The Encyclopedia of Lawmen, Outlaws, and Gunfighters

by Leon Claire Metz

  OLIVE, ISOM PRENTICE

  O'DAY, Tom (1862?-1930)

  There were newspeople who referred to O'Day as a "Montgomery Ward bandit," and as gunmen go, he did seem awkward and fumbling. By most accounts he came out of Pennsylvania and reached Wyoming in 1893. First he tried to become a participant in the Johnson County War but arrived too late. Following that he joined the Wild Bunch and assisted with the Belle Fourche, South Dakota, robbery in 1897. At least, he tried to assist-the most common story has it that he drank too much while waiting inside a saloon and that upon hearing gunshots ran out in the street to get his horse, let the reins slip through his fingers and, instead of participating in a robbery, chased his horse in the opposite direction.

  After finally arresting him, the citizens locked him in the very vault he had sought to rob. There he stayed until October 15, when he and other gang members were indicted on charges of attempted robbery. O'Day was acquitted.

  But still O'Day could not stay away from horses, particularly animals belonging to someone else, so in February 1904 he was finally brought to trial in Casper, Wyoming. The first two juries failed to agree, but the third one found him guilty of stealing 135 horses. He spent four years and six months in the state penal system. Thereafter, he moved to South Dakota, reportedly married an Indian woman, and

  died in 1930 when a team of horses ran away with a wagon he was driving and wrecked it.

  S66 C99o. WILD BUNCH

  ODEN, Alonzo Van (a.k.a. Lon Oden) (1863-1910)

  Originally from near Dogtown (Tilden) in McMullen County, Texas, Alonzo "Lon" Oden became a thirdgeneration lawman when he enlisted in the Texas Rangers on March 1, 1894. Oden was one of the few early Texas Rangers to keep a diary. His Swedish grandmother had instilled in the youngster an appreciation for the written word, a rare trait for one raised in the inhospitable and bandit-infested south Texas brush country. Because of the poetic entries in his diary, Oden is often referred to as "the Rhymin' Ranger."

  At Shafter, in the Texas Big Bend area, Oden and the renowned Ranger captain John Hughes, along with Ernest "Diamond Dick" St. Leon, halted silver thefts from the Fronteriza Mining Company. During an undercover investigation, St. Leon determined the plans and probable route of the thieves. The officers waited for hours in surveillance, before the outlaws arrived with their pack animals. A shootout commenced. Three desperadoes died. The rangers had no casualties.

  Oden now spent considerable time in El Paso, where for seemingly inexplicable reasons he became favorably acquainted with Utah Street's notorious madam Mathilde Weiler, better known as Tillie Howard. Also during this time period, Oden formed a friendship with Baz "Bass" Outlaw, a free-spirited, hard-drinking, hell-raising Texas Ranger who would later be slain by Constable John Selman in Tillie's backyard.

  Later (1893), in the Big Bend area, Rangers Hughes and Oden engaged in a furious gun battle (Oden's horse was shot out from under him) in which the brigand Florencio Carrasco was slain.

  Oden tendered his resignation as a Texas Ranger on May 18, 1894. He finished his days operating the Chispa Ranch at Marfa, Texas, where he died of natural causes on August 11, 1910.

  .fee 4{o; HUGHES, JOHN REYNOLDS; OUTLAW, BASS; SELMAN, JOHN HENRY

  OLINGER, Robert (1841?-1881)

  Bob Olinger was said to have been born in Ohio, although the family soon afterward moved to Indian Territory (Oklahoma). Around 1876, he joined his brother, John Wallace Olinger, at Seven Rivers, New Mexico. Bob, often called "Pecos Bob," was a large man who wore his hair long. He stood about six feet tall and weighed 240 pounds. His favorite weapon was a shotgun. He is said to have killed several men, although the only positively known victim was Frank Hill, in March 1880. The details are sketchy.

  When Billy the Kid's murder trial ended at Mesilla, New Mexico, on April 9, 1881, Pecos Bob was one of the guards who escorted the Kid on his way by buckboard to the Lincoln jail. Numerous stories have Olinger patting his shotgun and taunting the Kid, daring him to make a break. In Lincoln, the Kid was incarcerated on the second floor of the courthouse. Olinger and James Bell were the guards.

  On the 28th, when Sheriff Pat Garrett left to collect taxes in White Oaks, Bob Olinger placed his shotgun in the gun rack and told Bell he was taking a few prisoners across the street to the Wortley Hotel for a bite to eat. Within minutes, the Kid asked Bell to escort him to the outdoor privy. Coming back inside the jail and starting up the stairs, the Kid either yanked Bell's gun out of its holster, or he had a six-shooter that someone had secreted under the toilet seat. At any rate, the Kid killed Bell, who stumbled down the stairs and out into the courthouse yard, where he died.

  Robert Olinger, Lincoln County, New Mexico, deputy slain by Billy the Kid (University of Arizona)

  The Kid then hobbled to the gun rack, removed Olinger's shotgun, hobbled over to the upstairs window overlooking the Wortley, and waited for Olinger. Across the street, Olinger heard the shots and yelled, "Bell just killed the Kid!" Then Olinger hit the door running, not pausing until directly (by many accounts) beneath that upstairs jail window. The Kid glanced down both barrels, said "Hello Bob," and pulled two triggers. Olinger died instantly.

  Billy the Kid did not realize it, but he had only two more months to live himself. As for Bob Olinger, he was buried at Fort Stanton.

  See rJL5o: BILLY THE KID; GARRETT, PATRICK FLOYD JARVIS; LINCOLN COUNTY WAR

  OLIVE, Isom Prentice (a.k.a Print) (1840-1886)

  Print Olive was born on February 7, 1840, in Mississippi, but in 1843 his parents, James and Julia Olive, moved to Texas. Around the age of 14, he participated in Longhorn cattle roundups near Brushy and Yegua Creeks in Williamson County. The meat wasn't worth much, but the hide and tallow had value.

  When Texas seceded, Print joined the Second Texas Infantry Regiment and saw action at Shiloh and Farmington. The Federals captured him at Vicksburg, then paroled him. Print finished out the war guarding docks at Galveston.

  Upon returning home, Olive married Lousia Reno on February 4, 1866. They would have four sons and a daughter. Otherwise, he and his brother Thomas Jefferson (Jay), Ira, and Bob began longhorn cattle drives from Williamson County to the railheads at Kansas and Nebraska. The ranch became wealthy, but it also acquired the reputation as a "gun outfit," meaning that it did not take rustling lightly. Print shot Rod Murray for rustling livestock, then nursed the man back to health and hired him for the Print Olive brand.

  Sometime during 1870, Print tangled with Dave Fream during a horseback duel. Fream died on the spot, although Olive suffered heavy damage too.

  During 1871, he took a trail herd to Abilene, Kansas, returning with enough money to make his ranch one of the wealthier outfits. In mid-1872, during a card-game argument at Ellsworth, Kansas, Print was seriously wounded by James Kenedy, who shot Print in the hand, the groin, and the thigh. Print might have died had it not been for his loyal bodyguard, Nigger Jim Kelly, who shot Kenedy in the leg and thus ended the fight.

  In mid-1875, Print and Jay Olive ambushed and wounded W. H. McDonald, an alleged rustler. Both men went on trial for assault. Print was discharged. Jay paid a $1 fine.

  In March 1876, from a tree near their ranch, the Olives hanged two cattle thieves known only as Waddell and Lane. Not long afterward, Print and his brothers caught two rustlers in the act of butchering livestock; they wrapped the thieves James H. Crow and Turk Turner-inside the green beeve skins. It became known as "the death of the skins," since the sun gradually shrank the skins tightly around their victims, causing a slow, suffocating death. A county court acquitted the Olives of murder despite evidence of a dried skin prominently displaying the Olive brand.

  During that same year at the "Olive Pens," 20 miles east of Taylor, Texas, Print and Jay tangled with rustlers in early August. Both men were wounded. Jay died on August 20. In September Print killed a man named Banks who was allegedly responsible for Jay's death. No indictments came down.

  Perhaps in retaliation, other outfits struck the Olive Ranch en
virons. Bob Olive shot and killed alleged rustler Lawson Kelley, as well as an unknown black boy, who, according to rumor, planned to assassinate Olive. Bob later killed a local rancher named Cal Nutt in an Austin saloon. At this point in 1877, the Olives decided to move their operations, first to Colorado and then to Custer County, Nebraska. Even there, however, trouble as well as their violent reputations followed them. Bob became a deputy sheriff in 1877 and was slain by local rustlers Ami Ketchum and Luther Mitchell.

  Print Olive (Author's Collection)

  The Olives and some of their neighbors now formed the Custer County Livestock Association in 1878. Print became its first president. When a jury found Ketchum and Mitchell innocent, a lynch mob shot them to death and set the bodies afire. Other (probably more reliable accounts) say the Olives hanged them from a limb near Devil's Gap and then set their bodies afire as they dangled. From here on, Print Olive had the moniker of "Man Burner." A Hastings, Nebraska, court found him guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced him to life in prison. The case reopened a year later, and Print walked free when witnesses failed to appear.

  By now the beef market had come on hard times. Print lost essentially everything and moved his family in 1881 to Dodge City, Kansas. There he invested in real estate at Trail City, Colorado, establishing a wagon yard, stable, and saloon. On August 18, 1886, he walked into the Haynes Saloon, where he and his former trail boss, Joe Sparrow, argued over a trivial sum of money. Sparrow shot him in the head. Print Olive is buried in the Maple Grove Cemetery in Dodge City, Kansas.

  O'NEILL, William Owen (a.k.a. Buckey) (1860-1898)

  Buckey O'Neill did it all. He was a soldier, newspaper reporter and editor for the politician, sheriff, gambler, Rough Rider, attorney, and a Populist Party candidate. He became sheriff of Yavapai County, Arizona, in 1888, hardly finding his office before he conducted a 600-mile search for four bandits who had robbed a railroad safe at Diablo Canyon. He captured the outlaws in southern Utah and returned them to the Yuma Territorial Prison. Shortly afterward, he became mayor of Prescott and adjutant-general of Arizona Territory in 1897.

  O'Neill subsequently organized and became captain of the first U.S. volunteer cavalry regiment from Arizona to serve in Cuba, shortly afterward taking part in the action of June 24, 1898, at Las Guasimas. On July 1, at Kettle Hill, he died from a sniper's bullet in the head. Buckey O'Neill is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

  O'TOOL, Oscar (a.k.a. Barney; Charles Williams) (1852-1880)

  Not to be confused with another Charles Williams who frequented Shakespeare, New Mexico Territory, and who was also charged with murder, "Barney"

  O'Tool, originally from Wheeling, West Virginia, was a 28-year-old who murdered a man at Georgetown in Grant County, New Mexico. Williams was sentenced to hang. A local newspaper editorial said it well:

  Too marry murderers have already gone unpunished in Grant County, This community cannot longer afford to allow groundless feeling of pity or a culpable indifference to stand in the way of justice, We owe it to orselves to see that the sentence of the law is executed to the letter ... Justice should always be tempered with mercy, but mercy like charity, begins at home. We must protect ourselves.

  Complicating this picture was the fact that another prisoner, a black man named Louis Gaines, who had killed a soldier from Fort Bayard, was scheduled to hang alongside O'Tool. Many in the area, still harboring sympathy for the Confederacy's lost cause, declared that come hell or high water a white man should not be hanged alongside a black man. Rumors circulated that O'Tool would be liberated from the jail. The air was "thick with animosity."

  Determined not to be intimidated, Grant County sheriff Harvey Whitehill deputized a crew of 60 wellarmed citizens. Along with his chief deputy, Dan Tucker, he marched the two prisoners to the scaffold before a crowd numbering over 400. One person said later, "It looked like war for sure, even some of the women had guns."

  On August 20, 1880, standing on the scaffold, O'Tool (at the time still known as Williams) insisted that his true identity would forever remain secret. Then he and Gaines, the latter having had publicly proclaimed his "entire life to have been very evil," were swung into eternity. O'Tool and Gaines dangled side by side, the crowd dispersing quietly.

  .366 TUCKER, DAVID

  OUTLAW, Bass (?-1894)

  Bass Outlaw, an interesting name for a lawman, perhaps spelled his first name "Bazz." Bass, who was born in Georgia, left that state, where he had allegedly killed a man, and in 1885 enlisted in Company E of the Texas Rangers. From there he transferred to Company D in 1887, moved up to sergeant, and then was forced to resign by Capt. Frank Jones for being drunk on duty at Alpine, Texas. However, like most lawmen, Outlaw also carried a U.S. deputy marshal's commission, and this frequently brought him in and out of El Paso, Texas. But even so, he could not control his drinking. On April 4, 1894, he put in another El Paso appearance, still intoxicated, and this time growling threats against U.S. Marshal Dick Ware, who Bass believed had paid someone else to serve papers when the job and the commissions should have gone to him. As it turned out, Outlaw bumped into El Paso constable John Selman, and the two men discussed Outlaw's bad luck on the way down Utah Street, specifically to Madam Tillie Howard's Parlor House. There Selman seated himself on a couch while Bass visited the toilet, where in rearranging his trouser buttons he either dropped his six-shooter or accidentally fired it. The noise sent Tillie rushing into the backyard blowing her whistle, a signal that she needed police assistance.

  Bass drunkenly stumbled outside and was wrestling with Tillie for the whistle when Texas Ranger Joe Coolly, in town to testify in a criminal case and now just down the street talking with a printer, came running up the block, vaulted over the fence, and separated the two combatants. By now, Constable John Selman had reached the back porch, where he watched the events.

  Ranger Coolly separated the madam and Outlaw, then yelled, "Bass, why do you do things like this?" Outlaw screamed, "Do you want some too?" With that he shot the ranger in the head and then, when Coolly fell to the ground, shot him in the back.

  Selman now jumped off the porch, pulling his revolver and screaming at Outlaw, who turned in that direction. Both men fired at the same time. Selman's bullet struck Outlaw directly above the heart as Outlaw's bullet zipped past Selman's head. The gunsmoke blinded Selman, who now began wandering around screaming, "I can't see! I can't see!"

  Outlaw stumbled backward to the fence, braced himself, and fired another round that severed an artery in Selman's leg. Selman now stumbled from the brothel and sought a doctor.

  In the meantime, Outlaw tumbled over the fence and lay thrashing around on Overland Street, where two passing Texas Rangers, recognizing him but not knowing what had happened, carried him inside the Boss Saloon and laid him on the bar. A doctor was summoned but said there was nothing he could do, so Outlaw was transferred to a backroom prostitute's bed, where he survived for four hours, screaming over and over, "Where are my friends? Where are my friends?"

  One of his best friends, Lon Oden, the poet ranger, wrote upon Outlaw's funeral: "Bass Outlaw is dead. Maybe all of us knew something like this would come to Bass-Bass who was so kind; who could laugh louder, ride longer, and cuss harder than the rest of us; who could be more sympathetic, more tender, more patient, than all of us when necessary. Bass had one weakness that-at last-proved stronger than all his virtues. Bass couldn't leave liquor alone, and when Bass was drunk, Bass was a maniac."

  John Selman survived, although he forever after walked with a cane and had trouble seeing, particularly at night. Selman was tried for murder and acquitted. Bass Outlaw was buried in El Paso's Evergreen Cemetery.

  S61' reo; JONES, FRANK; SELMAN, JOHN HENRY

  OWENS, Commodore Perry (1852-1919)

  This lawman got his name as a result of being born on the 40th anniversary of Commodore Matthew C. Perry's victory on Lake Erie during the War of 1812. Although born in Tennessee, he lived as a child in Indiana. By the 1870s he had re
ached Texas, and then Apache County, Arizona. The citizens of Apache County didn't know what to make of this man, who wore his blond hair long, sported a huge, fancy sombrero, and carried a long-barreled Colt .45 surrounded with double belts of ammunition. The railroads hired him to discourage bandits, and in his spare time he chased Indians, on one occasion killing two of them.

  Commodore Perry Owens (Robert G. McCubbin Collection)

  Owens achieved his greatest fame as a result of the Pleasant Valley War, when he walked into the Bucket

  of Blood Saloon in Holbrook, Arizona. When he left a few minutes later, three men lay dead on the floor, and another was seriously wounded. The Bucket of Blood had lived up to its name.

  The fame of Commodore Perry peaked as a result of this battle. Folks came to fear him, and most of those who did not fear him disliked him. Although he went on to become sheriff of Navajo County in 1895, that was substantially the end of the line. He quit his job shortly afterward, and spent the remainder of his life operating a saloon and reportedly drinking too much. He died in 1919.

  eo. PLEASANT VALLEY WAR

  PACKER, Alferd (a.k.a. John Schwartz) (1841-1907)

  Packer is best known as a cannibal. Born in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Packer served briefly in the Union army and later became a shoemaker. He learned the prospecting trade early and gained considerable experience as a guide. During the fall of 1873, which became one of the coldest winters on record, he took 21 prospecting beginners for a trek into the San Juan Mountains near present-day Montrose, Colorado. Fortunately, a group of friendly Indians saved them. Several returned to civilization, but Packer and five others pushed on through bitter, frigid weather and were lucky enough one night to find a deserted cabin. That night they all huddled together, went to sleep in sheer exhaustion, and while they slept, Packer shot them. His initial motive was perhaps robbery, and he did take what little money they possessed. He also realized, however, that he needed food and that even with money he could die of starvation before reaching civilization.