About the time I became special officer for the Rock Island railroad in Oklahoma Territory, the townsite war between Enid and North Enid was going good. The Rock Island, being heavily interested in the North Enid townsite, refused to stoop its trains at Enid, where the Federal government had laid out a town when the Cherokee Strip was opened to settlement in 1893. The result was a regular armed conflict between the frontier towns of Enid and North Enid, with the Rock Island supporting the latter. The Enid people sawed down a railroad bridge, a colony of soldiers from Fort Reno rode in and took charge, and things were lively. This required my presence at North Enid a good deal of the time.

One afternoon Lew Humprheys from my home at Kingfisher was visiting me. I suggested that we get on the northbound train and ride up to Caldwell, just across the Kansas line, have a good meal at the Harvey House and catch the evening train back to North Enid. There was no place in the Strip where you could get as good a meal as they put up at the Harvey house, so Lew was glad to go.

On our way back after supper, the train made its customary stop at Pond Creek, about twenty five miles over the Oklahoma line. Like North Enid, Pond Creek was a railroad town that did not enjoy the government’s favor. The government town was Round Pond, three miles south. The railroad would not stop its trains there, which the citizens naturally resented. The same hard feeling existed between Round Pond and Pond Creek and the Rock Island was between the two Enids and the railroad, twenty-five miles farther down the track.

Leaving Pond Creek at nine o’clock or thereabouts we picked up speed and whistled through Round Pond without a stop. Mr. Humphreys and I were sitting in the smoking car talking with Joe Reed, the conductor, who had turned over a seat facing us, when the brakes were abruptly applied and the train began to chug along to a pretty sudden stop. But before it stopped the brakes were released and it started ups lowly and ran for a few yards and then stopped altogether and we heard two or three shots fired outside.

“What in Sam Hill is the matter?” exclaimed Reed, jumping up.

“It looks to me like a holdup,” I said. “Have you got a gun on you, Joe”

I had no gun. The conductor handed me a little thing that looked like a toy pistol.

The colored porter ran out on the front platform of the smoker, which adjoined the express car. There were some shouts, another shot or two and the porter did not return.

There was a good deal of commotion and someone shouted that the Dalton gang had waylaid the train. I told Joe I didn’t believe it was the Daltons. The Dalton and Bill Doolin gangs were operating over east, holding up the Santa Fe about once a week, but they had never touched the Rock Island and I did not think they would tough it. I know all the Dalton boys, and at this time one of their brother in law was living in a house of mine.

I took Joe’s little gun and said I would go out and see who they were and what was going on. The noise was all coming from the west or right side of the train. I went out on the platform of the smoker where the porter had gone and started to look out when I saw a man spring up on the ground right under the steps and started to run toward the engine. I thought he was a passenger from one of the rear cars who had lost his head, or I could have killed him easily.

The train had stopped where the road, or trail as it was then, crossed the track. A fire was burning beside the track, which I later learned was a signal to bob Hughes and Jim Borland, the outlaws who had boarded the tender unseen at Pond Creek, and climbed over and covered the engineer and fireman and forced them to bring the train to a stop where the rest of the gang was waiting. There were not many fences in that country in those days, but there was fence along this road, a barbed wire fence, and it came pretty close to the track. This man I saw running got tangled up in this fence, but he finally climbed over it and joined the rest of the outlaws, who were yelling and swearing like outlaws generally did, and hosting through the top of the express car, trying to get the express messenger and the guard to pen it. They had the engine crew and the porter with them so the people in the express car were afraid to shoot through the door for fear of killing some of their own men.

I knew by the voices of the outlaws that not one of the Daltons were with them, which, to tell the truth, made me feel a little better, as I would have hated to think that any of the Dalton boys would have caused me any trouble, as long as we had known each other.

The express messenger would not open up and the outlaws laid a stick of dynamite on the door-sill and ran back a little piece. There was a pretty strong explosion, which wrecked the door, but did not open it, and buckled the steel plate on the sill so that it could not be opened. But the express messenger said if the boys would come around to the other side of the train he would open up.

I had no confidence in Joe Reed’s little gun and went back into the train to get a better one. Entering the coach back of the smoker, the first man who caught my eye was a fellow seated about a third of the way back from the front door. He was a tall, slim fellow, pretty well dressed and wearing a broad western hat. He did not seem greatly disturbed by what was going on, although by this time the passengers as a whole were pretty thoroughly excited.

“Have you got a gun on you?” I asked this man.

He seemed surprised. “No, what makes you think I’d have a gun?”

There was something about the way he said it that I didn’t like. “You look to me like a man who’d have a gun,’ I replied.

He insisted however, that he hadn’t a gun.

“You must sit where you are, then” I said. “And don’t move.”

Just then the train guard burst into the car. He had come through the end door of the express car and through the smoker. He had a shotgun with him and he fell flat on the floor and started to crawl under a seat, crying, “They are going to kill me!”

I took his shotgun and went out on the platform and standing on the steps on the east side look to see what was going on. Two of the robbers were handing their companions up into the express door. Shooting was going all the time, and by the dim light from the train windows I located a man standing up in the bar pit which is where they scrape along the side of the track to make a fill, shooting back through the upper part of the train to intimidate the passengers. As my eyes became accustomed to the darkness I could see him plainer and in a minute he keeled over pistol in hand. Someone had brought him down by a shot from the train.

When this happened, the men began to jump from the car and the whole outfit started to run east along the road to where their horses were tied to the fence. They shot back as they ran and mounted their horses and rode away. I noticed that two horses were left, which would indicate that more than this one robber must have been put out of the fight.

I went and untied the two horses and led them tack to the train but there was no evidence that we had got more than one of the robbers. He was dead. They were loading the corpse in the express car when I head a voice at my elbow.

“I’ll take those horses back to town for you.”

I looked and saw the man I’d asked for a gun.

“I told you to stay in that car,” I said. “I have someone to take the horses to town.

Just then I recognized Joe McClellan, a partner of Prince Gentry in the lumber and banking business at Round Pond. (Round Pond is now known as Pond Creek), and the old railroad stop at Pond Creek, three miles north, has been abandoned. Mr. McClellan is now dead but Prince Gentry resides at Enid. Mr. McClellan had some boys with him and I entrusted the horses to them.

My man of the gun incident got back into the car. The train backed to Pond Creek, where we unloaded the corpse and AI got out and put up for the night.

The coroner’s inquest was held the next day, and who should turn up as a voluntary witness but this passenger. The dead man was identified as Bob Hughes, a member of a family that produced several outlaws down in the Chickasaw Indian Country. I had known him slightly. He was a friend of Belle Starr, and used to hand out at the Starr ranch in the Cherokee Country, over west of Fort Smith. Belle Starr was a quarter-blood Cherokee and the only real woman desperado I have ever known although I have known several who nowadays bear that reputation, including Calamity Jan Canary. Belle Starr was a superior woman in more ways than one. She had good looks and there was a trace of refinement in her manners that was a novelty among her associates, men and women, although I never heard that she had many women associates.

The passenger gave his name as Hill and launched into his testimony as though he were running the inquest. Finally I stopped him.

“Those aren’t the facts,” I said. “What I gave are the facts in this case.”

The man said he had forgotten, and changed his story without argument.

I was interested in this Hill. After the inquest I went up to him.

“I’d like to make you proposition,” I said. “There will be a big reward out in this case, and I’d like to have you help me run these fellows down.”

He said that was agreeable to him.

Going over the scene of the attempted hold-up I found a seamless two-bushel grain sack—they do not make them any more—that the robbers evidently intended to carry the loot away in. It had been patched with two kinds of goods—some pants goods, and some pinkish cotton goods. Examining the two horses I found that their hind shoes had been drawn recently. They appeared to be driving rather than riding horses, which the robbers no doubt had stolen. There were trailers on their shoes. A horse cannot travel under saddle well with that kind of shoe and they are also more easily trailed.

Leaving a friend to keep a watch over Hill and to follow him if he left town, I made a trip to Topeka to see Mr. M. A. Lowe, the general solicitor of the railroad, and returned to Pond Creek to find Hill still there, staying at Billy Malleley’s ranch house, which we all used as a hotel. But someone had brought Hill a horse and the day after my return he made an excuse to me and mounted his horse and rode south. I followed him, keeping three quarter of mile back, just so as to catch sight of him now and then on a far rise of the prairie. He rode south to within three mills of north Enid and then turned west toward a part of the country, which had a pretty bad name. But he did not go far. After traveling about three miles I saw him ride and into a big ravine and approach a dugout that was set in the west side of it. I rode back to Pond Creek and tried to get hold of Bedford Woods, a plain-clothes man in Wichita, who had been my deputy when I was city marshal of Caldwell in the early days. Failing to get Woods I boarded a southbound train to North Enid to find someone else. My wife, who had been visiting in Caldwell, was on the train enroute to our home in Kingfisher. Inasmuch as I had been warned that I would get killed if I tried to raid the dugout, and as Mr. Lowe of the railroad had advised against it, I thought I had better tell Mrs. Fossett of my plans. I did so, and left the train at North Enid, here I picked up a sort of half outlaw whose name slips my mind. He agreed to go with me and I had got my guns and ammunition and was looking around for a dark lantern when my son Lew, dropped off of a freight train from Kingfisher. Lew was fifteen years old. He was a boy who did not have a great deal to say. He hung around with me for a few hours, until I got my lantern. I told Lew to make himself at home about the hotel as I was going out into the country and probably would not be back until late that night.

“I heard about it,” Lew said, “I’m going with you.”

I told him he was not going.

“You’ll take some stranger out with you” Lew said, “and you’ll get killed.” Lew said if that happened it would make an outlaw out of him, as he would follow the fellows who killed me until he got them.

There was something to think about in what my son said. I had seen too many young fellows hit the outlaw trail not to know that. And I did not think any too much of the fellow I had engaged to go with me. In those days it was a slim line that separated some law officers from those who operated on the wrong side of the law. One year they were deputy sheriff or deputy marshals and the next year the sheriffs and marshals were after them. It was all from being exposed to the rough life of a new country. I thought it over and for my son’s sake more than anything else; I turned the other man off, and told Lew I would take him along. It may be lucky that I did, for I later learned that this man I had picked up was a tougher character than I had supposed him to be, and my suspicions were none too good.

We approached the ravine where the dugout was without any trouble, tied our horses in a clump of brush and crawled up to the back end of the dugout. There was a little window just above the surface of the ground. We began shooting through it with Winchesters and two women and two or three young men ran out and went into the brush. We did not bother them further, but posting my son as a guard outside I entered the dugout with my dark lantern in one hand and a gun in the other.

There was no one inside, and one of the first things I found, hanging by a nail on the wall, was a little boy’s pant, with two pieces cut out of it, one of them from the waist lining. The goods were the same as the sack had been patched with. I also found two pairs of horseshoes and making a good search I found a letter in a man’s coat. The letter had been written only a few days before from Pawnee, Oklahoma. It said in effect:

“We will meet in El Reno on Saturday and sell the horses and mules and fix to rob the train at Marlow on the fifteenth when they take the government money through to Fort Sill.”

As the envelope was missing I could not learn to whom the letter was addressed, but Felix Young, who was an outlaw I had heard of, but had ever seen, signed it.

I took the shoes to Pond Creek and they fitted the two horses there, nail hole for nail hole. I took the pants to Topeka and they matched the patches in the sack. Early Saturday morning I picked up Bedford Woods at Wichita and took him down the line with me toward El Reno. At North Enid Bill Tilghman, Chris Madsen, Heck Thomas and three or four other deputy United States marshals got on the train. They told me they had found out ‘who’ had held up the train at Round Pond. It was the Daltons. They had a woman with them, a woman who was an associate of outlaws, who had told them all about it. I told them that if they would get off with me at El Reno I would show them that they were being misled.

Woods and I reached El Reno and went up to the office of the Rock Island attorney there. While we there were talking I happened to look out the window and see my old friend Hill go past on foot. Other men who were leading a string of horses and mules followed him. Woods and I grabbed up our hats and ran downstairs. We pulled out our guns and grabbed the two members of the gang who were nearest. They made no special trouble and we got them around the corner to the little El Reno jail and came back. Turning into Bickford Street, I almost ran into Nate Silvey (in another article this was spelled Silva), whom I had seen with Hill a few moments before. Nate Silvey was a bad looker and he had a bad reputation. He was redheaded, freckle-faced, broad-shouldered and six feet five inches tall. I shoved a gun against him and told him to put up his hands. He did so without the least protest. Woods took his gun and marched him away toward jail.

Meantime out of the corner of my eye I had caught sight of Hill again. He was running for his horse, which was tied to a hitch rail about a hundred yards away. He took a shot or two at me as he ran. I fired and killed Hill’s horse just as he was mounting, and Hill turned west down a side street, past Kerfoot Hotel with me after him. We were both shooting. Finally Hill fell, wounded. When he got up I was almost on him.

‘Throw up your hands!” I hollered. He raised his hands, still holding onto his gun.

“Throw that gun away!” I yelled.

He tossed it toward me.

My friend Hill turned out to be Felix Young. They took him and Nate Silvey and the others to Pond Creek for trail, but there were never tried. He railroad war between Pond Creek and Round Pond was reaching an acute stage and one day the Round Pond people overturned a quarter of a mile of track. There was a good deal of shooting and excitement and in the midst of it the Pond Creek jail was broken into and the train robbers got out. Young was killed afterwards in Wyoming and Silvey went to the penitentiary in Missouri for stealing horses. (Continued next week)

BAD MEN

By W. D. (Bill) Fossett

NOTE: The story, reprinted from the America Legion Weekly, is continued from last week’s issue of the Times. Those who did not read the first installment should look it up now or else come to The Times office and get an extra copy of that issue. It’s too good a story to miss any of it.

~~~~~October 24, 1929—The Kingfisher Times--Jim Borland was not captured. He went back to his home in the Indian Territory and led a quieter life, and in 1901 when the Kiowa and Comanche country was opened Jim Thompson, the sheriff of the new county of Caddo, came to me and said he had selected the man he wanted for under sheriff and asked me to have a talk with him. The man was Jim Borland. I recognized him, and told Thompson I’d recognized him, but as he had led a straight life for seven years and was a good nervy man I thought that he would make a useful under sheriff. He was appointed. At this time I was chief Deputy United Stats Marshal of Oklahoma. Jim Thompson had been one of my assistants and I had more or less engineered his election as sheriff of Caddo County, wanting to get the office in good hands.

When this country was opened Dr. Beanblossom and his boy started from Oklahoma City for the new town of Lawton. The Casey gang robbed them on the way and the Beanblossom boy was killed. Bert Casey and his partner Simms were slippery characters from the Chickasaw Indian country. After the Beanblossom murder Jim Thompson and the sheriff of the surrounding counties had a meeting and decided to put a spotter on Casey’s trail, Casey not being personally known to any of the officers. This Casey was a young fellow about twenty or twenty-one, but he had killed several men. He was the killer type, like Billy the Kid, but unlike the Kid, he shot from ambush without giving his victims a chance. I always rather like the Kid, with whom I never had any dealings as a peace officer, but for several years I carried a fancy gold mounted Winchester of his that was given me by one of his friends.

The spotter the sheriffs picked was a brother-in-law of Jim Hughes, an old outlaw gang leader and a relative of bob Hughes, who was killed in the attempted train robbery at Round Pond. Before I had heard of the action of the sheriffs I followed a similar course picking two young fellows I had in the Federal jail at Guthrie on minor charges, named Ed Lockett and Fred Hudson.

Lockett, Hudson and the Hughes’s brother-in-law, whose name I forget, joined Casey at about the same time and a little later Casey joined Jim Hughes. This made a pretty strong combination. The Hughes’ brother-in-law somehow got the rectitude of his intentions suspected by the outlaws and one night they took him down by the bank of a creek and hung him. My man Fred Judson held the horses.

This came near discouraging Ed Lockett, but Hudson was game and continued to play my hand. I had in jail several of the Casey gang who were to be taken to Lawton for trial for the Beanblossom murder. I told Hudson to put the idea in Casey’s head to make a raid on the courthouse at Lawton to rescue these men. That was the way I intended to kill or capture Casey. Hudson did this and Casey thought the suggestion had merit.

“But if we do that,” Casey said, “we will have to get out of the country and there must be some money to travel on.”

It was decided to rob the bank at Cleo Springs to get the money, and preparations were made for Casey and Simms and my men Hudson and Lockett to rob the bank. The four camped under a big tree on the prairie outside the town. Casey and Simms rode into town, got shaved and looked the place over. When Hudson and Lockett returned Casey said that the robbery would take place the next morning at nine o’clock.

It was a habit of outlaws, as well as a good many other people, to examine their guns the first thing of a morning—to “warm them up,” they used to say. That night Hudson called Lockett out and told him:

“We can’t afford to go into this holdup, as someone is going to get killed. So in the morning when we are warming up our guns you sit down in front of Simms and I’ll sit down in front of Casey. You keep your eye on me and when I nod I’m going to make Casey throw up his hands or I’m going to kill him and I want you to take care of Simms.”

The next morning the four men got their breakfast together over a fire and sat down to eat it and discuss the projected bank robbery. My boys ate fast and then sat down as Hudson had planned and go out their guns and began to twirl them around and limber u. Casey and his partner were sitting with their guns in their holsters when Hudson looked at Lockett and nodded.

“Put up your hands, Bert,” said Fred Hudson.

Bert Casey was ordinarily no man’s fool; but this time he did a foolish thing. He reached for his gun—and that is a bad thing for any man to do when he is covered, I don’t care how quick on the draw he is. Hudson fired and Casey rolled over, but he had his gun in his hand. Lockett, who was the weak sister of the combination, had lost his nerve and after shooting Casey, Hudson had to turn and shoot Simms. He did so killing him. Then there was a third shot. It came from Casey’s gun. It went wild and when Hudson got to Casey he was dead. Both Hudson and Lockett swore to me that a contraction of Casey’s finder fire that shot after he was dead.

This rid Oklahoma of two bad men, but as there would be hard feelings I advised Lockett and Hudson to get out of the country. Hudson went back to his home in Arkansas, and was himself when Jim Borland got out a warrant for murder against him and went to Arkansas and brought him back for trial at Anadarko. Although Borland had assured Sheriff Thompson that he bore me no ill will as a result of my part in the Round Pond holdup, I am satisfied that it was on my account that he was persecuting the Hudson boy, so I attended his trial and he was acquitted.

The verdict of the jury made Jim Borland hopping mad. I was prepared for that, but thought it would blow over. Jim had been a good officer, and I wanted to see him succeed, but I would not let him take his old grudge against me out on young Hudson. When they let Hudson lose I told him to get back to Arkansas as quick as he could or there would be more trouble and he said he would.

But before he had time to get out of Anadarko Jim Borland met him on the street and began to abuse him and say that he was going to hold him as a witness against Jim Hughes, who meantime had been captured. One word led to another and a crowd gathered. No one seems to have noticed who drew first, if there was any perceptible difference in time between draws. At any rate the two fired simultaneously and fell. Borland killed instantly. Hudson was pretty far-gone when they got to him.

“What did I do to Jim?” he asked.

“You killed him,” someone said.

“Well,” said Hudson, “I just want to outlive that son of a gun.”

Fred Hudson had about ten minutes in which to enjoy the satisfaction of this triumph. Carmen Headlight.

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