what happened to dirty dave in san antonio tx

Dave Rudabaugh, probably during his Dodge City days. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

You lot probably heard nearly Dirty Dave Rudabaugh, didn't yous? Perhaps you know a friend of a friend of a friend who has met him, tellin' everyone at the bar, "Yes, I was pals with Dirty Dave!"

Well, if they called him Dirty Dave, you could telephone call that friend of a friend of a friend a damned liar! Dave Rudabaugh never took kindly to bein' chosen muddy, even though he did have a peculiar disfavor to h2o. He'd especially stay clear of public baths, similar he didn't want anyone to run into him naked. Non that anyone would await. He wasn't the picture of a charming man.

No, if Dave was annihilation, he was just plum loco. He didn't mind bein' chosen that, oddly enough. Added to his mystique, he said.

Well, since he'south gone at present, I might as well let some light in on that mystique of his. Sit down back and I'll tell you a chip virtually Dave Rudabaugh.

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Dave'south 'Radenbaugh' roots

Ohio Volunteer Infantry during the American Ceremonious War (circa 1863). Photo via Wikimedia Commons

David Rudabaugh was born on July fourteen, 1854, on a farm in Fulton Canton, Illinois. Not completely certain how he got from there to the wilds of America's new southwestern frontier, but it manifestly meant a stay in Ohio for a fourth dimension, as his father joined the fight to save the Union there. His 2 younger brothers and sister were born at that place likewise.

Dave'south father didn't brand it out of the war alive, so past the fourth dimension he was 10 years erstwhile, he and the other kids just had their mother to look after them. Some say that was when he stopped bathing, simply I remember information technology was much afterward.

Either mode, by the 1870s, his mother (who spelled her proper noun "Radenbaugh" according to the Kansas State Census of this menstruum) had moved the family unit to Greenwood County in Kansas, and managed to get the kids working together for a time. Then Dave decided it was time to hit the road. Mysterious Dave Mather used to say that he and Milt Yarberry got Rudabaugh his start robbin' phase coaches and rustling cattle in the no-man'due south country down around Texarkana. Though the boy's father fought for the Union, he started taking a southerner's view on black people down at that place. Not certain why, only Rudabaugh's encounters with freedmen didn't exit whatever credible positive impressions on him.

Then around 1873 the constabulary started paying attention to what was going on in that area of the state, and Rudabaugh had to split with Mather and Yarberry. He was back at his female parent'south farm in March 1875, when the country government in Topeka decided it was going to count upwardly all the people who were crazy enough to live in those tornado-ridden plains. Kansas, you know?

Buffalo killed for hides in 1872. US Section of Interior photograph via Wikimedia Commons

Round about 1876, Rudabaugh got itchy feet over again and headed downwardly to Dodge City. It had been a railroad town for four years already, and became a popular spot for cowboys to take their cattle once all the buffalo were killed off. Bet you didn't know it, merely all those buffalo skins, they became belts for industrial engines in England. Them Limeys bought all of 'em clean up from united states of america Yanks. That'south why in iv years, the buffalo went from millions to nothin'.

Anyway, Dave teamed up with Mike Roarke and Dan Dement to become "The Trio." Their goal was to rustle up enough cattle and hold up enough rich folk to make them independently wealthy young men. Isn't that the goal for all concord-up men, though? Round about November 1877, however, they got themselves some trouble when a Santa Fe construction crew working on sidings and stockyards at Contrivance City settled into campsite just subsequently getting their pay. The Trio swooped in and tried to rob 'em, but they got themselves chased off. The local authorities began to look at them every bit a nuisance, and so Bat Masterson, the new Sheriff of Ford County, got Wyatt Earp to get hunt 'em. He tracked the Trio all the way downward to Fort Griffin in Texas, where the outlaws made a large advent at John Shansey's Cattle Exchange Saloon, told anybody they were going south, and then headed back north.

Wyatt Earp, circa 1875. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Trouble was, Shansey's was where Doc Holliday was dealin' Faro. Physician knew Dave from when the 2 of them walked Front Street in Dodge, which may have been for a month or 2 back in 1876, and so he paid attention to what he was upwards to. When the Trio left, they didn't really bother to hide the fact they were heading n. Doc couldn't actually stomach that kind of stupidity, and then when Wyatt Earp arrived, he told them to await for those fools back in Dodge, 'cause that was where they were headed.

When the outlaws got dorsum to Kansas, nevertheless, they still had a caput start. So, they decided they needed a bigger gang and picked upwards Tom Golt, Ed West, and J.D. Green. Dave and Mike took to calling themselves the Rudabaugh-Roarke Gang, and for their offset chore, they picked out a spot near Kinsley, the seat of Edwards Canton nearly 40 miles east of Dodge on the Santa Iron line. There, they set well-nigh 1 cold Dominicus in January to rob themselves a train. Again, Bat Masterson, sheriff in the next county, didn't take too kindly to how their picayune offense wave was making him await bad, so he sent J.J. Webb, Kinch Riley, and Dave Morrow, the infamous "Prairie Dog," to hunt the perpetrators downwards. The gang had separate up into three pairs and was to meet at a rendezvous further west. Simply Dave and his sidekick Ed West concluded up getting themselves caught.

This was where Rudabaugh showed his true outlaw colors. I don't call back he ever was a existent team player. Instead of taking the striking for his gang, he quietly pulled J.J. Webb aside and said that he was willing to tell him where the rest of the gang were to encounter if they'd allow him become. He promised he'd go direct subsequently this, and stop robbing. Not sure if Webb believed his going straight pledge, but I approximate he figured getting five train robbers was ameliorate than ii, and then they made a deal. Ed West and the others were sold out, tried in courtroom and sent to prison house. And Rudabaugh, free to do as he liked, was allowed to stick around long plenty to serve as a hired gun in the Imperial Gorge War between the Santa Fe and the Denver and Rio Grande railroads. Only then later on, Dave quietly got back on his horse and route the tracks south to Las Vegas, the adjacent town to get a railhead way down in New Mexico.

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Viva Las Vegas!

Dave Rudabaugh. Phillips Collection photo via Wikimedia Commons

Las Vegas was one of the foremost merchandise towns in New Mexico, even back when information technology was part of United mexican states proper. Americans rode the Santa Fe Trail through it on their way to the markets of the onetime colonial capital, just on the other side of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Vegas had a thriving boondocks eye with adobe buildings nearly one-half a century old on the other side of the Gallinas River. Why the railroad did what it did, nobody has managed to explain to me in a satisfying mode, but they decided at the last infinitesimal to put the station a mile out of boondocks. You should take seen how fast those white folks put tents upwards near where the train was coming in. They were still platting and surveying on July four, 1879, the solar day that the first engine pulled its cars up to the platform.

Dave Rudabaugh was there, of class. And then also was but almost every killer and robber and thug that had been operating in Kansas over the by decade. Informally, they all became known as the Dodge City Gang, particularly after Hyman G. Neill, better known as Hoodoo Brown, got himself elected by the newly created boondocks of Eastward Las Vegas – the tent city – as justice of the peace. The criminals became the enforcers of laws, which went about equally well as you'd await it to go.

Well, for a time, Dave at least seemed like he was in sky. He had all his old friends there with him from Dodge City – the ones he didn't sell out, anyway – and there was even Mysterious Dave, his mentor from his days robbing coaches and trains near Texarkana. Joe Carson, the new Sheriff in New Town, was correct friendly like to him. I think he was still taking at least some baths back and so. But then his mood changed considerably for no credible reason whatsoever; and so much so that he didn't both bathing at all. I retrieve that was when he started going dorsum into crime.

The Old Phase-Passenger vehicle of the Plains by Frederic Remington. Image via Wikimedia Commons

After in the fall of 1879, trains started getting robbed near Las Vegas, as did coaches. The constables, surprise-surprise, couldn't discover any clues as to who done it. Then in late January, things started to autumn autonomously. Four yahoos from who knows where came to town – I think they went past Dutch Henry, Jim Westward, John Dorsey, and Pecker Randall – and they decided when going into the Close & Patterson dance hall that they weren't going to check their guns in. Sheriff Joe Carson was called, and he got insistent on them… and was shot. Mysterious Dave, in that location every bit dorsum up, put holes in three of the cowboys, killing Bill Randall and capturing Jim West, before the other two got chased out of town.

About ii weeks after, someone ratted out John Dorsey and Dutch Henry, telling the new sheriff J.J. Webb that the ii were staying at Juan Antonio Dominguez'southward place upwardly in Buena Vista. Webb grabbed Rudabaugh and the two of them led a 7-man team in bringing the two recuperating fugitives dorsum to justice in Las Vegas. Just justice moved a bit faster than anyone idea. Hattie, Joe Carson'south widow, got a bunch of the Contrivance City boys together, besides as a few of the more than distinguished types from Old Town, and had the perpetrators hanged on the decrepit windmill that used to exist in the eye of Las Vegas' Plaza. I say used to because the hanging of Dutch Henry, Jim West, and John Dorsey got all the townsfolk in Old Boondocks up in arms. It wasn't the outset fourth dimension anyone was hung there, but this time around it seems the Hispanic kids started hanging dogs, thinking that it was corking fun to play lynch mob with somebody else'south pet animal. Afterward the bodies were hurriedly cut down, carpenters went to piece of work removing the last vestiges of the old hanging windmill.

The side by side slide down the slippery gradient for the Dodge Hill Gang came well-nigh a calendar month later, when J.J. Webb and Hoodoo Dark-brown were implicated in a conspiracy to murder Mike Kelliher for coin. The wily justice of the peace managed to get on a train before someone had come to arrest him, and evidently he was just in time to escape to parts unknown with the Widow Hattie Carson. J.J. Webb wasn't every bit quick to run, though, and they arrested him before he could flee. Once again, the townsfolk were riled upward into a lynch mob. However, Dave Rudabaugh wasn't going to have any of that with his friend from Kansas, and he stood and faced the mob downward.

Of grade, that meant that Dave wasn't going to be going anywhere someday shortly. All through the month of March and to the stop of April, he had to scout and make sure no one was going to take his friend to a hanging party at some lamp mail service somewhere. He finally had plenty of this waiting game, and he got with a friend named John Allen, and the two of them ready nigh freeing Webb. Just, the dark that they tried this, April 30, Antonio Lino Valdes was watching the cells, and he was rather a stickler for the police force, particularly that part that says you can't interruption out a friend from jail. So Rudabaugh shot him. Unfortunately for him, his friends were there with him, and they started shooting back, and chased the two men away. J.J. was stuck back there with a whole agglomeration of angry Mexicans.

—

On the run

Billy the Kid sometime earlier his capture in 1881. Photo by Ben Wittick via Wikimedia Commons

Dave Rudabaugh eventually found himself in the visitor of Tom Pickett, who suggested that he ought to follow him and join the new gang organized by Billy the Child. Billy wasn't really that bad a guy once you got to know him, and the only reason why he got himself in the cattle rustling racket was because the cattle owners were liars, cheats, and thieves themselves. Particularly John Chisum – there's a existent slice of piece of work for you.

For the meliorate part of 1880, Rudabaugh hung out with Billy'south gang nigh Fort Sumner, stealing horses and cattle all upwardly and downwardly the Pecos River. Sometimes they'd ride up every bit far every bit Las Vegas, which was always a risky affair for Dave, merely they'd come up back with something. Then came Billy's 21st altogether, which was that Nov. 23. They'd gone that mean solar day to White Oaks, just north of his one-time stomping grounds in Lincoln, and had a real good time there dancing with the girls, everything. Well, all except for Dave. Seems he had something on his mind that night, and as everyone says, he was nobody's idea of a knight in shining armor (unless of form the shine is from the grease from his often unkempt hair).

Still, despite Dave'south absence from the festivities, while no one was looking, something must take happened that night, because after that, Billy sort of got nervous effectually Rudabaugh. I think Baton told that Dave just felt that he didn't have annihilation to lose, and that fabricated him seem scary to the younger outlaw.

Pat Garrett, Lincoln Canton Sherriff. Photograph via Wikimedia Eatables

Non that there was any time to exist scared, though. Billy'south birthday was on a Tuesday. That Sabbatum, Billy's gang got into a huge gunfight up at Coyote Springs on Jim Greathouse's ranch. Seems they were using a spot called Portales on the ranch as a hideout, and Pat Garrett's men figured it all out at long terminal. Erstwhile Jim never lived that i down, of course, only Dave had more immediate concerns as he rode with Billy, Tom Pickett, and Billy Wilson through the snows up toward Anton Chico. Just a few days after, the Territory put a bounty of $500 on Baton the Kid'due south head.

As a result, Billy the Kid'southward gang was taken on December. 23 at Stinking Springs. Billy the Kid gave Dave Rudabaugh the white flag to moving ridge in surrender when Pat Garrett'due south men defenseless upward with them. All 4 were taken in shackles to Fort Sumner, and then The Kid and Dave were transported to Las Vegas.

—

Waiting for Deliverance

The day afterwards Christmas, crowds of curious onlookers met Pat Garrett, his men, and the two outlaws as they were led into Las Vegas' Old Boondocks by equus caballus to the San Miguel County Jail. They arrived just in time. An angry mob quickly appeared exterior the jail, just not and so much for The Kid's sake. No, they were there for Dave. These were people enraged over the killing of Antonio Lino Valdes, the jailor that Rudabaugh shot while trying to pause out J.J. Webb. Pat Garrett, though, refused to give any ground to the mob, telling them to go home or he'd arm the prisoners. Though information technology wasn't probable to happen, Billy did like the sound of that. "If only I had my Winchester, I'd lick the whole crowd," he told Dave.

After that dark, though, the fight seemed to get out of Rudabaugh. In one case they took him into Santa Atomic number 26 by train, he started pleading guilty to everything they accused him of doing. He even started taking blame for the crimes that the other prisoners were accused of there in jail with him. His merits that J.J. Webb was innocent of killing Kelliher even spared Dave'south friend from getting hanged for Kelliher's murder, even if he wasn't to come across the light of solar day as a free man once more.

Truth told, though, I think he was trying to delay his render to Las Vegas for trial. He didn't similar the thought of existence lynched. When on March seven, 1881, he stepped from the train to the wagon waiting to take him to the jail, fifty-fifty the Gazette reported that crazy Dave Rudabaugh was noticeably nervous and agitated. However, a little more than a month later, his trials in San Miguel County over, he did return to Santa Atomic number 26, far from the angry crowds that want him hanged.

Baton the Kid's trials didn't do justice to the boy. In fact, Judge Warren Bristol sentenced him to hang until he was "expressionless dead dead," for the killing of Sheriff William Brady. They say Baton responded, "You tin become to hell hell hell." I think that story would frequently brand Dave smile. He took to rooting for The Kid when he escaped on Apr. 28, and for ii and a half months he'd annoy the guards asking for news nigh the avoiding gang leader he one time rode with. Then afterward July fourteen, the guards happily informed Dave that Pat Garrett shot Billy the Child dead. I retrieve that knocked the air current out of him for a whole calendar month, if not more.

Photograph by lilarraza via Pixabay

However, Dave Rudabaugh soon made his own try at liberty with his cell mate Thomas Duffy on Sept. 19. That didn't work out so well for Duffy, who was mortally wounded in the attempt. They transferred Rudabaugh to a higher security jail cell, one that also housed his old friend J.J. Webb. Information technology took a couple of months, but the two managed to fleck away at a 7 inch by 19 inch stone, and knock it loose from the wall, opening a pathway to freedom.

No one really knows what happened to Dave and J.J. Webb after that. They both were thought to have ridden to Texas, and and so due south to Mexico.

—

The End

Typical Mexican cantina. Photograph by AlejandroLinaresGarcia via Wikimedia Commons

That probably should have been old Dave Rudabaugh'south happy catastrophe. And indeed for five years non a word was heard of him in New Mexico. And so came the acceleration from Parral, a boondocks well-nigh as far s every bit you can become in the State of Chihuahua. They say that Dave was playing cards with a bunch of hombres who didn't really like the look of him. I of them defendant Dave of cheating, to which Dave responded with his ain accusations that they weren't playing fair. Finally, Dave and the Mexican who accused him stood up together, and in a flash, Dave's gun was blasting a pigsty in his accuser. He defenseless in his peripheral sight the motion of the dead human being'southward friend to draw a gun, and Dave put a hole in his head. At that, he picked up his money from the pot and stepped out into the evening air.

Still, he now had a new trouble. He couldn't notice his horse. Someone walked off with information technology, and he was sure information technology was someone at the table where he was gambling. He went back into the cantina gun drawn to face up whoever was withal there, and whatever was across that door would be the final thing he'd encounter. You see, a machete took his head clean off. For about a calendar week or ii, the cantina owner kept Dave Rudabaugh's head on a pike pole at the door where it was cutting off. Then the authorities finally told the cantina owner to take it down. No one knows where his remains went to after that. Probably not to a bathroom, though.

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Source: https://benmangel.wordpress.com/2021/09/16/backstory-the-life-of-dirty-dave-rudabaugh-from-scene-8-silva/

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