Tascosa: Ghosts and Outlaws

Season: 1 \ EpisodeS: 6 & 7

Join us as we uncover the wild rise of Tascosa, the frontier town that became the hub of lawlessness in the Texas Panhandle. In part 1, we focus on the town's early days, from violent sheep wars to its transformation into a trading hub. Along the way, we’ll meet figures like Charles Goodnight and Casimero Romero, and set the stage for the arrival of Billy the Kid. Then, in part two, we see Tascosa at its peak, and the random violence that helped to fill Boothill Cemetery, concluding in a dramatic shootout that took more lives than even the O.K. Corral. Finally, the drastic collapse of this boom town and why you won't even find it on a map anymore.

Featured music in episode 1: "Say Goodbye" by Charlie Stout, from his 2016 album Dust & Wind (New American Frontier). Recorded live at the Taiban Church Historic Site, just a couple of miles from the site of Billy the Kid's capture.

Equity Saloon, Old Tascosa (1897), bartender Jack Cooper, Charlie Myers, Marcello Sandoval, Henry Lyman, Burt Killian, Mel Armstrong;

Photo of the original photograph taken by Jody L. Slaughter at Julian Bivens Museum, Boys Ranch, Texas

Email us your questions, comments, or suggestions

Last Comanche Chief Quanah Parker, Alvis B. Grant (1923-2019)

Photo of the original image taken by Jody L. Slaughter at Julian Bivens Museum, Boys Ranch, Texas

Sharps Model 1874 Sporting Rifle, 1877, widely used by plains buffalo hunters,

Photo taken by Jody L. Slaughter at Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Tx

On the Big Canadian River, May 1869, Vincent Colyer (1825-1888), watercolor

Photo of the original image taken by Jody L. Slaughter at Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Tx

Reproduction of an adobe casita of the type used by the pastores near Tascosa

Photo taken by Jody L. Slaughter at Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Tx

Scale model of Palo Duro Canyon

Photo taken by Jody L. Slaughter at Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Tx

Goodnight Ranch line camp cabin served as winter headquarters for 1-2 Goodnight cowboys in far-flung areas of the ranch

Photo taken by Jody L. Slaughter at Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Tx

Map of the Panhandle, late 1800s. Including Tascosa, Fort Elliott/Mobeetie, and railhead at Dodge City, KS

Photo taken by Jody L. Slaughter at Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Tx

Boothill Cemetery, Tascosa, Tx, 2024

Two dozen graves dot this site, mostly gunfight victims, including those who fell in the notorious Big Fight. It got its name because it holds those who died with their boots on. Graves of Frank Valley, Fred Chilton, and Fred Leigh in the foreground.

Photograph taken by Jody L. Slaughter

Map of Old Tascosa

Photo of the original map taken by Jody L. Slaughter at Julian Bivens Museum, Boys Ranch, Texas

Reproduction of a Panhandle general store of the type that would have existed in Tascosa

Photo taken by Jody L. Slaughter at Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Tx

The scale of the XIT Ranch

Photo taken at The XIT Museum, Dalhart, TX.

Exchange Hotel, 1887, Tascosa, Tx

Photo of the original photograph taken by Jody L. Slaughter at Julian Bivens Museum, Boys Ranch, Texas

Sheriff Jim East with wife and dogs, undated, Tascosa, Tx

Photo of the original photograph taken by Jody L. Slaughter at Julian Bivens Museum, Boys Ranch, Texas

Reproduction of the Equity Saloon, Tascosa, Tx opened by Jack Ryan in 1881

Photo taken by Jody L. Slaughter at Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Tx

Reproduction of a Panhandle livery stable of the type that would have existed in Tascosa

Photo taken by Jody L. Slaughter at Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Tx

The original Oldham County Courthouse, Tascosa, Tx, 2024

Now the Julian Bivens Museum, Boys Ranch, Tx. One of two original buildings still standing in the town

Photograph taken by Jody L. Slaughter

Boothill Map, Tascosa, Tx, 2024

Located at cemetery entrance.

Photograph taken by Jody L. Slaughter

Barb wire surrounding Boot Hill Cemetery, Tascosa, Tx, 2024

Fencing of the open ranges marked the beginning of the end for Tascosa's dominance

Photograph taken by Jody L. Slaughter

Fort Worth & Denver Railroad Station at Tascosa, Texas, about 1888

This station was located in "New Tascosa" across the river from the original townsite. Photo of the original photograph taken by Jody L. Slaughter at Julian Bivens Museum, Boys Ranch, Texas

Frency McCormick, about 1870

Charcoal portrait of Frenchy as a teen. 

Photo of the original artwork taken by Jody L. Slaughter at Julian Bivens Museum, Boys Ranch, Texas

Frenchy McCormick, about 1940

Photo of the original photograph taken by Jody L. Slaughter at Julian Bivens Museum, Boys Ranch, Texas

Frenchy McCormick's adobe house, about 1945

Photo of the original photograph taken by Jody L. Slaughter at Julian Bivens Museum, Boys Ranch, Texas

The Easy Crossing, Canadian River, Oldham County Texas, 2024

Photo taken a few miles upstream from Tascosa. Due to water diversion and drought, the river is now just a trickle

Photograph taken by Jody L. Slaughter

Boys Ranch founder Cal Farley with Babe Ruth, 1932

Photo of the original photograph taken by Jody L. Slaughter at Julian Bivens Museum, Boys Ranch, Texas

Boys Ranch boys in 1941

Photo of the original photograph taken by Jody L. Slaughter at Julian Bivens Museum, Boys Ranch, Texas

Tascosa Today, 2024

Photo taken from the Boot Hill Cemetery overlooking Boys Ranch, a residential community founded by Cal Farley in 1939, dedicated to helping at-risk and underprivileged youth by providing education, mentorship, and a structured environment for personal growth. It is built on the site of Old Tascosa

Photograph taken by Jody L. Slaughter

Boys Ranch, 2024

Cal Farley statue with Boys Ranch chapel and football stadium in background.

Photograph taken by Jody L. Slaughter

The Tascosa Historical Marker, 2024

Located at the entrance to Cal Farley's Boys Ranch

Photograph taken by Jody L. Slaughter

SHOW NOTES

PART 1

Cold Open:

We set the scene in the Texas Panhandle, where two of Charles Goodnight's cowboys stumble upon a grisly scene at a sheep camp. The aftermath of violence between the Mexican pastores and Californian shepherds begins to unfold, setting the stage for the bloody Sheep Wars.

Chapter 1: The Sheep Wars

• Tascosa’s location at the easy crossing of the Canadian River and its significance as a frontier town.

• Introduction of Casimero Romero and the pastores, Mexican shepherds who settled the area.

• The uneasy truce between cattlemen, led by Charles Goodnight, and the pastores, which was shattered by violence.

• The murder of Don Vicente L'Arcubleta, and his son Sostenes’ vow to seek vengeance against any white man he saw.

• The Casner brothers’ attack on Plaza Borrega, marking a turning point in the Sheep Wars.

  
  

Chapter 2: The Cattleman’s Time

• The arrival of Charles Goodnight, Major George Littlefield, and the formation of the first large cattle ranches in the Panhandle.

• How Tascosa became the key trading hub for cattlemen in the region, attracting settlers, traders, and outlaws alike.

• The rise of squatter ranches like the LX Ranch and Frying Pan Ranch and the influx of cowboys and cattle rustlers.

• How Tascosa grew into a bustling town with saloons, general stores, and a hotel, drawing a colorful mix of cowboys, settlers, and outlaws.

• The creation of the Tascosa post office in 1878 and the rivalry between Upper Tascosa and Hogtown, the more lawless part of town.

  
  

Chapter 3: Neither snow nor rain...

• The story of Tom Wilson, hired to carry mail between Tascosa and Mobeetie during the brutal Panhandle winters.

• A recounting of the deadly blizzard that caught Wilson and his passengers off guard, leading to a harrowing journey through snowdrifts over a foot high.

• The tragic loss of life and how the fierce Panhandle weather claimed Wilson and his passengers.

• How a $10 investment to stake the dangerous road could have saved lives, but the price of neglect resulted in tragedy.

  
  

Chapter 4: the Kid

• Billy the Kid's arrival in Tascosa with his gang, including Dave Rudabaugh, Charlie Bowdre, and the teenage Tom O’Folliard.

• The infamous outlaw’s interactions with the local cattlemen, promising not to cause trouble while trading stolen horses and cattle.

• The incident at the Romero plaza’s baile, where Billy’s men broke the no-firearms rule, leading to their banishment from the dances.

• His exit from Tascosa and the rustled cattle he took with him.

• The formation of the Panhandle Cattlemen’s Association and their determination to stop Billy the Kid and his gang’s cattle rustling.

• Pat Garrett’s return to Tascosa, where he gathered a posse of Panhandle cowboys, including Charlie Siringo and Frank Weldon, to hunt down Billy the Kid.

• The dramatic showdown between Garrett’s posse and Billy the Kid’s gang in New Mexico, resulting in the deaths of Tom O’Folliard and Charles Bowdre, and Billy’s eventual capture.

A thrilling standoff between Garrett and his Panhandle cowboys and a lynch mob out for Billy the Kid's head, and an out of control train.

PART 2

Chapter 1: The First Murder in Tascosa

• Bob Russell, saloon owner, is killed by shopkeeper Jules Howard after a drunken confrontation.

• The town witnesses its first murder, and Russell is buried on a knoll that would become Boothill Cemetery.

• The cemetery’s name is inspired by Dodge City’s Boot Hill, reserved for those who died "with their boots on."

  
  

Chapter 2: The Death of Fred Leigh

• LS Ranch foreman Fred Leigh clashes with Tascosa’s lawmen after a series of drunken misadventures.

• Sheriff Cape Willingham confronts Leigh, resulting in a fatal standoff where Leigh is shot and killed.

• Fred Leigh becomes Boothill resident #2 after provoking the ire of the town's fledgling law enforcement.

  
  

Chapter 3: The Transformation and Tragedy of Henry McCullar

• Henry McCullar, infamous for violence, changes after being severely injured and losing his memory.

• McCullar becomes a deputy but is fatally shot while arresting a gambler named Mexican Frank.

• His death marks him as Boothill resident #3, and justice is eventually served as Mexican Frank is caught and convicted.

  
  

Chapter 4: Land, Reconstruction, and the XIT Cattle Empire

• Post-Civil War Texas struggles financially but uses land to fund projects like the new state capitol.

• The Chicago Capitol Syndicate, led by the Farwell brothers, receives a massive land grant in the Panhandle in exchange for building the capitol.

• The creation of the XIT Ranch changes the Panhandle’s ranching landscape with structured operations, rules, and formalities.

  
  

Chapter 5: Fences and the Changing Face of Ranching

• Barbed wire and drift fences transform open-range ranching, leading to tensions among ranchers and devastating cattle losses.

• The 1886 winter known as the "Great Die-Up" kills vast numbers of cattle, impacting ranchers and altering the Panhandle’s future.

• The first fenced ranch in the Panhandle is established by Henry Sanborn and William Henry Bush with the Frying Pan Ranch, setting a new standard for ranching.

  
  

Chapter 6: Pat Garrett's Home Rangers

• Pat Garrett returns to Tascosa to lead a team, known as the Home Rangers, to combat cattle theft.

• His men, funded by the Panhandle Cattlemen's Association, enforce the laws but face criticism for favoring large ranching interests.

• The Home Rangers disband after Garrett’s departure, with some remaining in Tascosa and earning the nickname "barroom gladiators."

  
  

Chapter 7: The Big Fight

• A love triangle involving Lem Woodruff, Sally Emory, and Ed King ignites tensions between small-time rustlers and the LS Ranch’s former Rangers.

• The March 1886 confrontation turns deadly, resulting in the deaths of Ed King, Frank Valley, Fred Chilton, and innocent bystander Jesse Sheets.

• The aftermath sees murder charges and trials, but all participants are eventually acquitted.

  
  

Chapter 8: The Death of a Town

• Fences and railroads shift economic power away from Tascosa, leading to its decline.

• The "Great Die-Up" and the bypassing of the railroad worsen the town’s fortunes.

• The Panic of 1893 further decimates Tascosa’s economy, leading to the gradual exodus of residents.

• The county seat is moved to Vega in 1915, solidifying Tascosa’s demise. By 1939, the town is a ghost of its former self.

  
  

Postscript: Frenchy McCormick

• Frenchy McCormick, a former saloon girl, remains in Tascosa long after its decline, devoted to her late husband Mickey.

• She survives harsh conditions alone until finally moving to Channing in 1939, with a promise to be buried beside Mickey.

• Frenchy’s belief in Tascosa’s enduring legacy proves true with the creation of Boys Ranch by Cal Farley in 1939, bringing new life to the historic site.

  
  

Legacy:

• Boys Ranch, established with land donated by Julian Bivins, grows into a thriving community, preserving Tascosa’s historical significance.

• Boothill Cemetery and the old courthouse, now the Julien Bivins Museum, stand as reminders of Tascosa’s storied past.

Listen to the Full Episode: Dive into the untamed history of Tascosa on WTX: A History of West Texas. From bloody sheep wars to outlaw alliances, this episode pulls no punches. Whether you’re fascinated by frontier justice, legendary figures like Billy the Kid, or how a lawless Panhandle town shaped the West, this is one episode you don’t want to miss. Buckle up for a wild ride through a town that burned bright and fast before vanishing into history.

Enjoyed the episode? Don’t forget to subscribe to WTX: A History of West Texas on your favorite podcast platform, and leave us a review! Follow us on TWITTER for more updates and behind-the-scenes content.

Join the Conversation: What do you think about the legendary town of Tascosa? Have you visited the Texas Panhandle or explored its frontier history? Share your favorite stories, thoughts, or questions with us in the comments below or on our social media channels using the hashtag #WTXPodcast. We’d love to hear from you!

Further Reading

• Maverick Town: The Story of Old Tascosa - John L. McCarty, University of Oklahoma Press, 1968

• Tascosa: It's Life and Gaudy Times - Frederick Nolan, Texas Tech University Press, 2020

• The Fort Worth and Denver City Railway: Settlement, Development, and Decline on the Texas High Plains - Tiffany Marie Haggard Fink, dissertation in history, Texas Tech University, 2004

Credits:

Writer: Jody L. Slaughter

Producer: Jody L. Slaughter

Editor: Jody L. Slaughter

Engineer: Jody L. Slaughter

FEATURED MUSIC: "Say Goodbye" by Charlie Stout, from his 2016 album Dust & Wind (New American Frontier). Recorded live at the Taiban church, just a couple of miles from the site of Billy the Kid's capture.

Music by Gentry Ford and the Homeless Lobos

Additional music: "Wild West" by White Bones, licensed via Adobe Stock.

Contact:

• Email: lubbockistATgmail.com

• Twitter: @Lubbockist

Listen on:

• YouTube

• Spotify

• Apple Podcasts

Thanks for listening, and so long...from West Texas.

FULL TRANSCRIPT: PART 1

s01e06 - Tascosa: Ghosts and Outlaws, pt. 1

Cold Open:

A restless wind swept across the Panhandle, rustling the dry grasses and stirring the dust along the trail as two of Charles Goodnight's cowboys rode slowly, scanning the terrain for signs of movement.

The sun was just beginning to dip below the horizon, casting long shadows across the plains. The air was thick with the scent of mesquite, and the distant bleating of sheep carried faintly on the wind. It was supposed to be a routine patrol, but nothing in the Texas Panhandle was ever routine.

Goodnight had made a deal with Casimero Romero, the leader of the pastores—Mexican shepherds who tended flocks of sheep in the Canadian River Valley. They had agreed to divide the land: the pastores would graze their sheep along the fertile stretches of the Canadian River, while Goodnight’s cattle would roam to the south, near the Red River and the Palo Duro Canyon. It was an uneasy truce, meant to keep blood from being spilled. But lately, rumors of violence had been swirling like the dust on the plains. Tensions were building, and Goodnight had sent his men to keep an eye on things.

The cowboys came upon the camp suddenly, cresting a low ridge that opened up into a small clearing. There they found it—desolate and eerily quiet. Sheep milled about aimlessly, without a shepherd to guide them. The camp itself was in shambles; pots and supplies were scattered, the fire long dead. One of the cowboys, a grizzled old-timer named Slim, swung down from his horse and moved toward the center of the camp. His boots crunched in the dirt as he crouched to inspect the remains of the fire.

“That’s odd,” Slim muttered, rubbing his thumb along a piece of charred wood. “Looks like it was put out in a hurry.”

Tommy, the other cowboy, younger and more brash, stayed in the saddle, his eyes scanning the edges of the camp. “Where’s the shepherd?” he asked, a hint of unease creeping into his voice.

Slim didn’t answer, his eyes now fixed on a form partially obscured by a pile of old blankets near the edge of the clearing. “Over here,” he said, his tone flat.

Tommy dismounted, tying his horse to a nearby scrub bush. Together, they approached the pile, and Slim gently nudged the blankets aside with the toe of his boot. The body of a man lay underneath, his face pale and lifeless, eyes staring blankly into the sky. Blood stained the dirt around him, now dried and dark. The shepherd had been shot, his hands still clutching a simple wooden staff.

“Damn,” the young cowboy whispered, taking a step back. “He never had a chance.”

Slim shook his head, his expression grim. “Nope. Whoever did this wasn’t interested in a fight. They wanted to send a message.

A faint whimper broke the silence, and both men turned toward the edge of the camp. There, struggling to stand on three legs, was a sheepdog. Its fur was matted with blood, and one eye was swollen shut. Yet it still stood, its body quivering, trying to herd the sheep that wandered near the edge of the clearing.

The young cowboy felt a lump rise in his throat. “Poor thing’s still doin’ his job,” he muttered, to himself.

Slim reached down and picked up the dog, cradling it in his arms. “It’s got more guts than most men I’ve known,” he said quietly. He glanced around the camp one last time, taking in the mess of supplies, the lifeless body, and the abandoned sheep. 

“You think it was the Mexicans?” Tommy said.

“More’n likely,” the Slim replied, looking toward the horizon and then back at the shepherd. A white man. 

“This is gotta be one of the Californians running sheep out here. Casner’s outfit,” Slim remarked. 

Tommy nodded and climbed back into the saddle, Slim lifted the injured dog and placed it across his lap. “We need to get back to headquarters and let the boss know what we found,” he said. "This ain't good.”

With a final glance at the camp, the cowboys turned their horses and rode off, leaving the clearing to the wandering sheep and the echoes of violence that would soon reverberate down the Canadian River Valley. 

Intro

Hey y’all, I’m Jody Slaughter, and welcome to West Texas. Where the sky stretches on forever, and the stories are as vast and rugged as the landscape itself. On this episode, we’re not featuring a person, but a whole town, Tascosa. You won’t find it on a map, not anymore, but in its short run as the unofficial capital of the Panhandle, it burned as brightly as anywhere, and hosted outlaws and lawmen that would become legends of the West like Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett, Charlie Siringo, and Bat Masterson. So grab a seat, kick off your boots, and settle in. Because this…is West Texas.

Chapter 1: The Sheep Wars

The Texas Panhandle in the late 1800s was a wild, rugged land of endless plains stretching as far as the eye could see, marked by deep canyons and the winding Canadian River. Dust storms swept across the open range, and scorching summers gave way to brutal winters. In this unforgiving terrain, you could hear the steady rhythm of hoofbeats as cattle herds roamed the plains. The calls of cowboys echoed in the dry air, mingling with the sharp cry of a buzzard circling overhead. The wind swept across the land, kicking up clouds of dust that coated everything in a fine, gritty layer. It was here, amidst this wild landscape, that Tascosa emerged as a rough-and-tumble frontier town, where cattlemen, traders, and outlaws crossed paths.

The site of Tascosa was no accident. As a low, flat, and easy crossing point on the Canadian River, it had been used by animals, then by the Prehistoric Panhandle Indian culture. Later, nomadic tribes used the spot. It became a place where Native Americans would meet to trade with the Comancheros.

If there is a border between the North and South Plains, it is the Canadian River. More than just a geographical feature—it was the lifeblood of the plains, shaping the routes of trade and travel across the West Texas frontier.

In the mid 1800s, The Comancheros  served as intermediaries between the Comanche and the white men. They bought plunder from Comanche raids and sold it back to other white men at a profit. The Comancheros were a group of frontier traders, mostly of Hispanic descent, who established a complex trade network with the Comanche. They traded goods like weapons, ammunition, and whiskey for horses, cattle, and other plundered items, operating in a shadow economy on the fringes of legality. The Ciboleros, on the other hand, were buffalo hunters, traversing the plains to harvest hides and meat from the dwindling bison herds.

After the subjugation of the Comanche in the 1870s, the Comancheros and Ciboleros started spreading word around the Southwest that prime grazing lands along the Canadian River were now open for business. "The plains offered a treasure-land of grass, which had nothing on it of consequence now that the buffaloes were gone," noted McCarty in his book. 

Most of the early settlers came not from the east, but from the west, with Hispanic sheepherders moving their flocks down the valley from New Mexico. The smarter shepherds figured out that Texas assessed taxes on January 1, while New Mexico assessed on March 1. As a result, you would be hard-pressed to find a single sheep in Texas on January 1, but by March, there were few left in New Mexico. The first permanent settlement came in the 1870s when Justo Ventura Borrego led several families of pastores—sheepherders—down from Taos, New Mexico.

They built the Plaza Borrega, a line of rock and adobe houses along with corrals for their sheep, goats, and horses. Soon, more families arrived, and other plazas sprung up along the river. By the mid-1870s, these small-time sheep outfits had staked their claims on sections of prime grassland adjoining their plazas. But soon, larger commercial herds were being moved in seasonally from New Mexico. In 1876, former Comanchero Casimero Romero drove 4,500 sheep into the state, and built a plaza on Atascosa Creek, near the Canadian River. Meanwhile, cattlemen like Charles Goodnight were also moving herds into the area. Disputes broke out over water and grass, and something had to give.

Romero, with one of the largest flocks, became somewhat of a leader of the pastores. He negotiated an handshake agreement with Goodnight where the pastores could graze their sheep along the Canadian River Valley, while Goodnight would keep his cattle further South in the Palo Duro Canyon area, along the Red River.

But not everyone shared Goodnight's temperament. By the mid-1870s, other cattlemen began pushing into the area and competing with the pastores for prime grazing land along the river. These were hard men, on both sides, and law and order simply did not exist in the Panhandle at this time. Justice wasn't given, it was taken.

In the mid 1870s, while tending to his flock, one of the pastores, Don Vicente L’Arcubleta was ambushed and killed. Accounts differ on the actual killers, but to the pastores there could have been only one culprit - white cattlemen. 

Don Vicente’s son, Sostenes, erupted into a rage with the news. Vowing to kill any white man he saw…and he meant it. 

Later that year, two of Charles Goodnight's men were scouting near Palo Duro Canyon when they came across a sheep camp. They found the herd of sheep unattended, a looted camp, and an injured dog, still painfully herding the sheep alone (the dog had a gunshot wound to the eye). They also found the body of a dead shepherd. Goodnight received word and rode in from his home in Pueblo, Colorado. Goodnight had established a herd and camp in Palo Duro in 1876. He learned that a group of Mexican pastores had been feuding with the Casner family, a group of Californian shepherds who had recently brought their flock into the Panhandle.

Two Casner brothers, arrived at Goodnight's ranch to claim their flock and vowed to clear the Canadian River Valley of any Mexican pastores they could find. Goodnight told them he would not allow them to terrorize the Panhandle, pointing to his well-armed cowboys and promising to uphold law and order. Nevertheless, the Casner brothers rode to Plaza Borrega, where they indiscriminately murdered a number of Mexican pastores.

Messengers rode far and wide, alerting the pastores that the Californians were on a rampage in the Canadian River Valley. Many other pastores gathered their belongings, families, and flocks and fled back to New Mexico. Meanwhile, at a trading post, the Casner brothers were told that a notorious horse thief, Goodanuf, had been involved in the murder of their kin. Before they could locate him, Goodanuf learned they were on his tail and turned himself in at Fort Elliott, near modern-day Wheeler, Texas. The Casners arrived, demanding his release, but the Army refused.

Since this was a state matter, the fort sent for the sheriff to retrieve the prisoner, but the sheriff wanted nothing to do with it and sent a deputy instead. The deputy arrived, and the Army provided five guards to ensure the safe delivery of the prisoner. The transport party camped the first night, and at midnight, the Casner brothers, along with five hired buffalo hunters armed with .50-caliber Sharps rifles, charged the camp, demanding that they turn over Goodanuf. They claimed they just needed to talk to him alone.

The next morning, the soldiers and the deputy found Goodanuf hanged from a cottonwood tree. The Casner brothers, now wanted as well, took their sheep and fled Texas as quickly as the pastores had. In less than a decade, the Panhandle had gone from being the capital of Comancheria, teeming with bison, to being overtaken by sheep herders after the buffalo were exterminated and the Comanche were moved to Fort Sill. Now, the sheep were mostly gone too. But the Canadian River still flowed, and the grass still grew as far as the eye could see. The cattlemen's time had arrived.

Chapter 2: The Cattleman’s Time

In the years following the Civil War, the cattle boom transformed the American West. As railroads pushed further into the plains, cattle drives became big business. The open range, with its vast, unfenced grasslands, attracted cattlemen seeking fortune. Tascosa, situated near the Canadian River's prime grazing lands, was poised to become a key player in this new economy.

Just as the bison, the nomadic Indian bands who followed them, traders, travelers, and conquistadors had for countless years before them, the cattlemen pushing herds north quickly found the shallow, fordable, and easiest place to cross the Canadian River - Atascosa. Except now it was overlooked by the adobe plazas of the pastores. Here, cowboys rested under the same trees that had offered shade to legends like Quanah Parker, the last chief of the Comanche, and Kit Carson, the famous frontiersman and scout.

Charles Goodnight, who had decided to move his herds from Colorado into the Panhandle in 1875, smartly paused in New Mexico, outside of the Comanche’s range, after hearing about the slaughter of a group of buffalo hunters at the Second Battle of Adobe Walls the previous year. In May 1875, the Comanche surrendered, and Goodnight was free to move in, staking claim to Palo Duro Canyon. Major George Littlefield arrived with his herds in the fall of 1877, establishing the first branded cattle ranch near the crossing—the LIT Ranch. But as this was the time of the open range, Littlefield didn’t claim ownership of any land and didn’t put up any fences. He simply used whatever land he needed.

As word of the excellent open range conditions spread, other similar "squatter" ranges sprung up. The LX Ranch in 1877. By 1879, two more large branded outfits had established themselves in the Canadian River Valley—the LE and the LS Ranches..

Other ranches would soon pop up, including the LX and the Frying Pan. More and more cowboys began drifting into the Panhandle from other parts of the state and country looking for work. Along with them came outlaw cattle rustlers, including one of the most famous in the world.

Oftentimes, cowboys and rustlers were one and the same; a cowboy losing his job on one ranch would turn to the outlaw life until he found another legitimate job with another ranching outfit. With no real law to speak of, Tascosa's residents lived with the constant tension of knowing that a drunken brawl or a misunderstanding could erupt into a deadly gunfight at any moment. It was a town where disputes were often settled at the end of a revolver.

As Atascosa grew, it began to evolve into an actual community and trading hub. The state sent in surveyors and began selling land, encouraging more settlers, tradesmen, and businessmen to arrive. 

Charlie Siringo arrived and found work as a cowpuncher for the LX Ranch. The cowboy would later become a legendary detective, Pinkerton agent and author. In Siringo’s books, he recounts that, during the summer of 1877, there were about a half dozen Mexican families, a store, and at least eight nearby ranches at Atascosa.

The two-room adobe general store sold whiskey, medications, ammunition, dry goods, and sundries. Later in 1877, a second store opened, and in 1880, a blacksmith set up shop. That same year, the Exchange Hotel opened. In 1881, the first saloon, the Equity Bar, opened next door. The business owners purchased the prime locations for retail—whether they needed them or not—and conspired to keep competition out. A third storekeeper tried to open up but found himself unable to secure any land in the business district, so he set up a few hundred yards downriver in an area that would come to be known as Hogtown.

By then, Tascosa had transformed into a bustling, albeit rough, frontier town. It wasn’t much to look at—just a cluster of adobe buildings, the Exchange Hotel, a couple of saloons, and dusty streets lined with hitching posts for the endless stream of horses. The Equity Bar was always bustling, while the blacksmith’s shop clanged with the sounds of hammers on iron. Despite its rough edges, Atascosa was becoming the beating heart of the Panhandle, attracting settlers, cowboys, and outlaws alike. It wasn’t by design; it was the easy crossing—the interstate highway for cattle heading north or south.

The townsfolk petitioned Washington, D.C., for a post office at Atascosa, but it was denied because there was already a city and county in Texas with that name. The paperwork was resubmitted, dropping the "A," and Tascosa was officially born, with the post office opening on June 24, 1878. Waves of settlers, now including women and children, began to arrive in covered wagons.

In 1880, Oldham County was formed, with Upper Tascosa chosen as the county seat in a narrow vote over Hogtown. The Tascosa townsfolk celebrated at the hotel, with cowboys firing their Colt .45s in the air, resulted in one accidental death. The rivalry between Upper Tascosa and Hogtown, more formally known as Lower Tascosa, heated up, as Hogtown now boasted a store, hotel, and saloon of its own.

Chapter 3: Neither snow nor rain…

Tascosa now had a post office, but getting in and out, especially in winter, was still hazardous. There was a particularly treacherous 35-mile stretch between Bonita Creek and Dixon Creek—a featureless prairie where a rider could easily get lost at night, in a storm, or when snow covered the ground.

Marion Armstrong, a cowboy, was originally hired to carry the mail between Tascosa and Mobeetie, up in Wheeler County. On one such trip, arriving late after his wagon had broken through ice on the Canadian River, Armstrong got chewed out by the postmaster for his tardiness. He warned the postmaster that if they didn't stake out the road, someone was going to die. His request was refused, so he quit on the spot.

Another cowboy, John Cannington, was hired to replace him. On just his second trip, Cannington got lost in a snowstorm for three days. When he finally arrived in Mobeetie, his feet were black from frostbite, and both had to be amputated. 

His replacement, Tom Wilson, would not be so lucky. Just two weeks after his appointment, traveling with two passengers in an uncovered wagon, Wilson and his group set off into the biggest snowstorm of the season.

As S.C. Gwynne wrote in Empire of the Summer Moon, "People from the East or West Coasts of America may think they have seen a blizzard. Likely they have not. It is almost exclusively a phenomenon of the plains, and got its name on the plains. It entailed wind-driven snow so dense and temperatures so cold that anyone lost in them on the shelterless plains was as good as dead."

The frigid wind howled across the barren prairie, turning the Canadian River's surface to a sheet of ice. Snow blanketed the land, muffling the sounds of life and leaving the world in an eerie, white silence. Halfway through the barren stretch, their mules got stuck, and the wagon tongue broke. With their tracks now covered, and no clear path to return, they decided to unhitch the mules and lead them on foot in their original direction, using the wind as their guide. But, the wind changed direction, as it tends to do in the Panhandle and they trudged right past Dixon Creek, missing it to the southwest.

They wandered for three days with nothing but a buffalo hide robe to protect them from the elements. One of the passengers' feet became so frozen that he couldn't walk, and they had to put him on a mule. On the third night, the mules ran away. The next morning, Wilson and the other passenger covered the injured man in the robe, promised to return for him, and set off on foot.

After walking for a few miles, they found a ranch road and followed it. Along the road, the second passenger collapsed, unable to go any further. Wilson soldiered on alone until he was spotted by an LX ranch hand gathering firewood. The ranch hand took Wilson to the headquarters, where he relayed the location of the man left on the road before collapsing himself. The ranch hand set out to find him but couldn't locate him before nightfall. He was eventually found dead two days later.

Once the weather cleared, the ranch brought Wilson to the Army hospital at Fort Elliott for treatment, but he died there a few days later. They would never locate the first passenger left wrapped in the buffalo robe, though years later, a cowboy found a skeleton near the location where he was said to have been left.

It would have cost just $10 to stake the 35-mile stretch of road. Instead, three lives were lost.

Chapter 4: The Kid

The violence and lawlessness that defined Tascosa in the 1870s weren't unique to the area. Across the border in New Mexico, similar conflicts were unfolding in what became known as the Lincoln County War, a violent struggle for economic power. Rival factions, including cattle barons, merchants, and corrupt lawmen, fought for dominance over the lucrative beef contracts and trade routes in the region. Billy the Kid, a young and infamous outlaw, became embroiled in the conflict after the murder of his employer and friend, John Tunstall. Initially seeking justice, Billy joined a group called the Regulators, who took the law into their own hands. The war quickly devolved into a cycle of revenge killings, with Billy the Kid claiming at least four lives himself and becoming a wanted man. Despite attempts at a truce, the bloodshed continued, newspaper articles around the country made Billy a symbol of the lawlessness that gripped the West.

But even famous outlaws need to eat, and finding prospects for pay drying up in New Mexico and prospects for arrest—or worse—increasing by the day, Billy the Kid gathered his men. They stole 125 horses and headed to Texas.

By the late 1870s, Tascosa was a town simmering with unease. Outlaws and rustlers had become a growing threat to the cattlemen's interests. Into this powder keg rode Billy the Kid. Accompanying him were a gang of like-minded outlaws, including the hardened sharpshooter Dave Rudabaugh, the loyal Charlie Bowdre, and Tom O’Folliard, barely out of his teenage years. Together, they made up a dangerous band of rustlers ready to take on the open range.

The arrival of a gang of outlaws with their reputation surely concerned the cattlemen, and a group of the largest outfits called The Kid in to meet with them. Billy came happily and answered all their questions with a smile. He told the ranchers that he had heard they were short of horses and that he had come to supply them. He also promised that he and his men just wanted to be left alone and wouldn't cause any trouble.

Billy and his gang soon became fixtures in the town, drinking, gambling, racing horses, target shooting, and, of course, horse trading. There was even a legendary target-shooting contest between Billy, Temple Houston (Sam Houston's son), and Bat Masterson. Houston won. By most accounts, Billy and his gang kept their word and were well-behaved during their time in Tascosa. No one even witnessed Billy taking a drink while in the Panhandle.

The worst incident was a misunderstanding at one of the Mexican dances—or bailes—at a Romero plaza house. 

The bailes thrown by the pastores were important social and cultural gatherings that went beyond mere entertainment. These dances were typically held in plazas or homes of prominent figures in the community such as Casimiro Romero and played a key role in maintaining Hispanic traditions in the frontier environment. Music, often played on guitars, fiddles, and accordions, set the backdrop for traditional dances like the ranchera and fandango, which were central to the festivities.

These bailes brought together men, women, and families from the surrounding areas - white and Hispanic - and served as vital spaces for courtship, celebration, and community bonding. People dressed in their finest clothes, and, although the atmosphere was joyful, the community elders enforced certain rules of decorum, like the unwritten rule banning firearms from these events. Ultimately, the bailes served not only as entertainment but also as a way to maintain cultural traditions and pass them on to younger generations in the tight-knit Hispanic communities.

At one of these bailes, held at Casimero Romero’s plaza, Billy tripped while entering the building and fell down onto the middle of the dance floor.. His men, thinking he was in a fight, all produced hidden six guns and surrounded him, pointing their shooters at the other attendees. There was no actual threat, but they had broken the rule against carrying firearms and after this incident, Billy's men were banned from the bailes.

By 1878, most of the horses had been traded off, and the gang began to drift. Some settled in Tascosa, while others rambled along to other places. Billy had made some money, a few friends, and had also learned a lot about the local ranches and their operations. As attrition dwindles his numbers,Billy recruited some locals to fill open positions. 

Their time being good, cordial citizens finished, they said their goodbyes and headed out of town. But not before rustling cattle from various ranches—the LS, the LX, the LIT—and driving them to New Mexico. They sold them. They rustled more cattle in New Mexico. As their bounties mounted there, they came back to Texas and stole even more cattle, becoming more brazen with every raid.

The Panhandle cattlemen were incensed, and in March 1880, Charles Goodnight, T.S. Hughes, Hank Creswell, and O.H. Nelson formed the Panhandle Cattlemen’s Association. Their first order of business was to send a scouting party into New Mexico to search for Billy the Kid. They arrived at White Oaks to find hides draped outside a butcher’s shop displaying the LIT brand. After speaking with locals, they learned that Billy had left three days earlier and that his gang was larger and more well-armed than ever—no match for the small search party. The scouts elected to head back to Texas to report their findings rather than take on the gang.

The cattlemen worked to map out a campaign to retrieve their cattle and wipe out the gang once and for all. Meanwhile, a former Panhandle resident rode back into town—Pat Garrett. Garrett had been a buffalo hunter and called Tascosa home before moving to New Mexico, where he had worked as a cowpuncher for John Chisum. He was later drafted by the cattlemen there to run for sheriff of Lincoln County, with one condition: he had to deal with Billy the Kid.

Garrett, who was familiar with Billy during their time in the Panhandle, knew this would be a big and violent undertaking. He needed help, and he knew just where to find it. To quote McCarty’s Maverick Town again, "Garrett needed the cold, fearless, quick-shooting frontier cowboys of the Panhandle."

The Panhandle Cattlemen’s Association agreed to help Garrett. Each of the large Panhandle ranches sent men. Bill Moore, foreman of the LX Ranch, chose the men he feared and wanted to get rid of, further blurring the line between outlaw and lawman. The posse set out on November 16, 1880, featuring several men who would later make their mark in some way. The most notable of these were Frank Weldon, who would later be known as the "Mongolian Monster", one of the most skilled and famous rodeo cowboys of the early 1900s, and Charlie Siringo, the "cowboy detective," who would write bestselling books about his time as a Panhandle cowpuncher and later as a Pinkerton detective.

While the posse camped outside Las Vegas, New Mexico, Siringo was given $400 and sent into town for food and ammunition. However, Las Vegas, New Mexico, must have looked like Las Vegas, Nevada, to old Charlie. By the time he had graced the many dance halls, saloons, gambling dens, and whorehouses, the money was gone, and Siringo had nothing to show for it but a smile on his face. Another posse member would later describe Siringo "wandering down the Pecos without any grub," leaving the rest of the posse to "tighten their belts and postpone a few meals."

Many of the men in this posse thought they were on a cattle recovery expedition and had not been informed of the true plan—a manhunt for one of the most notorious gunmen and outlaws in the West. When the true nature of the expedition came out, several of the men wanted no part of it and refused to continue. But Garrett was able to find six volunteers among the Panhandle cowboys, along with several of his own men, to ride south to Fort Sumner on the trail of Billy the Kid.

They left the wagons behind, took the fastest horses, and each man carried a six-gun and a Winchester rifle. Thanks to Siringo, who opted to stay behind, they rode all day through the bitter cold without eating. Meanwhile, word had gotten out that a posse from Texas was in New Mexico on the trail of Billy the Kid. As a result, some of Billy's men started dropping out, leaving him with just six followers.

When Garrett's posse arrived in Fort Sumner, they learned that the gang had gone to Billy's camping spot on Lake Portales. Rather than follow them, Garrett quartered his men at a house outside of town along the road to Portales. One snowy evening, a guard noticed a small pattern of gray in the distance. It grew larger and finally resolved into a group of horsemen. The guard, who knew Billy the Kid from his Tascosa days, recognized him. He raised the alarm, and Garrett's posse moved into ambush position behind the house's short adobe fence.

Billy was riding in the lead and somehow, instinctively, sensed something was wrong. He excused himself to go grab some tobacco and hurried to the back. Tom O'Folliard, the youngest member of the gang and the most loyal, was now in the lead as the six horsemen neared the house. Garrett raised up and yelled for the men to get their hands up. O'Folliard reached for his gun but didn’t clear leather before two .45 slugs ripped through his body. He collapsed but somehow stayed on his horse.

A second volley of gunfire sent the other riders spinning and disappearing into the swirling snow. The lead horse continued charging straight at the house, but its rider, O’Folliard, was nearly dead. The posse dragged him inside and laid him by the fire to die, cursing Pat Garrett until he took his last breath.

For some reason, Garrett waited until morning to pursue. Twelve miles away, they found a dead horse, shot through the stomach, but fresh snow obscured the trail. Luckily, they happened upon a rancher who had seen a gang of five men, two sharing a horse, headed in the direction of Stinking Springs, near modern-day Taiban.

The posse rode through the night and came upon an abandoned rock house with three horses tied outside the door. The fourth, Billy's racing mare, was inside the small house. Garrett, along with four of the Panhandle cowboys, crawled up an arroyo until they were within 30 feet of the house, guns at the ready. As the sun began to rise, one of Billy’s gang members, Charles Bowdre, walked outside with a feed bag for the horses.

"Throw up yer hands!" yelled Garrett. Bowdre dropped the bag and reached for his gun. He was filled with pistol lead before he touched it. He stumbled back through the door of the house, but Billy grabbed him and threw him back outside. "Charlie, you're done for," Billy said. "See if you can get one of ‘em before you die!"

Bowdre stumbled towards the hidden lawmen, fingers too weak to even cock his gun. He tripped over one of the concealed cowboys, Lee Hall, and collapsed on top of him. Hall disarmed him and flipped him over into the snow to die. What followed was a day of taunts and blind gunshots. They were in a stalemate.

At one point, one of the horses meandered toward the front door, prompting one of the posse members to shoot it through the heart. It fell in the doorway, trapping Billy's prized racing mare inside. There would be no brazen escape. It was bitterly cold that December on the plains, and the remaining four members of Billy's gang had no fire, food, or even water.

That night, the rancher the posse had encountered earlier rode up with some food for Garrett’s men. They built a cook fire and made a stew. The smell was too much for Billy the Kid. He, along with Radebaugh, Prickett, and Wilson, surrendered. His only condition was that they deliver him safely and protect him from any lynch mobs. Garrett agreed.

Garrett and his men delivered Billy the Kid and his gang to the jail in Las Vegas, but they still had to get him safely to Santa Fe to receive the governor’s reward money. They decided the safest course of action was to transport the gang by train, but they had to wait several days for the train to arrive.

Meanwhile, word had gotten out around New Mexico that Billy the Kid was in custody in Las Vegas. Angry ranchers, cowboys, and vengeful family members of Billy's many murder victims began to pour into town. Garrett personally guarded Billy. When the train finally arrived, Garrett and the Panhandle cowboys, guns drawn, escorted the men from the jail to the train station. The mob demanded Billy's head, but Garrett refused, assuring them that justice was coming.

The mob wouldn't have it. They surrounded the train. Garrett and his men were hopelessly outnumbered. While Billy and his gang were in a passenger car, surrounded by armed guards, the engine was unprotected. The mob pulled the train engineer and fireman from the engine. The train was staying right where it was.

Garrett considered arming Billy and the gang to give them a better shot at fending off the mob. But Billy's savior wouldn’t be a six-gun—it was a mailman. J.F. Morley, an inspector with the Post Office, snuck into the train cabin and, just as the mob was ready to fully explode, opened the throttle. The train sped away down the tracks, out of control.

Somehow, the train engineer was able to grab onto the back car as the train sped away, pull himself onboard, and make his way to the engine to regain control before calamity struck. Garrett and the cowboys delivered Billy the Kid and his men to Santa Fe, collected their reward, and the posse was disbanded.

To quote Maverick Town again, "For a time, Billy the Kid had met more than his match. Two of his gang had been killed, many had been forced to desert him, and three were with him in prison in Santa Fe. Garrett's reputation and that of the Panhandle cowboys, the ranchers, and the infant Panhandle Cattlemen’s Association who financed them, spread far and wide. Their success had a wholesome and chilling effect on the outlaw world and definitely placed everyone on notice that the large cattle owners were not going to tolerate wholesale thievery, outlawry, and mass murder."

Billy the Kid would later escape from prison in 1881, and it again fell to Garrett to hunt him down. He succeeded, putting an end to Billy the Kid once and for all with two gunshots on a warm July night in Fort Sumner. However, what Garrett couldn't have known in 1881 was that the hunt for Billy the Kid wouldn’t be the last time he would be called upon to aid the cattlemen of Tascosa. Another war, every bit as violent as New Mexico's Lincoln County War, was brewing back in the Texas Panhandle.

Closing

You’ve been listening to Part One of Tascosa: Ghosts and Outlaws on the WTX Podcast, I’m Jody Slaughter. 

In Part Two, we’ll tell the rest of Tascosa’s story. Including how simmering tensions led to a violent shootout that caused the creation of an entire cemetery. You won’t want to miss it!

You can find this and all episodes on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Visit our website at wtxpodcast.com for companion articles, show notes, and photos for each episode. I actually went to Tascosa and got a lot of photos of the area as it appears today so you’ll want to make sure and check those out on the website. To get ahold of me with questions, comments, or show ideas you can email me at lubbockist@gmail.com or on Twitter @Lubbockist. 

This episode was written, produced, engineered, and edited by me, Jody Slaughter. 

This episode was scored by my AI band Gentry Ford and the Homeless Lobos. Special music in this episode, “Say Goodbye”, written and performed by Charlie Stout. Charlie recorded this song, and the whole album, in an abandoned 100-year-old church in Taiban, NM. Just a couple of miles from the site of Billy the Kid’s capture. Special thanks to Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch and the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum for providing photos and background for these episodes.

Thanks for listening, and until next time...so long...From West Texas.

FULL TRANSCRIPT: Part 2

s01e07 - Tascosa: Ghosts and Outlaws, pt. 2

# Chapter 1: The First Murder in Tascosa

It was a cool fall night in 1879 when murder first came to Tascosa. A man named Bob Russell had opened a saloon in town and, by most accounts, was his own best customer. His wife, Lizzie, was a rough frontier woman, but pretty, and she spent her days entertaining the cowboys at the bar, making sure they spent their money there instead of at the many other drinking options in town. Bob was cool with this—it kept the bills paid. What he wasn't cool with was when the shopkeeper down the street, Jules Howard, started making comments around town about the inappropriate and unbecoming behavior of the married Lizzie. Once this got back to Russell, he spent the better part of a weekend stewing in the 90 proof before deciding to, quote, "jump ol' Howard out." By then, the town gossip had surely gotten back to Howard that Russell had been drinking and cussing his name all weekend, because when Russell stumbled down the street and busted in the door to Howard's shop, Howard was ready for him, with a six-shooter out and pointed at Bob Russell's head.

"Lay 'er down, Bob," Howard said, gesturing towards the shop counter. Russell, confused in his drunken haze, complied.

"Now Bob, to show you I don't wanna take any undue advantage, I'll lay mine down by yours."

The two men stood for a moment, staring at each other. The counter and two guns lay between them. One's eyes were alert, the other's bleary-eyed with hatred. This wasn't getting talked out.

"Well," said Howard, "If you wanna pick yours up... let's go."

Russell went for his gun. But a two-day bender makes a man slow, and Howard got to his, raised it, and fired before Russell's gun even left the counter. Bob Russell clasped at the hole in his chest and collapsed on the floor. A faint red splotch slowly grew until it covered his shirt. Howard turned to the onlookers gathered outside.

"Somebody get him out of my store," Howard said. Bob Russell had been taken away by the time Lizzie arrived, leaving just the blood-soaked sand outside of the store.

The fledgling town didn't yet have a proper cemetery, and it was left to the widow to select the spot. She chose a knoll just outside of town, and either out of bitterness or coincidence, the hill stood directly out the window of Howard's store—a place he would have to stare at all day as he tended his shop. Someone in town suggested naming it Boothill, after a similar burial ground in Dodge City—a place reserved for those who died with their boots on.

#

Hey y’all. I’m Jody Slaughter and welcome to West Texas. Where the sky stretches on forever, and the stories are as vast and rugged as the landscape itself. On this program, we will explore the characters who have etched their names into the sun bleached history of this region. From outlaws and lawmen, to everyday folks who dared to dance with destiny, we’ll explore the legends, the truths, and the tall tales that define this undefinable region.

Today, part two of our series on Tascosa, TX. Last time we learned about how this place got its start, grew into the defacto Capitol of the Panhandle, and hosted legends like Billy the Kid. This episode, we’ll fill Tascosa’s famous Boothill Cemetery, and find out why you won’t find the town on a map any longer. So sit back, relax, kick off your boots, and settle in. Because this…is West Texas.

# Chapter 2: The Death of Fred Leigh

In 1880, Fred Leigh, foreman for the LS Ranch, was grazing a herd south of Tascosa on the other side of the Canadian River. The river could contain the cattle, but not the cowboys, who regularly swam their horses across to enjoy the many amenities Tascosa had to offer. For a town of just a few dozen permanent residents, Tascosa boasted a shocking number of saloons, brothels, and possibly the most gambling joints per capita of anywhere in the country—even the livery stable had one. The law, as it existed, was just a couple of cowboys wearing badges.

The first Justice of the Peace was Marion Armstrong, a former LX ranchm hand. The constable was Henry Brown, a former member of Billy the Kid's gang who had stayed behind when the rest left town. Cape Willingham, another LXer, was the first sheriff.

Leigh and some of his cowboys were leaving town after a morning of drinking and grumbling to each other after being told that they couldn't wear their guns in town. Armstrong and Brown were walking in the opposite direction, and one of the cowboys, recognizing the lawmen, tried to shush the group and get them to settle down in the presence of the law. Leigh wasn't having it. He made a show of cursing the town and its citizens as he rode by.

Armstrong, the JP, told Leigh that it was a peaceful, law-abiding community and asked the men to please help them keep it that way. Leigh sneered and rode on.

Arriving back in town, the lawmen encountered a group of angry Tascosa men sharing stories of the cowboys' transgressions. Everyone agreed to keep an eye on Leigh and his boys and sound the alarm if things started getting out of hand.

Later that day, Leigh, clearly still drunk because this was a risky idea, decided to swim the whole herd across the river. That job done, they decided to head back into town for another drink or ten. Riding into town from the north this time, they came across some ducks preening themselves in a puddle in the middle of the road. Leigh blew one's head off. A pregnant woman sweeping her porch across the street screamed and fainted. The cowboys erupted in laughter.

Hearing the shot, Sheriff Willingham, unarmed, rushed down to the men and demanded Leigh hand over his pistol. Leigh refused. Armstrong, smartly, backed down and let the men pass. He walked back behind the hotel where he had left his sawed-off shotgun. The alarm had been raised, and the lawmen and others took up positions around the town.

Leigh and the cowboys had had two taunting run-ins with the law that day—both times the cowboys had the advantage. The third time would go differently.

As Leigh and his men turned the corner and headed towards the saloon, they had no idea what they were riding into. Leigh dismounted outside the saloon, taking a long puff of his cigar. Sheriff Willingham swung around the corner, raising his shotgun at Leigh.

"Turn it over," Willingham ordered.

Leigh didn't reply, but instead grabbed his saddle horn and swung back up on his horse, reaching for his pistol as he did. By the time he got it out, he had already been filled with two barrels' worth of buckshot and blown totally out of his saddle. The other lawmen rose from vantage points and took dead aim at the rest of the men, they surrendered. Fred Leigh would be Boothill resident #2.

# Chapter 3: The Transformation and Tragedy of Henry McCullar

In 1879, Texas Ranger Captain G.W. Arrington established the first Ranger camp in the Panhandle on the other side near Mobeetie, another rough and tumble outlaw town. In 1882, after several years of piecemeal law enforcement, Arrington decided enough was enough, engaging in a wholesale cleanup of Mobeetie and running dozens of its most disreputable denizens out of town—robbers, rustlers, con men, and card sharks, among others. All were banished from Mobeetie. And guess where they all showed up? That's right, Tascosa.

Those of you who listen regularly know that my favorite thing about doing this is the names of the folks in these stories, so if you'll indulge me, let me list a few of the saloon girls who arrived in Tascosa during this time: Frog Lip Sadie, Gizzard Lip, Rowdy Kate, Homely Ann, Canadian Lily, Panhandle Nan, Slippery Sue, Midnight Rose, and Boxcar Jane.

Another one of the Mobeetie refugees, with a much more boring name, was Henry McCullar. McCullar was such a bad man that other bad men couldn't even stand him. He was known for giving those who crossed him a "cowpuncher's shampoo," which involved pistol-whipping a person over the head, leaving deep bloody gashes across their scalp.

But people can change. After receiving a pistol whack across the head himself, McCullar was found unconscious in a ditch. When he came to, one side of his body was completely paralyzed. He lost his memory and didn't know what to call a hat or a horse. It took him three months to learn how to walk and talk again. When he did, his entire personality had changed. He was now a law-abiding, respectable citizen. He even had a live-in girlfriend, Jenny.

It didn't take long before he was appointed deputy sheriff. His service to the law would be short-lived, though. Sent to Hogtown by Sheriff Willingham to arrest a gambling cheat named Mexican Frank, McCullar found his fate. The gambler didn't even take his gun out of the holster, shooting through the leather and into McCullar's stomach. Henry McCullar crawled from Hogtown all the way back to Jenny's house, where he suffered for three days before passing. The bad man turned lawman was Boothill resident #3.

Mexican Frank fled, and Sheriff Cape Willingham took it upon himself to  find justice for his deputy. Cape rode him down, and cornered him near the Alamo Citos Ranch headquarters after Frank stopped off there for breakfast. Willingham wfound him on the road into New Mexico and, with trusty sawed-off shotgun raised, forced a surrender. District Attorney Temple Houston (son of Sam Houston) secured a murder conviction and a 21-year prison sentence for Mexican Frank.

# Chapter 4: Land, Reconstruction, and the XIT Cattle Empire

Let's zoom out for a second to what was going on in the rest of the state during Tascosa's rise. The Civil War had ended, and Texas, like the rest of the South, was broke and in the throes of Reconstruction. The state had also outgrown its capitol building, but had no money to build the one it needed. But what the state lacked in cash, it had something else in abundance—land. Almost 70,000 square miles of Comancheria, now opened up after military campaigns. Texas had always claimed these lands as part of the state, but didn't really control them to any significant degree until the Comanche had been moved to the reservation.

The 1876 Constitution had dedicated this land to all sorts of public projects. The Public University Fund (PUF) was meant to support higher education, and the Public School Fund to do the same for primary and secondary education.

In 1879, the legislature dedicated three million acres in the western Panhandle to finance the construction of a new state capitol. They contracted with a Chicago syndicate of businessmen to build the new capitol building in exchange, not for money, but for this land—led by Charles and John Farwell.

If you'll go to our website wtxpodcast.com in the Tascosa show notes, you can get an idea of the scale of this land grant. It started at the northwest border of the Panhandle, touching Colorado, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, and stretched all the way down to within just miles of modern-day Lubbock. It encompassed all or some of modern-day Dallam, Hartley, Oldham, Deaf Smith, Parmer, Castro, Bailey, Lamb, Cochran, and Hockley Counties.

The Chicago Capitol Syndicate held up their end of the bargain, constructing the striking pink granite capitol building that still stands today. Taller than any other state capitol building in the country - including the US Capitol - it was one of the most expensive state projects ever undertaken anywhere in the country at that time. But even with the \$3.2 million price tag, the Chicago Syndicate got a great deal. They paid just over \$1 an acre for the land they received in exchange. A great deal, even for that time.

The syndicate sent a survey party who spent over a month scouting their new land. Originally planning to parcel and sell the massive spread, they found land that was already being grazed by thousands of head of cattle by the  squatter ranches. With the beef boom fully underway in the U.S., the Chicago businessmen decided not to sell the land after all, but instead to establish their own cattle operation. But they were going to need a lot more money to do that.

In 1884, John Farwell traveled to London and met with the upper crust of British nobility—earls, barons, and members of Parliament—and returned with \$5 million to build their cattle empire. When they registered their brand, they chose one without a lot of meaning behind it, it wasn't anyone's initials like most of the area ranches. It was a brand designed simply to make it difficult to change or cover by maverick cattle operations (more on these in a moment). The XIT. Now world famous, but a novelty at the time. Surely locals rolled their eyes at the pretty boy Chicagoans and Londoners throwing their lot in the cattle game. But they wouldn't be laughing for long.

If the Panhandle squatter ranchers had even heard that their land had been sold, they likely had no idea what a multinational group of big-city capitalists descending on the Panhandle truly meant for their way of life.

Prior to the XIT's establishment, even the large cattle operations were typically run by one man or a small group of partners. Agreements were often sealed with a handshake, and cowboys came and went. Contracts and formal laws were often viewed as distant notions—abstract ideas from far-off cities with no real means of enforcement. But a multinational operation like the XIT couldn't function that way. It needed structure: contracts, ledgers, records, and heaps of paperwork.

In 1888, the General Rules of the XIT Ranch were codified—23 rules laid out in a multi-page document that had to be posted at each ranch camp. They covered employment contracts, payroll procedures, bans on employees keeping private livestock on the ranch, prohibitions on livestock abuse, and even bans on carrying pistols. These rules also prohibited gambling and alcohol consumption. Rule #20 specified that "loafers, deadbeats, tramps, gamblers, or disreputable persons must not be entertained at any camp."

The XIT Ranch made it clear that they sought a different class of cowboy—one who fit their mold of discipline and respectability.

#

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# Chapter 5: Fences and the Changing Face of Ranching

In the open range era of the 1870s and early 1880s, there just weren't fences. Most of the ranchers - large and small - were squatting on public land. Building structures as needed, but never claiming ownership of any of the surface itself. Everyone's cattle grazed the same pastures, drank the same water, and intermingled.

The spring and fall roundups consisted of multiple ranches, all working in coordination to push all of the various range cattle  into one centralized area where they would be sorted by brand and corralled by their individual owners. New calves would be branded. The steers that were ready for market could be herded and driven up to Dodge, or they could simply be counted, branded, and then released to comingle again until the next roundup. These were massive community affairs - modern cities have nothing that really comes close. During roundup you could have 100 Cowboys in town all at the same time. It was July 4th, The Super Bowl, Black Friday, and New Year's Eve all rolled into one for Tascosa business owners.

Now, a big problem during this time in the Panhandle—aside from outright rustling from groups like Billy the Kid's gang—was mavericking. With all of these animals from different ranches mixed together on the open range,  ownership proof began and ended with the brand on the animal. No photographs, no tags, no DNA, just the brand.

So a thief, a small-time outfit, or even an unscrupulous larger outfit could take my branded steer and, depending on the design, could put their brand on top of mine where it could no longer be seen. After that, as far as the law or anyone else was concerned, that was my steer. Sometimes the only way to prove this had happened was to kill the animal, skin it, and examine the branded hide from underneath.

As time went on, some maverick or outlaw ranching outfits, went to great lengths to further this criminal enterprise. Some registering brands with elaborate, spider-web-like designs capable  of covering just about any other brand.  It was with this practice in mind that the Chicago Capitol Syndicate created their XIT brand—one designed to make mavericking of their steers much more difficult.

The arrival of barbed wire not only transformed ranching practices but also pushed the conflict between the Panhandle factions past the point of no return. It's almost impossible to think about ranching today without fences, but in the early 1880s, the Panhandle had none. Cattle were branded, turned loose, and left to roam freely until roundup time. But as cattle drifted, especially during the cold winter months, they could end up far from where they started. As cold front pushed down from the north, open range cattle would push down ahead of the weather. This was a survival instinct inherent in cattle. As crazy as it sounds, there are even reports of branded cattle from Nebraska found grazing all the way down in the Texas Rio Grande Valley come spring.

It was horribly time consuming and expensive to go hundreds of miles to round up these drifting cattle. They also made easy targets for maverick outfits to steal.

There was also a financial impact on the ranchers in the southern plains where these cattle ended-up. In the spring, Tascosa ranchers would find their grazing lands being decimated by thousands of cattle from Kansas and Colorado.

The Panhandle Cattlemen's Association convened to address this issue and came up with a solution - drift fences.

Now fencing in the past had not proven to be a really effective method for containing cattle. A stampede could demolish weeks' worth of work in a few minutes. Cattle just leaning against a fence could knock it down quickly and release the whole herd.

But in 1874, Joseph Glidden from Illinois patented his version of barbed wire. The sharp metal points gave cattle a strong incentive not to push on the fence, and the fences could stand for months or years without needing repairs.

In 1881, after a particularly bad winter sent overwhelming numbers of cattle into the Panhandle, the stockmen resolved to build a fence north of the Canadian river to keep these northern cattle out. The drift fence extended some 200 miles from Higgins on the Oklahoma border, over to Dalhart and even into New Mexico.

It was an innovative solution, but it was also devastating for the herds. During blizzards, cattle would piling up against the drift fence would smother, starve, or freeze, unable to move further south. Losses were catastrophic—some winters claimed up to 75% of the northern herds.

One LX ranch hand reportedly skinned 250 carcasses per mile for 35 miles down one section of the fence. Cattle deaths were so staggering during an brutally cold winter in 1886, that the event was named - The Great Die Up.

There were attempts to add drift fences to the south as well, to keep the Panhandle herds between northern and southern boundaries, but these fences also led to cattle deaths.

So the drift fences, while solving one problem, had created new ones. Further innovation was going to be needed.

In 1881, two men—Henry Sanborn and William Henry Bush—arrived in the Panhandle and purchased land in Potter County to establish the Frying Pan Ranch. These men were ahead of their time, as they had worked for Glidden's barbed wire company and understood the benefits of the technology. They created the first fenced ranch in the Panhandle, containing their herd entirely. Soon, other ranchers realized that the future of ranching was in fencing off their herds completely, and supervising them year round.

When the XIT followed suit, becoming the largest fenced ranch in the world by 1887. Three million acres of open range had effectively been closed off. Few could have imagined at the time how something as simple as twisted wire and cedar posts would totally transform their way of life, the frightening violence it would inspire, and ultimately the death sentence it would render upon the thriving boomtown of Tascosa.

# Chapter 6: Pat Garrett's Home Rangers

Okay, so let's rewind back a couple of years. If you'll remember, the Panhandle Cattlemen's Association had its first big win by sending Pat Garrett to take down Billy the Kid. They built the northern drift fence that kept unwanted herds out of the Panhandle, but rustling and mavericking remained rampant. By the early 1880s, law and order slowly began to seep into the area. A courthouse was being planned, the county had a Justice of the Peace, a constable, a sheriff, and deputies. Captain Arrington and the Texas Rangers were present, if mainly on the other side of the Panhandle, but cattle theft remained difficult to prove.

The Cattlemen's Association decided it needed a dedicated team to tackle the problem. Reenter onto the scene, Pat Garrett. Having captured Billy the Kid, then later executing him after his escape, Garrett had served one term as sheriff of Lincoln County, NM, but that was over with. So he was available when the Panhandle Cattlemen sent for him in 1884 to form a group to combat cattle theft. He agreed to work for them for one year, but only if they could get him a commission as a  Texas Ranger Captain (Governor Jim Hogg was happy to oblige this request). Garrett set up headquarters at the LS Ranch and organized his Rangers, including a few that will become relevant later - Ed King, Fred Chilton, John Lang, and Frank Valley. Garrett made it clear to the Cattlemen's Association that his group wasn't a lynch mob—they would only act on solid legal grounds, with properly executed warrants and indictments.

In the meantime, Garrett and his Rangers would patrol the roundups, curbing trouble and gathering evidence of brand burning and cattle theft, but would not disarm cowboys or make arrests without solid legal footing.  To assist with law enforcement, the governor issued an executive order making it illegal for civilians to carry pistols. Most of the cowboys begrudgingly complied - for a time - but many soon purchased arm holsters so they could conceal their pistols instead of carrying them openly on their belts. Meanwhile, the LS Ranch loaned the county \$25,000 to build a rock courthouse and jail. Now a grand jury could convene to issue indictments, and Garrett's rangers had somewhere to put them. The first grand jury issued 159 true bills, allowing Garrett's men, now known as the Home Rangers to begin cleaning up the men that the County found undesirable.

It was clear from the beginning who the Garrett's men were out to protect, and it wasn't the common man. They were headquartered on the LS, paid by the Cattlemen's Association. J.E. McCallister, foreman of the LS ranch, was the County Judge, and the rest of the commissioner's court was comprised of other figures from the large ranching outfits.

So while law and order had, technically, come to Tascosa, it was a corrupted system weighted in favor of the big ranchers. All brands were registered with the county, and the commissioner's court had the power to declare any brand a maverick or "outlaw" brand and use the Home Rangers to confiscate all livestock bearing those brands. Often times this was done on the thinnest of evidence.

In a town known more for its gunfights than its legal wrangling, the first big pushback to this new order wouldn't come at the barrel of a pistol, but at the barrel of a pen.

The Tabletop Brand, owned by Billy Gatlin and Wade Woods, was one of these brands declared outlaw by the county. The brand, an open table top with four legs, had the ability to cover every brand used in the Canadian River Valley except the LIT. During the spring roundup, the Home Rangers took possession of all the Tabletop cattle for the county and had them butchered.

Gatlin and Woods hired a local attorney, H.H. Wallace, who threatened a \$25,000 lawsuit against the county, and criminal charges against McCallister and the commissioners for the unlawful maverick brand declaration.

The cattle barons brought Wallace in for negotiations, and he emerged with an \$800 settlement and, apparently, a few new friends. Because a few months later when McCallister declined to run for reelection, it was Wallace who ran for the County Judge's seat, backed by the large ranching outfits. He, of course, won the election.

The next big fight over mavericking wouldn't end as cordial. A group of Hogtown—also known as Lower Tascosa—residents had gotten in the habit of "borrowing" pasture horses from the LS Ranch to assist in their mavericking activities. An LS ranch hand, Jermo Martinez, who was in charge of the horses, caught them in the act of returning them one night in 1884. Martinez warned the men, led by a local bartender named Gene Watkins, that if he caught them again, he would report it to headquarters.

Sometime later, he caught Watkins and another man again with their horses. A heated argument ensued, but their friends managed to calm the situation before it escalated into violence. Later that night, Martinez walked into the Hogtown saloon where Watkins was tending bar, more words were exchanged, and Martinez went for his gun, but Watkins was quicker. Watkins shot, missing, but the powder burns at close range blinded Martinez. Eyesight or not, Martinez still managed to hit his target, killing Watkins.

Watkins had friends in the bar, and someone—no one could say who—shot and ended Martinez as well. That should have been the end of it, but two of Watkins' friends went outside the saloon and found Martinez's brother lying in a drunken stupor. They shot him five times. The only unfriendly witness left was an Indian named Pisquah, who had been inside and, presumably, had seen who had shot Martinez. A few nights later, the men bought Pisquah drinks until he could barely walk. When he fell into a mud puddle on his way home, they filled him with lead as well.

Meanwhile, the grand jury was still at work, churning out indictments.

Pat Garrett and Sheriff Jim East (you may remember East as one of the posse members who helped capture Billy the Kid) were working together to serve a stack of arrest warrants, two of which were Billy Gatlin and Wade Woods. Previously winning the settlement over illegal designation of his Tabletop Brand as maverick, they was now charged with outright livestock theft.  They and a group of other supposed outlaws were holed up at an old rock house at Red River Springs on the Canadian.

Harkening back to their success using a snowstorm to bring in Billy the Kid, Garrett and East decided to wait for a strong blizzard to make their move against the rustlers' camp.

With Kid Dobbs, a local, serving as their guide suggesting that they approach from the north as there weren't any windows or openings where they could be fired at, the Rangers rode up through the brutal, blowing snow, rifles drawn and ready.

Dobbs happened upon one  of the oblivious rustlers, who was out gathering firewood, before the man noticed him. The rustler tossed the firewood in the air in cartoonish fashion as he scampered inside the house, yelling that Garrett and the Rangers had come for them.

One of the men, Tom Harris, emerged calmly and asked if they were there for him...again. Harris had recently been arrested by Garrett and acquitted on the charges. Garrett shuffled through the warrants before announcing, much to Harris's surprise, that he wasn't one of them. Garrett then rattled off the names of the eleven men he had come for. Harris told him that Wade Woods wasn't there, but the rest were. Garrett demanded that they surrender peacefully, and nine of them obliged.

But Billy Gatlin refused. One of the surrendering men, Charley Thompson, emerged without his coat and asked if he could go back for it. He promised Jim East that he would grab it and be right back outside.

However, once back inside, Thompson had a change of heart. He cracked the door and yelled that he was going to fight it out with Billy. East pleaded with him to reconsider, pointing out that he had every chance of being acquitted just like his buddy Harris had been. "Why throw your life away over a cow theft charge?" East reasoned.

Thompson began crying and soon emerged again, his hands in the air. Now only Gatlin remained.

Gatlin bantered with the Rangers for most of the day, but they were at a stalemate. Finally, Garrett ordered two men to climb up on the roof and start dismantling the structure from above.

Gatlin then called out for Sheriff East and challenged him to come in and talk to him for five minutes, vowing that at the end of that time, one or the other of them would die, ending the standoff.

East agreed and cautiously approached the door. As Gatlin slowly opened it, East bum-rushed him followed by two deputies, Winchester rifle pressed into Gatlin's belly. But Gatlin had his guns drawn as well, and East soon found two pistols pressing into his chest.

From this position, a short negotiation took place, and Gatlin eventually handed over his guns. The outlaws and the Rangers then crowded into the warm house, cooked bacon, and had coffee before heading to the jailhouse.

Garrett served out the year he had contracted for before leaving town in the spring of 1885. The Home Rangers disbanded, but many of the men stayed on to continue working for the LS Ranch. Without Garrett’s enforced discipline, the men became notorious for drinking, gambling, and fighting, earning a reputation as Tascosa’s "barroom gladiators." The tensions between the large ranchers and the small outfits and townsfolk continued to fester until they, inevitably, erupted.

# Chapter 7: The Big Fight

If the stage hasn't been properly set by this point, it's important to understand that there weren't really any good guys or bad guys here. No white hats vs black hats. Everything was shades of gray. While the big ranchers were having men arrested for burning brands and stealing their cattle, many of these outfits were doing the same to their competitors at the same time. Even some of the lawmen were outlaws in previous lives, and would resort back to it again before they died. It was a world where you eeked out survival anyway you could.

And up until the mid 1880s, it was still possible for most everyone, from every background, to find some sort of survival.

As we discussed before, when the cattlemen first arrived in the Panhandle, they didn't own any land. They simply used what they needed. They built camps and houses where they needed. If the state decided to enforce ownership at any point, they would buy it, but even then it might be a strategic point on the river, or the small area where the headquarters stood, but the open range was the open range.

Sure, there were disputes, but as a general philosophy... there was plenty of land for everyone. Until the fences went up.

By the mid 1880s, all of the large ranches were claiming massive swaths of land and enclosing them with fencing. A nester who had built a homestead on public land might find himself in the middle of the north pasture of the LIT. Or, if not, finding barb wire preventing his cattle from getting to the river to drink.

So what would you do in this situation? You're squatting, they're squatting. Now they just fence you in? Hell Naw! You cut that fence and get your steers where they need to go like you always have.

Well in 1884, The Panhandle Cattlemen's Association took things one step farther when they lobbied the legislature to make fence cutting a felony. So now groups like Garrett's Home Rangers, deputized lawmen but 100% in the employ of the cattle barons, would throw you in jail for it.

And it's not like the large ranches would just allow you to sit in your house in the middle of their fenced pasture. The nicer outfits would pay you off to move somewhere else, but others would just send armed cowboys to kick you out and burn your house to the ground.

So understandably, what had before been a series of annoyances. Two groups with different goals trying to coexist on the same land. Now an irreconcilable gulf was forming, a great tectonic fault line running across the Panhandle like the Canadian River. It was inevitable that it was going to erupt. And when it did, it wasn't over the land, it was over a girl. Sally Emory.

Sally was a saloon girl at the Jenkins & Dunn saloon. She had recently been spurned by her boyfriend Lem Woodruff, who had taken up with another saloon girl, Rocking Chair Emma, down the street.

Lem was a bartender at Jenkins & Dunn as well, and partner in a" small timer" cattle herd, who had recently been acquitted of cattle theft. He ran around with some other small timers, rustlers, and gamblers like Louis" The Animal" Bousman, The Catfish Kid,  and Sally’s brothers Charlie and Poker Tom Emory.

These men were no friends of the big ranchers and their cowboys, especially the LS who now employed several of Garrett's former Home Rangers - Fred Chilton, Frank Valley, John Lang, and Ed King, who had earned the nickname Barroom Gladiators for their wild drinking and violent behavior in Tascosa without Garrett to rein them in.

Now, if this starts to sound like Tascosa High School instead of Old Tascosa, I think that's a fair assessment, because after Lem Woodruff left Sally Emory for another woman, Sally got revenge by shacking up with the enemy in Ed King, one of the LS rangers. So if the two factions didn't get along before, then certainly the introduction of a love triangle was destined to send things over the edge.

The first preview of The Big Fight was on a Friday night, March 19, 1886 when King, Valley, and Chilton taunted Woodruff on their way through town calling him "Pretty Lem" with King getting in his face and slapping him. Woodruff took the abuse - he was outnumbered 3 to 1, but the attack only inflamed his hatred for King and the LSers.

He went back to his buddies, telling them about the humiliation, and they agreed that it was time someone taught the Barroom Gladiators a lesson.

The next day, March 20, King, Chilton, Valley, and Lang finished their day’s work back at camp, changed into clean clothes, and headed into Tascosa. It was Saturday night, and that meant the baile - dance - at Casimero Romero’s plaza. An event that would bring the whole community together.

As they rode into town, Frank Valley saw a jackrabbit in the brush, and took its head off with his six gun. He dismounted, removed the rabbit’s foot with his buck knife, and stuffed it in his pocket. “That’s a sure sign of good luck,” he told the other men, “now I’ve got my rabbit’s foot.”

They spent the early part of the night at the baile, dancing and having beers. By 10 o’clock, they had moved on to Jack Ryan’s saloon in Hogtown where more drinks were drunk, and it was approaching 2am before they mounted their horses and headed into upper Tascosa. They needed to get back to camp, they had a long day ahead of them, but decided to dip into the Equity saloon for a quick hand of cards first.

They passed the Jenkins & Dunn saloon, where Lem was working. His crew - the Catfish Kid, Animal Bousman, and the Emory brothers were inside too. So was Sally. She popped out to greet Ed King, and asked him if he wanted to walk her down to her place down the street. He got off his horse and, slipping his arm around her waist, started walking with her in that direction. Chilton and Valley dismounted as well, giving their horses to Lang to take to the stockade, and they headed into the Griffin saloon for their card game.

As Ed and Sally walked down the street, someone made a remark to Ed King from the porch of the Jenkins saloon. It’s never been revealed what was said or who said it, but it was enough for Ed to tell Sally to go on home and he would catch up to her. King turned around and headed back to the saloon. As he stepped onto the porch, there was a gun flash from the shadows, and King spun around and fell back down the steps and into the street, face up. His mouth gushing blood but still alive. Then Lem Woodruff rushed out of the saloon, Winchester raised, and shot Ed King through the throat at point blank range.

Woodruff and his buddies rushed back in the saloon, barring the door and turning out the lights.

John Lang was walking back after taking the horses to the stockade when he saw the gunshots take down King. He ran 50 yards down to the Equity Saloon where Valley and Chilton were standing on a table, sloshing down whiskey and singing. 

“Boys, they’ve killed Ed. Come on!” he yelled breathlessly. The two Barroom Gladiators immediately sobered-up, grabbed their pistols and charged out onto the street. They came upon Ed but he was clearly dead. So they ran down the block and back up to the rear of the saloon where they found Woodruff, the Animal, the Catfish Kid, and the Emory brothers huddled in conversation. 

Gunfire rang out in every direction as the eight men scrambled for cover and fired blindly at each other. Charley Emory took a shot to the leg, and Lem Woodruff was hit twice in the opening volley, through the abdomen and groin. Valley charged him, flinging lead in every direction as Woodruff stumbled back through the door of the saloon and managed to get it closed as Valley fired several shots through the door. He must’ve thought that Woodruff was surely dead, because he opened the door just enough to peep in. Woodruff was very much still living, and fired once. The bullet tearing into Valley’s left eye. He fell in the doorway, lucky rabbit’s foot still in his pocket.

Meanwhile, Chilton and Lang had taken cover outside. Now Jesse Sheets should have had a rabbit’s foot because he had the worst luck of anyone that night. Totally unconnected to either of the two factions, Sheets ran the restaurant adjoining the saloon and has suspected one of his cooks was stealing from him. He chose March 20, 1886, of all nights, to sleep in a back room of the saloon, where he could keep an eye on his restaurant.

With no idea what was going on all around him, Sheets waited until the gunfire stopped to rise and step unarmed into the back doorway of the saloon. Still in his pajamas. Chilton, mistaking Sheets for one of the other men, raised his gun and fired, hitting Sheets in the forehead and killing him instantly.

The gun flash exposed Chilton’s position, and the Catfish Kid, concealed behind a woodpile, fired his rifle twice, drilling him both times in the chest. Fred Chilton, too, fell dead.

Now John Lang was alone, and he attempted a dangerous retreat, back down the alley and back to Tascosa’s Main Street. The other three men gave chase, spraying lead at him as he ran for his life, firing blindly behind him as he did. Soon, his guns were empty. Somehow, he made it back to the Equity Saloon where friends from the card game helped to defend him as he hunkered down. He had a bullet hole in his coat sleeve, but had miraculously suffered no injuries.

Meanwhile, the wounded Woodruff, using a rifle as a crutch, hobbled over the body of Jesse Sheets and out the back of the saloon. As he made his way down the street, he passed the Sheets home, where Jesse’s wife and children were huddled at the front window, awakened by the commotion. In the second case of mistaken identity that night, Jesse’s family thought Lem Woodruff was Jesse Sheets, grabbing him and pulling him inside. Realizing their mistake but seeing that he was wounded, they gave him a tall glass of whiskey. Woodruff gulped it down, told them Jesse was just fine, and limped off into the night.

By this time, sheriff Jim East had heard the ruckus and was headed towards it, when he came upon Lang and the card players at the Griffin saloon. Lang told him what had happened and who was involved, and an effort began to round up the survivors of the Big Fight. A deputy, L.C. Pierce approached the wood pile behind the saloon when he saw a figure dart from behind it and flee down towards the river. “Halt!” Pierce yelled, but the man did not stop. It was the Catfish Kid. Pierce fired his gun at the back of the Kid, and watched as his body dropped.

But the Catfish Kid hadn’t been hit. By total providence, right as the deputy had fired at him, the Kid had tripped and fallen into a small mud hole used by an adobe maker along the river to mix his mud. The bullet whizzed right over his head. As deputy Pierce approached him, the Kid writhed and coughed in the mud as if he had been shot. Pierce figured he would be dead in a few minutes, and ran back into town to continue the search for the others. Pierce was certainly embarrassed later to find that his victim was totally unharmed and still on the loose.

Charley Emory was quickly found suffering in the back of the saloon from the leg wound and was taken into custody. Sheriff East arrived at the home of Louis The Animal Bousman to find The Animal, fully clothed, pretending to be asleep in bed. His rifle, barrel still hot to the touch, resting nearby. Lem Woodruff was found several weeks later in the home of a friend two miles out of town, apparently having been close to death from his wounds. He was taken into custody once he healed. The Catfish Kid eventually turned himself in as well.

Even in a rough town like Tascosa, four men being murdered in one night, one of which was a totally innocent bystander, shocked the town. It was ordered that four coffins be built, and four graves dug on Boothill. When Jesse Sheets’ widow found out that they were digging four graves side-by-side on the hill, she insisted that he be buried away from these thugs, outlaws, and his own murderer. So the gravediggers moved his plot to another area of the small cemetery.

Ed King, Fred Chilton, and Frank Velley were interred in the same service, Boothill residents #4, 5, and 6, with 55 LS cowboys in attendance. East and his deputies were armed and visible to keep the peace. Judge Wallace read the 23rd Psalm. Immediately after, the Sheets funeral took place. Boothill resident #7.

The LS Cowboys, out in force now, wanted to hang every member of the opposition, but their Ranch Bosses refused to allow any further retribution. As far as they were concerned, since the fight didn’t strictly concern protection of LS property, it was just a drunken brawl and that would be the end of it.

Murder charges were filed against Lem Woodruff, Louis “The Animal” Bousman, the Emory Brothers, The Catfish Kid, and John Lang. After much legal wrangling and two changes of venue, the men were all eventually acquitted.

# Chapter 8: The Death of a Town

Nothing again in Tascosa ever reached the violent level of that night in March 1886. Sure, there were skirmishes here and there, but overall the town continued to grow and prosper peacefully. A newspaper, the Tascosa Pioneer, opened up later in that same year, and its publisher, C.F. Rudolph, became the town’s foremost booster. The XIT ranch and its $5 million dollars in investments had brought an economic boom. They built a large warehouse in Tascosa for their supplies, and the town soon became a freight hub for the XIT and other large ranches.

But storm clouds were still gathering on the horizon. The open range that had been Tascosa's lifeblood was being carved up like a Christmas turkey. The XIT Ranch alone was installing thousands of miles of fence, creating an iron web that would forever change the landscape of the Texas Panhandle. And it wasn’t just the big ranches anymore. Every homesteader with a dream and a few acres was putting up fence. The same barbed wire that kept cattle in also kept them out, and the traditional cattle trails that had been the arteries of Tascosa's economy were slowly being choked off. Cowboys found themselves facing an impossible maze where once there had been nothing but open prairie.

Life wasn’t going great for the big ranches either, as a two year drought in 1885 and 1886 killed large numbers of cattle.

But there was still hope for the town. The Fort Worth & Denver Railway was pushing ever closer to the Panhandle. Construction had begun from Ft Worth in 1882, and would give whatever cities it passed through a permanent claim to relevance, and a link to the rest of the world.

Randolph and the Tascosa Pioneer unabashedly promoted Tascosa’s location as the only logical spot for the railroad to pass. It was the “easy crossing” after all. Tascosa was already the largest and most important town in the Panhandle. It would make no sense to bring it anywhere else. Randolph predicted that Tascosa would soon become “a second Chicago.”

Ultimately though, the railroad disagreed. Citing shifting sand along the north bank of the Canadian river, the rail line was routed along the south bank, crossing the Canadian about 2 miles north of Tascosa. The town, and Randolph, were stunned. 

To make things worse, the winter of 1886-1887 - known grimly as the "Great Die-Up" – was a perfect storm of devastation. Blizzard after blizzard swept across the plains, with temperatures plummeting to lethal lows. Cattle that weren’t killed on the drift fences, starved, unable to break through the thick ice to reach what little grass remained. They died by the thousands.

So we’ve got fences ending the cattle drives through the area, blizzards and drought, decimating the cattle that live there, and the railroad bypassing the town and hamstringing any hope for continued future growth. Tascosa really needed a rabbit’s foot in its pocket.

If they had one, it was of the Frank Valley variety.

If the downfall of Tascosa had begun when Henry Sanborn fenced his Frying Pan ranch for the first time, it was cemented when that same man began promoting land he owned for settlement in a place 30 miles to the southeast called “Amarillo.” IT was along the rail line. A depot was built. So were hotels, and stores, and stock pens. The railroad helperd in promoting the area for settlement. A few years later the Atchison-Topeka-Santa Fe rail line made it to town. Amarillo had stolen Tascosa’s future. No second Chicago.

Now, instead of driving cattle north from Tascosa to Dodge City, Kansas to the railhead, you would need to drive them south to Amarillo. The area ranches were happy to do that, but it no longer made sense for any other cattle to be brought up past Amarillo to Tascosa. Soon, the saloons and card halls sat empty. The Saturday night bailes were deserted. Merchants, always attuned to the winds of commerce, saw the writing on the wall. One by one, they began to pack up their businesses and move to Amarillo. Each closing store, each departing family was another nail in Tascosa's coffin. The town that had once been known as the "Cowboy Capital of the Plains" was becoming a ghost of its former self.

Then came the Panic of 1893, a nationwide economic depression that hit frontier towns like Tascosa particularly hard. Banks failed, businesses collapsed, beef prices plummeted, and many of the remaining ranches found themselves unable to weather the financial storm. The economic devastation was merciless.

The human cost of this decline was perhaps the most poignant. Families that had put down roots in Tascosa, building homes and communities, were forced to make difficult decisions. The exodus to Amarillo accelerated. Where once there had been bustling streets and busy saloons, now there were empty buildings and quiet doorways. The sounds of commerce and celebration were replaced by the whistle of wind through abandoned structures. The old rock houses and adobes that had once served as the homes of cowboys and saloon girls, gunmen and families, began to crumble under the relentless winds and storms and heat and cold of the Panhandle.

The final blow came in 1915 when Tascosa lost its status as the county seat to Vega. This wasn't just an administrative change – it was official recognition that Tascosa was no longer the heart of the region. The courthouse, once the symbol of Tascosa's importance, stood empty, its doors closed on decades of frontier justice.

By 1939, Tascosa was effectively a ghost town. The handful of remaining residents were living witnesses to the end of an era. The empty buildings stood as silent monuments to a way of life that had vanished as surely as the buffalo that had once roamed the plains.

The story of Tascosa's decline is, in many ways, the story of the end of the Old West itself. The forces that killed the town – barbed wire, railroads, and the relentless march of progress – were the same forces that were transforming the entire American frontier. Tascosa didn't just die; it was rendered obsolete by a changing world that had no place for the kind of frontier freedom it represented.

The town's story reminds us that progress, for all its benefits, often comes at a cost. The same forces that bring prosperity to one place can spell doom for another. The transformation of the American frontier was inevitable, but that doesn't make the loss of places like Tascosa any less poignant.

Postscript: Frenchy McCormick

Frenchy McCormick came from somewhere back east, no one was quite sure where, and she liked it that way. As a teenager she ran away from home to become a burlesque dancer in St. Louis and later in Dodge City. She made her way down to Mobeetie where she was a saloon girl. That’s where she met Mickey McCormick, a gambler and livery stable owner from Tascosa in 1880. He said he always won when she was at his side, so he brought her back to Tascosa with him. They were married in 1881.

Frenchy dealt monte in the gambling halls of Tascosa and entertained the cowboys during Tascosa’s heyday. After the town’s decline, and the stable and gambling halls closed, but the couple stayed. Living in a two room adobe house. Mickey (who she called Mack) hunted and Frenchy tended a vegetable garden, their milk cow, and some chickens. They had no children, but kept a couple of beloved hunting dogs and Frenchy's prized talking parrot. They lived a happy, simple life together.

Mickey died in 1912 and was buried a half mile east of their house. As everyone else gradually abandoned Tascosa, Frenchy refused to leave her husband. 

She was quoted as saying later in life, “Mack and I discussed the fact that we had both lived somewhat on the seamy side…and then he took my hands in his, and we pledged to stick to each other and to the town of Tascosa. And that's what I aim to do.”

And she did. For 27 years, she lived there. With no electricity or running water. Alone in her home, and alone in her town. She stayed through the dust bowl of the 1930s, through sub zero blizzards, raging floods, and scorching summers.

She knew that the town she still loved would stage a comeback some day.

As she turned feeble, Oldham county sent someone once a week to bring her food, coal for the stove, and oil for her lamp. Sometimes, when the river raged, they couldnt get to her. And she would sit alone for weeks at a time without seeing another human being.

When she lost her hearing, her dog Nuggie served as her “ears”. Until Nuggie was bitten by a rattlesnake. The rattlers had made a den under her house. One, she killed inside. Her water well was caving in. 

Friends begged her to move out. But she refused. “I'll stay with my Mack.”

Finally, in 1939 with the house crumbling around her and her health failing, the almost 90 year old Frenchy begrudgingly left Tascosa. The county insisted, her friends pleaded with her, and she gave in, provided they bring her regularly to see her husband and promise to bury her beside him when she passed. They moved her to Channing, about 10 miles away, where she lived with a friend. She died in 1941, and was buried beside Mickey back in Tascosa.

Until her last breath, she never gave up hope for Tascosa. “Tascosa some day will come back. It's a wonderful town. The people all over the world will know about Tascosa. And though she never got to see it, as preposterous as that even sounded in the mid-20th century…Frenchy was right.

Through the early 1900s, Lee Bivens had built a business and cattle empire. He purchased part of Goodnight’s JA Ranch, part of the LX Ranch, part of the XIT Ranch, and part of the LIT Ranch - including the town of Old Tascosa. When Lee died in 1929, his land holdings passed to his sons, with Julian Bivens receiving the portion containing Tascosa.

In 1939, Julian donated 120 acres of land, including the Tascosa townsite, to Amarillo businessman Cal Farley, for a new philanthropic venture - Boy’s Ranch. Farley wanted a place where orphaned and troubled young boys could be cared for and learn life skills. His first year they had 9 boys, living in the rock former Oldham County Courthouse building. Over the years, Boys Ranch has expanded to serve some 300 boys per year.

Tascosa’s still there too…a little bit. Boothill still overlooks the town, the courthouse still stands - now the Julien Bivens Museum - documenting both Tascosa and Boys Ranch history (check out the show notes at wtxpodcast.com to see come pics from there). The 1889 schoolhouse is the only other Old Tascosa structure still standing.

And while it may not be the Capitol of the Panhandle any longer, Boys Ranch is larger than Tascosa ever was. It has its own school district - a 2A high school with a football stadium that competes in UIL sports - a pool, fire department, water treatment plant, post office, and an annual rodeo. It may not be Chicago, but it is every bit of a thriving 21st century West Texas town.

Frenchy, it turns out, was right.

Outro

You’ve been listening to the West Texas Podcast, I’m Jody Slaughter. This is the final episode of season 1, but I’ll be back in 2025 with all new episodes. You never know, we might even have a little holiday surprise before then. Please make sure you subscribe on your platform of choice, that helps us out a lot and also ensures that you won’t miss any episodes. If you would be good enough to leave us a rating or review, that would help us out a ton as well.

If you’ve enjoyed the music this season, my AI band Gentry Ford and the Homeless Lobos has released an album of instrumental music from the podcast. You can listen to that on YouTube, Spotify, Amazon, Apple Music or wherever you stream music.

As always, you can reach out to me at lubbockist@gmail.com or @lubbockist on Twitter with any comments or suggestions. If you have any show ideas for upcoming seasons, I would love to hear those as well.

This episode was written, produced, edited, and engineered by me, Jody Slaughter. Music by Gentry Ford and the Homeless Lobos. Thanks for all your support of this project and so long…from West Texas.