Allison
Born near Waynesboro, Tennessee on September 2, 1841 to a Presbyterian minister and farmer, Jeremiah Scotland Allison (he passes away when Clay is only five years old), and his wife, Mariah Ruth Brown Allison, Clay grows up as the fourth of nine children the couple produce. Just in time for the American Civil War, though he has a club foot, Allison enlists in the service of the Confederate states at the age of 21 on October 15, 1861. A member of Captain W. H. Jackson's light artillery battery, the youth is discharged though after only three months due to an old head injury that causes him to easily anger, have terrible headaches, and suffer wild mood swings ... both his peers and superiors fear him, because when drink is added to the mix, he can display psychotic behavior in the blink of an eye (while home, Allison will kill a corporal in the Third Illinois Cavalry that tries to loot his mother's home). Bodies needed by the South, in search of as many violent men as possible, his condition is ignored by the men he next rides beside, the horsemen of the 9th Tennessee Cavalry, led by the man who will become known as the "Wizard of the Saddle," General Nathan Bedford Forrest. During his time with Forrest's cavalry, Allison participates in the battles of Chickamauga, Fort Pillow, Brice's Cross Roads, Tupelo, Second Memphis, Third Murfreesboro, Nashville, and Wilson's Raid, surviving them all and surrendering with Forrest on May 4, 1865 at Gainesville, Alabama. Briefly held as a prisoner of war and sentenced to be shot as a spy, Allison escapes after being said to kill one of his guards. Civil War over, seeking a fresh start, and distance from the rumored killing of a corporeal in the 3rd Illinois Cavalry that comes on to the family farm looking for booty and breaks a vase given by his father to his mother to commemorate the couple's wedding anniversary, Clay and some of his family next take up residence in the Brazos River Country of Texas. There, the wild tales of his malicious temperament continue.
Forrest
Brice's Cross Roads
Not agreeing with the price Zachary Colbert is asking to take customers and their freight across the Brazos River, he beats the ferryman unconscious and crosses to the other side for free. Cowboying for Charles Goodnight, Oliver Loving, M. L. Dalton, Lewis Coleman (Allison's brother-in-law) and Irwin W. Lacey, he rides through portions of Texas (on a return trip to the state in 1878, Allison will lead a group of local citizens in fighting off a Comanche raid), New Mexico, and Colorado, taking time to engage in a fight with a man named Johnson over rights to a water hole ... a fight in which a single grave is dug, the two men jump in, and then go at each other with Bowie knives, with only Allison leaving the hole. Paid off in product after driving a cattle herd to New Mexico in 1870, Clay and his brothers, Monroe and John, begin their own ranch with a herd of three hundred cattle in 1870 in New Mexico near the junction of the Vermejo and Canadian Rivers. Moving from cowboy to rancher does not settle down Clay at all, and tales are soon told about the territory of town visits in which he drunkenly shoots out lights and makes individuals he doesn't like "dance"with his six-shooters. Black heart on display, in 1871 Clay leads a lynch mob that pulls suspected killer Charles Kennedy out of his Elizabethtown jail cell ... he then wraps a rope around the man's neck and rides up and down the town's main street until Kennedy is way beyond being dead ... corpse in tow, Allison then decapitates his victim and stakes the man's head on a fence post. He is also a menace to himself ... after a successful summer robbery of mules from the command of General Gordon Granger at Fort Union, Allison returns to the scene of the crime in the fall, and in barely getting away, accidentally shoots himself in the foot. Wound and robbery survived, beyond the clubfoot he already possesses, for the rest of his life he will walk with a pronounced limp.
Allison
Ready for his next bout of drunken mayhem after recovering from his wound, Allison takes a disliking to a local Wilson, but when Wilson quickly makes his presence scarce, Clay finds alternate victims at the County Clerk's office, pinning the clerk, John Lee, to a wall with a flung knife through the man's sleeve, then crossing the street to where Lee has run, and performing the same trick on a young lawyer named Melvin Mills ... like Wilson, both men survive by vanishing from the area. Hardly a great catch, and yet, in 1873 Allison meets, woes, and marries Dora McCullough from Sedalia, Missouri (his brother meanwhile marries Allison's sister) ... by all accounts of the times, the two love each other madly, and at least when Dora is around, the maniac is a different man (there is a 21-year difference in their ages, 39 to 21, with Allison the older, when the pair marry ... they will have two children, Jeremiah and Mariah)..
Allison
In 1873, Allison also meets the only man he is unable to out-draw with a gun, Colfax County Deputy Sheriff Mace Bowman. Friends (as much as Allison can be friends with anyone other than his own family), one evening the men are having drinks at Lambert's Inn when booze addled talk turns to the speed of Wild Bill Hickock's draw is discussed ... with Allison claiming he could outdraw the pistolero, and Bowman laughing, claiming Allison couldn't even outdraw the lawman. Almost fighting words, the men then make a bet of a gallon of whiskey as to who is the fastest draw and move to the center of the saloon to see who is faster. Pace off and then draw, when Allison goes for his gun he is shocked to see that Bowman's weapon is already out and pointing at his chest ... game over if Bowman was the homicidal maniac Allison is, instead of a killing, Allison never draws, but he does pay off the bet ... and for a modest fee, then begins taking gun fighting lessons from Bowman (whom he never confronts again). Or there is the more involved story in which after Allison acknowledges Bowman superiority with a pistol, the men strip and begin dancing in their underwear, then to see who is the better dancer, as if they are bullying dudes from the east coast, fire at each other's feet until they run out of ammo and the night's festivities come to an end.
Bowman
Gun fighting lessons he puts on display in January of 1874 when he meets gunfighter Chunk Colbert.
Wanting a new notch on his duelist resume (he is said to have killed seven men in Texas) or seeking revenge for Allison beating up his uncle nine years before when Zachary Colbert was a ferryman on the Brazos River, on January 7, 1874, Colbert shows up in Cimarron, New Mexico and buddies up to Allison ... the men spend the day together drinking and gambling on local horse races, then have dinner together at the Tom Stockton's Clifton House (an inn and a general store on a river crossing near Allison's ranch). A large meal spread out before the men, Colbert lays his gun on his lap while Allison puts his pistol beside himself on the day. Meal devoured, Colbert makes his move by suddenly pulling his weapon out from under the table as he reaches for another cup of coffee, but in the process he nicks his weapon on the piece of furniture ... a split-second delay that gives the wary Allison the moment he needs to shoot Colbert fatally in the head. Asked later why he accepted Colbert's supper invitation if he knew the man was an enemy, Allison responds, "Because I didn't want to send a man to hell on an empty stomach." It is also believed that two weeks later Allison additionally does away with Colbert's friend, Charles Cooper, who is a witness to the gun fight and is never seen again after being last spotted riding out of Cimarron with the gunfighter (two years later Allison will be charged with Cooper's murder, but will later be released for lack of evidence in the death).
Early Cimarron
The Clifton House
Allison Vs. Colbert
A magnet for trouble, Allison is soon involved in the series of disputes involving the region's Maxwell Land Grant (1.7 million acres) that will come to be called Colfax County War (a clash that will take over 200 lives over the course of the decade) ... and as these things naturally seem to go, he is on the side opposite the power hungry group of corrupt politicians, judges, and lawmen (many of the same men who will provoke the Lincoln County War of Billy the Kid infamy) known as the Santa Fe Ring that includes the lawyer he threw a knife at (now a state legislator) and the doctor that initially treats Allison's leg wound and has patched up Allison victims in the past (now a probate judge). Also against the "Ring" is Parson Franklin J. Tolby of the Methodist Circuit Riders who delivers sermons throughout the region. When the 33-year-old Tolby is found shot in the back in September of 1875, Allison is enraged. Asked to help discover the parson's killer by the man that replaces Tolby, Allison leads a masked mob that grabs and beats the alleged murderer, new Cimarron Constable Cruz Vega, before lynching him from a telegraph pole (Vega denies involvement, but claims that the murder was done by Manuel Cardenas, at the behest of Vega's uncle, Francisco Griego and a mail contractor named Florencio Donaghue ... then, after Vega's hung corpse is taken down, Allison pours more gas on the already ignited situation by refusing to let the constable be buried in the local cemetery (he is unworthy of being buried in the same place as Tolby per Allison) or within the city limits of Cimarron. Outraged, Griego, Vega's 18-yer-old son, Luis, and Griego's partner, Florencio Donaghue ride into town and begin making threats as to what they will do to the killers of Cruz. Finding Allison at the town's St. James Hotel, Griego talks to Allison about the death over drinks, which of course eventually leads to Griego pulling his gun while fanning himself with a hat to distract Allison ... who undistracted (the shooting will be ruled self-defense), clears leather quicker and puts three fatal bullets in Griego (a killing which Allison will celebrate by getting drunk, stripping, and on the spot where Griego goes down, performing a war dance with a red ribbon tied around his private parts.
Parson Tolby
Griego
Allison In Action
The situation in the region does not improve when alleged assassin Manuel Cardenas is arrested and questioned by authorities in nearby Elizabethtown ... the Hispanic gunman will claim that Vega killed Tolby on orders from Allison's two long time enemies, the lawyer and the doctor, Melvin Mills and Robert Longwell (the two men flee the area and barely survive lynch mobs looking to mete out a little rope retribution, and will eventually be cleared when Cardenas retracts his statements). Not believed by many, a vigilante group (most suppose is led by Allison and his brother) shoots Cardenas to death being escorted to the local jail (the true story is that Tolby witnessed Griego shoot a man during an argument, and is killed because he can testify to what he has seen). And this killing in turn leads to the Mexican-American community in the area seeking payback, hunting Allison. For a time, the Cimarron gunman will be hidden by Sheriff Orson K. Chittenden on the lawman's nearby ranch, and when in town, Allison is escorted by a group of more than forty armed cowboys (seething about an editorial documenting Allison's depredations on the region, two assistants will help Allison blowing up the office of the News & Press, and throwing the newspaper's press into the Cimarron River. Finally, Governor Samuel Beach Axtell gets involved, and after Allison is promised a fair trial and gets acquitted of Cooper's murder (the trial takes place in Taos, New Mexico), the area returns to a semblance of normality ... a normality in which Allison can once more be a drunken cowboy maniac!
Dr. Longwell
Governor Axtell
No charges pending against him or Hispanic horsemen looking to string him up, Allison decides to celebrate his good fortunes of the moment with his brother John, and so the two men join a raucous dance at the Olympic Dance Hall in Las Animas, Colorado. Sloshed, the two men ignore a request to check-in their guns, then draw complaints from the assemblage for dancing with unwilling partners, insulting various revelers, and deliberately stepping on the toes of other couples. Fed up at the drunks, town marshal and deputy sheriff Charles Faber leaves the dance, grabs a shotgun, and then with two freshly recruited deputies, returns to the Olympic to arrest the Allisons. John out on the floor dancing while Clay imbibes at the bar, Faber steps into the dance hall with his weapon at the ready as someone in the crowd, seeing his weapon, shouts, "Look out!" Spinning at the warning, John is hit by a blast from Faber's shotgun that hits him in the chest and shoulder. At the same time, Clay pulls his revolver and sends four bullets Faber's way, one of which hits the lawman in the chest and kills him, though in falling, the shotgun goes off again and now John also has multiple leg wounds. Immediately recognized they are over-matched, the two deputies flee as Allison empties his guns at the men (and hits nothing but air), then drags Faber's body over to where his brother is bleeding on the floor, assuring John that he has been avenged (John will recover from his wounds, and an arrested Clay will get off once again because witnesses testify that Faber fired first). Deciding to change the base of his operations, in 1877 Clay sells his ranch and stock to his brother John and moves first to Sedalia, Missouri and then to Hays City, Kansas where he establishes himself as a cattle broker.
Las Animas, Colorado
Allison Six-Shooter
Reputation proceeding him, there are soon tall tales of Allison backing down Dodge City's Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson when the pair demand that Allison and his cowboys check their guns at the jail while in town and the order is refused, along with rumors that instead, Earp cause Allison to back down. Whichever the case (another rumor has cattle rancher Dick McNulty and Long Branch Saloon co-owner, Chalk Beeson talking Allison and his men into giving up their guns), Allison moves again in 1880, this time to Hemphill County, Texas, where a new tale of Allison lunacy is soon added to his already large resume ... riding nude down the streets of Mobeetie and screaming about drinks are on him at the local bar, Allison ignores the sheriff's order to get off his horse, takes another ride about town, then at gunpoint, forces the sheriff into the saloon and pours rotgut down the lawmen's throat until the man is too drunk to stand, before remounting his horse and riding out of town. A human tumbleweed, in 1883 Allison is back in New Mexico, ranching in the state's Seven Rivers region. And of course, there he creates yet another incident of violence. Stopping after a long trail ride in Cheyenne, Wyoming to get a terrible toothache fixed, a nervous dentist becomes flustered and starts working on the wrong tooth ... causing Allison a second toothache. Up and out of his chair in a flash, Allison locates another dentist in town who pulls the right tooth, relieving Allison's pain, but not his rage. Returning to the first dentist, Allison forces the man into his own chair, then uses a pair of forceps to pull a healthy molar from the man's mouth ... he is just attacking another tooth, when drawn by the dentist's screams, citizens send Allison on his way (a bowdlerized version of the incident will be recreated in the 1948 Bob Hope comedy, The Paleface).
The Dentist Scene
One more move before the end, in July of 1887 Clay Allison is in Pecos, Texas, about 50 miles south of the state's border with New Mexico. Forty-seven years old, Allison skips the usual gunman abrupt leaving of meeting a quicker shootist or becoming the guest at a neck-tie party, and instead accidentally crafts a more fitting ending to the bizarre life he has led. Drunk as usual, Allison is hauling a load of supplies from Pecos to his ranch when a sack of grain falls off the wagon. Trying to stop the sack from falling, Allison reaches back but becomes unbalanced and falls to the ground, which causes the wagon's horses to rear and then gallop forward ... carrying the wagon right across Allison's neck, which is instantly snapped, killing the gunman (and almost decapitating Allison). A violent life ended violently, just not by bullets or rope ... 7/1/1887.
Clay Allison
Tombstone. .
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