Pinkerton’s Great Detective

by Beau Riffenburgh

  No one was more representative of this new breed than Siringo, although his early experience was interrupted midway through 1867, when he nearly died from typhoid fever. Shortly thereafter, his mother fell prey to an age-old con, when she married a man who promptly squandered her savings and the proceeds from the sale of her land on alcohol before abandoning her and Catherine in Illinois. A short while later, Bridgit moved to St. Louis, but somehow Charlie did not receive her new address, and he spent much of the next two years traveling on the Mississippi, working in hotels, on farms, on riverboats, and in packing houses, all the while searching for his family.

  Returning to Matagorda at the age of fifteen, Siringo took a job on Rancho Grande, a mammoth cattle and pony ranch owned by Abel “Shanghai” Pierce and his brother Jonathan.6 The Pierces were among the few ranchers who delivered their own stock rather than hiring trailing contractors, but it was not until 1876 that Siringo finally helped drive twenty-five hundred head to Wichita, Kansas.

  The next year, he took thirty-five hundred steers to Dodge City for the famous Texas cattleman George W. Littlefield. While there, Siringo and another cowboy were involved in a bust up with a group of buffalo hunters in the Lone Star Dancehall, which was managed by lawman Bat Masterson. In the midst of the fight Masterson, who was tending the bar, threw several beer glasses at Siringo, one of which “clipped [me] behind the right ear and didn’t feel like a mother’s kiss either.”7

  Soon thereafter, Siringo left behind those he derisively called “Kansas short horns” and helped drive twenty-five hundred steers south to the LX Ranch in the Texas Panhandle. After taking a job there, Siringo became friendly with another youngster, born Henry McCarty but known as William Bonney, or Billy the Kid. Two years later Siringo led a group of men from the LX into the New Mexico Territory to recover several hundred cattle stolen by the Kid. While there they met Pat Garrett, the sheriff of Lincoln County, who was looking for volunteers to go after the Kid. A couple of Siringo’s men obliged, but Siringo followed his employers’ orders and collected the missing cattle. He returned to Texas in June 1881, within weeks of Garrett killing Billy the Kid at Fort Sumner, New Mexico.8

  In 1883, David Beals, one of the owners of the LX, bought a farm near Caldwell, Kansas, so he could winter cow ponies there. Siringo was put in charge, and bought nearby property himself. Located three miles north of the Indian Territory, Caldwell was one of the last Kansas towns to serve as the destination for Texas cattle drives as the quarantine area moved west. But Siringo’s mind eventually wandered to other things. In March 1884, soon after being ordered to bring some of the ponies back to the LX, he met a fifteen-year-old, black-eyed beauty named Mamie Lloyd. Six days later they were married, and Siringo then headed south with one hundred ponies.

  By September Siringo was back in Caldwell, but when Beals asked him to bring more ponies south, he resigned to stay with his pregnant wife. He opened a tobacco store, which was so successful that he expanded it into an ice cream and oyster parlor. When a daughter, Viola, was born in 1885, he looked for other ways to make money and stumbled upon what would earn him his lasting reputation—writing autobiography. “No other cowboy ever talked about himself so much in print [but] few had more to talk about,” the Texas historian J. Frank Dobie wrote.9

  Siringo’s first effort was his greatest. A Texas Cow Boy, or Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony, appeared in the autumn of 1885, quickly sold out, and became arguably the most influential book ever written about the Old West. The first cowboy autobiography, it was written in an engaging, humorous, and at times sentimental style, while presenting a self-serving picture of a daring, clever, and outgoing young man. More importantly, it popularized the romantic image of the American cowboy, his work, character, aspirations, relationships, and love of whiskey, women, weapons, and his horse. It told of months-long cattle drives, hunting for missing steers, riding through the Indian Territory, and suffering from sweltering heat, dust storms, and freezing rain. It generated the popular image of the wild west based on Abilene, Dodge City, Wichita, and other Kansas towns where cowboys rubbed shoulders—and exchanged gunfire—with frontier lawmen like Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, and Wild Bill Hickok. And it placed forever in the American psyche the great cattle trails from Texas to Kansas, especially the Chisholm Trail, which, before falling into disuse after 1884 due to new quarantine laws and miles of barbed wire, saw more than five million cattle and one million mustangs make the long journey north.

  • • •

  The immediate success of A Texas Cow Boy convinced Siringo to give up his shops and move to Chicago, where he could oversee the publication of a second edition. He had not been there long when a series of memorable events changed his life.

  On Saturday, May 1, 1886, large numbers of workers rallied in support of demands for a national eight-hour workday, with more than forty thousand in Chicago participating in a general strike.10 The next Monday, a confrontation between strikers and replacement workers at the McCormick Reaper Works in Chicago exploded into violence, and the police—assigned to protect the strikebreakers—shot into the crowd, killing between two and six people.

  In response, local socialist and anarchist leaders organized a protest rally for the next evening at Haymarket Square (about two and a half miles from McParland’s house). At 10:20, after several speakers had addressed a crowd that had dwindled from about fifteen hundred to six hundred as the night grew colder and rain threatened, approximately 180 police marched up from the Desplaines Street Police Station. When Police Captain William Ward ordered the remaining crowd to disperse, a bomb was thrown into the police ranks, killing officer Mathias Degan and fatally wounding several others. The police opened fire, with some of the crowd shooting back, most fleeing, and an undetermined number wounded. A final tally showed seven policemen killed and at least sixty injured.

  Following a police investigation, eight men said to be anarchists were tried and found guilty of murder. Four were executed, three received lengthy prison sentences, and one committed suicide before his scheduled execution. Like the Molly Maguire trials, that of the Haymarket defendants has long been a focal point of arguments about injustices of the legal system and the oppression of the working classes.11

  Siringo attended much of the trial, which lasted from June 21 to August 19. Living on Harrison, not far from Haymarket Square, he and Mamie had heard the explosion, and when he found out the next day what had occurred, he was horrified and “wanted to help stamp out this great Anarchist curse.”12

  The idea of being a detective had first been raised after a lecture given by a blind phrenologist in Caldwell in 1884.13 After feeling the bumps on the heads of several others, the blind man “laid his hand on the top of my head and then said: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, here is a mule’s head.’ When the laughter had subsided he explained that I had a large stubborn bump, hence was as stubborn as a mule. He then said I had a fine head for a newspaper editor, a fine stock raiser, or detective; that in any of these callings I would make a success.”14

  After some thought, Siringo applied to William Pinkerton, giving as references David Beals of the LX; James East, the Tascosa, Texas, sheriff; and Pat Garrett, who had killed Billy the Kid. Pinkerton told him that if the references came back positive they would hire him, and “give me a position in a new office which they were opening in Denver, Colo. He said they would need a cowboy detective there, as they figured on getting a lot of cattle work” and would want someone familiar with cattle, horses, and living and travelling on the open range.15

  Siringo’s first assignment—given by David Robertson, by then the Chicago superintendent—was “to watch the [Haymarket trial] jury, to see that lawyers for the defense did no ‘monkey work’ in the way of bribery.”16 Although he maintained a dislike of anarchists for the rest of his life, Siringo questioned the verdict’s fairness: “I couldn’t see the justice of sending Neebe to the pen. . . . The evidence was i
n Neebe’s favor, except that he was running with a bad crowd.” He also had mixed emotions about certain aspects of the trial’s background: “A million dollars had been subscribed by the Citizens League to stamp out anarchy in Chicago, and no doubt much of it was used to corrupt justice. Still, the hanging of these anarchists had a good effect and was worth a million dollars to society.”17

  • • •

  While Siringo was at the Haymarket trials, McParland was in Duluth, Minnesota, working under the name of James S. Mack. The previous year what was thought to be the richest vein of iron ore in the United States had been discovered in the square mile known as Section 30 in Township 63, Range 11 of the Vermilion Range, three miles east of Ely, Minnesota. By the end of 1886 thirty-one claims had been filed for it. One of the longest court battles in state history then began, due to the many claims, arguments for right of possession, and judgments overturned based upon conflicting state and federal laws.18 Pinkerton’s was hired by one set of claimants to obtain information. However, it would be half a dozen years before McParland actually testified.19

  Meanwhile, one of the detective’s old companions—Thomas Hurley—finally met his maker. As the killer of Gomer James and one of the shooters of Bully Bill Thomas, Hurley had remained high on the Pinkerton’s most wanted list for a decade. It had been rumored that he was in Ontario, Canada, where, under the name John Skivington, he worked as a laborer on the construction of the Third Welland Canal, between Port Dalhousie and Allanburg.20 He left there for South America, but ended up instead in Texas, where Linden learned that he was going under the name of Thomas McGee.21 Yet again, however, Hurley evaded capture, fleeing to Gunnison, Colorado, where he adopted the name Hugh McCabe.

  Hurley thereafter worked in a mine at Baldwin, in Gunnison County, where he was considered a “tough customer” and “usually carried a long clasp dirk knife which he used to cut his plug tobacco.”22 One evening in August 1886, after watching a professional prize fight, several men got into a tussle, and a miner named Luke Curran had his stomach slit open by a sharp knife—he died within minutes. Three suspects were arrested, but knowing Hurley “was as dexterous with a knife as he was with his fists,”23 the suspicions of the county sheriff fell on him—and they were confirmed when his knife was found covered with dried blood.

  The sheriff of Gunnison County was Cyrus Wells “Doc” Shores, one of the most respected lawmen in the history of the West, who, in a law-enforcement career spanning more than thirty years, often worked as a special Pinkerton’s operative, at times paired with Siringo. The story eventually went around that although the murderer was arrested as McCabe, on information from the East, the sheriff was able to identify him as Hurley. Taking him aside, the sheriff said, “Your time has come, Tom Hurley! McParland is on his way here to take you back to Pennsylvania.”

  “Who is McParland?” demanded Hurley.

  “You used to know him as James McKenna.”

  No sooner had he heard the name than he slipped his hand under a mattress, and pulling out a razor, cut his throat from ear to ear. As he dropped dying to the floor, he said, “Mac will never get me alive.”24

  In fact, according to Shores, the reality was quite different, although still dramatic. At the time of Hurley’s arrest the county jail was also occupied by the notorious cannibal and murderer Alfred Packer, who was awaiting a second trial for killing five men, after the verdict in the first trial had been overturned on appeal.25 Hurley’s preliminary hearing was held the same day that the jury was deliberating its verdict for Packer. When an indictment was returned for Hurley at the city hall, a crowd gathered, thinking to lynch him. Shores took Hurley by the arm, pulled out his revolver, and ran the gauntlet back to the jail, having to threaten to shoot those people trying to stop him. Once at the jail he locked Hurley in Packer’s cell, while he took Packer to the courthouse to await the verdict. Fetched by the jailer shortly thereafter, Shores returned to the jail. “I found McCabe lying on his stomach in the front part of his cell. Blood was streaming across the iron floor in all directions,” he later wrote. “I grabbed the fallen man by the shoulder and turned him on his side. Although accustomed to sights of violence, I shuddered as I looked down at his grotesquely dangling head, which was nearly severed from his body. Blood was spurting from a deep gash which extended nearly from ear to ear. His jugular vein had been cut, and he had bled to death within only a few minutes. He certainly knew how to handle a knife even when it was directed against himself.”26

  Looking around the cell, Shores found a bloody, straight-edged razor that belonged to Packer. Shores had no idea if the deceased had any family, but shortly thereafter Hughie Frill, the dead man’s closest friend, claimed the body. And then the telegraph operator showed Shores a telegram that had been received in response to one Frill had sent to the man’s family. “Bury Tommy in Gunnison,” it read. When Shores looked at the name and address on the telegram, they read “Hurley” and “Pottsville, Pennsylvania.” It was then that he realized that the most notorious of the fugitive Molly Maguires had refused to let anyone else end his life, and had chosen to finish it by his own hand.27

  • • •

  Within two months of the end of the Haymarket trial, Siringo—having already told William Pinkerton “that the east was too tame for me, hence I wanted a position in the west”28—was sent to the new Denver office. Allan Pinkerton had long avoided expansion, believing that a limited number of offices allowed the agency to be run by people he implicitly trusted in a manner that followed his long-established ethical codes. His sons, however, added four offices—in Denver, Boston, Kansas City, and St. Paul—within five years of their father’s death.

  The Pinkerton’s Denver office came about due to expansion into that city by the Thiel Detective Service Company. One of Pinkerton’s most trusted operatives during the Civil War, Gus Thiel had set up a rival company in St. Louis in 1873, an action that Pinkerton considered a betrayal.29 In 1885, Thiel sent his star agent, John F. Farley, to open an operation in Denver, which was considered the most significant city between Chicago and the Pacific.30 In response, the Pinkertons made it their fourth branch location in 1886, opening the office under Charles O. Eames, a former assistant superintendent in Chicago.31

  Siringo became suspicious of the goings-on within the agency almost immediately upon his arrival in Denver, in October 1886. Eames, a trusted officer, had been allowed to select his own operatives—other than Siringo—and it seemed to the cowboy that they were all occupied in shady practices. Although Siringo did engage in what he called “city work”—such as catching a gang of dishonest streetcar conductors—he welcomed the opportunity to get into the field for investigations, because the ethos and actions in town disturbed him.

  Siringo’s first major case came early in 1887, when he was sent to Archuleta County, in southwest Colorado, to investigate an ugly political dispute.32 The county included only about seventy-five voters, most of whom were English-speaking. But in the recent election, three members of the Archuleta family—wealthy Hispanic sheep ranchers from Amargo in northern New Mexico—and two of their cronies had won the five positions as county commissioners by sending their employees into Colorado on election day to cast votes. Their English-speaking opponents rebelled and marched the five members of the Archuleta group over the state line, warning them never to return. Bendito Martinez, one of the five, hired Pinkerton’s to put down the insurgents and restore the deposed commissioners.

  Siringo thought neither party was totally in the right, but, posing as a Texas outlaw, he bought a horse in Durango and pretended to join the insurgents, who numbered about seventy-five. The Archuletas had sixty heavily armed New Mexicans, and the two sides faced each other across a bridge over the San Juan River, threatening serious violence. Twice the insurgents laid plans to murder the commissioners, and twice Siringo managed to warn them. “This came very near costing me my life,” he wrote, “as a rope had been prepa
red to hang me as a spy. But I lied out of it.”33 A truce was finally brokered between the two sides, but meanwhile, Siringo found proof of a number of crimes by the insurgents, including illegal vote buying. He testified to a grand jury in Durango and then disappeared when sixteen of the insurgents were indicted.

  Soon thereafter, Siringo was ordered to hunt down a brakeman for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway who had stolen ten thousand dollars from Wells Fargo following a train wreck. Siringo traced him to Mexico City but found there were no extradition laws with Mexico, so he played tourist for two months while waiting for the man to return north. When he finally did, Siringo had him arrested in Leavenworth, Kansas.34 The cowboy detective followed that with cases in Colorado, where he figured out who was robbing a wealthy widow, and Wyoming, where his search for a killer who had broken out of jail included going undercover.35

  When he returned to Denver, Siringo continued to be bothered by his colleagues’ corruption. Eames, in league with the bookkeeper Morton, had started his own watch patrol—claiming it was Pinkerton’s—to furnish protection to businesses.36 He also had operatives take on multiple assignments and charge several clients concurrently for the same full day’s work. The operatives also padded their expenses, accepted bribes, became involved in cases that Pinkerton’s would not normally accept, and committed crimes themselves, which they then pretended to investigate.37

  The worst were two thugs known as “Doc” Williams and Pat Barry; the former had served time in an eastern prison for safe blowing. The pair kept a large part of their ill-gotten gains—such as stolen clothes and jewelry, some of it purloined from merchants for whom they were conducting investigations—in trunks in the room shared by all the operatives. One day Siringo was there when he heard cries from the superintendent’s adjoining office. Looking through a peephole, he saw Barry trying to beat a confession out of a man for a robbery that Siringo knew Barry and Williams had committed. Grabbing his Colt .45, Siringo rushed in, pointed it at Barry’s face, and demanded he stop immediately. He then told the whole story to Eames who, rather than support Siringo, unsuccessfully tried to convince Pinkerton to sack him.38