The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1898-11-14
rIENlORIES OF The BAD NAN.
Happy Character of the Plains and Mountains Is Now
Renaissance.

When Bill Thompson finally let go /
the cause Of his eXuberance was made |
clear to the colonel by the story told
Next morning early Ben Thompson |
walked up to Colonel Babcock's room in |
the hotel, bit of daring requiring of |
him a greater exhibition of courage |
than a pistol duel at 20 PAGES. "Colo-
nel, said he, you were good to my
brother Bill out in Colorado, and I have !
come here to tell you l am your friend |
in this state capital matter
And he was as good as his word.
PROFESSIONALLY the most eccentric Of
all the happy bad men was jim Moon
Finding him in an agreeable mood one
day shortly before Clay Wilson killed
him at Denver, I quizzed him about the
motives and sensations of border shoot
ing scrapes.
''The first man you KILL" said he, in
genuously enough, sit goes pretty hard
with you for awhile, but after the sec
ond or third you don't mind knocking
over one of these gun fighters any more
than you would a sheep. The man who
pulls a gun on you when you have
nothing in sight is q cur. All you need
to do is to walk right UP to him, take
it away and beat him over the head
with it, so he won't try it again. Nearly
all my men came for me. Of course,
I went after some of them-had to-
Only a few weeks previous Moon,
while seated with a friend and two
women at a restaurant, and having a
rather merry time, not objected to by
the proprietor, was, according TO his
way of thinking, insulted by a lieuten-
ant and officer of police. He beat both
of them nearly to death with the Chi
navarro and chairs, hurried his three
companions into hack which he or
dered driven to halfway house out
side the city limits, and held his inn
promptu block house a week with a
double shotgun against the
combined police and sheriff. force. He
surrendered only when liberty was
guaranteed him.
Shortly after bad man from Brock
enridge pulled a siX-shooter on Moon
in a gambling room. He captured it
and hit his assailant over the head
with the butt. The blow knocked the
Breckenridge killer down a flight of
stairs, and when the body was taken
! to the morgue the neck was found to
have been broken. Moon was acquitted
Then came Jim Moons last attempt
to brain or shoot a man with his own
pistol. A woman was at the bottom of
the trouble. Clay Wilson was a mild
; hammered, inert sort Of young fellow.
Moon got entrance to his room one
night and made him dance a jig in
his night shirt while the 45-caliber bull
let's cut splinters out of the floor
around his feet.
/ The following morning Wilson put in
! his pocket Colts sawed-off 49,"
which was the favorite weapon of the
happy bad man. He went into the Ar
| cade to take a drink. Moon was there
and ordered him out. He obeyed, but
came back with the siX-shooter in his
I hand. He fired twice before Moon
grappled with him., both bullets plow-
| ing through the heart. With that
strange vitality which is eXplicable in
| the deer when it bounds for hundreds
| of yards after having received a mortal
wound, but unaccOuntable in a man.
| Moon fought for the possession of the
six-shooter, which Wilson discharged a
! third time, the bullet again passing
| through his body. Moon did not quit
the fight until a fourth bullet broke his
neck.
Nothing in the annals of border trag-
| edy is SO remarkable as the last battle
of Jim Moon, waged with animal-like
| instinct after he had been shot fatally.
His own siX-shooter was found in his
coat pocket. Moon was large, alert,
athletic, red-headed and, of course,
blue-eyed. Before settling in Colorado
he disposed OF some of the most
| troublesome Junior bad men in Ariz-
ona.
Bill Hickok was finer type of the
happy bad man than such as Jim Moon,
because he was a genuine lover of law
and order. When wild BilT' ruled in
the name of good citizenship it Jared
i'll with every pistol expert who under
took to run the town. His assaSsina-
ton at Deadwood was one of the most
cowardly acts remembered in the min
ing camps.
wild Bills" partner, John Malone
firing of trying to lead a missionary
life in the tough towns of the Kansas
border, with a siX-shooter in each
pocket, settled in the state of Washing
ton years ago, ands is now a sedate
and well-to-do citizen of Tacoma.
Jim Curry, the fearless Kansas Pa.
cific locomotive engineer, who was orig
inally the peace-loving protege o.
Hickok and Malone, sort of went tt
the bad when he got beyond the pale
of their influence, and finally closed hi:
/, downward career by killing an inoffen
sive actor in Texas. Since then he ha!
) wandered around the mountain and Pa
cific coast country like a lost spirit
knocking at the walls of Paradise
While standing off train robbers ant
picking off men who thought them
selves as desperate and clever with
six-chambered gun as he, Curry haC
the satisfaction of judicial duty wei
DONE
The Porter-B Barrymore affair was no
such as a happy bad man could con
scientiously engage in, so remorse sool
made the old hero of the throttle be
ing unacceptable by his most init
mate friends. The last heard of hin
from any authentic source was abou
six years ago, when he appeared Xix
: an apparition before Malone at Tacom
in the night to borrow money.
Curry at one time was reckone
among the bravest Of the happy ba
! men of the Kansas frontier.
The bad men of the pioneer period i
the mountains were easily classifie
into desperadoes and man-hunters-
: men who took life from criminal i'm
6 pulse and men who had the cause c
! vengeance or order at heart 1t wa
. one of the former mould that laid GU
poor Tom Gretorex. Tom was sketch
;, ing the picturesque San Juan noun
tains and mining camp life for Hal
per's [ first met him at Silverton i
1877, one of the happiest-go-lucl1y fe
a lows in the world, and possessed of a
: the nerve and bohemianisn of tn
n Latin quarter. We had in the camp
- sort of exile fellowship which number
q ed IA or is youths who had wandere
! into the western wilds looking for col
bricks. Tom was made a member.
f 1t was soon observed that gallantr
% was such a potent impulse with hi
!, that = was disposed to defend abstrat
: womanhood in the hurdy -gurdys ever
{ time he visited them for sketches, an
n the boys good naturally leetured hi
a On the inutility and danger of interfe,
: ing with the inevitable-which was IL
/ fate of these women to be knocke
IS down and then earessed by the brute
It with whom they lived.
G Not long after, While Tom was tai
! ing a limners mental notes in a Dl
rango dance hall one of these ere: