The Encyclopedia of Lawmen, Outlaws, and Gunfighters

by Leon Claire Metz

  Adding to the mix, Dell Dublin killed Jim Williams and also took to the brush, later locating and joining up with brother Dick. After an intensive search by Texas Rangers, Dell was arrested at Luke Stone's ranch and was immediately transported to the Llano County jail for safekeeping. But for whatever reason, the authorities released him in 1877.

  On more than one occasion, Dick was almost captured by Texas Rangers but managed to escape after blistering exchanges of gunfire, causing the irate ranger lieutenant N. O. Reynolds to chastise his subordinates, snapping that his black cook could have done a better job in dealing with Dick Dublin, and that the outlaw had become a "regular Jonah" to the ranger company.

  At last, on the morning of January 18, 1878, taken completely off guard and fleeing on foot, Dick Dublin was fatally gunned down at the Mack Potter ranch by the second shot from Ranger James Gillett's lever-action rifle. Since the reward was for arrest and conviction, not dead or alive, the money was never paid. Reportedly Dell and Role Dublin made serious, but in the end empty, threats against the Texas Rangers for killing their brother.

  Meanwhile, a series of stagecoach holdups had occurred near Peg-Leg station, a stop on the San Saba River in particularly rough and isolated country midway between Fort McKavett and Fort Mason. Texas Rangers had been assigned to ride shotgun on stagecoaches, but the tactic had been abandoned in order to handle other demanding law enforcement missions. Finally, a break came when Bill Allison, Jimmy Dublin's son-in-law, "snitched" to Texas Rangers Dick Ware and Jim Gillett. Warrants were issued for Dell and Role Dublin, Mack Potter, and Rube Boyce. In the end, all were rounded up, both Dublin boys being shot in the process. The bandits received 15 years in the penitentiary. The Peg-Leg robberies ceased.

  GILLETT, JAMES BUCHANAN

  DUEL

  In the eastern and southern United States, a duel involved two men standing back to back, pistols in hand, stepping off 10 paces, turning, and firing at each other. In the western United States, a gun duel took place without the formalities. There were no High Noons, in the strict sense of the metaphor. A duel referred to two or more men firing at each other, frequently from opposite sides of a street, with various calibers and types of weapons, and often from behind cover. Sometimes several parties were injured or slain, including innocent bystanders.

  DUFFIELD, Milton B. (1810-1874)

  Born in Wheeling, West Virginia, Milton Duffield drifted at an early age over to Ohio, where he worked as a merchant. There he married, fathering four children, all of whom he abandoned. He ended up at Tuolumne County in California (1852), where he sought his fortune in real estate and gold-mining claims. In these gold camps, Duffield won many a drink with his steady hand and sure six-shooter aim.

  As time passed, the foul looking, hard-drinking Duffield became an utterly audacious frontier personality, a person many were offended by and most were afraid of. Adding to his intemperate behavior were well-grounded suspicions about questionable business dealings.

  Absolutely fearless with regard to his own personal safety, deliberate and cool in any desperate encounter, it wasn't long before the hulking (six foot three inches, 220 pounds) Duffield found his trouble. In 1854, Duffield was attacked by James G. Lyons, Tim Hazelton, and a man known as Scott. The trio commenced firing at Duffield as he walked down a public street. Seemingly possessed with raw nerve, Duffield jerked one of his own revolvers and shot down Lyons. Hazelton and Scott fled.

  At the outbreak of the Civil War, Duffield returned east and may have made an exploratory trip to Nicaragua for the U.S. government. Later, after the Arizona Territory had been carved from New Mexico, Milton B. Duffield, on March 6, 1863, at 53 years of age, became the territory's first U.S. marshal.

  When Duffield arrived in Tucson, the town was just starting to live up to its stereotypical image as a wild and woolly frontier community. There was an overabundance of loose livestock, loose women, loose tops on whiskey barrels, and loose interpretations of how the law should be enforced. Yet Milton Duffield, silk hat atop his balding head, an arsenal concealed in his clothes, felt at home amid the boisterous bt1$-s and the dirt-floored saloons. "He drew weapons from the arm-holes of his waistcoat, from his boot-legs, from his hip-pockets, and from the back of his neck ... On a war-footing, nothing less than a couple of Gatling guns would have served to round out the armament." Those who witnessed Duffield's personal artillery inventory chose to remain silent about the marshal's "eccentricities."

  During one well-publicized dispute with a former Confederate officer, a Lieutenant Colonel Kennedy, Duffield knocked the man to the ground and kicked him in the head. When the befuddled antagonist regained his feet and fled, the marshal pulled out a derringer and shot him in the buttocks, a painful but nonfatal wound. On another occasion, "Waco Bill," a teamster and a Texan full of rot-gut whiskey, declared he wanted his own personal piece of the new lawman in town. He was obliged. Waco Bill had hardly reached for his six-shooter when Duffield's bullet struck him in the groin.

  Duffield's extreme hatred for ex-Confederates and their sympathizers fed his unrelenting attacks on southerners. This made it difficult for territorial officials to heal old wounds. The marshal made a lot of people happy when, enormously dissatisfied with delays in financial compensation, he tendered his resignation on November 25, 1865, to become effective on April 1 of the following year. No one tried to change his mind.

  Seeking other work, and weary of wrangling about past expense accounts, Duffield secured an appointment as special postal agent for Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. The officials replaced him in March 1870 due in large part to his "highhanded conduct."

  In a dispute with newspaper editor Pierson Dooner, who was holding a pistol in each hand, both aimed at Duffield's chest, the ex-marshal stared him down. Nothing happened. On another occasion Duffield challenged Tucson mayor Fred Maish to a duel. The district attorney (McCaffry) approached him from behind, placed a small pistol against his back, and pulled the trigger. The gun misfired. Duffield had to be the luckiest man in the West.

  In June 1870, two Mexican men entered his residence while he slept and tried to kill him with a hatchet and a knife. A blow to the shoulder awakened him, and Duffield dispersed his attackers, later commenting, "I sprang up in my bed and fought them, and in grasping a large knife my right thumb was cut off. That prevented me from cocking my pistol although I finally got one shot. They retreated, but not till they had made some 31 wounds on my person."

  Duffield continued to be the focal point for numerous brawls, his life coming to an abrupt end on June 5, 1874. During a dispute with Joseph T. Holmes over a piece of real estate, Holmes with a double-barreled shotgun stood firm as Duffield advanced toward him. Duffield should have heeded repeated warnings to back off. He didn't, and he died.

  DUNLAP, John (a.k.a. Three Fingered Jack) (?-1900)

  "Three Fingered" Jack Dunlap is something of a Western enigma. Of the fact that indeed he was at one time a real, live bad guy, there is no historical question or doubt. Presumably he was handed his nickname because of a missing digit. Specific details regarding his origin and antecedents are sparse, and while he lived, Jack wasn't worth much. Dead, though, he occasionally made it into the history books.

  Three Fingered Jack Dunlap allegedly was a product of the Colorado Penitentiary for some unknown criminal mischief, and whether he just wanted a change to a warmer Arizona or was running from Rocky Mountain policing authorities will possibly remain a not very significant mystery.

  A couple of Three Fingered Jack's misadventures, however, are not clouded in ambiguity, one being his August 6, 1896, abortive robbery of the International Bank of Nogales in Arizona Territory. By most accounts Three Fingered Jack was the gang's leader, but plans went awry when Fred Herrera, a sharpwitted bank cashier, grabbed his six-shooter and started firing, although all he killed were a couple of horses in the street.

  Later, after tedious and time-consuming posse work on the part of Cochise County sheriff C. S. Fly and Pima
County sheriff Bob Leatherwood, the outlaws and lawmen closed for a skirmish. The outlaws killed a U.S. mounted customs inspector named Frank Robson and then fled.

  Three Fingered Jack now dropped out of sight until 1900, when the Alvord/Stiles gang recruited him for a southeastern Arizona train robbery scheduled for February 15. As expected, the train chugged across the international line from Sonora, Mexico, and steamed into Fairbank, Arizona Territory, with a Wells Fargo & Co. guard Jeff Milton on board. Waiting were Three Fingered Jack Dunlap, former West Texas cowboy Bob Brown, "Bravo Juan" Yoas,

  and the Owens brothers, George and Lewis. They hit the train hard, severely wounding Jeff Milton in the arm. Thinking Milton out of tactical commission the desperadoes advanced on the express car, but Milton steadied his double-barrel shotgun with his good arm and banged away. Three Fingered Jack took most of the charge and collapsed, while some of the remaining pellets punctured Bravo Juan in the back, causing painful though not life-threatening wounds. Jack's condition was much worse. Helping Jack into the saddle, the five fled into a dark desert night. Three Fingered Jack was ultimately abandoned by his partners. When a posse finally stumbled onto Jack Dunlap, they uncorked a bottle of liquor for him. He drank, he talked, and he died. His pals were soon captured and sent to the Yuma Territorial Prison in chains.

  S66 490: ALVORD, ALBERT; MILTON, JEFFERSON DAVIS; YUMA TERRITORIAL PRISON

  EARP, Morgan (1851-1882)

  Morgan Earp was born in Pella, Iowa, but was in Wichita, Kansas, by the mid-1870s. By July 1880, he and his common-law wife Louisa (known as Lou) met Wyatt Earp in Tombstone, where Morgan and others joined a group of soldiers trailing mule thieves. Morgan later became a shotgun guard for Wells Fargo. During his off hours in mid-August 1880, he captured George Perrine, the accused murderer of Mike Killeen. Shortly afterward, Virgil Earp became Tombstone's chief of police as well as a U.S. deputy marshal.

  Along with Doc Holliday, Morgan acted as one of Virgil's special deputies during the OK Corral gunfight. Morgan likely shot Billy Clanton in the chest and was himself seriously wounded, shot horizontally through both shoulders.

  On March 18, 1882, someone assassinated Morgan. He had been playing pool at Campbell & Hatch's on Allen Street. A glass door opened into the alley, and parties unknown fired through the glass. Dr. George Goodfellow later noted that "the bullet entered the body just to the right of the spinal column in the region of the left kidney emerging on the right side of the body in the region of the gall bladder. It passed through the left kidney, the liver and injured the spinal column." The bullet finally lodged in the thigh of onlooker George A. Berry.

  Bystanders carried Morgan 10 feet to the doorway of the card room, where Doctors Matthews, Millar,

  and Goodfellow did what they could, knowing it wouldn't be enough. Morgan's last words were, "This is the last game of pool I'll ever play." His body went to Colton, California, for burial. The slayers were never positively identified but were believed to be Pete Spence, Frank Stillwell, Frederick Bode (alias John Doe Freeze or Freis), and two Indians, one called Charlie.

  .366 C91So. EARP, VIRGIL; EARP, WYATT BERRY STAPP; GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL; HOLLIDAY, JOHN HENRY

  EARP,Virgil (1843-1905)

  Virgil Earp was born in Hartford, Kentucky, although the family moved to Illinois and then to Iowa. To say Virgil's love life was somewhat convoluted is something of an understatement. His first marriage was to a girl named Ellen Ryadam, but her parents had the marriage annulled. He then enlisted in the Union army, served without injury for three years, and was discharged in June 1865. In the meantime, however, his first wife had decided he was dead and moved to Oregon, where she gave birth to a daughter and then remarried. Virgil never knew he had a daughter until she was grown. Anyway, Virgil married Rozilla Draggoo in Lamar, Missouri, in 1870, but she disappeared when Virgil left Lamar for Council Bluffs, Iowa, where he reportedly drove a stage. In Council Bluffs, he met Alvira (Allie) Sullivan. There is no evidence that they ever married, although she lived with him for 32 years.

  From Council Bluffs, Iowa, Virgil and Allie showed up in Dodge City, Kansas, where by some accounts he became a member of the police force. Following that, he lived in Prescott, Arizona, and became a deputy sheriff. Crawley Dake, the U.S. marshal for Arizona, appointed Virgil as a deputy marshal. Virgil Earp then migrated to Tombstone.

  After Curly Bill Brocius shot Tombstone's first city marshal, Fred White, the city council appointed Virgil as the temporary marshal. However, in a special election a man named Ben Sippy won the position. Undeterred, Virgil hung on to his deputy U.S. marshal position until June 1881, when Ben Sippy left town, throwing the city marshal position back to Virgil. Earp now wore two hats, city marshal and U.S. deputy marshal, and he took his positions seriously, making arrests and generally cracking down on lawbreakers. He even arrested Kate Elder, Doc Holliday's mistress, charging her with being drunk and disorderly. After the town burned on June 22, 1881, Virgil became a leading spokesman for getting a professional fire department. Meanwhile, relations between the Earps and the Clantons (cowboys/ rustlers) deteriorated.

  On October 26, Virgil Earp walked up behind Ike Clanton on Fourth Street and pistol-whipped Ike, knocking him against the wall. Virgil confiscated Ike's weapons, then arrested him for carrying firearms in town. A judge fined and released Ike Clanton, and Ike, Billy Clanton, and Tom and Frank McLaury walked from Allen Street through the OK Corral to the vacant lot alongside Fly's Photography Studio, a stone's throw from the OK Corral. As they stood there cursing the Earps and Doc Holliday and discussing what to do, Marshal Virgil Earp, his brothers, and Doc Holliday approached the lot. The most famous gun battle in Western history was only seconds away.

  When the gunsmoke cleared less than two minutes later, the two McLaury brothers were dead, Billy Clanton was just minutes from death, Morgan Earp had been seriously wounded, and Virgil had a bullet hole in the right calf of his leg.

  However, for Virgil the famous gunfight was only a prelude. That wound stung, but it was nothing compared to five shotgun blasts at near midnight as he left the Oriental Saloon on December 28, 1881.

  One round badly shattered his left arm. Friends raced for the doctor, while others carried Virgil to his room at the Cosmopolitan Hotel. He would never again fully use that arm. Although suspects were all over the place and arrests were made, witnesses swore that the accused had been in Charleston at the time of Virgil's shooting. All suspects were acquitted.

  Virgil remained a U.S. deputy marshal until April 1882, and although he never completely recovered from his wounds, he became the first town marshal of Colton, California, and later an Esmeralda County, Nevada, deputy sheriff. He died of pneumonia at Goldfield, Nevada, on October 19, 1905.

  .366 O. BROCIUS, WILLIAM; CLANTON, NEWMAN HAYNES; DAKE, CRAWLEY; EARP, MORGAN; GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL; HOLLIDAY, JOHN HENRY

  EARP, Wyatt Berry Stapp (1848-1929)

  Wyatt Earp is best known for the Gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, but he lived a long and colorful life that began at Monmouth, Illinois, where he was born on March 19, 1848. His father, a Mexican War veteran, moved the family to the Dutch community of Pella, Iowa, around 1850. In 1864 the family headed for California, but in 1869 it turned around and moved to Lamar, Missouri, where Wyatt became a constable. He also married Urilla Sutherland on January 24, 1870. Urilla died of unknown causes within the year. By now, the lean, tall Wyatt was in bond trouble, and he left Missouri in March 1871; within a month, the authorities in Indian Territory (Oklahoma) had arrested him and others for horse theft. All charges were dropped, with the exception of those against Wyatt. He posted bail and then forfeited it when he disappeared.

  For a couple of years Wyatt Earp reportedly hunted buffalo before becoming a policeman in April 1875 on the Wichita, Kansas, force. He served without distinction, and in fact raised eyebrows because of his money-collection practices and alleged takes. Within a year Wyatt moved to Dodge City, where on June 5, 1878, Mayo
r James H. Kealy appointed Earp as an assistant city marshal. Wyatt put in his time credibly but without any particular prominence. He also took up with Celia Ann "Mattie" Blaylock, who became his common-law wife. A month later, on July 27, Earp and officer James Masterson shot at several cowboys in the act of disturbing the peace while leaving for camp. The fusillade hit a cowboy named George Hoy in the arm, and he tumbled off his horse, dying a month later. Either of the two officers may have fired that shot. At any rate, Wyatt resigned his seasonal job in September 1879 and drifted to Las Vegas, New Mexico, with his brothers Virgil, Morgan, and James. By December they were all in Tombstone, Arizona.

  The three brothers filed mining claims and purchased lots in town. In July 1880 Wyatt became a deputy sheriff, a lawman dealing faro in his spare time. Virgil became a U.S. deputy marshal in 1879. Morgan rode shotgun for Wells Fargo.

  On October 27, 1880, Deputy Wyatt Earp happened to be in Billy Owen's Saloon when he heard several shots fired a block up the street. Earp and his brother Morgan reached the scene only to find City Marshal Fred White ordering Curley Bill Brocius to surrender his revolver. Brocius pulled the six-shooter from its holster just as Earp threw his arms around him. At the same time, White snatched the pistol from Brocius's hand. The gun fired, the bullet striking White in the groin. He would die of peritonitis. In the meantime, Officer Earp clubbed Brocius over the head with his revolver and hustled him to jail. A judge freed Brocius.

  Wyatt Earp (Creative Publishing Co.)

  Wyatt resigned his office on November 9, 1880, just as Sheriff Charles Shibell won his third term. Shibell appointed John Behan to Wyatt's old position, and Behan soon afterward became sheriff, due to the creation of Cochise County and the naming of Tombstone as the county seat. By some accounts, Behan had promised Wyatt the position of chief deputy, but that didn't happen, one reason perhaps being that Behan had previously taken up with "actress" Josephine Sarah Marcus, better known as Sadie or Josie. It did not take long for Earp to move in, although that created a problem with Mattie, Earp's common-law wife. Nevertheless, Mattie was out, and Sadie was in. Of course, Earp also failed to get the job as Behan's deputy.