United States Marshal Heck Thomas - Smoking Guns

By Robert Kammen

In the Cherokee Strip lawmen were outnumbered by an army of outlaws. The enforcement of law was in the hands of U.S. Marshals like Heck Thomas and his deputies. They were paid two dollars a day, furnish their own horses and living expenses.
These outlaw gangs, heavily armed, materialized out of nowhere, staged these surprise raids and faded across the plains, with a diminishing clatter of hoofbeats, they were gone.

But Heck Thomas and other U.S. Marshals kept after these lawbreakers, out of pride, determined to avenge the deaths of fellow starpackers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Longhorn Publishing
• Release date: May 27, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227180964

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

If he'd known it would feel this good to kill a man, Little Dick West would have done so a long time ago. Back during his hazy beginnings in Texas when the half-hearted woman he called ‘ma’ was sharing her bed with a drunken bully whose main passion in life seemed to be beating the heck out of him. Or later on, as a homeless waif, to avenge all those indignities he suffered while doing menial tasks in frontier beaneries. There were times when he didn't have a place to sleep, and maybe it was this that had left him with a craving for sleeping outdoors as much as possible. This was his way even when a storm had cleaved the sky open, but when there was a roof over Little Dick's head, it was always a shed or barn.

He was sixteen at the time, a wizened little runt and doing roustabout work on the Three Circle Ranch in Texas, when the hand of friendship was first offered to him. This by a rancher bringing through a cattle herd, and the job Little Dick West took was as horse wrangler. So it wasn't too long before he'd put in a couple of summers on the Cimarron River. Unlike those just wanting to take their spur or quirt to a horse, Little Dick treated them kindly.

He was considered a loner, sparse with his words, and not someone to go drinking with, though he got to be treated as an equal by the other HX Bar hands. Some of whom were merely biding their time out at the ranch before hitting the outlaw trail again. Little Dick came to know the likes of outlaws such as Bill Doolin, Bitter Creek Newcomb and Bill Raidler. So maybe it was out of gratitude for their befriending him that he became a bandit.

Grown, it was said of Little Dick that you could smell bad of him like smoke in a house. The undersized waif hadn't grown all that much, and he always affected a slovenly appearance, but none were tougher. The reputation stamped upon him by lawmen was of Little Dick having courage, but more the fear-bit ferocity than sand. Or when cornered he was desperate; but he really had to be in a tight spot before he would unlimber those Colt .45s. Despite this, it was generally believed by star-packer and outlaw alike that Little Dick West had the fastest draw in the Territory, with either hand.

Little Dick wasn't one of those brazen enough to notch the black gutta-percha grips on his matched pair of Colts. Such advertising, he couldn't help noticing, brought would-be gunfighters swarming in thick as wasps. He just wanted to be left alone, something that most outlaws took into consideration as they didn't want to go against West's awesome speed with a six-gun. Even Bill Doolin threaded warily around this sad-faced and unkempt member of his outlaw gang.

About a year ago, in the summer of '92, they'd robbed a train over at Adair. It hadn't gone all that smoothly as some bystanders were hit along with three lawmen. Little Dick West had brooded over the fact an errant bullet from one of his Colts had struck one of those bystanders, and his huffy pride was keeping this a secret from those he rode with. After this had come other holdups, stagecoaches and a few cow town banks, until a week ago found them up near the Cimarron River in Kansas staging another train robbery, and for the record a Santa Fe train. Enriched by thirteen thousand in cash, Little Dick and the rest of the Doolin gang struck south across the Cimarron River only to be confronted with a running gun battle by a posse led by Marshal Chris Madsen. It was here that a steel-jacketed bullet from the rifle of Madsen shattered Bill Doolin's right foot, but mounted on superior horses the outlaws soon disappeared into the river breaks. It was at a ranch in the Cherokee Strip that the outlaw leader received treatment for his foot, and then the outlaws were off for a place they'd been many times before, the hardscrabble town of Ingalls.

For Little Dick West it was a chance which he'd discarded to get a room at the Pierce Hotel. Even as he celebrated this new windfall with the other outlaw's West's bedroll was waiting for him in the loft of the only livery stable. The chief residents of the hotel were several prostitutes, and eagerly they shared their rooms with the free-spending newcomers. But the women and the outlaws were next door at the Trilby Saloon, out of which Little Dick West emerged to throw a cautious glance along the street. Someplace or other he'd picked up a rash, and he ambled over to one of the posts holding up the front porch, scratching as he moved. Earlier in the day he'd bought one of those flat cans of Armbruster's Healing Salve at the store just up street, and gone out back to shuck out of his upper garments and smear some of the salve on his arms and torso. Now he leaned against the post, a sour scowl on his face, and surveyed all that he viewed.

Which from his vantage point was a wagon track of a road carrying on to Tulsa and was one of Ingalls’s two streets, the other curling northward and just a wide space between ramshackle building. There were two stores and a blacksmith shop, another saloon, while the centerpiece of this dying cow town was the town pump out in the middle of the street, and the horse trough, the ground around it muddied up and cleft by deep holes left by horses coming up to water. Around it buzzed fat bottle flies and a dragonfly passing down street. The quartering wind brought the stench of fresh horse manure decorating the hard-packed street to Little Dick. Maybe, came this irritated notion he should rub some horse droppings on his chest, 'Cause this darned lotion's not cuttin' it.

Little Dick West knew he wasn't the only one here in a foul mood, the other person being Bill Doolin homesteading inside the saloon. That foot wound of Doolin's was slow in healing, and in this business a man who couldn't keep on the move soon found himself dead or behind bars. Another concern of Little Dick's was that everyone in the county, and maybe beyond, knew the Doolin gang liked to hang out here. Before they'd greased the axle, so to speak, by buying food and provisions for the needy, but with that reward money being offered for every member of the gang; someone was bound to turn them in.

Should vamoose out of here, he muttered worriedly. But them darned women just won't let go.

It was said of Bill Doolin, who'd just propositioned one of the women, that by rights he should be pushing up prairie sod. This was way back when Doolin was a member of the Dalton gang. On their way to rob the bank at Coffeyville, Doolin's horse had gone lame, and they'd left him there with Doolin's promise to steal another horse and catch up at Coffeyville. So it was aboard a stolen horse that Doolin encountered a cowhand only too eager to tell of the Dalton gang being massacred. Without inquiring further, Bill Doolin swung his horse around and set out for the Territory and the haven of a hideout known only to him. Later on he viewed pictures of the dead outlaws in a newspaper, knowing that but for a lost horseshoe nail he'd be stretched out alongside them.

As for the outlaw Bill Doolin, he didn't brood long over the Daltons getting killed as he set about organizing his own gang. Twelve joined with Doolin, to get to calling themselves the Oklahombres. At first they specialized in robbing banks, but with wanteds of them being posted in darned near every town in the territory, they started going after trains.

Doolin was tall, lean, and likable. He fancied a shaggy beard and, though married, enjoyed consorting with women of the demimonde. He lived recklessly, while burning inside the outlaw chieftain was this fierce anger toward those packing a star. Bardog! he bellowed out as his arm tightened around the plump waist of the woman, Another bottle of whiskey! Hey, Charley Pierce, how you doing?

Bill, the other outlaw slurred back, Never had so much fun. Spittle running down both jowls, Charley Pierce picked up his big stein of foamy beer only to lose his grip on it and have the beer splash onto his grimy shirt and vest. Instead of getting angry at this, laughter bubbled out of the outlaw. Darn it all, I needed a bath. Bardog! he started banging his empty stein on the rickety tabletop, Another darned beer!

A smile draped the face of Red Buck George Weightman sharing the same table. He couldn't be more than in his mid-twenties, and somewhat handsome despite the cold and slit eyes and handlebar mustache. Out of Texas, Red Buck, a vicious killer and horse thief, had ambitions to form his own gang and often had arguments with Bill Doolin. He'd joined Doolin's outfit after serving three years in prison for horse stealing. He slid a wary eye over at Bill Doolin's foot propped up on a chair; Doolin having cut part of his lower boot away to accommodate the inner bandage.

Bill's packing a lot of corn whiskey away, Weightman muttered inwardly, So maybe this is the time to brace him. But Red Buck George Weightman held to his chair, sensing that the time wasn't ripe yet to call Doolin outside. More than once he'd seen Doolin unlimber that .45 caliber percussion Colt Dragoon, knew even when drinking the man was fast and with his eye lidding away, Red Buck tended to his own drinking.

Clustered around two tables wedged together were the rest of Doolin's hardcases, with the exception of Arkansas Tom Jones confined to his room at the City Hotel, the bandit laid up with influenza. Back of their table one of the bartenders was adjusting the flame on a lamp he'd just lighted. This was up by a front window letting in dying remnants of sunlight. They'd seen a hundred bars such as this, dark and reeking of beer spillage, the poker games, the barmaids and women gussied up in tight-fitting silken dresses and walking awkwardly in those high-heeled shoes. Most of the hardcases wouldn't have it any other way.

At the moment an outlaw named Bitter Creek George Newcomb was holding court as he began singing the song which had given him his nickname. I'm a wild wolf from Bitter Creek . . . an' it's my night to howl...

You sure can't carry a tune, complained Ol Yantis.

Bitter Creek George retorted jestingly, It suits me just fine. An' these highfalutin women don't mind my singing either. You can't help it, Yantis, bein' such a sourpuss. Generously he picked up the pitcher of beer and refilled Yantis's stein to overflowing.

Along with Bob Grounds and Alf Sohn, there was Dan Clifton, otherwise known as Dynamite Dick, the elusive Tulsa Jack Blake, and lastly the unprepossessing Dick Raidler.

That Raidler was a shade different than men he'd chosen to ride with was common knowledge; for Bill Raidler had left college in Pennsylvania upon contracting tuberculosis to seek a cure in the dry atmosphere of the plains. Here he became a close friend of Bitter Creek's who enticed him into becoming an outlaw. Raidler, though small and rat-faced, would don a larger stature when he would dreamily quote Wordsworth or Keats or Shakespeare around the nightly campfire. And the outlaws listened respectfully when he spoke of historical people such as Genghis Khan and Hernando Cortes. 

The common thread linking these men together was that at one time or another all of them had worked out at the HX Bar Ranch. A deeper bond was that every man here was a killer, took a certain pride in that cold fact, with some putting boastful notches on their six-guns. They didn't want any other life than robbing, be it a bank or train or whatever. And the enjoyment afterward of whiskey and gambling and women. Sometimes there'd be reflectful moments, a pondering word or two that a lot of lawmen were after them, and tomorrow might be their last sunrise. But none had any notions of quitting.

It was Tulsa Jack Blake's suggestion, quickly echoed by Raidler, that a poker game was just what they needed. They chased a couple of women away and got down to the business of gambling. A complaint from Ol Yantis caused the bartenders to light more lamps. As he took a peek at the cards just dealt to him, Bitter Creek George Newcomb brought up a worried hand to shove his hat back. He keened his ears away from the talk of the outlaws and their bragging to the open batwings and beyond, and decided after a few moments that it seemed unusually quiet out on the street fronting the saloon. He eyed a couple of bystanders sauntering up street and a cowhand loping a tired bronc toward the livery stable. A silent thought: just doesn't feel right.

You in?

Nodding, Bitter Creek flicked a red chip into the pot and discarded three cards, while out on the front porch the outlaw Little Dick West bestirred himself by swinging about and passing into the saloon. He took in the poker game; Bill Doolin seated farther back next to one of the women, and Pierce and Weightman jawing quietly at another table. Catching the worried message in Bitter Creek's eyes, Little Dick muttered, Quite as heck out there.

Just the same, we should post a lookout.

Lay off, said Ol Yantis. All worry does is wear another hole in your backside.

Bob Grounds added to this by saying, Indians and lawmen like hittin' around sunup. I'll raise . . . two bucks.

One of the women claimed the bench residing before an old upright piano and began banging away at the keys. It wasn't too long before the music of a popular song brought worried thoughts away from the Doolin gang flushed with stolen money, a lot of this money being passed to the bartenders in exchange for more corn whiskey and beer.

While slipping to the darker edges piercing farther back in the saloon, Little Dick West eased down at a table. He refrained from drinking, though he did get out the makings and roll a cigarette, to afterward check the loads in these six-guns. He still shared Bitter Creek's worry, with this growing feeling that things just didn't seem right. He'd been an outlaw too long to ignore this acquired sixth sense, but he wasn't boss man Bill Doolin. So he held to the table as some quite words edged out between his lips, I'll give it another ten minutes, then check out the town.

CHAPTER TWO

Had Bill Doolin known of the lonely rider slipping away from Ingalls to strike out cross-county, the outlaw chieftain would have roused his men and made tracks for a safer haven. But Doolin held to the Trilby Saloon, as he let the whiskey and the sensuous words of the woman chase away the slight pain coming from his healing wound.

He had called himself a spy, this lonely rider espying distantly the glow of a camp fire. Not too long ago, Red Lucas had drifted into Ingalls, where he put up an old tent, and to eke out a living sold the yellow channel catfish he caught as he posed as an eccentric and not too bright fisherman to locals and to outlaws whenever they passed through. He even played poker with those riding with Bill Doolin as he checked out the identifying scars and faces adorning wanted posters. Clad plainly in an old black flannel coat and shapeless hat with a stubble of reddish bead, not for one minute did anyone suspect Red Lucas as being a deputy marshal.

But I'm glad it's over . . . as there were some hairy moments.

His association with these outlaws had given lawman Red Lucas a clearer insight into just what caused Doolin and West and Bitter Creek to turn to crime. It had been more or less bred into them, as most of these outlaws hailed from places along the Kansas-Missouri border and from Arkansas. As their fathers had been owl-hooters, so did the sons and their kin continue this bloody chain of crime. They took pride in using the guns they wore, considered robbing not something wrong but a way of life. A few could even be found in church one day, robbing a bank the next, and spouting holy words even as their booming guns cut down another innocent. All of them seemed to cast the same appearance of low-crowned and broad-brimmed hats, unshaven and stoop-shouldered, with begrimed red flannel shirts and those cold, cold eyes.

They'll never stop until we stop them, Red Lucas said as his concerned eyes took in a pair of horsemen misting out of the darkness, and he reined up his sorry-looking steed.

Lucas, came a welcoming voice, Wasn't sure it was you. The words were accompanied by the dry husky crackle of a gun hammer being eased down. What have you got?

The Doolin gang, he said simply, and hemmed in by the lawmen, he walked his horse the rest of the way into camp.

The men gathered around the large camp fire, which was a considerable distance south of Ingalls and close to the Cimarron River, had come out here posing as hunters. They had ventured forth in two covered wagons; the men remaining under the canvas as they passed through small towns on their way over here. Some of them had actually gone out hunting the better part of this week while awaiting the return of Red Lucas.

Lucas tied up his horse before turning to squat down by the camp fire. After a tin cup of coffee was passed to him as he said, They came in yesterday.

I see, said Marshal John Hixon. He had been given command only because Bill Tilghman, who was to have headed the force, was confined at home with a broken leg. The other U.S. Marshals, Madsen, Thomas, and Ledbetter, were busy elsewhere. Though possessing less seniority, Hixon had more than proved himself in this criminal war against the outlaws infesting the territories.

Notable among the other lawmen, Red Lucas couldn't help noting, were Lafe Shadley, Dick Speed, Tom Houston, and Jim Masterson, brother to the famous Bat Masterson. He told quickly of how the Doolin gang were drinking it up at the Trilby Saloon. They haven't posted any guards.

Darned arrogant of them, spat out Marshal Hixon. Let's hitch those wagons up and head up there.

At last the lawmen brought their wagons and the two outriders away from the Cimarron River and along a small creek meandering north. Inside the darkness of the covered wagons the lawmen made no complaints about the jolting ride as their thoughts were either on their weapons—-each being armed with two handguns and a matching number of cartridge belts and a Winchester—-or, like Tom Houston, pondering over what was to come.

Young Houston knew his capabilities as a peace officer serving in Oklahoma Territory had proven himself under fire. Despite this, he couldn't help mulling over the bloody reputation earned by Bill Doolin and his killing band. None of these outlaws would ever consider giving themselves up, and Houston's expectancy at the moment was matched, he knew, by every lawman here; that in the coming gun battle some of them would get killed. What I'm getting paid for.

What's that, Tom? came Dick Speed's hushed words.

Just jawing to myself.