December 2018 44 The Fine Line continued from page 43 Then there were the lesser-known Outlaws-turned- Lawmen-turned Outlaw once more. Seedy men with problematic reputations, but reputations that were enough for the desperate town and territorial governments to hire them to keep order. These were brutal ill-tempered, brute men as comfortable with their fists as much as they were with a gun. Men like John Larn, Milton J. Yarberry, and (Al)Burt Alvord, whose unsavory deeds did become part of Arizona Old West History. The case of Texan John Larn, the Sheriff of Shackelford County, Texas was so atypical of the tough, young gunmen who roamed the West at the end of the Civil War. Born in Mobile, Alabama on March 1, 1849, Larn left home as a teen, drifting through Colorado, New Mexico, and finally settling down in Texas. He supposedly murdered his first boss - a Colorado rancher - in an argument over a horse, then he was said to have killed the lawman that was on his tail. Again, an alleged story because murdering a lawman, even a corrupted one was a big deal and Larn would have been pursued for years. At any rate, he ended up, just barely past 20 in Fort Griffin, Texas. For a time he may have worked as a ranch hand, but worked his way to the top as his boss, a fellow Alabaman named Joseph B. Matthews took a liking to him. It didn't hurt that Matthews was probably the wealthiest rancher in Fort Griffin and that Larn soon would be squiring and marrying his daughter, Mary Jane. Fort Griffin was a tough place to live, and Matthews apparently encouraged his young ranch hand to pursue an interest in law enforcement. So, in 1874, Larn signed up with the Fort Griffin Vigilante Committee. Larn was popular, personable, apparently never drank, smoked, or cursed, with what appeared to be on the surface a solid reputation. He would be asked to run for Sheriff of Shackelford County, and he agreed to do so, winning the election as Shackelford County's second Sheriff in 1876, while almost simultaneously starting a cattle business. Cattle rustling was a major problem in Shackelford County, and Larn and his new deputy, William Cruger soon developed a fearsome reputation as hunters of cattle thieves. Of course, Larn's idea of bringing rustlers to justice was the tried - and sometimes the true method of the rope. It may not have bothered Larn at the time, but perhaps in hindsight, it should have because somewhere along the line Larn took to rustling himself. It was soon noted that Larn had quite a cattle herd when his cattle business was supposedly small scale. As suspicions mounted that Larn was actually bumping off the competition in order to enrich himself, he hired a new deputy, an old friend by the name of John Selman. If that name sounds familiar, it was John Selman who two decades later walked into an El Paso saloon, approached an unsuspecting gambler from behind, and drilled notorious outlaw and longtime enemy John Wesley Hardin in the back of his skull. The even then unsavory Selman would become Larn's business partner, but not for long, as Larn was forced to resign as Sheriff when his (perhaps) more honest deputy Cruger shot and killed two cowboys. The townsfolk were now extremely suspicious and incensed that Larn's cattle herd had increased while theirs kept disappearing, and suspecting that Larn was in cahoots with the two murdered cowboys didn't blame Cruger but demanded Larn's resignation instead. He would ironically be replaced as sheriff by Deputy Cruger (Selman by then, probably knowing what might be coming down the pike) just disappeared from the county. One might have thought Larn had learned a lesson and would leave well enough alone, but not John Larn. He put together a new gang and began terrorizing the cattlemen of Shackelford County. Ranchers were shot and left for dead, horses shot and killed too, and Larn's cattle business kept increasing. In early 1878 the local ranchers had had enough. They petitioned the Texas Rangers to search Larn's ranch, and while they did so and arrested Larn. He was successfully able to deny he had anything to do with rustling. Larn became more reckless, his hired men ratcheting up the rustling and violence, and things might have continued that way if Larn's men hadn't shot and left for dead a rancher who had exposed Larn's rustling scheme. The man however lived, implicated Larn, and his old deputy Cruger arrested him on June 22, 1878, placing him in the Shackelford County jail in Albany, Texas. Cruger, taking no chances, made sure Larn was shackled to the jail floor. He was shackled in Shackelford, so to speak. But that proved to be Larn's undoing, as on the morning of June 23rd a mob of 12 hooded men broke into the Albany jail while Sheriff Cruger was away. Finding Larn chained to the floor and unable to break the chains, these vigilantes in their frustration riddled him full of holes - another victim of lead poisoning. Milton J. Yarberry was yet another hard case, another one with an unsavory reputation hired by a town desperate for law enforcement, the town being Albuquerque, New Mexico. Born John Armstrong in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas the same year as Larn, Yarberry was allegedly the son of a well-bred, well-respected family. Yarberry like Larn drifted away from home as a teen and quickly took up the outlaw ways. By the time he drifted into Albuquerque he had murdered at least five men, supposedly owned three saloons, and ran off with the wife of one of his saloon partners. Like Larn and his rancher father-in-law, the tough Yarberry found an important patron in Bernalillo County Sheriff Perfecto Armijo, who would appoint his new friend Yarberry as Albuquerque's first town marshal, circa 1880. Unlike the fine-mannered Larn though, Yarberry was a mean cuss. The first man Yarberry murdered was, like Yarberry, another ill-tempered heavy drinking man by the name of Harry Brown who himself rode into Albuquerque in the early months of 1881. Brown was quick with the gun, but so was Yarberry, and Brown made the fatal mistake of coming on to Yarberry's girl who was receptive to his advances, it seems. Sadie was the same woman who had been the wife of Yarberry's partner at their saloon in Colorado. Sadie had run off with Yarberry, and now it seemed she was ready to run off again when Yarberry discovered her with Brown. A fight ensued with Brown punching the marshal, then pulling out his gun and shooting Yarberry in the hand. Yarberry turned around fast, pulled his gun and shot Brown dead. Yarberry acquitted of murder, wasn't so lucky three months later when after a drinking binge with a friend, Yarberry heard shots coming from down the street. He saw a man walking towards him and without calling out or checking to see if the man was armed he quickly pulled out his revolver and opened fire, murdering the man, who turned out to be an entirely innocent railroad worker who was unarmed. Tried, Yarberry was found guilty and sentenced to hang. As he marched to the gallows under heavy guard on February 9, 1883, Yarberry turned to the crowd and said his final words: "Gentlemen, you are hanging an innocent man." The crowd wasn't buying this especially having experienced a bit of Yarberry's "shoot first, ask questions later" demeanor, and he was duly hanged in an unusual method - he was jerked upwards instead of the traditional way of being hanged downwards through a trapdoor. This methodology was called being "Jerked to Jesus" and so Yarberry, who in the end also admitted coming from an honorable family, was. The life of being on the other side of the law for years and acting as such even after becoming a lawman finally catching up with him in a moment of mean-tempered gunplay and the death of an innocent man. And finally, there was (Al)Bert Alvord who was portrayed by my friend Buck Montgomery in the Arizona PBS-TRUE WEST special "Outrageous Arizona." Alvord, a brute of a man and looking every bit as such in the prison photographs taken of him after his incarceration, was a big and tough cowboy who spent his young adulthood roaming the range and getting into trouble around Tombstone, Arizona in the late 1880s, the post Wyatt Earp-Doc Holliday years when Tombstone was a pale shadow of its earlier rough and rowdy days, when he was approached by the famed Lawman, Texas John Slaughter, who asked the big, rangy cowboy to serve as his deputy. Although Alvord was very good at fisticuffs, he preferred using a gun to solve problems, and as noted in R. Mitchell Wilson's "Great Train Robberies of the Old West" was "not only a fast draw but also an exceptionally accurate marksman" (page 145). Well-liked and respected despite his brute ways, Alvord did such a good job as Slaughter's deputy that he would subsequently be hired to police Pearce, Arizona, another tough cattle community. He would tame Pearce, and in 1899, just prior to the turn into the 20th Century Alvord was hired as town constable (Marshal) of the booming cattle town of Willcox, Arizona. A good reputation didn't necessarily pay the bills, as we have previously noted in the case of Henry Brown, and yearning to improve his financial lot in life, Alvord took up with an unsavory character from Texas by the name of Bill Downing. Downing sometimes claimed to be the late Sam Bass, two decades dead by the time Downing met up with Alvord. But despite this bogus claim, Downing actually was tied to Bass, and as Frank Jackson, who disappeared when Bass went to ground in Round Rock was the last surviving member of the Bass gang. Downing aka Jackson having some experience in train robbery appealed to Alvord and his deputy, another former outlaw named Billie Stiles, and the three of them began to concoct a plan to rob the westbound Southern Pacific at nearby Cochise Junction, Alvord still feted as a John Larn Then there were the lesser-known Outlaws-turned-Lawmen-turned Outlaw once more. Seedy men with problematic reputations, but reputations that were enough for the desperate town and territorial governments to hire them to keep order. These were brutal ill-tempered, brute men as comfortable with their fists as much as they were with a gun. Men like John Larn, Milton J. Yarberry, and (Al)Burt Alvord, whose unsavory deeds did become part of Arizona Old West History.