Wagons West Chronicles October Issue 2016 October Issue | Page 19

Wagons West Chronicles
Arizona’s Rustler King from page 18.

everything he can loosen from the
earth, regardless of prior rights.
“Tombstone is usually considered to have been the roughest of
camps,” said John Dunbar, editor
of the Phoenix Gazette. He lived
in Cochise County in 1880. “But
Tombstone,” he continued, “wasn’t
a marker to Charleston. It was simply awful. They didn’t begin their
day down there till dark, and then
they whooped it up. Election days
were the richest of all. The townspeople never pretended to come
out of their holes to vote. The cowboys, hundreds of them, would
come in on their Sunday horses,
tank up and then proceed to capture the ballot box and stuff it as
they pleased. They rarely molested
Tombstone. But they managed
things along the San Pedro according to their own sweet wills.
“There were some of the toughest men in those rustler gangs that
ever stretched hemp,” mused
Dunbar, “but every man seemed
afraid of Burnett, and the toughest
were in a band that knew him as
leader. One was Billy Leonard, the
toughest nut that ever carried a
gun. He wasn’t originally a cowboy; had very little experience at it.
He was a jeweler from New York
City, a high-class workman. He had
consumption, knew he had to die,
and really would have preferred
being killed. One of his feats was
to chase the whole crowd off my
racetrack at Tombstone one
Sunday at the muzzles of two guns
in his nervous little hands. He had
a dozen or so helpers, but Billy
himself did all the driving. I know,
for I was in the crowd. Billy had
lost on a race and felt bad. Curly
Bill was a member of Burnett’s
crowd and so were the Clinton
boys, the Lowreys and Jack
Ringgold. Ringgold was 6 feet 4
inches, the handsomest desperado
that ever put a foot in stirrups. But
the kingpin was Burnett, the
Charleston Justice of the Peace.”
“I was in Charleston in the early
days, representing Zeckendorf &
Co. of Tucson,” contributed
Banker P. K. Hickey of Phoenix.
“The first two days I was there I
came very near death. Blacksmith
Pete Hickey had been murdered
the week before by one of
Burnett’s pets and the rustlers eyed
me apprehensively when I got my
first mail at the post office. The
way the postmaster did was to open
the pouch, stand to the assembled
crowd. The cowboys thought when
they heard my name that I had
come to avenge a relative. That
night I went to bed in all apprehension, for I had been told that
the cowboys every night shot out
the lights in the saloon next door.
About morning I was awakened by
a terrific crash, but I lay still and
did not go out to investigate.
When I arose I learned that someone had blown in the front of the
saloon with giant powder. The
rustlers were sure I was the miscreant, but were diverted by Burnett
from lynching me. Burnett and I
got friendly after that, and I had

October 2016

ample opportunity for investigating his peculiar methods of court
procedure.”
Burnett was a heavy set, blueeyed, jovial sort of citizen, with
what the Irish call a winning way.
When he died he was about 65
years old. He was elected to office
almost unanimously, though
known to possess few qualifications. Not a day passed without
gun plays on the streets or in the
drinking places of Charleston. No
member of Burnett’s crowd was
ever molested, but tr ibulation was
upon the head of an outsider.
Tenderfeet were hauled before the
bar of justice and fined for being
alive, much after the fashion of a
lodge of Elks. Burnett made only
one quarterly report to the
Cochise
County
Board
of
Supervisors. He sent with it a bill
for a fee balance of $380. The
supervisors cut it down one half.
Burnett thereafter pocketed all
fees and fines, dividing up with his
henchmen and constables as he
saw fit. He defied the Sheriff,
grand jury and supervisors, and
calmly replied to all expostulations
that “the Justice’s Court of
Charleston precinct was amply able
to look after itself.” Jack Schwartz,
a saloon keeper, killed a man
named Chambers, an assistant
foreman in one of the mills. It was
a cold-blooded murder.
Yet
Burnett, in the face of almost frantic objection from the district attorney, fined Schwartz $1,000, pocketed the coin and turned the prisoner loose. The district attorney was
Lyttleton Price, now a district
judge up in Washington. He sent a
warrant from Tombstone, but
Schwartz had disappeared. That
was a sample of the justice dispensed by the burly magistrate,
who kept order in court by means
of a couple of revolvers in his belt
and whose rifle was ready at hand
behind the woolsack.
He winked at the lark of a gang
of his lambs that raided the
Charleston office of the Toughnut
mine and appropriated in broad
daylight $16,000 of the company’s
coin. Then they took the agent, a
very tender Philadelphia tenderfoot, down town and fined him
$160 in personal checks for being
robbed. The agent stayed no more
in Arizona. He had had enough.
His name was John Gird, then
Superintendent of the Toughnut,
but now the sugar magnate of the
Chino beet sugar plantation.
The next day Burnett walked up
to Jack Herrer, when that desperado was crazy with drink, pulled him
from his horse, striking his pistols
from his hands, and fined him on
the spot twenty head of three yearold steers.
In one year, 1881, Burnett’s personal share of the spoils was reputed to have been $40,000. For he
was not simply a justice of the
peace and manager of a great
butchering establishment. He was
especially a dealer in cattle on the
hoof. His band would for a week
operate in Mexico, bringing across
the line, ignoring all revenue regu-

lations, cattle of whatever brand
happened to be loose. If the
herders interfered they were foolish: they were killed. A fortnight
later Burnett’s henchmen would
be coolly taking in herds of fat
Durhams from the Mormons on
the Gila. The man who opposed
them rarely survived. The cattle
were always taken to headquarters,
a beautiful section of Rucker
Canyon, in the Chiricahua
Mountains, thirty five miles east of
Tombstone. The Mimbres Valley
of New Mexico was occasionally
tapped for livestock, and steady
supplies were kept up by a habit
Burnett had of fining a festive cowboy twenty head or so of cattle; it
mattered not the brand of the
stock turned over in settlement. It
was through some such transaction
that the Greene-Burnett feud
arose.
Only rarely did Burnett accompany his rascals on their raids. He
was charged, however, with leading
an expedition that left a half a
dozen Mexican cowboys dead on
their republic’s soil. His post was

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to realize on the booty secured,
whether in cattle or in bar silver.
His generalship was admirable. He
was respected as well as feared by
his daredevil, outlaw raiders, for he
dealt liberally with them and
planned for them wisely. Not a
slight evidence of his ability lies in
the manner in which he escaped
punishment for his misdeeds in
later years, when Johnny Behan, as
sheriff, and Mark Smith Gate congressman, as district attorney, succeeded in breaking up outlawry in
Southeastern Arizona. Burnett did
not emigrate as did the rustlers.
He stayed about Tombstone and
held his head high among his fellows.
His taking off, according to
Judge James Reilly, “was a deliberate, cold blooded, utterly unprovoked murder.” Yet the man who
killed him did so with popular
approval upon his deed. This was
the life and this death of the man
who bore the title “King of the
Rustlers.” His career has never,
perhaps, been paralleled in the
Southwest.