The Story of the Outlaw: A Study of the Western DesperadoHough, Emerson
History
The Story of the Outlaw: A Study of the Western Desperado
Hough, Emerson
Crime -- West (U.S.); Criminals -- West (U.S.); Outlaws; West (U.S.) -- History
"I dropped my glass and jerked my gun and covered him, but he just
wouldn't put up his hands for a while. I didn't want to kill him, but I
thought I surely would have to. He kept both of his hands resting on the
bar, and I knew he had a gun within three feet of him somewhere. At last
slowly he gave in. I treated him well, as I always did a prisoner, told
him we would square it if we had made any mistake. We put irons on him
and started for Las Vegas with him in a wagon. The next morning, out on
the trail, he confessed everything to me. We turned him over, and later
he was tried and hung. I always considered him to be a pretty bad man.
So far as the result was concerned, he might about as well have gone
after his gun. I certainly thought that was what he was going to do. He
had sand. I could just see him stand there and balance the chances in
his mind.
"Another of the nerviest men I ever ran up against," the same officer
went on, reflectively, "I met when I was sheriff of Dona Ana county, New
Mexico. I was in Las Cruces, when there came in a sheriff from over in
the Indian Nations looking for a fugitive who had broken out of a
penitentiary after killing a guard and another man or so. This sheriff
told me that the criminal in question was the most desperate man he had
ever known, and that no matter how we came on him, he would put up a
fight and we would have to kill him before we could take him. We located
our man, who was cooking on a ranch six or eight miles out of town. I
told the sheriff to stay in town, because the man would know him and
would not know us. I had a Mexican deputy along with me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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