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 Robert
Clay Allison worked on his parents' farm near Waynesboro, Tenn., until he
was twenty-one. Immediately upon the outbreak of the Civil War, he
enlisted in the Confederate Army and went off willingly to fight for the
South. He had a clubfoot that did not seem to hamper his ability to
perform active duty. He saw action in several battles but was sent home in
March 1862 to recuperate from wounds that seemed more mental than
physical, a Confederate doctor stating that Allison was suffering from a
condition that was "partly epileptic and partly maniacal." He
had reportedly threatened to shoot his superiors following one battle
because they refused to pursue and execute retreating Union troops.
A short time later, Allison got the chance to vent his
anger on one Union soldier, a corporal of the Third Illinois Cavalry who
rode onto the Allison farm and announced to Allison's mother that he
intended to take everything valuable on the premises. Clay went to a
closet, got out a gun, and promptly shot the Union soldier dead. Following
the end of the war, Allison, his two brothers, Monroe and John, his sister
Mary, and her husband, Lewis Coleman, migrated to Texas. While Allison was
waiting to take a ferry across the Red River, he became incensed when
ferryman Zachary Colbert tried to double-charge them. Allison beat up
Colbert and left him unconscious while the family took the ferry across
the river paying nothing.
Once in Texas, Allison signed on with several cattle
barons as a cowboy, helping to blaze the Goodnight-Loving Trail through
Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado in 1866. He became an expert, tough
cowhand, working first for Oliver Loving and Charles Goodnight, then for
cattle barons M.L. Dalton and Isaac Lacy. He drove a huge herd of cattle
to New Mexico in 1870 and demanded as pay 300 head of cattle. With this
small herd Allison began his own ranch near Cimarron, N.M., which was soon
lucrative. It was on October 7 of that year that Allison's true savagery
emerged. Allison brooded about a locally convicted murderer, Charles
Kennedy, while drinking heavily in the saloon at Elizabethtown. He stirred
up sentiment against Kennedy and then led a lynch mob across the street to
the jail. Allison and others battered down the door, knocked the deputies
senseless, and dragged Kennedy screaming from his cell. He was taken to a
local slaughterhouse where Allison and others not only lynched Kennedy but
mutilated his corpse with the huge knives employed for butchering cattle.
Allison then cut the body down and, using an ax, decapitated the corpse
and jammed the head on a pole, riding with this gory trophy all the way to
Henry Lambert's saloon in Cimarron where Allison put the head on display.
Those who befriended Allison stayed fiercely loyal to the
gunman. His enemies, on the other hand, not only hated him but vowed to
kill him whenever the opportunity arose. One of these was gunslinger Chunk
Colbert who had secretly planned to kill Allison ever since Clay beat up
his uncle Zachary some nine years earlier at the Red River crossing.
Colbert rode into Cimarron and challenged Allison to a horse race. Both
men rode their horses wildly and the race wound up in a dead heat. They
decided to rest up at the Clifton House, an inn near Allison's ranch. Both
men sat down to eat large dinners. They talked amiably, but Allison
noticed Colbert reach for his cup of coffee with one hand and his pistol
with another. Before Colbert could lift the gun beyond the rim of the
table, Allison tipped his chair backward, falling toward the floor which
caused Colbert to hurry his shot which, in turn, plowed into the table
top. As he fell backward, however, the cool-under-fire Allison aimed a
single shot that smashed into Colbert's head, going in above the right eye
and killing the gunman.
After Colbert was buried behind the Clifton House, someone
asked Allison why he would sit down to dinner with a man he knew intended
to kill him. Quipped the sardonic gunman, "Because I didn't want to
send a man to hell on an empty stomach." Charles Cooper, a friend of
Colbert's who had been present at the shoot out, did not take part in the
gunfight, but he stated to friends that he would settle matters with
Allison later. On Jan. 19, 1874, Cooper was seen riding toward Cimarron
and then was never seen again. It was widely believed that Allison killed
Cooper and buried the body on the prairie. Two years later, the gunman
would be charged with murdering Cooper but the prosecution could produce
no body nor any evidence that Allison committed the crime; the gunman was
released.
As time passed, Clay Allison earned the reputation of a
mad gunfighter who feared no one and could be counted on to do the
unexpected. It was reported that Allison, totally drunk, stepped from a
saloon in Canadian, Texas, wearing nothing but his ten-gallon hat, his
boots, and his six-guns, to march up and down the main street challenging
any and all to face him. There were no takers. Another report had the
gunman and a drinking companion, Mason T. Bowman, stripping to their
underwear and dancing wildly about a saloon and then shooting up the floor
at each other's feet to quicken the pace without bloodying a single toe.
On Oct. 30, 1875, Allison took part in another lynching,
helping to hang one Cruz Vega, under arrest for murder in Colfax County,
N.M. As Vega was dragged to a telegraph pole by Allison and others, he
shouted out that he was not the killer, but that the murder he stood
accused of had been committed by Manuel Cardenas. It mattered not to
Allison and his friends. Cruz was strung up and while he slowly strangled
to death the compassionate Allison shot him in the back "to put the
poor Mex out of his misery." The gunman then had the body taken down;
he tied the end of the lynch rope to his saddle and rode through the
streets, dragging the body outside of town, over rocks and heavy brush,
until the face was unrecognizable. He left Vega's body to rot in the
desert.
Cruz's employer, rancher and feared gunman Francisco
Pancho Griego, showed up in Cimarron on Nov. 1, 1875, asking for Allison.
With him were Luis Vega, the 18-year-old son of the lynch mob victim, and
Griego's partner, Florencio Donahue. Allison boldly confronted the trio
outside the St. James Hotel and suggested they step inside the bar to talk
things over. The men had a few drinks and seemed to talk amiably. Then
Griego motioned to a corner of the bar and he and Allison walked to the
spot. As Allison turned he saw that Griego had removed his large sombrero
and had begun to fan himself, an uncommon gesture on one of the coldest
nights of the year. Allison had also prepared for treachery with a trick
of his own; having palmed a small pistol, he fired this weapon as soon as
Griego's sombrero stopped at his gunbelt. The lights in the saloon
suddenly went out (thanks to a friend of Allison's), and when the lamp was
next lit the body of Francisco Pancho Griego was seen sprawled on the
floor, a bullet in his heart. Allison had disappeared.
Colfax County citizens began a campaign to get rid of the
lethal Allison, urging the editor of the Cimarron "News and
Press" to write some scathing articles about the New Mexico badman.
One of the those behind the publicity campaign was none other than
Allison's own brother-in-law, Lewis Coleman. The gunman's response to this
civic campaign to run him out of the territory was to ride into Cimarron
and wreck the entire offices of the "News and Press", putting it
out of business. Though Allison's neighbors were nervous about his
presence, total strangers living in towns Allison visited on his trail
drives were positively traumatized when he and his cowboys rode into town.
Such was the situation when Clay and John Allison appeared in Las Animas,
Colo., on the night of Dec. 21, 1876. They had just sold a herd of cattle
and were looking to entertain themselves, at the expense of the local
citizenry, of course. The Allison brothers stomped inside the Olympic
Dance Hall and began dancing with the wives of local merchants, both of
them almost drunk and impolitely stepping upon the toes of their partners.
Town constable and deputy sheriff Charles Faber quietly walked up to the
Allisons and asked them to check their six-guns but they ignored him.
Faber stepped outside and quickly deputized two men, getting a shotgun and
returning to the dance hall. Just as he entered, someone shouted,
"Look out!" John Allison, who was still attempting to dance with
a cringing local lady, spun around, appearing to draw his gun. Faber let
loose with a blast from one of the shotgun barrels. Clay Allison, who was
at the bar and had his back to the scene, wheeled around with his pistols
in his hands (he usually wore one gun but on occasion wore two). As John
Allison received a load of buckshot in his chest and arm, Clay fired four
deliberate shots at Faber, hitting him only once, but this shot ripped
through the deputy's chest, killing him. As Faber fell, his shotgun went
off once more, the second barrel of buckshot slamming into John Allison's
leg, sending the brother toppling to the floor.
Allison then chased the two deputies outside, firing at
them as they ran for their lives down the street, escaping uninjured in
the darkness. Returning to the hall, Allison went to his brother and then
called for a doctor. He reached over to Faber's fallen body and yanked the
bloody corpse next to the semi-conscious John Allison, telling his
brother, "Look here, this man is dead, John, not to worry, vengeance
is ours! Not to worry."
John Allison eventually recovered from his wounds and Clay
Allison managed to escape punishment by proving self-defense. This
shootout spread the reputation of Allison far and wide through the hell
holes and cow towns.
To the citizens of Colfax County, however, Allison was
infamous enough. He found that few in the area wished to befriend him, or,
worse, do business with him. Losing money on cattle he could not sell,
Allison moved to greener territory, buying a ranch in Hemphill County,
Texas. There he married and his wife gave birth to two girls, Patsy, born
a cripple, and Clay, who was born after Allison's strange, premature
death. The gunman seemed to temper a bit and began to avoid confrontations
with other gunfighters. His fortunes rising once more, Allison bought
another ranch in Lincoln County, N.M., and here he developed considerable
herds.
Allison's end was ignominious and grimly ironic. On July
1, 1887, Allison was returning from Pecos, Texas, where he purchased
supplies for his ranch. Apparently he had been drinking, for about forty
miles from Pecos, the gunfighter toppled from the buckboard he was driving
and fell beneath the wheel of the heavily laden wagon. The horses jerked
forward and the wheel crushed Allison's head, almost decapitating him.
Historians later estimated that the six-foot, blue-eyed
gunman had shot and killed at least fifteen men during his notorious
career. Shortly before his death, Allison told a newsman, "I never
killed a man who didn't need it." He then added that in all his
gunfights he was merely "protecting the property holders of the
country from thieves, outlaws, and murderers." He could have numbered
himself among these miscreants, for Allison was no simple rancher with a
hair trigger. Throughout his days on the range he practiced wholesale
rustling of cattle and horses. On one occasion, he even attempted to steal
a herd of army mules but the stubborn beasts would have none of him. He
fell from his horse amidst the herd, and they began kicking him. He
actually drew his gun, frothing with rage and intent upon shooting several
of the mules, but he received another kick and the gun accidentally went
off, sending a bullet into Allison's good foot. This caused Allison to
place added pressure to the clubfoot, increasing a lifelong pain and
developing a permanent limp. Allison used a cane after that until the very
day of his death.
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