2/25/1851 - On a cold Tuesday morning, the many adventure storied life of future U.S. Deputy Marshal, Chris Madsen, begins on the Denmark island of Funen (the country's third largest island) in the village of Orested, with the birth of Christian Madsen Rormose.
Madsen
When Madsen first rises to notoriety as a lawman helping clean up the American West, the tale he tells about himself he that he is the son of a Danish soldier, and as such, though only thirteen at the time, he too enlists in the Danish Army (after graduating from the Kauslunde Argicultural School) and fights for the Danes at the Battle of Dybbol on April 18, 1864 as part of the Second Schleswig War (the fight is a huge German victory). After hostilities in that war end, Madsen joins the French Foreign Legion and is stationed in Algiers until his unit is transferred to Europe and fights at the the epic Battle of Sedan that concludes the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 in favor of Prussian King Wilhelm I (greatly assisted by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and Field Marshal Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke). During the battle, Madsen will claim to be wounded and taken prison, before escaping from the Prussians and making his way to Norway. In Norway, Madsen finds work as a railroad engineer, as a clerk in a shipping office, and as a sailor on a whaling ship. Sometime during his Norway sojourn, Madsen also meets an American expatriate Civil War veteran named Major Hansen who fills the youth's head up with tales of the U.S. Army and life in America, so much so that the Dane books passage for a trip to New York City, where he arrives in 1876, and four days after after stepping off the boat, enlists in the army on January 21, 1876. Most of the tales are made up though (Madsen never serves in either the Danish Army of the French Foreign Legion, which never fights at Sedan) to prevent it from being known in his new digs that Christian Madsen Rormose is actually a crook and conman with numerous convictions for fraud and forgery (and there are arrests for begging, and vagrancy too), and that he has spent a good portion of his youth behind bars (after losing a position with a local wine seller), with his trip to the United States actually being bank-rolled by the Danish government just to get rid of the bad apple. Released from prison on December 26, 1875, after serving 652 days behind bars (in other accounts, he is corralled for 1,346 days), two days later Madsen is on his way across the Atlantic!
Dybbol
Sedan
New York City Harbor - 1876
A second chance to reinvent himself in a new country ... the conman of course creates a new name for himself by dropping his last name of Rormose, and shortens his first name to Chris. Enlisting in the United States Army, Madsen is assigned to the 5th Cavalry and sent out West ... and another batch of stories attach to his life, the biggest whopper being that the Dane is actually assigned to Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry where he sees action during the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and actually is the clashes only survivor ... or that he is one of the soldier's that polices the battlefield afterward, burying the bodies of dead fellow troopers. Not at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Madisen makes up for his absence by actually being a witness (he is a signalman for Company A of the 5th Cavalry) to the Battle of War Bonnet Creek during which a Cheyenne chief named Yellow Hair fights Army scout William "Buffalo Bill" Cody on July 17, 1876, a skirmish between the two men in which Cody guns down the chief with a Winchester rifle, scalps the warrior with a Bowie knife, and is then said to have held his grisly prize aloft, yelling, "The first scalp for Custer!" In the same unit as the legendary Wild West showman, as the years roll on, Madsen's acquaintance with Cody becomes a fantasy in which the Dane is one of the man's best friends. And doing something right, in 1883, Madsen is chosen to be part of the 75-man cavalry escort that accompanies 21st President Chester Alan Arthur on his exploration of natural wonders of Yellowstone National Park. During Madsen's service in the cavalry, he will earn a Silver Star for bravery fighting hostile Indians, along with earning sergeant's stripes (he also meets and marries Margaret Bell Morris in 1887 while being stationed at Fort Reno in Oklahoma, a union that will produce two sons, Marion and Christian), but will also demonstrate that the mendacity and nefariousness in his personality have not been totally erased by change in location or new moniker ... absent without leave and in possession of stolen property, Madsen serves five months behind bars at the Wyoming Territorial Penitentiary before returning to his duties (brought up also on charges of larceny, for lack of evidence he is acquitted). Not enough money being paid him by the military, using tale tales of his exploits in Europe, and then with the U.S. cavalry, in 1891, Madsen retires from army life and manages to con his way into a position with the United States Marshal Service as a deputy marshal in the Oklahoma Territory for Marshal William Grimes (working out of the town of El Reno and then Guthrie).
Cody Versus Yellow Hair
Yellowstone Adventure - Seated From Left To Right - Montana Governor
Schuyler Crosby, Lt. General Philip Sheridan, President Arthur, Secretary Of
War Robert Todd Lincoln, Senator George Vest Of Missouri - Standing - Lt. Colonel
Michael Sheridan, General Anson Stager, Captain Philo Clark, New York Lawyer
Daniel G. Rollins, And Lt. Colonel James F. Gregory
Margaret
Thomas
Tilghman
Doolin
The new gang's first robbery takes place on November 1, 1892, when Doolin and his associates hit the Ford County Bank of Spearville, Kansas. Bandanna masks worn during the heist, outlaw Ol Yantis is nonetheless recognized as one of the culprits, a small posse consisting of Madsen, Heck Thomas (eager to make up for being a day behind the Daltons when they show up to rob Coffeyville), and U.S. Deputy Marshal Tom Hueston, and Ford County Sheriff Chalkley Beeson goes looking for Yantis at the farm of the bandit's sister (Mrs. Hugh McGinn), three miles outside the town of Orlando, Oklahoma. At sunrise of a foggy November 29, 1892, Yantis emerges from his sister's home carrying a sack of feed for his horse in one hand and a six-gun in the other. "Throw up your hands, Ol. We're officers," Madsen yelled at the outlaw, but Yantis responds by snapping off a shot at the lawman which misses, an action that prompts the marshals to return fire. They do not miss, though for awhile the downed badman continues to fire on the officers though he is mortally wounded by slugs from the rifle of Madsen (a round from Madsen's Winchester hits Yantis in the right side above the hip, angles down, and severs the outlaw's spinal column) and the shotgun of Hueston. Yantis will soon be joined in death (or behind bars) by all of his desperado friends.
Beeson
Yantis
Wired on June 10, 1893 that the Doolin-Dalton Gang has hit the westbound California Express train outside of the town of Cimarron, Madsen guesses where the bandits might cross back into the Indian Territory, puts together a posse, and with swift riding, is able to put together a posse and ambush the outlaws as they tried to cross the Cimarron River near a spot called Deep Hole (near where the town of Buffalo, Oklahoma is now located). In the gun battle that takes place when the two groups meet, although the bad guys get away (they escape into a large thicket of willows), Madsen gets to operate his new .30-.30 Winchester rifle for the first time, putting a steel-jacketed slug into the heel of Doolin's right foot ... an injury that will plague the outlaw the rest of his life. Later in 1893, Madsen slaps leather again while escorting a district judge to Beaver City, Oklahoma. Bedded down for the evening over a saloon, the pair find sleep impossible to obtain when drunken revelers below the mind start discharging their pistols into the air and slugs beginning crashing through the floor. Marching downstairs when a bullet comes a few inches from his head, Madsen jerks the revolver out of one man's hand, but immediately has trouble with another imbibed celebrant that gets in the Dane's face while screaming, "I'm a son-of-a-bitch from Cripple Creek." Keeping his sense of humor intact despite his lack of shuteye, Madsen responds, "I knew who you were, but I didn't know where you were from." Apparently not willing to share why he left Cripple Creek, the drunk answers Madsen by swinging a fist at the lawman's head. No match for someone who is sober, Madsen dispenses his own form of shuteye by clubbing the miscreant to the floor, and shooting the man's friend in the hand when the fool decides to protest Madsen's actions ... the saloon is quiet for the rest of the night. Also in 1893, due to other marshal business and injury (Tilghman is laid up with a broken ankle), all three of the territory's guardsmen miss the September 1, 1893 debacle that takes place at the town of Ingalls ... a shootout between fourteen lawmen with the marshal's service and the Doolin-Dalton Gang that results in three deputy marshals (Thomas Hueston, Richard Speed, and Lafayette Shadley) deaths, a civilian bystander named Dal Simmons getting killed when he attempts to take cover inside Vaughn's Saloon, saloon owner George Ransom is wounded in the leg, while his bartender, a man named Murray, is wounded in the arm and side, barfly, N. A. Walker takes a killing slug through his liver, the 14-year-old son of the town doctor, Frank Briggs, takes a flesh wound to the shoulder, outlaw Bitter Creek Newcomb being grievously wounded in the groin, bandit Dynamite Dick Clifton is wounded in the hand, a sickness ailed Arkansas Tom is captured at the town's Pierce's O.K. Hotel, two horses are killed, and a chicken is pulverized into torn meat and bloody feathers as it tries to cross the street.
Madsen
Ingalls
Arkansas Tom
Nix
Dead Bill Dalton
1895 proves to be a disaster for the outlaws. Following the gang's robbery of a Rock Island train outside of Dover, Oklahoma on April 3, 1895, Madsen organizes a posse which goes after the desperadoes ... and thanks to the accurate fire of Deputy U.S. Marshals William Banks and Isaac Prater, the criminal escapades of William "Tulsa Jack" Blake are brought to a permanent conclusion. Next to leave are Bitter Creek Newcomb and Charley Pierce who make the mistake of hiding out on the ranch of the Dunn Brothers, and their sister, Newcomb's sweetheart, Rose (who will become known as "the Rose of Cimarron"). Betrayed for the reward money available, both outlaws are murdered by their "friends" while sleeping in the ranch's barn on May 2, 1895. Then Bill Tilghman gets into the action, tracking Little Bill Raidler into the Osage Nation, eighteen miles south of Elgin, Kansas, to the Moore Ranch. Gunfight instead of the requested surrender, Raidler gets off a single shot that misses Tilghman, but Tilghman doesn't miss Raidler, sending a load of shotgun buckshot into the outlaw that knocks Raidler to the ground with pellets in each side of his body, the back of his head, his neck, and through his right wrist (surprisingly, Raidler survives his injuries and is put on trial and sentenced to ten years behind bars for his part in the Dover train robbery ... released in 1903 from a federal prison in Ohio in ill health from his unhealed wounds, he dies the following year at the age of 34. Tilghman then tops himself in January of 1896 by capturing Bill Doolin in the bathouse of the Davy Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.
Bank & Prater With Tulsa Jack
Newcomb & Pierce
Raidler
1896 doesn't see the total end to the Doolin Gang, but it does see the end of Doolin himself, Captured by Tilghman, along with an also arrested Dynamite Dick, Doolin and thirteen others escape from the Guthrie, Oklahoma jail on the night of July 5, 1896. Foolishly not fleeing south into Mexico when he has the chance, the outlaw leader is turned into human Swiss cheese by twenty-two pieces of lead when he is ambushed by a posse led by Heck Thomas on August 25, 1896, outside of Lawson, Oklahoma, at the ranch of his father-in-law. George "Red Buck" Waightman joins Doolin in death when lawmen find him in an Arapaho, Oklahoma hideout and he refuses to surrender. Two gang members still on the loose, under the direction of Madsen posses, both men do not make it into the new century. On November 7, 1897, near Checotah, Oklahoma, searching the environs of the Sid Williams Ranch, U.S. Deputy Marshals George Lawson and W. H. Bussey surprise Dynamite Dick Clifton on the trail, request his surrender, and when the outlaw opens fire with his Winchester instead, the lawmen knock him out of his saddle with a bullet through his arm, follow the wounded bandit through the brush to a cabin in the woods, and kill him when he refuses to surrender for a second time and starts shooting. The last Doolin outlaw to go is Richard "Little Dick" West, who is discovered by Madsen hiding out in the territorial capital of Guthrie. On April 13, 1898, West goes like so many of his other friends and loses a late night shootout after being requested to surrender ... the outlaw gets off four shots that hit nothing, while Madsen and his men (or by other accounts, Tilghman, Thomas, and their men) take West out with buckshot from a 10-gauge Remington shotgun and Winchester rifle bullets, the killing round coming in the form of a piece of lead that hits the outlaw in the side and then exits his body through the shoulder.
Doolin
Red Buck
Dynamite Dick
West
The big guns of the Doolin crew gone, in 1898, with an eye on perhaps getting into politics, Madsen leaves the marshal service and decides to get back into military attire by fighting in the Spanish-American War taking place in Cuba by joining the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry of Colonel Leonard Wood, a group now better known for being Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders. Shipped to Cuba with the rest of Wood's command, Madsen participates in the unit's triumphs on the island as a quartermaster sergeant. Not the adventure he was anticipating, feigning a tropical illness for the higher pension his condition commands, the Dane is back out of the Army before the turn of the century, and soon back in the Indian Territory as a deputy marshal once more (one of his assignments is to escort convicted Oklahoma train robber, Al Jennings, to Ohio for incarceration). When Roosevelt becomes President of the United States in 1901 following William McKinley's assassination, Madsen has high hopes of moving up the command chain for law enforcement and becoming the head marshal of the region himself, but despite much name dropping and even more glad handing that includes multiple visits to Washington D.C. (during one, in which he is accompanied by Bill Tilghman and Bat Masterson, as a joke he will be presented to guests at a formal White House dinner as the next ambassador to Denmark and called "Your Highness" throughout the evening), the Dane is passed over for the position in 1901 and 1906 (it does not help that Madsen is a Republican as the region turns Democrat), but does finally achieve his goal in 1911 when he temporarily replaces the recently removed from office, John Reeves "Catch 'Em Alive" Abernathy (the nickname comes from the lawman's unique method of capturing living wolves) for four months at the beginning of 1911. When Madsen is again passed over for the permanent position in 1913, he leaves the marshal's service, but does not quit being a lawman (or a liar) and in the years that follow the Dane, after being rejected for serving in the army again when WWI for America begins, will serve as a special investigator for the governor of Oklahoma, James Robertson, from 1918 to 1922, is appointed Chief of Police for Oklahoma City while in his sixties (he will kill a fleeing bootlegger in his last gunfight), works as a guard at a federal reserve bank in Oklahoma city (he gets the job at 73 after besting the other candidates for the position in a marksmanship contest in which he puts six bullets in a bull's eye from 70 yards away), as a court bailiff from 1927 to 1933 when he is 82-years-old, as a superintendent of a Union Soldier's Home, and finds time to write his autobiography with Harold Mueller for the The Daily Oklahoman, "With Sword and Pistol," in 1935.
The Rough Riders
Madsen
Jennings
Abernathy & Roosevelt
Chief Of Police
And burnishing his legendary career as a lawman, in 1915 he becomes involved in the making of the silent film, "The Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaws." Made by the Eagle Film Company, the film is directed by Bill Tilghman (and shot by pioneer photographer, Benny Kent, one of Tilghman's Oklahoma neighbors) and features several scenes filmed where the actual events happened, cowboys from the 101 Ranch pretending to be posses and outlaws, actual lawmen Bud Ledbetter (Jennings' captor, and sometimes known as "The Fourth Guardsman") and Evett Nix, Doolin gunman Arkansas Tom (before the released convict returns to a life of crime and is shot down in Joplin, Missouri at 54 during a gunfight with police detective Leonard H. Vandeventer), and Madsen and Tilghman playing themselves. After filming, Tilghman and Madsen take the film across the country for showings that include talks before the movie by the lawmen commenting on how crime doesn't play, the film, then a look at Old West memorabilia from Tilghman's collection. A hit for years, there are talks of more movies, but none are ever made. Eyes dimming as he ages, Madsen spends his "golden years" living with his daughter, Marion, in Guthrie, Oklahoma, action for the old man coming in the form of walking downtown daily and visiting the local sheriff's office and the office of the marshals too. telling his tales, some true and some just tall, to anyone willing to listen. In the winter of 1944, he slips on a patch of ice and breaks his hip Trying to recover from the injury at Guthrie's Masonic Home for the Aged, he dies on January 9, 1944 at the age of 92, leaving behind a farm, an estate worth a little over $10,00, and a raft of story questions that can never be fully answered. He is survived by his daughter, and by his son Chistian, and is buried in Yukon, Oklahoma's Frisco Cemetery. In 2009, along with his companions, Bill Tilghman and Heck Thomas, Madsen is inducted into the Oklahoma Law Enforcement Hall of Fame.
With All His Medals
Upper Left Bubble
Arkansas Tom Recreating Ingalls Battle
1937
Final Resting Place
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