Heck Thomas Was In On The Kill For Some Of The West's Biggest Criminals

 

Heck Thomas got his start at 17, at 17 when he joined the Atlanta police force

Henry Andrew Thomas, better known as “Heck” Thomas, was in on the kill for some of the West’s most dangerous outlaws. He helped take down Bill Dalton, Bill Doolin, and the Lee brothers, a notorious group of Texas cattle rustlers. He rode on the final chase after “Dynamite Dick” Clifton but missed out on the kill.

Thomas got his start in law enforcement at seventeen when he joined the Atlanta, Georgia, police force. From 1875 to 1885, he worked as a railroad guard for the Texas Express Company. In 1885, he became a member of the Fort Worth Detective Association.

His first big case involved tracking down the Lee brothers.

The Dillon Tribune said the Lees had been terrorizing Delaware, Bend, and Cook Counties in Texas for nearly two years. They rustled cattle on the Texas side of the Red River and drove them across the river into Indian Territory, where they had ranches. Jim, Bill, and Pink Lee led a gang of twenty cattle thieves in the river country and were said to have killed forty men.

Thomas told the Dallas Daily Herald he had been chasing the Lee boys since May 5. “At times, we were in close places and could not tell whether the Lee boys were after us or we after them.”

Tom Horn Cattle Detective

 

Tom Horn

Tom Horn is one of those western characters who’s hard to peg. During his brief lifespan, he served as an Indian fighter, deputy sheriff, Pinkerton man, and range detective, but mostly, he worked as a problem solver, offering a final solution for troubled cattlemen.

The Salt Lake Herald said, “Horn is alleged to have taken it upon himself to get rid of the rustlers in his own peculiar way and which he often remarked was the sure way.”

 “Doc” Shores, the sheriff of Gunnison County, said Tom Horn “didn’t place a high value on human life.” As a cattle detective with the Swan Land Cattle Company and the Iron Mountain Ranch Company, Horn earned $600 for the hide of every cattle rustler he brought in. But Horn told one confidant, I have “no trouble collecting my money, for I would kill a man who cheated me out of ten cents.”

Many Western writers classify Tom Horn as a gunfighter because he killed at least seventeen men during his days as a range detective. But Tom Horn was no gunfighter. He faced no one in a fair fight. His favorite method of getting his man was to ambush him on the trail or back shoot him from a safe distance—with a Buffalo gun. Tom Horn may have played fast and loose with his victims’ lives, but he never took chances with his own.

Bat Masterson: Frontier Lawman, Buffalo Hunter, Writer, & Sports Enthusiast

 

Bat Masterson made his way to the Kansas frontier in 1871,
where he worked as a buffalo hunter and Indian scout

Today we think of Bat Masterson as a frontier good guy, but in his day, the press wasn’t sure which side of the law Bat was on. The Globe Republican (Dodge City) said, “Bat is one of the best-known sports in the West and has had a checkered career ever since he came into prominence as a city marshal of Dodge City when it was a cowboy town.”

Years later, in 1905, when Masterson became a deputy marshal in New York on the recommendation of Teddy Roosevelt, the Washington Times suggested his selection was a bit of absurd overkill. They said, “The action is somewhat similar to that of Congress when it passed a $50,000,0000 appropriation bill for national defenses and called it a ‘peace measure,’ shortly after the blowing up of the Battleship Maine.”

Or, maybe it was an extension of Theodore Roosevelt’s trademark phrase, “speak softly and carry a big stick.” Only the Times understood you couldn’t fight criminals by inviting a killer to the party. So appointing Bat Masterson as a deputy marshal was a lot like throwing down a challenge to the criminal class, especially if you factored in Bat’s troubled past.

William Barclay Masterson made his way to the Kansas Frontier in 1871 at the tender young age of eighteen. He worked as a buffalo hunter, a civilian scout for General Nelson A. Miles in his Indian campaigns, and not too many years after that as a frontier lawman.

In 1874, Bat took part in the Second Battle of Adobe Walls—an epic standoff between 27 buffalo hunters and 700 Comanche, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Arapaho warriors.

Wyatt Earp Frontier Lawman

 

In october 1878, Wyatt Earp assisted in the arrest of James Kennedy
for the murder of Dora Hand

Bat Masterson said Wyatt Earp “more than any man I have ever known was devoid of physical fear.” He said Earp was a “terror in action, either with his fists or a gun.”

In 1877, the Dodge City Times said, Wyatt Earp “had a quiet way of taking the most desperate characters into custody which invariably gave one the impression that the city was able to enforce her mandates and preserve her dignity.” The paper said, “It wasn’t considered policy to draw a gun on Wyatt unless you got the drop and meant to burn powder without any preliminary talk.”

The meaning was clear. If you were on the business end of a 45, dealing with Wyatt Earp, you’d soon need a reservation at Boot Hill.

In October 1878, Wyatt assisted in the arrest of James Kennedy for the murder of Dora Hand, alias Fannie Keenan.

Four pistol shots rang out in a Dodge City saloon shortly after 4 a.m. James Kennedy ran out of the saloon, jumped on his horse, and galloped down the road, heading towards the fort.

Wild Bill Hickok: Buffalo Hunter, Lawman, and Gambler

 

Henry M. Stanley interviewing Wild Bill

Henry M. Stanley interviewed Wild Bill for a series of articles published in the St. Louis Democrat in April 1867. He wrote, Wild Bill “stands six foot one inch in his moccasins, and is as handsome a specimen of man as could be found.” He “held himself straight, and had broad compact, shoulders, was large chested, with small waist, and well-formed muscular limbs.”

Stanley asked, “I say, Mr. Hickok, how many men have you killed to your certain knowledge?”

“After a little deliberation, he replied, ‘I suppose I have killed considerable over a hundred.’”

“What made you kill all those men? Did you kill them without cause or provocation?”

“No, by heaven, I have never killed one man without good cause.”

Later in the interview, Wild Bill described his first kill to Stanley.

The Wild Bunch or The Hole-In-The-Wall Gang

 

Outlwas camped inside the Hole-in-the-Wall

The Wild Bunch, or the Hole in the Wall Gang, was one of the last great outlaw gangs to terrorize the Old West. Butch Cassidy organized the gang, and membership changed as often as the wind, depending upon the specialties needed to perform the job at hand.

Butch’s friend, Elzy Lay, was the first member recruited into the gang. Other members included Harry Longabaugh, the Sundance Kid; Harvey Logan, alias Kid Curry; Ben Kilpatrick; Tom and Bill McCarty; Tom “Black Jack” Ketchum; Sam Ketchum; Bill Carver; and several others.

They made their hideout in the Hole in the Wall, a secret lair; lawmen dared not enter. “It is a spot where ten men can defy a thousand,” said a story in the Saint Paul Globe, “and one man can elude a hundred for months.”

“The only entrance and the only exit is the gorge through which the little stream rushes out again into the open lower country. Here, too, the walls rise abruptly, like the canyons in Colorado, and so narrow is the trail that not more than two horsemen may ride abreast.” All along the way, there are hideaways where one outlaw, armed with a shotgun, can make short work of a lone lawman or hold off a posse for days.

The outlaws would emerge from the Hole in the Wall—rob a bank or train—and dash back into hiding before a posse could catch sight of them.

Alfred T. Mahan The Naval Influencer Who Never Fought A Battle

Alfred Thayer Mahan spent most of his career talking about naval battles he never fought.

While many military thinkers built their reputations in combat, Mahan built his surrounded by books. He’d served in the Navy, but he’d never commanded a fleet in battle.

 

He studied the men who did.

 

At the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, Mahan developed a reputation as the guy who was always digging through history books. While other officers argued about ships and guns, Mahan wanted to know why some countries became powerful while others fell apart.

 

He kept running into the same answer.

 

Ships.

 

Not just warships. Merchant fleets. Ports. Naval bases. Trade routes. The whole machine.