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Over
the years, small-town newspapers have found it necessary to supplement
the local news with other sources of material to help fill up their
pages. In the old days, when there wasn’t a lot of newsworthy events
taking place, the local paper would fill space with features or
magazine-type material.
Way back in 1924, The Moulton Eagle was presenting a column called
“Tales of the Old Frontier” which was written by a fellow named
Scott Watson. This story was later published in the October 1930
issue of Frontier Times Magazine. It is probable that the paper
subscribed to an outside source and received this article on a weekly
basis. I found Watson’s stories to be entertaining but in some cases
not exactly “historically accurate.” However, the following story
about a murder, in 1889, is quite fascinating and is the subject
of this week’s Lone Star Diary.
The Moulton Eagle – April 11, 1924
To
the cowboys who rode the range in West
Texas during the [1890s] there was one longhorn
steer that was always an object of dread. He was a big, white fellow
with “Murder 1889” branded in huge letters on his left side. His
appearance among their herds brought a chill of terror to the superstitious,
for this steer was said to have been responsible for the killing
of at least nine men and it was believed that his coming to a ranch
invariably meant another tragedy.
The steer’s sinister history began in Jan. 1889, during a round-up
on the Leon Cipa ranch in Brewster County, in a dispute between
H.H. Powe and Fino Gilliland over the ownership of this steer, then
a yearling, Gilliland shot Powe and fled. Thereupon Powe’s cowboys
imprinted the gruesome brand upon the steer’s hide and turned him
loose on the range.
A short time later Jeff Webb, Gilliland’s nephew, was killed under
mysterious circumstances near the town of Alpine
and Gilliland believed that Sam Taylor, a noted desperado, was responsible
for the death. One night Taylor was playing poker in a saloon in
Alpine
when some one fired a load of buckshot through the window, killing
him instantly and mortally wounding an easterner who was sitting
in the game.
It was in this game that the cowboys’ “dead man’s hand” – aces and
eights – originated, for Taylor had just won a pot with those cards
and he fell dead across the table with them clutched in his hand.
But the strangest part of the affair occurred soon afterwards. A
big white steer with “Murder 1889” branded on his side was seen
near the saloon looking meditatively through the window where the
fatal shot had been fired.
About six months after Gilliland killed Powe, he himself was shot
down by two Texas Rangers when he resisted arrest. While the officers
were looking over the scene of the battle a steer walked out of
a patch of scrub oak to where Gilliland lay and stood sniffing at
his body. As it turned to leave the Rangers saw the brand “Murder
1889” on its side. By some mysterious coincidence the steer had
drifted to this spot, 75 miles from the scene of its branding, and
was here at the exact time when Gilliland was killed.
After this incident the big longhorn was seen at many places where
crimes had been committed and [uninformed] Mexicans of the country
spread the story that it possessed the spirit of the dead Gilliland.
© Murray
Montgomery
Lone
Star Diary June
2 , 2008 Column. Modified December 4, 2015
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