Coghlan always had plenty of cash. He built a substantial adobe house with walls three feet thick and obsessively persisted in efforts to acquire land and cattle, eventually carving out an empire, over which he ruled with an iron fist and seemingly-at least for a while-with legal impunity. While it lasted, Coghlan was indeed "king of the Tularosa," a name bestowed upon him by local and regional newspapers.
With headquarters at both Tularosa and Three Rivers, and property that included a store, saloon, and wagon yard, town lots and ranches, and herds of cattle, Coghlan concentrated on living the good life. He smoked fine cigars, drank aged whiskey, raced purebred horses, and took occasional trips to California and Ireland.
Coghlan in fact dealt primarily in stolen cattle, the well-known gunman and cattle rustler Billy the Kid supplying much of his beef. Coghlan owned his own slaughterhouse and had lucrative contracts to supply beef to the military unit at nearby Fort Stanton. However, Coghlan had his detractors, one of them livestock detective Charles Siringo, who submitted sufficient evidence (hides of freshly butchered cattle with Texas brands) to cause John William Poe, sheriff and U.S. deputy marshal, to arrest him. Due to legal shenanigans and prosecutorial timidity during the 1882 spring court session at Mesilla, New Mexico, Coghlan was offered a plea bargain, a one-count guilty plea in exchange for a fine of $150. He accepted the deal. Noted southwestern attorney Albert J. Fountain, representing the cattlemen's interests, filed a $10,000 civil suit against Coghlan after the plea was entered.
During extended legal machinations, on April 17, 1882, George Nesmith (a prosecution witness against Coghlan), his wife, and his little girl were brutally murdered near White Sands. Maximo Apodaca and Rupert Lara were tried for the killings. Lara was hanged. Maximo Apodaca confessed and received a life sentence (he committed suicide in prison). The prosecutors tried to implicate Coghlan in the slayings, but the effort failed for lack of evidence.
Coghlan's legal problems continued to cause such financial woes that gradually he ceased to be "king of the Tularosa." In poor health and with a personal estate by then figured at $4,300, Coghlan died in El Paso, Texas, on January 22, 1911. El Paso newspapers made no mention of his past exploits and relationships, instead referring only to his extraordinary strength, describing him as one of the strongest men in the region. He is buried in El Paso's Concordia Cemetery.
.366 BILLY THE KID; FOUNTAIN, ALBERT JENNINGS; GARRETT, PATRICK FLOYD JARVIS; LINCOLN COUNTY WAR; POE, JOHN WILLIAM
COLT Revolver
In February 1836, Samuel Colt patented a repeating, hand-held firearm based on a revolving cylinder. It became the No. 5 Belt Revolver and was sold to the Texas Rangers. During the Mexican War, Samuel Walker, a Texas Ranger, helped Colt design what became the Colt-Walker Revolver, better known as the Walker Colt. In 1851, Colt introduced the .36 caliber Navy Revolver. Colt's Single-Action Army Revolver, popularly known as the "Peacemaker," remains the icon of the American Wild West.
SEE co; WALKER COLT
COMANCHEROS
Comancheros were Spanish-Mexicans permitted in Comanche camps for purposes of trade. Of course, often they lived there and raised children. AngloAmericans generally thought of Comancheros as half-breeds and renegades. A Comanchero, however, did not have to have Comanche blood, although through intermarriage many of them did. As a general rule, the Comanchero made his living by ransoming Mexican or American captives and by trading firearms to the Indians. In short, the Comancheros became middlemen between the Spanish and the Indians, trading hides from one party for guns from another and brokering plunder and captives, regardless of who the buyers or sellers were.
Over time, the Comancheros often became valuable to Americans, as in the case of Rachael Plummer, taken captive by Comanches and brutalized for years. She was returned to her family only when New Mexico Americans learned of her fate and commissioned a group of Comancheros to ransom her.
Comancheros remained active even beyond the Civil War, in particular trading rifles from New Mex
ico and Arizona ranchers for livestock driven in from Texas by raiding Comanche warriors. These actions brought about such bitterness toward Comanches, however, that ultimately the Texans destroyed the Comanches as a people. Only the middlemen, the Comancheros, survived. Over time they integrated in mainstream society, perhaps becoming Main Street businessmen.
CONSTABLE
The position and power of constables in the law enforcement chain varied from state to state, but as a general rule constables served elective or appointive four-year terms. Justices of the peace often appointed their own constables or served in the position themselves. The constable's duties generally included serving processes, attending court sessions, and otherwise performing the usual, established duties of precinct peace officers. Constables often served concurrent as well as overlapping terms as town marshals, police chiefs, or deputy sheriffs. In their own jurisdictions they served as the precinct counterpart of the county sheriff. They also earned fees for serving writs; summoning juries, witnesses, or grand juries; for attendance in court; for travel; and even for hanging sentenced prisoners. Most constables in the Old West carried firearms and frequently used them. Constables also could be powerful allies, one example occurring during the Lincoln County War. While the House of Murphy enjoyed the support of sheriffs in Lincoln County, New Mexico, the opposing faction, nominally led by attorney Alexander McSween, had the support of a justice of the peace, John Wilson. Wilson appointed deputy constables so as to give legitimacy to the McSween cause.
S66 450: LINCOLN COUNTY WAR
CONTENTION City
This site lies 12 miles northwest of Tombstone, Arizona, on the San Pedro River. It is a former tiny mining community with the requisite saloons and brothels. Its claim to fame arrived with the nighttime Tombstone stage on March 15, 1881. The stage carried eight passengers and $26,000 in gold, but three masked men stopped it. During the resultant shootout, one passenger and a shotgun guard were slain. The outlaws were driven off, one of them wounded.
The crime was never solved, although Kate Elder, former bedmate of John "Doc" Holliday, later signed an affidavit swearing that Doc had participated in the robbery. Nothing came of it.
S66 Co: HOLLIDAY, JOHN HENRY; TOMBSTONE, ARIZONA
COOK,Thalis Tucker (1858-1918)
Born in Uvalde County, Texas, Thalis Tucker Cook enlisted in Company F, Frontier Battalion, Texas Rangers on June 4, 1874, under the command of renowned Capt. Neal Coldwell. At the time he signed on, Cook was 16 years old, the youn
gest lawman ever to serve in the unit. In contrast to the rough lifestyle of many frontier lawmen, Thalis Cook throughout his career remained a serious Bible student and led a fervently religious life. He no doubt even prayed for his wayward cousin in New Mexico Territory, one of Billy the Kid's buddies, Tom O'Folhard, later slain by a posse headed by Lincoln County sheriff Patrick Floyd Garrett.
An epileptic, Thalis Cook trained his horse to stand completely still during his seizures and resultant losses of consciousness. Once an attack passed, it was back to normal for man and beast. In fact, the disability affected Cook hardly at all. Throughout West Texas he was a crack shot with both rifle and six-shooter, and a demonlike fighting man when he had to be.
After two separate enlistments with the ranger service, Cook signed on as a deputy sheriff in Presidio County, the Big Bend country of Texas. His best remembered gunfight occurred on January 31, 1891, while he was working in conjunction with Texas Ranger Jim Putman in the Glass Mountains north of Marathon, Texas. The lawmen had been seeking Fine Gilliland, wanted for the murder of H. H. Poe. As these things sometimes happened, the two lawmen literally collided with Gilliland. As the desperado watched them approach, he eased a cocked sixshooter into his hand, the weapon obscured under a coat draped across the front of his saddle. Upon recognizing Cook and Putman as peace officers, Gilliland fired, the bullet smashing Cook's knee. Another shot downed Cook's horse. Nevertheless, the officers killed Gilliland during that exchange of gunfire.
Cook's leg mended stiff and straight, making it difficult thereafter for him to mount and ride. In exasperation Cook asked a doctor to rebreak the leg and reset it slightly bent, to allow him to sit properly in the saddle once again.
On September 27, 1896, while tracking outlaws through the Glass Mountains and farther west into the Davis Mountains, Cook, along with ranger captain John R. Hughes and a small group of other rangers, shot it out with cattle rustlers. Two of the rustlers were slain. One escaped. The lawmen recovered the pilfered livestock.
Thalis Cook in his twilight years moved to eastern Texas, where he died near Marshall on July 21, 1918.
.S+°e 4190! GARRETT, PATRICK FLOYD JARVIS; HUGHES, JOHN REYNOLDS
COOK, William Tuttle (a.k.a. John Williams; John Mayfield) (1873-?)
Bill Cook lived an interesting if dangerous life. His mother died early, and Bill grew up in the Cherokee Nation (Oklahoma), where he had been born, near Fort Gibson. He worked initially as a federal and military scout, but he got into trouble in 1893, when federal judge Isaac Parker gave him a month in jail for selling liquor to the Indians.
William (Bill) Cook (Robert G. McCubbin Collection)
Within a year Cook had organized an outlaw gang calculated to terrorize Oklahoma. The outlaws slashed back and forth across the territory, robbing trains, banks, and businesses, as well as travelers. Tenacious federal marshals and local lawmen gradually decimated the desperadoes, killing many of them and capturing the rest, including Crawford Goldsby, better known as Cherokee Bill.
Oddly, Cook himself wasn't known positively to have killed anyone, so when Borden County, Texas, sheriff Thomas D. Love and Chaves County, New Mexico, sheriff C. C. Perry overtook Cook near Fort Sumner, New Mexico, on January 11, 1895, he surrendered without a fight. A month and one day later, on February 12, judge Isaac Parker found Cook guilty of bank robbery. He handed Cook a 45-year sentence, to be served in Albany, New York. Cook died in prison.
.See GOLDSBY, CRAWFORD; PARKER, JUDGE ISAAC.
COOMER, Daniel (a.k.a. Dan) (1846-1890)
Dan Coomer falls into that genre of frontier personalities not actually classified as lawmen but who could always be relied upon to jump into a fray on the "right" side. Cattle rustlers, thieves, and jail escapees all too late learned that it didn't pay to mess with Dan or his livestock.
Born in Washington County, Tennessee, Dan moved with his family to Van Buren, Arkansas, where at the outbreak of the Civil War he volunteered for the Confederate army but was rejected due to his age. However, he worked as a teamster hauling military supplies for troops until the close of the conflict. After that, in the spring of 1867, he and his brother, Jesse, took up cattle ranching on the Mimbres River in southwestern New Mexico.
By 1872, Dan Coomer had moved closer to Silver City, by now ranching in the Santa Rita Mountains. A local newspaper editor wrote:
This was at that interesting time in the history of Grant county when thieves had things petty much their own way. Mr. Coo»zer& strrong ideas of right and wrong caused hi»z to make a relentless war on that class of people..Single and alone he followed the thieves for days and nights without stopping. He always recovered his stock and in several instances started the thieves on the road to a better life.
During September 1879, rustlers departed with 65 head of Coomer's cattle. Coomer contacted Grant
County sheriff Harvey Whitehill, who for unknown reasons declined to offer assistance. Coomer and a fellow rancher therefore pursued the thieves, picking up the trail near Silver City. Coomer followed it through the Burro Mountains, down the Gila River, across the Carlisle Mountains, down the Gila once again, and on to Pueblo Viejo. The trail extended all the way to Fort Grant, Arizona Territory, and then doubled back into the Burro Mountains, where after a grueling 24 days Coomer finally caught up with the beleaguered thieves.
There are two versions of what happened next. One account says the rustlers were slain while resisting a citizen's arrest; the other says they were shot down while trying to escape. Either way, two outlaws were dead. Back at Silver City, Coomer looked up Deputy Sheriff Dan Tucker and inquired if there had been any warrants issued for his arrest involving the dead outlaws. There hadn't been, nor would there be.
During the following year of 1880, rustlers made off with 20 head of Coomer's livestock and sold them to a civilian butcher at Fort Cummings. At first the butcher remained tightlipped as to the source of the beef. His hesitation ended, however, when Coomer shoved an "eared-back" Winchester in his face. He quickly named men called Bud Rice and Johnson. When the thieves learned Coomer was hunting them, they sent him a spate of death threats. Nevertheless, at Fort Bayard, Dan Coomer and Bud Rice came face to face. Rice died with a bullet in his head and two in the torso. Johnson disappeared.
On March 10, 1884, a wild jailbreak occurred at Silver City, New Mexico. Kit Joy, Mitch Lee, Frank Taggart, and George Washington Cleveland, all imprisoned for a murderous train robbery near Gage Station, plus convicted killer Carlos Chavez and suspected horse thief Charles Spencer, seized weapons, overpowered their guards, stole horses, and fled. A citizen, J. C. Jackson, jumped on his horse and followed the escaping prisoners, being careful to stay out of rifle range. Two or three miles out of town Jackson was joined by three posse members, one of them Dan Coomer. While Jackson and the others deployed in a flanking movement, Coomer charged the fugitives. Spotting Coomer alone and unaided, the outlaws did an about-face and began firing. They all missed. Dan Coomer coolly dismounted with his rifle, took aim, and killed Chavez's horse. The outlaws again turned and ran, Chavez now riding double.
In a brief time the posse overtook the outlaws. Coomer wounded Mitch Lee. Cleveland was killed, while Taggart and Spencer were captured. Chavez was found dead in the underbrush. Only Kit joy escaped, killing posse member Joseph N. Lafferr, a sewing-machine salesman and respected Silver City resident. The wounded Mitch Lee and Frank Taggart surrendered and were lynched. A local newspaper editor remarked: "Taggart died hard of strangulation-a throat disease that is becoming extremely common among their ilk in this section." Spencer was returned to jail. Days later, joy was shot and captured. He went to the penitentiary after a trial at Hillsboro.
For his outstanding performance and extraordinary courage, Coomer received a $500 reward. Yet before he could spend it, Dan Coomer led an assortment of ranchers after a quartet of Mexican outlaws who were butchering the wrong beeves. He arrested Jose Lopez, Alaris Frescas, Danacio Gonzales, and Julio Castillo. The prisoners were hustled b
efore a local justice of the peace, who set their bonds at $2,000 each. How they managed to escape cowcountry justice (lynching) is indeed a mystery.
Coomer later established a successful sawmill and lumber business in Grant County, but on a trip back to Arkansas in May 1890, he passed away of natural causes. Among other things, his obituary stated, "Daniel Coomer did much towards putting down the lawless element of the country, and in a short time his name became a terror to thieves. His and his neighbor's property was let alone."
JOY, CHRISTOPHER; TAGGART, FRANK; TUCKER, DAVID; WHITEHILL, HARVEY HOWARD
COUGHLIN, Patrick (?-1896)
Patrick Coughlin appears in the record as a young man perhaps in his twenties or thirties in 1895, when he and an equally obscure friend, Frederick George, stole two horses in Summit County, Utah, and rode them to Salt Lake City, where they teamed up with an equally obscure youth named A. D. Bruce. Bruce, however, changed his mind about the relationship, returned to Salt Lake City, and reported the two men, plus their horse-thieving and house-breaking activities, to the authorities.
On July 26, a posse caught up with the thieves along the Webber River in Summit County. The factions traded rifle fire, injuring no one. Four days later a gunfight between another posse and the youngsters
occurred at the Palmer Ranch, near Evanston, Wyoming. This time two lawmen died-Constable Thomas Stagg and N. E. Dawes, an ex-Evanston city marshal. One of the great territorial manhunts now commenced. In early August, word arrived that the outlaws were hiding in South Willow Canyon, which was in Utah but near Grantsville, Wyoming. A posse immediately converged, fired into some brush when they saw it moving, and flushed out Patrick Coughlin. He was ordered to yell for his companion. Within a brief time, Frederick George surrendered.
On August 13, the two prisoners, charged with the murder of Stagg and Dawes, appeared in an Ogden, Utah, court. On October 30, a jury found Coughlin guilty of murder in the first degree, sentenced him to death, and set the date of execution as December 15, 1896. Another jury found Dawes guilty and gave him life imprisonment. He was paroled on December 20, 1909.
The Encyclopedia of Lawmen, Outlaws, and Gunfighters Page 12
