In my last column, I told you about how Brownwood had a livelier history of gunfights, bank robberies, raids, murders, shootouts, and whatnot than Deadwood, South Dakota. Well, Tombstone didn’t have anything on Brownwood either.
The O.K. Corral made Tombstone, Arizona famous – one glorious shootout between rival gangs of cops, friends, brothers, and outlaws – but most of that story was inflated and mythologized over time. It was a story made for the penny pamphlets sold to city folk in New York and Chicago. The movie Tombstone is great… and highly fictionalized entertainment. I like fiction. And sometimes fiction can tell a truer story of the context of the times than a bland, cold relation of events can tell. I’ll fictionalize some Brownwood stories for you someday so we can get closer to the truth of things, but this story doesn’t need the Hollywood treatment.
Now, this is the story of Brownwood’s first recorded gunfight, and it was written in the book Frontier Generation by great Brownwood writer Tevis Clyde Smith. Brownwood should be famous for its writers too.
Anyway, let’s get to the story.
It’s Old Brownwood and it’s 1861.
The War between the states has just begun, but the ramifications of that conflict are just starting to trickle into the far frontier of Texas. Out at Camp Colorado north of Santa Anna, the Yankee soldiers are getting out of dodge and abandoning the fort and the settlers in those parts. Some of those outlying pioneers who are most at risk fall back and closer to civilization and are trying to make a go of self-protection in the little area of Thrifty, north of what is now Bangs. Many of the more cautious settlers come all the way back to Brownwood.
The frontier which is RIGHT THERE – between Brownwood and Coleman – is dangerous and hostile. And new. The first white child born in Brown County was only five years old. The “frontier” was that new. But the settlers and frontiersmen had their squabbles too.
Sutton Harriss didn’t like the Roberts brothers. Burl Roberts was the second sheriff, but he’d just been replaced by the third sheriff who was elected in March. That new sheriff was Sutton Harriss.
Now, we don’t know who was in the right, but the way the story came down it seems that perhaps the Roberts brothers were a little hot-headed and maybe not too smart. Perhaps things were said. Insults and insinuations? Maybe – and this is pure speculation – but it seems probable that Harriss had defeated Burl Roberts in the election in March, and maybe that was the source of the friction. What? Have you never heard of an election causing division and strife?
If this was Hollywood, we’d make up a reason for the conflict, and there would be snarling and threats: maybe a few near conflagrations in a saloon.
Anyway, one night Sheriff Harriss and Burl Robert’s brother got into a fistfight and the good sheriff beat the man pretty severely. Ex-Sheriff Roberts wasn’t too happy about his brother taking a beating and sent a message to the new sheriff:
“I will get you before sundown tomorrow; arm yourself with something besides your fists, because I am coming for you with a brace of Colts.”
That escalated quickly.
“I am coming for you,” wasn’t written by a Hollywood writer, and as far as we know he didn’t add “and hell’s comin’ with me!” which is a bit too biblical and corny for real life, but it makes good entertainment. As I said, the real-world history of Brownwood is better than that of the places that became famous for a single mythologized event.
Harriss had heard Burl Roberts’ threats and he prepared himself. He took a shotgun and his pistol with him to court the next day. He’d just arrived in the courtroom when Roberts showed up outside ready for a fight. Sheriff Harriss stepped out to meet Burl.
“Hear you’re looking for me, Roberts. Better go on about your business and let things slide. There’s no use in you and I having trouble.”
That seems like a reasonable thing to say, but Roberts wasn’t in the mood to be reasonable. He went for his Colt and Sheriff Harriss blew the man away with a blast from his shotgun. It’s much more dramatic when you have the right music playing and the townspeople around the courthouse are scurrying to get their children off the streets, hiding in the General Store or the Leather shop.
Burl Roberts’ blood was soaking into the dust and surely there was a great one-liner… “I told him to go on his way. Guess I had to send him.” (That line is fiction. The rest is true.)
A few days later, one of the dead man’s friends shot the sheriff in the back.
I could have written that part better – showed the man slinking through alleys and hiding behind water barrels, waiting for a clean shot.
According to the reports, the man fled the country and went to fight in the war. Harriss lived on for a few weeks in agony, and then died and got put in the ground.
We miss the scenes of the posse of Brownwoodians riding through the brush, dramatic music playing, as they rush eastward trying to catch up with the sheriff’s killer. We don’t get to see the thrilling escape of the nameless coward who shot a man in the back. Absent is the fade-in sepia-tinted montage of the dead sheriff’s widow standing over his gravesite, weeping. We don’t know if things ended there. That’s for the screenwriters to make up.
Written up properly, and fictionalized just a tad to get to the real truth, wouldn’t this make a great play at the Lyric? You can tell the truth in fiction. Tombstone did it.
Brownwood’s history is replete with stories like this. They hide cool stuff like this in books.
***
Michael Bunker is a local columnist for BrownwoodNews.com whose columns appear periodically on the website.