2/18/1886 - Known as "Dirty Dave" for his disdain for bathing or washing his clothing, the gunfighting career of 31-year-old outlaw David Rudabaugh comes to an abrupt, but expected. conclusion of bullets and machete blows over cheating accusations during a drunken card game in a Parral, Mexico cantina.
Rudabaugh
Not much is known of Rudabaugh's young life beyond the facts that he is born in Fulton County, Illinois on July 14, 1854, while still a youngster is father is killed in the Civil War, and that his family will move from Illinois to Ohio (there are rumors that the move is due to Rudabaugh fleeing retribution for a train robbery), back to Illinois, and then settle in the town of Eureka, Kansas. Sometime in the early 1870s, his outlaw career begins in earnest when he leaves Kansas, sets up shop in Arkansas (another of Rudabaugh's monikers will be "Arkansas Dave") and begins leading a bandit gang that includes "Mysterious' Dave Mather, Milt Yarberry, and other cowboy hooligans in rustling cattle and sticking up stagecoaches traveling along the area bordering Arkansas and Texas. Authorities intent on breaking up the gang, fleeing repercussions of killing a Texas rancher, Rudabaugh moves north and starts robbing stages in the Black Hills region of South Dakota. A tumbleweed terror, when that area becomes too hot for the desperado he wanders south and in 1876 can be found in the tough cattle town of Dodge City, Kansas. In Dodge City he teams up with Mike Roarke and Dan Dement in forming a new group of outlaws called "The Trio," and not unexpectedly, soon come to the attention of Deputy U.S. Marshal Wyatt Earp as a result of robbing a construction camp of the Santa Fe Railroad.
Mather
Dodge City
Wyatt Earp
Following Rudabaugh's trail, Earp will travel 400 miles south into Texas to a small frontier town on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River, Fort Griffin. Seeking information on Rudabaugh (who after stopping there briefly, has reversed course and headed back up into Kansas, traveling with bandit Mike Roarke), Earp will find out from John Shanssey, owner of the largest bar in town, "The Bee Hive Saloon," that Rudabaugh passed through town the week before after stopping for supplies and playing cards with gambler-gunfighter John Henry "Doc" Holliday (there will arise a long standing legend that for card lessons from Holliday, Rudabaugh will teach the gambler tricks of the "shootist" trade). Holliday in turn will tell Earp that Rudabaugh had mentioned throwing off his pursuit by returning to Kansas ... information telegraphed back to Bat Masterson in Dodge City that will contribute to Rudabaugh's arrest following a train robbery, it is the beginning of a friendship between Earp and Holliday that will last until "Doc's" death from tuberculosis at Glenwood Springs, Colorado in November of 1887 at the age of thirty-six.
Fort Griffin
Holliday
Back in Kansas, on January 22, 1878, Rudabaugh, outlaw Ed West, and four other individuals try to rob a westbound train near Kinsley, Kansas, but butcher the operation and ride away from the caper with no loot whatsoever. It is a short ride however, and a few days later, Rudabaugh and West are arrested by a posse led by Sheriff Bat Masterson that includes John Joshua "J.J." Webb, Kinch Riley, and Dave "Prairie Dog" Morrow (the other culprits will be caught a few days later). During his capture, Rudabaugh will begin to go for his revolver, but stops when he sees Webb has the drop on him. Brought to trial, Rudabaugh promises to go straight (a massive lie), turns rat on his confederates, and is soon released to continue his career as a gunman, this time working with his former captors Masterson and Webb, as a member of a crew of seventy plus gunfighters (also in the band of fast draws are Holliday, Ben Thompson, "Mysterious Dave") representing the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in its war with the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad over which company will control access through Colorado's Royal Gorge to the mountain silver mines of Leadville. War over after a court decision favoring the Denver and Rio Grande, and a confrontation between the two sides at a Santa Fe roundhouse in Pueblo, at the end of 1879, Rudabaugh and his new friend, J.J. Webb, drift southwest to the town of Las Vegas, New Mexico and soon become key members of a group called the Dodge City Gang.
Masterson
Webb
The Royal Gorge
One of the wildest of Wild West towns, in Las Vegas, New Mexico (Billy the Kid will be there for awhile and is said to have had dinner at the nearby Old Adobe Hotel with a Missouri outlaw that offers him a job with his gang ... the notorious Jesse James), Webb operates as a Deputy U.S. Marshal and then as a member of the Las Vegas police force, often failing to catch or solve crimes committed by his buddy, Rudabaugh (two stage coach heists and a train robbery that results in $2,085 in loot, three confiscated pistols, and all the lanterns on the train). Intent on dominating the political and economic life of the community, other members of the gang besides Rudabaugh and Webb include Justice of the Peace, Hyman Neill (better known about town as "Hoodoo Brown"), City Marshal Joe Carson, Mather (the mysterious one will get in a gun scrape that takes off the thumb of a drunken soldier, kills two drunken men at the Close & Patterson Variety Hall that refuse to yield their weapons and kill Marshal Carson, and kills a railroad worker named Joseph Castello, when the man points his gun Mather's way) and gunmen Tom Pickett, "Six Shooter" Bill Smith, William P. "Slap Jack Bill" Nicholson, John "Bull Shit Jack" Pierce, Selim K. "Frank" Cady, "Dutch" Henry Born, and Jordon L. Webb (no relation to J.J. Webb). While not a member of the gang, Doc Holliday is also there, practicing dentistry for the last time and partnering with J.J. Webb in a local saloon (Holliday will engage in one gunfight over a saloon girl that sends former army scout Mike Gordon to Boot Hill, and another with Charley White that wounds the bartender in the head, before joining Wyatt Earp in Tombstone, Arizona in 1880). Part of a posse in 1880 that captures two of the men responsible for the death of Marshal Carson (the two men that Mather doesn't kill, John Dorsey and T.J. House), back in Las Vegas, Rudabaugh becomes one of the leaders of a lynch mob that drags the men from jail and is about to hang them from a windmill on the town's plaza, when gunfire from Carson's widow relieves them of the need.
The Hanging Windmill
Tired of the town's lawlessness, in March of 1880, when city marshal J.J. Webb shoots a freighter named Mike Kelliher at the Goodlet & Roberts' Saloon (at the behest of Hoodoo Brown for the $1,900 the man is known to be carrying) in each breast and in the head and the dead man's money disappears into Webb's pocket, the lawman-outlaw is arrested and indicted for murder ... and showing the range of his rabid personality, with a shotgun and pistol at the ready, Rudabaugh protects his friend from a lynch mob. Found guilty of murder and sentenced to be hung (on appeal, the sentence will be changed to life behind bars), Rudabaugh, along with a gunman named John "Little Jack" Allen, attempt to break Webb out of his cell on April 30, 1880, but fail when Deputy Sheriff (and the town's jailer) Antonio Lino Valdez engages in a gun battle with the outlaw that drives off the miscreants (and costs Valdez his life). The good times in Las Vegas now over, accompanied by Allen (a mistake, afraid that Allen will expose Rudabaugh's killing of Valdez, the outlaw soon shoots his confederate to death) and Tom Pickett, Rudabaugh flees south to the ranch of Thomas Yerby and is soon a member of the band of desperadoes in Fort Sumner area known as "The Rustlers" congregating around the infamous Henry McCarty, Billy the Kid (and talk soon begins that Rudabaugh is the only man in the west that the Kid is afraid of tangling with).
Webb Shackled At Center
Valdez
Rudabaugh
Riding into White Oaks, New Mexico a day after escaping a posse looking for them, Rudabaugh, Billy the Kid, and Billy Wilson get into a gunfight with Deputy Sheriff James Redman, but flee the battle when townsfolk join the fray (no one is killed or wounded). Taking refuge forty miles away from White Oaks on the ranch of Jim Greathouse and Fred Kuch, the men take Greathouse hostage, and when a White Oaks posse soon arrives at the site, trade him for Deputy Sheriff James Carlye, when the lawman volunteers to be a part of a swap and negotiate the surrender of the outlaws. A flawed plan, after midnight, Carlye is gunned down and the outlaws escape into the night. About two weeks later, on December 19, 1880, Billy the Kid, Rudabaugh, Wilson, Tom O'Folliard, Tom Pickett, and Charlie Bowdre (the man that first introduces Billy the Kid to Rudabaugh) ride into Fort Sumner looking for recreation on a cold Sunday evening. Instead, they walk into an ambush set up by newly elected Sheriff Pat Garrett. In the exchange of gunfire with Garett's posse, O'Folliard takes a rifle slug to the chest, a fatal round just beneath the 22-year-old outlaw's heart (it takes the gunman 45 minutes to succumb to his wound), Pickett is wounded, and Rudabaugh has his horse shot out from under him. Scrambling up on to Wilson's horse, Rudabaugh and the gang gallop out of Fort Sumner and eventually find shelter in an abandoned stone cabin in a small arroyo outside the town of Stinking Springs. Easily tracked there over the snow-covered New Mexico terrain, Garret and his 20-man company surround the site and on the morning of December 23, 1880, another shootout between the outlaws and lawmen begins when thinking he is the Kid, 31-year-old Bowdre steps outside to feed his horse breakfast and is hit in the chest by two unexpected rifle slugs. Trapped when Garrett kills Rudabaugh's latest mount in the only doorway of the cabin as the outlaw tries to bring his mount inside, the surviving outlaw's surrender (marching out of the stone structure behind Rudabaugh waving a white flag) later in the day when the smell of cooking posse food wafts their way and proves unbearable.
The Kid
O'Folliard
The Stone Cabin
Bowdre
Brought back to Las Vegas, having already experienced leading a lynch mob and defending a friend from a hanging horde, Rudabaugh now gets to experience what it is like to be the person the mob wants to set air dancing by the neck. Mob stood off by Garrett and his posse, the outlaw is moved to Santa Fe and tried for stagecoach robbery, pleads guilty thinking he will thus escape murder charges for the killing of Valdez, and is given a 99-year behind bars sentence. Then however, he goes on trial for the Valdez death, is found guilty, and sentenced to a gallows execution scheduled to take place later in 1881 (by this time Billy the Kid is back in Lincoln for hs own execution) ... but Dirty Dave has different plans. Finding himself behind bars with equally desperate men that include his old compadre, J.J. Webb, along with Thomas Duffy, and H.S. Wilson, Rudabaugh gets his hands on a gun the prisoners somehow get their hands on guns and tries to shoot his way out of the local jail, but surrenders after his shots miss jailer Florencio Mares and assistant jailer Herculano Chavez mortally wounds Duffy. Not dissuaded, the men decide to try digging their way to freedom. Procuring a pick, an iron poker, and a small knife, Rudabaugh, Webb, and five other convicts whittle away evenings on a wall in the jail, and two months later, escape confinement through a 7"by 19"hole (Webb will go back to Kansas, then moves on to Arkansas where under the alias of a teamster Samuel King, he dies of smallpox in 1882). Fleeing to Arizona after do some cattle rustling in Texas, Rudabaugh becomes a member of The Cowboys, and as such, is said to actively participate in Clanton Family's feud with the Earp Family that includes the 1881 assassination attempt of Virgil Earp, the murder of Morgan Earp while the lawman is playing billiards at Tombstone's Campbell & Hatch Billiard Parlor on March 18, 1882, and at the Iron Springs gun battle in which Wyatt Earp kills outlaw William "Curley Bill" Brocius. Authorities getting too close for comfort, Rudabaugh decamps south for the less hostile landscapes of Mexico.
Santa Fe - 1881
Morgan Earp
Curley Bill
For three years, life in Mexico is good for Rudabaugh as he leads yet another band of rustlers stealing cattle, while also cowboying for many of the ranchers he is stealing from. Fired from cowboy employment when he is caught changing the brands on some cattle, Rudabaugh travels to the town of Parral in 1886. Basically taking over the town out of the citizens' fear for their lives, Rudabaugh's murderous antics come to a head (literally) in a saloon on the evening of February 18, 1886. Drunk and loudly boosting of the many gunmen he has ridden with or against, winning too many hands of poker, the inevitable call of "cheater" is soon uttered as Mexican card loser stands up, a movement that causes Dirty Dave to instantly slap leather. No match for the American gunfighter, Rudabaugh's accuser goes down with a bullet in his skull, then shoots another combatant through the heart, and wounds a third Mexican in the arm before staggering outside, unhurt ... but not for long. Forgetting where he tied up his horse, the outlaw foolishly steps back into the now darkened cantina to get help, and instead, is greeted by a hail of bullets to the chest from the hiding in the shadows, unhappy citizens of Parral. Then, to show how happy they are to be rid of the bully gunman, someone procure a machete and cuts off Rudabaugh's head, and trophy procured, a crowd of mounts Dirty Dave's cranium on a pike and a parades it about the town. Celebration over, Rudabaugh's head and body are then left on a nearby hillside for vultures to devour, a suitable ending for a really bad dude (though like many outlaws, there will be rumors that he wasn't killed in 1886, but under an assumed named, moved to Montana, became a rancher, married, had three daughters, and eventually died drunk and destitute in the Oregon of 1928). Either way, adios, Dave ... and good riddance!
Rudabaugh's Head
Parade
Great story.
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