Horse theft: a crime of hanging

Horse theft in the Old West was a felony. A man’s life often depended on his ability to get somewhere fast, and that was usually on horseback. Taking a man’s horse in some cases was like putting a bullet in his head. Due to their seriousness, the punishment for such crimes was always the same: swift and merciless. Most often the thief was found hanging from a tall tree with a note pinned to his shirt identifying him as a horse thief. It was a warning to other would-be horse thieves to think twice before taking another man’s horse.

If he was lucky, a rancher’s gang would shoot a horse thief instead of hanging him. Hanging was not a pleasant way to end one’s life, and usually carried the stigma of wrongdoing.

There were those who were foolish enough to think they could get away with stealing horses. It seemed to them a quick way to make money by selling the stolen horses. To their way of thinking, someone else might get trapped, but not them. They were too smart, too bold, and too bad to be caught, and they would never be that stupid!

Take the example of Charles P. Ford known as “Hand” Charlie Smith, a horse thief who didn’t think he’d get caught. He and his brother Tom got tired of their dull and boring life in Peoria, Illinois and decided to come west. Little is known about his early life. They were thought to be the illegitimate children of then Illinois Governor Ford. Their search for fun and adventure brought them to Kansas. For unknown reasons, they dropped the Ford name and became known as Tom and Charlie Smith. Charlie was not given the name “One-arm” Charlie until 1871. In Topeka, Kansas, where he lost his right arm above the elbow in a shooting accident. Later, he and his brother joined the Curly Marshall gang of outlaws and horse thieves. The gang operated in Topeka, Newton, and Wichita, Kansas.

In the spring of 1871, Charlie Smith established a small ranch on the Ninnescah River between Wichita and Caldwell, Kansas. The ranch was located near the route by which the stolen horses were taken to Indian Territory. Charlie’s involvement with known outlaws and the Marshal’s gang of horse thieves added greatly to his already bad reputation. It wasn’t long before ranchers and settlers in the area decided to organize to get rid of “Mano” Charlie and his den of horse thieves. They arrived at his ranch and took Charlie and two friends away at gunpoint. They rode horses to a grove of large cottonwoods along the nearby river, threw a rope over a sturdy branch, and led the outlaws to the tree, one at a time to hang.

The first man to be hanged was LB Hasbrouck, a promising young lawyer who had nothing to say and died quietly.

The second man to be hanged was Billy “Bully” Brooks, a notorious gunfighter and the first City Sheriff of Dodge City, Kansas.

“Hand” Charlie was the last to be hung. As they led him to the hanging tree, he felt that it was not right for the son of an eastern governor to end his adventurous career by being hanged. He now he felt that he should have stayed in Illinois and lived a peaceful life instead of the one he had chosen of fast horses, faster women and damn fast justice. Charlie’s melancholy musings on his wasted life were interrupted by a sharp blow to the rump from his stolen horse. The horse galloped away leaving Charlie dangling in the air from the overhanging tree with a broken neck. He would go down in history as one more horse thief who died at the end of a rope.

The pages of Western history are littered with stories like Charlie’s: stories of men who robbed and killed just for fun, profit, or adventure. They, like “one-armed Charlie”, often ended up at the end of a dangling rope, with a note pinned to their shirt that spoke of their offense.

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