Bunk Gadsoe, Lawyer
The Iowa Recorder, Greene, Iowa, January 14, 1902
Flagstone BUNK GADSOE, LAWYER by John H. Rafferty
Bunk Gadsoe came to Flagstone when the town was merging from a modern inferno to a respectable town. About half the population spoke of it as "the city," the other half - the bad half - called it "the camp." Bunk's advent created something of a furor on the shady side of Flagstone, for he brought with him the reputation of fifteen years of horse stealing, an old Colt's revolver with eleven notches in the handle, and the fame of having passed four years in the Texas penitentiary, whither he had been sent by an awakening deed of killing a sheep herder with a shot fired in the dark through a thin board partition.
When Bunk landed in Flagstone he wore a new Prince Albert and a Winchester, to say nothing of small clothes and lesser artillery concealed about his ample person. He was big, his look was fierce and his talk large. His first move was to hire a room over the Plaza saloon and hang out a sign - "Bunker Hill Gadsoe, Attorney at Law." The next day half the town knew that Lawyer Gadsoe had come to town to defend Bass Intake, the rustler then in jail under a charge of murdering Colonel Forest in the desert of Shifting Sands, above Jolla. Gadsoe explained that he had spent his prison term studying law, and that he meant to follow his new profession on a "high plane."
However, Lawyer Gadsoe made a bad start, for his client, Bass Intake, was hanged, and the whole Comanche county breathed a sigh of relief in spite of Gadsoe's publicly given harangue against judge, jury and prosecution. After that the man from Brazos didn't flourish as a lawyer. He began to show his old Colt, with its fateful notches, and tell stories of his desperate deeds. In June he got into a scuffle with Jere Brownlow and killed him in a jiffy. Brownlow had been foreman of the jury that convicted Intake, and there was a feeble show of prosecuting Gadsoe. The jury in the first case "stuck" as they say in the West, and the next one let Gadsoe go finding that the killing of Brownlow was a case of self-defense. That decision established Gadsoe in Flagstone. He half-bullied, half cajoled Pete Carroll into selling him a half interest in the "Bucket of Blood" - the only live dance hall and gambling joint in town - and then he got into politics.
There wasn't a man around that cared for "his game." Some hated, some despised him, but the bad men looked "leery" at his notched pistol - always in view - and the good people feared him as a bold, bad man. A lantern-jawed, stoop-shouldered giant with the facial expression of a hyena, he yet clung to the legend that he was "a lawyer" come to Flagstone "to practice his profession on a high plane," while his daily life was a slinking, bullying, sinister continuance of the only life he knew or understood. Inside of six months he was recognized by all classes as a "boss." The toughest of the lingering frontier rowdies feared him, and the decent people agreed that it was better to avoid him than to incur his venom. For these reasons when a new town marshal became necessary Bunk Gadsoe got the job.
Being now a duly authorized and approved authority, Bunk extended his sway to that degree that every game in town payed tribute to him and the municipal authorities began to praise his dominance over the "lawless element." There was no doubt about his dominance. There wasn't a half-and-half bad man in town that didn't fawn before his prowess and the silent voice of his notched pistol. Fighters from the hills and cowmen of tried mettle who blew in from the mines and the ranges, and who had heard of Bunk Gadsoe, felt honored to have a drink with him, but, drunk or sober, nobody dared to waken his anger or summon the famous weapon that hung always at his right hip. He gave offensive men "hours to leave town" without so much as arresting them.
"You git 'forenoon 'r I'll run you out like a wolf," he said to Scarface Boyd, the Laredo bully. And Scarface did "git." Old Hansbrough, the town drunkard, invoked his doom by refusing to leave a table in the Echo saloon one night when Gadsoe wanted to entertain two friends at the same table. The marshal didn't wait for explanations; on the contrary, he hardly gave Hansbrough time to measure the distance to the door, but shot him where he sat, and after the drunkard was on the floor emptied his Colt into the defiant one. That made a stir in Flagstone and some were bold enough to hint that Gadsoe was a bully and even a coward. There was another trial, but the marshal proved that Hansbrough had "made a motion for his gun" and there was another acquittal.
After that there was no stopping Bunk. He lorded it to a degree that terrified all classes of men. He boasted openly of his prowess and levied larger tribute to the saloons, gambling resorts and dance halls. On the slightest provocation his gun was out and his method of enforcing what he understood as the "law on a high plane" was a terror to the daring and disgrace to the gentle. When Captain Callaway and ten rangers came down from Jolla to round up the smugglers above Flagstone, Gadsoe looked the band over with a haughty eye and declared: "They ain't a fust-class man among 'em."
But it was Willis Pierson, the dude of Callaway's troop, that "riled" Gadsoe the most. The rangers circulated all right - quiet fellows, most of them - but nobody expected trouble between them and the marshal till the latter and Willis Pierson sat in at the same wheel one night, and while Gadsoe lost continually on large bets, the dude ranger won incessantly on small ones.
"Cash 'em, Carroll," sneered Gadsoe at last with a leer at Pierson. "I kaint win settin' next to no French doll."
Pierson looked up, blushed and laid his chips on the spot vacated by Gadsoe.
"Take them cheap bones out o' my graveyard!" snarled the marshal, hitching round so that his pistol was easy, and with his left hand sweeping away the stack of white chips.
"Beg pardon, Colonel Gadson," smiled the ranger in a voice like a woman's; "I thought you were through."
"Who the h__l cares what you thought?" sneered Gadsoe, rising.
"I'm very sorry," resumed the polite man of Callaway's troop, also rising, while the players all snickered at what they regarded as the little fellow's lady-like cowardice. But the latter kept step with Gadsoe as he stalked away, and when they got near the doorway said: "Colonel, will you kindly let me have a match?"
Gadsoe, flattered with his triumph and with the dude's humiliation, handed out a match. Pierson took it with "many thanks," and sweeping it across the leg of his corduroys as to light it, whipped out his revolver and held it glistening at the nose of Bunk Gadsoe.
"You bone-picking buzzard," he said, smiling, too, like a girl, "you come with me."
The crowd, gathering one by one, saw the sudden change of the situation and followed as Gadsoe, the gun leveled at his ear, slunk out of the Bucket of Blood. A few paces behind Trooper Willis Pierson they followed the pair to the office of the Flagstone Herald, and lingering on the sidewalk they watched old Gadsoe walk up to the counter and take a pencil. He wrote for five minutes, paid the editor something, and at intervals turned to look into the muzzle of Pierson's gun.
And the next day they all understood, for on the front page of the Herald was this card:
"I hereby humbly apologize to Willis Pierson, Texas Ranger.
He is a gentleman and I am a low-down cur.
Bunker Hill Gadsoe"
And thereafter Bunk Gadsoe, marshal, was seen no more in Flagstone nor in Comanche county forever.
Photo of Flagstone above, from the film "Once Upon a Time in the West"
Bunk Gadsoe came to Flagstone when the town was merging from a modern inferno to a respectable town. About half the population spoke of it as "the city," the other half - the bad half - called it "the camp." Bunk's advent created something of a furor on the shady side of Flagstone, for he brought with him the reputation of fifteen years of horse stealing, an old Colt's revolver with eleven notches in the handle, and the fame of having passed four years in the Texas penitentiary, whither he had been sent by an awakening deed of killing a sheep herder with a shot fired in the dark through a thin board partition.
When Bunk landed in Flagstone he wore a new Prince Albert and a Winchester, to say nothing of small clothes and lesser artillery concealed about his ample person. He was big, his look was fierce and his talk large. His first move was to hire a room over the Plaza saloon and hang out a sign - "Bunker Hill Gadsoe, Attorney at Law." The next day half the town knew that Lawyer Gadsoe had come to town to defend Bass Intake, the rustler then in jail under a charge of murdering Colonel Forest in the desert of Shifting Sands, above Jolla. Gadsoe explained that he had spent his prison term studying law, and that he meant to follow his new profession on a "high plane."
However, Lawyer Gadsoe made a bad start, for his client, Bass Intake, was hanged, and the whole Comanche county breathed a sigh of relief in spite of Gadsoe's publicly given harangue against judge, jury and prosecution. After that the man from Brazos didn't flourish as a lawyer. He began to show his old Colt, with its fateful notches, and tell stories of his desperate deeds. In June he got into a scuffle with Jere Brownlow and killed him in a jiffy. Brownlow had been foreman of the jury that convicted Intake, and there was a feeble show of prosecuting Gadsoe. The jury in the first case "stuck" as they say in the West, and the next one let Gadsoe go finding that the killing of Brownlow was a case of self-defense. That decision established Gadsoe in Flagstone. He half-bullied, half cajoled Pete Carroll into selling him a half interest in the "Bucket of Blood" - the only live dance hall and gambling joint in town - and then he got into politics.
There wasn't a man around that cared for "his game." Some hated, some despised him, but the bad men looked "leery" at his notched pistol - always in view - and the good people feared him as a bold, bad man. A lantern-jawed, stoop-shouldered giant with the facial expression of a hyena, he yet clung to the legend that he was "a lawyer" come to Flagstone "to practice his profession on a high plane," while his daily life was a slinking, bullying, sinister continuance of the only life he knew or understood. Inside of six months he was recognized by all classes as a "boss." The toughest of the lingering frontier rowdies feared him, and the decent people agreed that it was better to avoid him than to incur his venom. For these reasons when a new town marshal became necessary Bunk Gadsoe got the job.
Being now a duly authorized and approved authority, Bunk extended his sway to that degree that every game in town payed tribute to him and the municipal authorities began to praise his dominance over the "lawless element." There was no doubt about his dominance. There wasn't a half-and-half bad man in town that didn't fawn before his prowess and the silent voice of his notched pistol. Fighters from the hills and cowmen of tried mettle who blew in from the mines and the ranges, and who had heard of Bunk Gadsoe, felt honored to have a drink with him, but, drunk or sober, nobody dared to waken his anger or summon the famous weapon that hung always at his right hip. He gave offensive men "hours to leave town" without so much as arresting them.
"You git 'forenoon 'r I'll run you out like a wolf," he said to Scarface Boyd, the Laredo bully. And Scarface did "git." Old Hansbrough, the town drunkard, invoked his doom by refusing to leave a table in the Echo saloon one night when Gadsoe wanted to entertain two friends at the same table. The marshal didn't wait for explanations; on the contrary, he hardly gave Hansbrough time to measure the distance to the door, but shot him where he sat, and after the drunkard was on the floor emptied his Colt into the defiant one. That made a stir in Flagstone and some were bold enough to hint that Gadsoe was a bully and even a coward. There was another trial, but the marshal proved that Hansbrough had "made a motion for his gun" and there was another acquittal.
After that there was no stopping Bunk. He lorded it to a degree that terrified all classes of men. He boasted openly of his prowess and levied larger tribute to the saloons, gambling resorts and dance halls. On the slightest provocation his gun was out and his method of enforcing what he understood as the "law on a high plane" was a terror to the daring and disgrace to the gentle. When Captain Callaway and ten rangers came down from Jolla to round up the smugglers above Flagstone, Gadsoe looked the band over with a haughty eye and declared: "They ain't a fust-class man among 'em."
But it was Willis Pierson, the dude of Callaway's troop, that "riled" Gadsoe the most. The rangers circulated all right - quiet fellows, most of them - but nobody expected trouble between them and the marshal till the latter and Willis Pierson sat in at the same wheel one night, and while Gadsoe lost continually on large bets, the dude ranger won incessantly on small ones.
"Cash 'em, Carroll," sneered Gadsoe at last with a leer at Pierson. "I kaint win settin' next to no French doll."
Pierson looked up, blushed and laid his chips on the spot vacated by Gadsoe.
"Take them cheap bones out o' my graveyard!" snarled the marshal, hitching round so that his pistol was easy, and with his left hand sweeping away the stack of white chips.
"Beg pardon, Colonel Gadson," smiled the ranger in a voice like a woman's; "I thought you were through."
"Who the h__l cares what you thought?" sneered Gadsoe, rising.
"I'm very sorry," resumed the polite man of Callaway's troop, also rising, while the players all snickered at what they regarded as the little fellow's lady-like cowardice. But the latter kept step with Gadsoe as he stalked away, and when they got near the doorway said: "Colonel, will you kindly let me have a match?"
Gadsoe, flattered with his triumph and with the dude's humiliation, handed out a match. Pierson took it with "many thanks," and sweeping it across the leg of his corduroys as to light it, whipped out his revolver and held it glistening at the nose of Bunk Gadsoe.
"You bone-picking buzzard," he said, smiling, too, like a girl, "you come with me."
The crowd, gathering one by one, saw the sudden change of the situation and followed as Gadsoe, the gun leveled at his ear, slunk out of the Bucket of Blood. A few paces behind Trooper Willis Pierson they followed the pair to the office of the Flagstone Herald, and lingering on the sidewalk they watched old Gadsoe walk up to the counter and take a pencil. He wrote for five minutes, paid the editor something, and at intervals turned to look into the muzzle of Pierson's gun.
And the next day they all understood, for on the front page of the Herald was this card:
He is a gentleman and I am a low-down cur.
Bunker Hill Gadsoe"
And thereafter Bunk Gadsoe, marshal, was seen no more in Flagstone nor in Comanche county forever.
Photo of Flagstone above, from the film "Once Upon a Time in the West"
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - Copyright © 2004 Callaway Family Association
posted by DFM | 6/27/2004
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