Chapter 1 – My Early Years
Before I was a Sheriff, I was a Deputy in the pretty but rowdy town of Broken Hearts, Wyoming, back in the year 1863. The town attracted a lot of deserters from the Confederate army. When I took on the job, I was only 21 but I was better educated than most of the people at that time. I learned to read and write and got me a good knowledge of what was right and wrong. But, I am getting ahead of myself.
I was born in the year 1842 to Charles and Emile Foster. My folks owned a cattle ranch near Pewter Lake, twelve miles west of Houston, Texas. My parents had a little girl three years after my birth. They named her Elizabeth.
My Pappy had a herd of 120 cattle and I didn’t seem much of him in my early years. He worked from dawn till after dark and most of the time, especially when I was really young, I was in bed before he came in for his evening meal.
I started my schooling when I was six and was a fast learner. By the time I was twelve, I only need schooling three hours a day. The rest of the time I worked on the farm helping with small chores when I was not getting schooled. At fourteen, I was working fulltime with my father and by the time I was sixteen, had learned everything there was to know about running a cattle ranch. By the time I was eighteen, I stood six foot three and many people said I was lean and mean, neither of which was true. At that age, I weighed 180 pounds and had never been mean to anyone except maybe my little Sis when she wouldn’t let me play with her new puppy. That was a long time ago.
I continued for working on the ranch for another year or so but started to get restless. Pappy thought I was smart and wanted me to study law in Boston. The cattle ranch gave our family a comfortable living but didn’t allow us any luxuries The idea of my going to Boston to further my education was out of the question. Me, I had a burning desire to see what was outside of Texas and at twenty, said good-bye to my Mama and Pappy.
For eighteen months, I roamed from town to town. Trying to find work in the West was not an easy thing to do. But I managed. I worked five months helping to build a railroad, had a job as a clerk in the local bank, even sold farming supplies in a hardware store. The job I liked the most was being a bouncer for Sam’s Saloon out in Turtle River, Nevada.
Sam took a shining to me the first time he saw me. It was a hot August day. I had stopped in to get a cold one to quench my thirst. Sam offered me a job as bouncer and promised me at least $2 a day. I was still selling farm supplies but my boss only paid me a small commission for the things I sold and I hadn’t been selling a whole lot lately. It was just before my twentieth birthday when I started to work for Sam. I hadn’t grown much more, maybe an inch or two but I wasn’t lean. I weighed somewhere around 230 pounds and much of that was muscle, not fat. Working on the cattle farm with Pappy - that’s what I needed to be thankful for!
The first few days hadn’t been much to speak of. In fact, it was a bit boring sitting around watching men drinking and playing cards. The only incident was when the town doctor got a bit tipsy and started to sing just when the chorus girls came out on stage. It didn’t take much to convince him to leave, not when he was just 150 pounds soaking wet. Sure, he grumbled a bit as he left but he knew it was pointless to argue with me.
It was around the fifth or sixth day that my job was put to the test. Drinking and gambling was not always a good thing to do. Most of the time, those playing cards had enough sense to drink only what they could handle. They knew well enough that if they drank too much their card playing suffered. But such was not the case with Tom Chapman.
Tom always had a drinking problem but he usually confined it to his homestead just outside of town. He never came into town much, maybe once a month to get supplies.
It was on a Friday night, if my memory serves me right. He had just bought goods over at the General Store and came into Sam’s for a meal and a drink or two. The problem was that the drink or two turned into three or four. Then he decided to join three of the town folk in a game of poker. One of the people at the table was the owner of the General Store, Bill Murphy.
I’m not even sure today what really happened. I think Tom got complaining about what he had to pay for a bag of flour. Then, so I was told, Murphy won a pot with four aces and Tom accused him of cheating. A scuffle broke out. Somebody started to reach for a gun but I stopped him in the nick of time. Murphy looked pretty sober to me and it was obvious that Tom was the one who started the fight. It was all I could do to control him, not because of his size but because he was more wiry than an angry ‘gator from the Louisiana swamps, as I found out years later.
In the course of working for Sam, I got to know all his chorus girls. One, a young Irish lassie, Mary O’Brien, I got to know better than the others - a lot better! She was twenty-four and had immigrated to America just two years before. At first, I found it difficult to understand her but in the course of our friendship it was soon forgotten.
Altogether I worked for Sam for eight months before I had to move on. Most of the times, all that my duties demanded were throwing out the odd patron who had had too much to drink. Oh Sam, he didn’t mind how much they drank but when they started to get too loud or they started to eye the crowd for someone to fight with, that’s when Sam would give me the nod. I always waited for Sam’s signal, well most of the time anyway.
There was that one time when Joe Fletcher put his hands up the skirt of one of our dancers. I didn’t waste any time grabbing him by the collar and throwing him out in the street. He was a pathetic looking sight, laying there in the muck. It had been raining all day. He was a lucky man though, because had it been Mary, I think I would have sent him to his Maker that day.
It was in March, 1862 when my life took a complete change. A gunslinger came into town with his gang of five. They were the meanest looking hombres north of the Mexican border. As soon as they entered the saloon, everyone in there knew there was going to be trouble. It didn’t take long to come. They all ordered a double shot of whisky and refused to pay for them. Then one of them decided to take a fancy to Sam’s daughter Sally, who was wiping down tables. He grabbed her by the waist and tried to haul her into the backroom for his own amusement. That’s where I came in.
I tackled him from behind and he lost his grip on Sally. I pushed him to the floor where we rolled into a table knocking it and two chairs over. He managed to pull his gun and fired at me. How he missed, I’ll never know.
I clouted him on the jaw knocking him out. The gun fell harmlessly out of his hand. By that time, Sam had hold of the shotgun he kept under the bar and was pointing it at the table where the others sat. They had been so busy watching the girls dancing that they hadn’t noticed what was happening until it was too late.
Sam ordered them out of his bar. The leader’s hand began to move to his right side but then he hesitated and withdrew it. They all got up slowly and started to walk towards their fallen comrade but before they could reach him, I grabbed the gun and edged my way back to the bar.
There was a jug of beer on a table which they grabbed and splashed into his face. As he began to regain consciousness, they hauled him to his feet and left the saloon promising they would get even.
Sam ran over to the Sheriff’s office and explained what had happened. The Sheriff, Walton I think his name was, suggested that it might be dangerous for Sam and me to stay around town. It wasn’t a day later that Sam closed his saloon, packed up his belongings and was getting ready to move to Kalamazoo where he would live with his sister whom he hadn‘t seen for many years. After all, Sam was over sixty when this happened and he figured it was just as good a time as any to retire. He had saved quite a sum of money and figured he’d have no trouble selling the saloon to a nephew of his. That left me without a job. I could have hung around to see if the nephew bought it and if he required my services but I didn’t want to wait.