Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen (40 page)

His first known livestock heist took place in the late 1860s. He'd found work as a buffalo hunter in Arkansas and eventually was able to save enough of his earnings to buy a wagon, hire a helper, and make serious money. But his plans were foiled by a Cheyenne attack, which left him and his partner alive but wounded and horseless.

They finally made their way, slowly and painfully—in the melee with the Indians, Henry suffered an arrow through the foot—to Fort Smith, where, hoping to salvage some scrap of his investment, he asked the commander if he might borrow a brace of mules to retrieve his hides. The commander had grown increasingly annoyed with hiders and threatened Born with arrest.

The story goes that Dutch Henry hadn't really considered breaking the law in any serious way until that very night when he swore revenge on the uppity post commander. He made off with twenty government mules and the commander's prize horse. Sadly for Henry, he was soon captured and sentenced to prison for a lengthy stretch. But you can't keep a bad man down, especially one with an axe to grind. Irrepressible as ever, Henry made an escape barely three months into his sentence. That first jailbreak set a precedent that he would uphold time and again throughout his long career as a thief.

Henry found the rewards of cattle and horse theft much to his liking, and more importantly, he found he was rather good at it. He drifted back and forth over the line of the law for the next few years, finding work as buffalo hunter and freighter. Then, in 1874 he made his way down to the Texas Panhandle and became embroiled in the Second Battle of Adobe Walls, a lopsided siege by Comanche Chief Quanah Parker's men in a brutal effort to wipe out the whites in the compound. Interestingly, another notable in that fight was Bat Masterson, who would, years later, transport Born back to Dodge City on a warrant for larceny.

After that he signed on as a civilian scout for the US Army—specifically for Custer's Seventh Cavalry—but he didn't mix well with a certain self-righteous boy general. Born left his position, claiming that Custer was intolerably mean to his own men.

In time, Dutch Henry Born became the open-range equivalent of a big-city crime boss. At his prime he oversaw a vast network of operatives—as many as three hundred men, according to legendary Pinkerton Detective Charles Siringo. The gang cast a wide net, rustling livestock in a large region stretching from the Texas Panhandle over to New Mexico and up to Colorado and Kansas. Though he specialized in Indian pony and mule theft, Born and his men were certainly not averse to relocating cattle should their net happen to pull them in as well.

While some reports paint Born as the Robin Hood type, roving the vast stretches of the cattle-rearing West, righting affronts to downtrodden small holders by big ranchers, such syrupy accounts conveniently fail to recall the thefts of horses and cattle by him from the very small holders he was said to be helping. They also fail to mention the many deaths attributed to the man. Born's is not unlike the Jesse James story, bestowing on the cold, killing thief the mantle of wise benefactor to his “people.”

Born was out to make himself money, and damn the peons who got in his way. That said, Dutch Henry was no run-of-the-mill, murderous brute. Rather he was a clever, bold man not prone to shirking a fight. He was also a fortunate man who slipped out of a number of close shaves and dicey predicaments through the years.

One such incident would bring Born the closest he ever came to losing his life. In 1866 his gang's encampment was discovered by a lone cowboy. The startled man stole toward Dodge City and alerted the law. Born and his men were well-known in the area, having looted cattle and horses from most of the surrounding ranches. Each town responded immediately with a posse, and by the time the riders converged from two directions on the rustlers, the outlaws had begun to scatter.

A dozen members of his gang were shot, captured, and hanged, including Dutch Henry's right-hand man, Chubby Jones. Dutch Henry escaped, though not without serious injury. Some accounts have him on the receiving end of six or seven gunshot wounds. But escape he did, managing to make it to Texas, where he holed up and healed up, vowing revenge on those who tried, but failed, to lay him low.

Numerous stories circulated throughout the West about Dutch Henry's inborn salesmanship. It was said that he once stole a sheriff's horse, then sold the same animal back to the lawman. But as slippery and as ruthless a thief as he was, Born could also be a savvy neighbor.

Not long after rancher Charles Goodnight established his famed JA Ranch below the Salt Fork of the Red River in Texas, he set up a meeting with Dutch Henry and his men at their camp near Fort Elliott, Texas, on Commission Creek. Goodnight proposed that he wouldn't hinder Born or his men if they, in turn, would agree to refrain from raiding in Goodnight's vast range. They shook on it, drank to it, and each remained true to his word.

In 1878 Born was once more arrested for attempted mule theft, this time in Trinidad, Colorado. While there awaiting trial, a reporter for the local newspaper offered this quick description of Born: “. . . a rather genteel-looking man for a horse thief, road agent, and murderer.” It was also while in Trinidad that he met up with his old Adobe Walls fighting compatriot, Bat Masterson, now the law in Dodge City, Kansas. . . .

“I tell you, Masterson, I am as innocent of these charges as a newborn babe is of taking sweets from a grocer.”

“Oh, you say that now, and I expected to hear no less from you, Dutch Henry, but make no mistake, you are a rascal and a rogue with a propensity for thievery.” Bat Masterson hooked a forefinger around a slowly smoking stogie and leisurely puffed out a blue cloud. “What I want to know is how you made it through all those years of thievery when just about everyone else who ever made off with another man's mount was made to dance at the end of a rope.”

The man in the cell leaned back on the cot, stretched his long legs, folded his hands over his belly, and sighed. “What makes you think I could answer that?”

Masterson glanced through the bars at Henry Born, a man he was convinced would end up in history's ledger as the single greatest horse thief in all the West, maybe beyond. He had to admit the man didn't really look like a thief, not that there really was a defining look to such men. But if there was he would guess it would have to be low-built, swarthy, wide of shoulder, narrow of wit, and of dark humor, not clever enough to evade the hangman in the end.

Not at all like Henry Born. The man fairly brimmed dandy. He was on the tall side, with a quick smile and a kindly way about him. No wonder, thought Masterson, that he'd heard the ladies liked Henry Born.

“Masterson, why are you so all-fired eager to drag me to Dodge City?” Born jumped to his feet and grabbed the bars. “Seems to me the rubes in this town could deal with me as well or better than the rubes back in your town.”

Masterson puffed the cigar, blew a thoughtful cloud of smoke at the jail-house ceiling. “Talk like that will only get you in hotter water faster—here and in Dodge. And you know full well why I'm going to bring you all the way back to Dodge City—you're a thief and a fugitive from justice, Mr. Born.”

“Ah yes, that's right. I'd almost forgotten about that. So much has been blamed on me that I find it difficult to commit it all to memory, the farce from the fact.” The famous horse thief leaned close to the bars. “Did you know, Mr. Lawman, that it was said I worked with Custer?”

Now it was Masterson's turn for surprise. “I thought that was true.”

“Oh, it was, it was. I scouted for a time—a short time, mind you—” At this he offered a wry smile. “For the Seventh Cavalry. Trouble was, I just couldn't take that man. Not in any shape or form. He thought so highly of himself, yet he treated his men with no respect. That's a fact.”

Masterson shook his head slowly, as if he'd just caught a starving puppy wrestling with a flank of beef. “You're talking of a well-regarded man, Mr. Born. And in a most heinous fashion. Might be you'll want to curb that tendency in the future.”

“Why, Mr. Lawman, are you a friend of the deceased?”

“No, I didn't say that.”

“Well then, neither did I say anything that wasn't the truth. You see, truth is Custer was the meanest man I ever knew. And that's my opinion.”

“Fair enough. I'd say you made a wise decision to get on out of the Seventh when you did.”

“Yep, that's a fact. Those boys didn't deserve to die that way. Not at the hands of savages.”

“Savages, eh? Is that why you've stolen so many horses from Indians?”

The man in the cell smiled but said nothing.

Masterson continued. “And plenty more, I'll wager, from whites.”

“Now that's not true. Yes sir, I can say with all honesty that I never stole a horse from a white man.”

“Now you're parsing words and splitting hairs. I know for a fact you've stolen plenty of mules from the US Army.”

“Whites, for the most part, I'll reckon. Least that's the way I heard it.” Born took a turn around the small cell, sat down heavily with a sigh. “What I'd give to stretch my legs up and down the main street of this dusty little devil of a town.”

“Not a snowball's chance in hell, Born. The only place you're going is to sleep, and I recommend you make a good night of it because tomorrow we light out for Dodge.”

The horse thief stretched out on the cot and closed his eyes. “Might be you're right, Lawman. But that doesn't mean I'm staying there for long.”

Masterson did haul Born back to Dodge City to face charges of larceny and as a fugitive from justice. Once back in Dodge City, however, Born was acquitted of the charges because no witnesses could be rounded up.

Instead he was found not to have finished a prison term in Arkansas, and his exchange with the judge in the courtroom shows what a character Born really was. When Born was arrested for stealing mules, and then confronted with the fact that he was also wanted for escaping from prison, he reacted in mock astonishment. “Why, sir, I never did such a thing!”

The judge canted his head, a curious look on his face, “Oh? Then how do you explain the fact that you are here and not there, inside those walls serving your sentence as a prisoner?”

Born shuffled his feet, raised his manacled hands and scratched a whiskered cheek, a look of genuine puzzlement writ large on his face. “I only took that guard at his word. You see, he gave me permission to go look for a shovel. Well,” Born raised his hands, then let them drop, “I went and went some more, on and on, all over the country, and I still couldn't find a shovel.” He shrugged his shoulders and looked at the judge as if he had just about reached his wit's end in his quest for a shovel.

“Well, Mister Born, be that as it may, and while I would very much like to accept your version of the story as the truth, I am compelled by law and logic to uphold the earlier verdict and remand you into the custody of the penitentiary at Arkansas you left in such an untimely manner, where you will serve the remainder of your sentence. After that, sir, I hope you will repent and refrain from your nefarious ways.”

The notorious thief nodded and said, “I think you are doing what you must do, Judge.”

“Now, about this latest charge of horse thievery.” The judge once again sighed long and loud, rustled a sheaf of papers before him on the bench. “We have waited in vain for the witnesses for the prosecution to turn up in this court. But it would appear that the Indians are all where they are supposed to be—on the reservation. And the US Army soldiers who would have spoken against Mister Born are nowhere to be found. Why is that, prosecutors?”

A weary man in a rumpled gray suit pushed to his feet. “Your honor, those soldiers were sent for, but they had been transferred to other regions, as is the army's wont.”

“Then you are telling me you have no witnesses?”

The prosecutor gnawed the inside of his cheek, then finally closed his eyes and nodded. “Yes, your honor.”

Once more the judge let loose with a long, low sigh. “Having no other option at my disposal, I hereby release Mr. Henry Born of the charge of horse theft due to a lack of sufficient evidence.”

The judge hammered down the outraged growls and gasps of shock that rippled through the half-filled courtroom. Dutch Henry cleared his throat as the guard unlocked his manacles.

“Yes, Mr. Born? You wish to say something?”

“Just that as I am now even with the army and I am even with the Indians, it is time for Henry Born to bury the hatchet and smoke the pipe of peace and go straight.”

And, after decades of rustling, Dutch Henry Born kept his word. When he got out of prison, he took to mining in Colorado, then purchased 160 acres along the West Fork of the San Juan River, a day's ride from Pagosa Springs, Colorado. He established a fish farm there, and the spot would become known as Born's Lake. He even married, fathered four children, and refused to keep a gun on the premises, claiming he'd had his fill of killing.