SEAMAN CALVIN GRAHAM - CHILD HERO

4/3/1930 - Certainly a vastly different United States that will come together as one in its crusade against Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan after the "Day of Infamy" sneak attack on Pearl Harbor that takes place on December 7, 1941 ... a war with thousands upon thousands of American heroes, thanks to Griffin football teammate Nelson Chamberlain for bringing this story to my attention, the tale of the youngest U.S. serviceman to fight in the war, Texan Calvin Leon Graham.

 

Graham

Born in Canton, a small town east of Dallas in the Van Zandt County of Texas, on April 3 of 1930, Graham is a member of a troubled family of seven children that face the poverty of the Depression era, the death of their father, and abuse from a caustic step-father when their mother remarries.  Family moved to the town of Crockett, north of Houston, Graham begins attending school and starts dreaming of escape and a better future.  While still attending school, escape begins for the youth when he runs away from home with an older brother and settles in to a cheap rooming house on the other side of Crockett, where he contributes to the monthly rent by selling newspapers, shining shoes, and working as messenger when he isn't studying.  Only 11 when Pearl Harbor is attacked on December 7, 1941, the patriotic (he is already no fan of Hitler's Nazi Germany and is told he has lost cousins in the opening battles of WWII) and parentally unsupervised (his mother stops by from time to time to say hello to her two sons and sign Calvin's report cards) six grader soon concocts a plan to join the United States Navy ... thinking it will make his beard come in early, he begins shaving long ahead of any need to, and to seem older, he begins talking in a deeper voice.  Notary stamp stolen from a local hotel and his mother's signature forged (to cover his absence he will tell his mother that he is going to California to visit family in San Diego) on an authorization for early enlistment, now 12, he puts his plan into effect on a busy Saturday at the Navy recruitment center in Houston on August 15, 1942.

At 12

Five feet and two inches tall, weighing 125 pounds, Graham dresses in one of his older brother's suits (including a matching fedora hat), and gets into a line of recruits he is sure are also underage.  Sixteen the legal age okay to join the Navy if parental consent has been given, claiming he is 17, Graham crosses his fingers and marches up to the navy dentist checking age by the development of teeth, and sure enough the man exclaims that he is only 12 years of age ... a fact Graham denies while loudly pointing out that the dentist has already passed several other inductees that he knows are also underage.  A period early in the war in which the Navy is desperate for men after several disastrous engagements with the Japanese, and not wanting a long argument to delay the long line, the dentist lets the youth enlist.  Mission accomplished, Graham is sent to San Diego, California for six weeks of basic naval training (pretty sure they have an underage recruit on their hands, his instructors try to get the boy to quit by giving him extra duties and send him on longer runs than other recruits and have him haul heavier loads than other men, but Graham doesn't break), then is sent off to Pearl Harbor where he is assigned to the newly commissioned (March 20, 1942) battleship, USS South Dakota.

San Diego Naval Training Center

Built by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation (1939 to 1941) as Japan decides to leave treaty constraints it has made with the United States, the first of four "South Dakota" style battleships, the USS South Dakota has a fully loaded displacement of 45,233 tons, a length of 680 feet, a beam of 108 feet and two inches, a draft of 35 feet and one inch, is powered by four General Electric steam turbines (and eight oil-fired Babcock & Wilson boilers) that turn four screw propellers to a speed of 27.5 knots (and a cruising range of 15,000 nautical miles). It's armor varies from six inches of steel on the deck to eighteen inches for it's turrets.  For firepower, the vessel carries nine 16-inch Mark 6 guns, sixteen 5-inch DP guns, seven quad 40mm Bofors guns, seven quad 1.1-inch guns, thirty-four 20mm Oerlikon cannons, and eight 50-cal. machine guns.  The ship also has two catapults for launching three "Kingfisher" floatplanes.  Crewed by 2,500 officers and enlisted men, the USS South Dakota is commanded by 51-year-old Captain Thomas Leigh Gatch of Salem, Oregon.  Graham joins the crew of the battleship just in time to participate in the vessel's first battle actions of WWII in the South Pacific waters off a 2,047 square mile jungle island called Guadalcanal where a new American commander has recently taken over the region, an aggressive Vice Admiral and naval aviator (his creed is "Hit hard, hit fast and hit often") who states after Pearl Harbor, "Before we are through with 'em, the Japanese language will be spoken only in Hell!" ... William Frederick "Bull" Halsey Jr.

Shakedown Cruise

Gatch

Halsey

Escorting the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise along with nine destroyers as part of Task Force 16 (they will be joined by the aircraft carrier USS Hornet and the escorts of Task Force 17, and combined, become Task Force 61), at the end of October the USS South Dakota will take part in the three-day Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands ... an air and sea clash that will result in the loss of the USS Hornet (the Japanese will have two carriers and a cruiser damaged, but fail to exploit its victory) and the destroyer, USS Porter, and the USS Enterprise being damaged.  Damaged, but not sunk, partly due to the anti-aircraft fire the USS South Dakota pours into the sky (protecting the USS Enterprise, the ship will claim to have shot down 26 Japanese planes during the battle and its crew will receive a Navy Unit Commendation for outstanding heroism in action against the enemy), a portion of which comes from the 40mm anti-aircraft gun 12-year-old Graham serves as a loader (after the war, naval historians will reduce the number to 13).  During the battle, the battleship will be hit on the roof of her forward main battery by a single bomb from an Japanese Aichi D3A dive bomber that kills two sailors and wounds over fifty more (one of which is Captain Gatch who is hit by a bomb splinter and knocked unconscious by the concussion of the explosion.

USS Enterprise Under Attack

USS South Dakota Is At Center-Left

USS South Dakota Firing At Torpedo Bomber

Bomb damage to the USS South Dakota repaired (along with damage incurred when the ship collides with destroyer USS Mahan leaving the area on October 30, 1942) at the French island of Noumea, and Captain Gatch back in command, detached from guarding the USS Enterprise, on orders from Vice Admiral Halsey, the battleship becomes part of Task Force 64 in November of 1942 (under the overall command of former Olympic shooting champion <five gold medals, one silver medal, and one bronze medal at the 1920 Sumer Olympics held in Antwerp, Belgium> Rear Admiral Willis Augustus "Ching" Lee Jr., the rest of the force consists of the battleship USS Washington and four destroyers, USS Walke, USS Preston, USS Benham, and USS Gwin) and is ordered to stop a Japanese force on it's way to bombard the Henderson Field airbase on Guadalcanal so that Japanese soldiers can be successfully landed on the island (days before, a first attempt at taking out the airfield during the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal fails after the Japanese force given the task departs the area after losing the battleship Hiei, two destroyers, a heavy cruiser, and seven troop transports at the awful American cost of losing two light cruisers, four destroyers, having two heavy cruisers severely damaged, and the sea taking the lives of Rear Admirals Daniel J. Callaghan and Norman Scott).  Patrolling around Savo Island to the north of Guadalcanal in the waters of Ironbottom Sound (so named for the many sunken Japanese and American warships at its bottom) on the evening of November 14, 1942, the USS South Dakota will play a key role in The Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal ... a fight that will prove to be a turning point in the struggle for the island.

Lee

Traveling in column formation with the destroyers in the lead followed by USS Washington (which Rear Admiral Lee has made his flagship and is three nautical miles behind) and USS South Dakota bringing up the rear (a nautical mile to the rear of USS Washington), at 10:55 the radars aboard the battleships begin picking up the presence of intruders approaching Savo Island, the Japanese task force of Admiral Nobutake Kondo (Kondo's flagship, the battleship Kirishima, the heavy cruisers Atago and Takao, the light cruisers Nagara and Sendai, and nine destroyers).  Though heavily outnumbered, shortly after 11:00 the American force engages the Japanese and a slugfest soon develops in which the USS Walke and USS Preston are sunk within the first ten minutes of the clash, the USS Benham has it's bow blown off by a torpedo and has to retire from the area (it will sink the next day), and the USS Gwin is struck in it's engine room and leaves the fight (meanwhile USS Washington is setting the destroyer Ayanami alight).  At the worst time, the USS South Dakota suffers electric failures that make her radar, radios, and most of her gun batteries inoperable (the chief engineer has violated safety procedures during repairs and locked down a circuit breaker) just as the ship is illuminated by Japanese searchlights and fires from sinking ships and becomes the main target for most of Admiral Kondo's vessels shortly after midnight.  Placing shells into Kirishima and on to both heavy cruisers, though the USS South Dakota avoids being hit by any torpedoes, it takes between 26 and 42 hits from the Japanese force that set it's upper decks on fire and knock out most of its gunnery and communication systems (in the words of Rear Admiral Lee, the ship is rendered "... deaf, dumb, blind, and impotent").  But in the chaos of battle, with the Japanese firing at the USS South Dakota and lacking radar, the USS Washington is able to close on Kirishima and undetected, at a range of 5,800 yards, pummels the Japanese battleship with nine hits from it's 16-inch guns and over 40 from it's 5-inch guns (the battleship will eventually capsize and sink at 3:25 in the morning of November 15).  Then the American battleship turns it's guns on the Japanese heavy cruisers, and bracketing both vessels, forces them to turn away from the fight to the point that when they fire their Long Lance torpedoes at USS Washington, all of the weapons miss.  Moving north after the misses, luring Admiral Kondo's force out of the area, the USS Washington becomes the only battleship of WWII to destroy another battleship in a one-on-one contest.  Additionally, because of its victory over Kirishima, the USS South Dakota is able to escape the area and survives to fight another day.  In the morning, once again not flattened by Japanese battleships, Henderson Field is able to launch fighters and bombers, supported by the guns of the destroyer USS Meade, that destroy four beached transports, kill hundreds of Japanese soldiers, and send between 2,000 to 3,000 men into the jungles of Guadalcanal with little food or ammunition (out of a force of 12,000 soldiers).  

USS Washington Firing On Kirishima

Gun inoperable for most of the battle, Seaman First Class Graham is carrying verbal messages between USS South Dakota officers when a hit on the battleship sends shrapnel through the 12-year-old's jaw and mouth, and knocks the youth through three stories of the ship's superstructure.  Child to an adult in an instant, a dazed and wounded Graham, now missing his front teeth and suffering from flash burns, pulls himself to his feet, and after having his fragmentation wounds stitched together and salve applied to his burns, spends the rest of the night and morning pulling other crew members to safety, providing emergency first aid in the form of converting pant belts into tourniquets, passing out cigarettes, and encouraging more grievously wounded sailors not to give up (in the carnage that takes place aboard the USS South Dakota, 40 sailors will be killed and another 180 more will be wounded).  For his actions, still not knowing that Graham is only 12-year-old, the youth is awarded a Bronze Star Medal for meritorious service while in combat, a Purple Heart Medal for being wounded, and as part of the crew, another Navy Unit Commendation ribbon.

Damage To The USS South Dakota

Battle Damage

Japanese Hit On The USS South Dakota

Limping back to the naval base at Noumea, with the help of the repair ship, USS Prometheus, the USS South Dakota undergoes emergency patchwork that allows the battleship to steam back into the Atlantic Ocean from the Panama Canal and undergo permanent repairs and a complete refit at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York.  Letting the Japanese believe they have sunk the USS South Dakota, she is heralded by the press upon her return as Battleship "X" ... and as such, Graham's problems with the U.S. Navy begin.  Viewing a newsreel of the battleship and it's crew, Graham's mother spots her son and relates to the naval authorities that Calvin is only 12-years-old, while at the same time, denied proper leave to attend his dead grandmother's funeral, the youth heads for Texas to be with his family (and arrives one day too late to attend services for his grandmother).  Embarrassed that they have enlisted a child in their service that has now gone AWOL from his ship in their eyes, when Graham reaches Corpus Christi he is slapped in the naval station's brig for almost three months, and only released when his sister Pearl threatens to make a stink in local papers about the U.S. Navy's treatment of the heroic "Baby Vet."  Message received, the authorities release Graham from confinement and more ... on April 1, 1943 (two days before his thirteenth birthday, the youth's enlistment in the U.S. Navy is voided and he receives a dishonorable discharge and is stripped of his commendation ribbons and medals, along with any ability to receive disability treatments or payments.   

USS Prometheus

Sent off as if he had never been on the USS South Dakota or experienced naval war firsthand, for a short time Graham becomes a 'flavor of the Month" celebrity.  There are interviews on the radio and in newspapers about his time aboard Battleship "X," and when the movie "Bombardier" premieres in Houston, it's star, Pat O'Brien, calls the youth out of the crowd to take a rousing bow.  Eventually though the spotlight moves on to others, and Graham attempts to return to his pre-war life, but it is not to be.  Returning to school, because of his experiences he has little in common with his classmates and has trouble keeping up with the educational level other students his age are at.  Dropping out and plunging himself into the world of adults once more, by fourteen he is married and finds work as a welder in a local Houston shipyard.  The following year he becomes a father.  But both the job and marriage come to an end, and by seventeen he is divorced and looking for work.  Service record erased by the U.S. Navy, now of age, in 1948, Graham enlists in the United States Marine Corps.  His days as a "Leatherneck" are numbered too however, and he receives a medical discharge from the Corps in 1951, after falling from a pier and breaking his back (an injury for which he gets only a 20 percent service disability).

Movie Poster

Post service, the rest of Graham's life is also filled with one struggle after another.  Disabled because of his fall, the only work he can get is selling subscriptions to Life, Look, and other magazines while campaigning to have his awards and commendations returned, and his discharge from the U.S. Navy changed to an "honorable" one.  In 1976, with the presidential election of Jimmy Carter, a naval veteran himself, Graham finds a sympathetic audience to his cause and in 1977, Texas Senators Lloyd Bentsen (Democrat) and John Tower (Republican) introduce a bill in Congress to give Graham the discharge he was asking for.  Passed and approved by the president, Graham's status is changed on the official records of the U.S. Navy and his medals and commendations are returned ... with one exception, his Purple Heart is not part of the package, for awhile.  Public attention finally brought to his story with the 1988 playing of the CBS prime time television movie (the rights to his story sell for $50,000, but two agents receive half of that total, and a third vampire, a writer of an unpublished book about the patriot gets 20%, leaving Graham with only $15,000 before taxes for his own tale), "Too Young the Hero" (with "Hollywood" drama added where it is deemed necessary), starring Ricky Schroder as Graham (the 18-year-old-actor playing a 12-year-old).  President Ronald Reagan becomes involved in the story shortly afterwards, signing special legislation that grants Graham full disability benefits, increases his naval back pay to $4,917, and allows the former sailor $18,000 for past medical bills (but as always it doesn't quite work out that way, and with many of the doctors that treated him passed away and bills lost, Graham only receives $2,100 of the money allotted his plight).  But for some unknown reason, there is still no Purple Heart until after Graham dies of a massive heart attack on November 6, 1992 in Fort Worth, Texas at the age of 62.  No Purple Heart that is until two years after Graham's passing when the wrong is noted and righted by President Clinton's Secretary of the Navy, John Howard Dalton, at Arlington, Texas on June 21, 1994 giving the award back to Graham's family.  Parade rest and gone to his true glory, the youngest American to serve in WWII is buried in Fort Worth, Texas at the city's Laurel Land Memorial Park.

Schroder As Graham

Graham

Resting Place Of A Hero

Thank you for your service, Sir!

Purple Heart

Hero

  

Calvin Graham, the USS South Dakota‘s 12-year-old gunner, in 1942. Photo: Wik  

THE BIG FIGHT AT THE DUNN & JENKINS SALOON

3/21/1886 - Nothing but a ghost town now, but once a place that rivaled the wild locales of the American west like Deadwood, Dodge City, Abilene, Bodie, and Tombstone, Tascosa, Texas (it has no town council, mayor, sheriff, or marshal for it's first five years of existence), a tent, adobe and wood village on the Texas panhandle with a permanent population of never more than 300 souls that draws cattle rustlers, gamblers, dance hall girls, prostitutes, fugitives, thieves, gunslingers, and con men to the area (the "bad" part of Tascosa is known as "Hogtown"), proves on an especially bloody Saturday/Sunday night why Texas Ranger George Washington "Cap " Arrington will call the seat of newly established Oldham County, "the hardest place on the frontier" (it will serve Hollywood as the town where James Stewart's Lin McAdam will begin his final confrontation with his murderous brother, Stephen McNally's Dutch Henry Brown in Anthony Mann's 1950 western, "Winchester '73") with a shootout that will come to be called "The Big Fight at the Dunn & Jenkins Saloon."

The Big Fight - True West Magazine

Once Texas Rangers authorized by the state government to rid the Canadian River Valley of cattle rustling, and led by the killer of Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, by 1886 the cowboys of the local LS Ranch are considered by the Tascosa locals as just another batch of "barroom gladiators," troublemakers that like to drink, brawl, and are quick to slap leather when not given their proper due from a group of small ranchers and rustlers known as "The Syndicate."  One of the most troublesome LS riders is a cowboy named Ed King, and when he begins courting a Dunn & Jenkins Saloon girl named Sally Emory that has recently broken up with Syndicate member, bartender Lamar Albert "Lem" Woodruff a fuse is lit that will result in multiple deaths.  Not leaving the situation alone, in the days preceding the weekend's regularly scheduled town dance, King and buddies from the LS Ranch make a point of taunting Oldham, calling the man "Pretty Lem," forcing Oldham to call King "Daddy," and even slapping the bartender in the face.

Drinking In Tascosa

Two in the morning wild, tiring of the dance, Ed King, King's buddy, John Gottlieb Lang, and two other LS cowboys, Frank Valley and Fred Chilton, grab their mounts and ride off to have a drink at the Equity Bar.  Passing the Exchange Hotel on their way to the Equity, just off her shift at Dunn & Jenkins, Sally Emory calls out to King, who dismounts and with his girlfriend now in tow, heads up the street to Sally's place as Valley and Chilton hand the reins of their mounts to Lang to tie-up (along with King's horse) as the men enter the Equity.  Seconds later the street explodes with violence as King and Emory approach Dunn & Jenkins on the southeast corner of Tascosa's plaza.  "Ed King," a voice calls out from the darkness of the saloon, and as the cowboy turns to see who has hailed him, he is shot in the face by a "Syndicate" gunman.  Crashing to the ground with blood streaming out of his mouth as Sally runs home at full speed, Woodruff comes out of the saloon, puts a Winchester against King's neck and pulls the trigger before retreating back into the bar.  The murder of his friend witnessed from just up the street, Lang rushes into the Equity and calls out to Chilton and Valley, "Boys, they've killed Ed!  Come on!"  Declaration heard, the two cowboys join Lang and sprint across the street to a cramped yard behind the Dunn & Jenkins saloon (inside, along with Woodruff, are "Syndicate" leader, Jesse Jenkins, and gunmen "Squirrel-Eye" Charlie Emory, "Poker" Tom Emory, John "The Catfish Kid" Gough, and Louis "The Animal" Bousman) where a number of men are in the process of exiting the drinking establishment.

Lang

Guns blazing, Valley begins firing on the men with both of his revolvers, scoring two hits on Woodruff (one to the killer bartender's belly and one to his groin that put Woodruff on the ground where he kicks shut the backdoor to the saloon) and one that takes a chunk of flesh out of Charlie Emory's leg.  His gunfire however makes him target #1 for the saloon shooters, and after Valley puts several shots through the now closed door, he follows his rounds into the saloon and is greeted with a lethal rifle round to the head through his left eye.  At almost the same moment, the next door owner of the North Star restaurant, Jesse Sheets (spending a late night at his business to keep an eye on an employee he believes is robbing him), pokes his head out of his establishment to see what all the nearby ruckus is about.  A big mistake with so much lead flying about, targeting movement, Chilton puts a fatal rifle round in Sheets' face, and a second later he is killed from a slug to the chest that comes from someone shooting from behind a woodpile behind the saloon.  Dying, he hands his pistol to Lang who continues the fight as he retreats down Spring Street with bullets striking all around him as he makes for the Equity Bar, where he finds reinforcements in the form of Sheriff James East and his deputy, Charlie Pierce.  Reversing direction, the trio head back towards the Dunn & Jenkins saloon, where they fire on a shadowy figure they drop into the wood pile to much groaning and choking, "The Catfish Kid."  Fight over, as the men police the saloon carnage, "The Catfish Kid" crawls quietly off into Tascosa's darkness, having successfully faked being hit during the gun battle.

 

Lawman East

Four dead and two men seriously wounded in a short matter of minutes, in the aftermath of the shootout 50 LS cowboys "volunteer" to ride into town and burn Tascosa down while killing every "Syndicate" gunman they can find, but they are dissuaded from their plans for retribution by the ranch's foreman, Jordan McAllister, and its owner, William McDole "Alphabet" Lee, and East keeping on eye on things while closing down all the saloons in town.  Bodies all buried the next day in the town's Boot Hill (aghast that her husband might be buried next two one of his killers, Sarah Sheets has her husband buried in a different part of the cemetery, before reburying the unlucky restaurateur in Roswell, New Mexico in 1928), the three dead LS cowboys all go into the ground beneath markers that read "Ill met by the Moonlight."  Trying to find out "who had kicked the lid off Hell," local Justice of the Peace,     Edwin C. Godwin-Austin assembles a coroner's jury that brings murder charges against Woodruff (who is not expected to live, but does), Bousman, Charlie Emory, and "The Catfish Kid."  The men's first trial ends in a hung jury, while the second is even better for the men of the Syndicate," with all the combatants acquitted of the charges they are facing (after another Tascosa killing, "The Catfish Kid will die in prison in 1890, Charlie Emory will pass away in 1897, his brother Tom leaves in 1914, Woodruff moves to Hot Springs, Arkansas and dies there in 1902, and Louis "The Animal" lives in Oklahoma until passing in 1942)

The Dead LS Cowboys - King, Valley & Chilton

Suffering only a hole through his coat sleeve despite the numerous bullets sent his way, Lang goes on from the gunfight to become the Town Sheriff of Amarillo before moving to Oregon to be with his family.  With Oregon as his base, Lang participates in Klondike Gold Rush of 1897, then as an Oregon volunteer (Company E of the Oregon Volunteers), in 1898, he is off to the Philippines during the Spanish-American War (where he takes part in actions at Tondo, Malolos, and Malobon).  War over, he returns to Oregon and opens up a wood cabin saloon, runs the Haines Hotel and Livery Stable, marries Ella Stiltz in 1914, and as a Democrat, represents his district in the state legislature, spends time as the mayor of Haines in 1935, and owns a gold mine named the Western Union in the town of Rock Creek.  Wanderlust never quite cured despite his life successes, he continues to prospect for gold at various times from 1900 to 1930.  He dies in Haines on April 4, 1942 at the age of 80 and is buried beside his wife in the town cemetery.

Lang

As for Tascosa, while there will be more violent flareups for the town, it's fate is sealed when the Fort Worth & Denver City Railroad decides to bypass the wild city and a number of local cattle ranches go bankrupt during the "Big Die-up" cattle killing blizzards of 1886-1887.  Once the capital of ten Texas Panhandle counties, the place is now a ghost town of dust, wind, and a few ruined stone and adobe buildings.

Tascosa

Gunfight - True West Illustration

 

DEATH OF A BAD DUDE

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