Legends of the Old West - THREE GUARDSMEN Ep. 1 | Heck Thomas: “Fort Worth Detective Association”

Episode Date: July 20, 2022

Henry Thomas, Jr., better known as Heck Thomas, was a young lawman in Georgia before he caught what he called “a severe case of Texas fever.” He became an express messenger on a railroad and then a self-made detective. He squared off with notorious outlaws like Sam Bass and the Lee Brothers, and earned a reputation that led him to Oklahoma Territory as a Deputy U.S. Marshal. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join To advertise on this podcast, please email: [e-mail] For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This show is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please visit AirwaveMedia.com to check out other great podcasts like Ben Franklin’s World, Once Upon A Crime, and many more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Join for free at Rakuten.ca or get the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N. From the United States Congress An act to regulate trade and intercourse with the Indian tribes and to preserve peace on the frontiers. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, that that part of the United States west of the Mississippi, and not within the states of Missouri and Louisiana, or the territory of Arkansas, and also that part of the United States east of the Mississippi River, and not within any state to which the Indian title has not been extinguished, for the purposes of this Act, be taken and deemed to be the Indian country.

The Indian Intercourse Act of 1834, modified from the original Indian Intercourse Act of 1790. In those words lies the origin of a portion of land that was known as Indian Territory from 1834 to 1890, and then Oklahoma Territory from 1890 to 1907, and then the state of Oklahoma from 1907 until the present. The territory was created as the new home for the Native American tribes from the area that is now known as the Southeastern United States. The tribes were removed from their lands and forced to walk to Oklahoma during the tragedy known as the Trail of Tears. The survivors settled in Indian territory and then watched as that territory was systematically reduced by the U.S. government over the coming decades.

In 1889, nearly 2 million acres of land that was set aside for Native Americans was offered up to white settlers in a land rush. And so, the eastern area of what is now Oklahoma consisted of the last remnant of Indian territory. In the 1880s and 90s, outlaws like Bell Starr and many others plied their trade in the territory. It was home to the Marlow brothers, who inspired the movie The Sons of Katie Elder, which is one of my favorites. The territory was the home of Crawford Goldsby, better known as Cherokee Bill, who robbed and killed with the infamous Cook Brothers. The Rufus Buck Gang, the Barnett Gang, and the Seminole outlaw Greenleaf terrorized Indian territory for nearly 20 years. terrorized Indian territory for nearly 20 years. And then, of course, there was the Doolin-Dalton Gang,

one of the two gangs who shared the nickname the Wild Bunch. To patrol the territory, the U.S. Marshal Service hired hundreds of deputies. Heck Thomas, Bill Tillman, and Chris Madsen were three of those deputies. Together and separately, they pursued some of the Old West's most notorious desperados. They took on the Doolin Daltons, the Sam Bass Gang, the Lee Brothers, and many more, and they earned the collective nickname, the Three Guardsmen. This is the beginning of the story of Heck Thomas. As a podcast network, our first priority has always been audio and the stories we're able to share with you. But we also sell merch. And organizing that was made both possible and easy with Shopify.

Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell and grow at every stage of your business. From the launch your online shop stage all the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage. Whether you're selling scented soap or offering outdoor outfits, Shopify helps you sell everywhere. They have an all-in-one e-commerce platform and in-person POS system. So wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With the Internet's best converting checkout, 36% better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms, Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers. Shopify has allowed us to share something tangible with the podcast community we've built here, selling our beanies, sweatshirts, and mugs to fans of our shows without taking up too much time from all the other work we do to bring you

even more great content. And it's not just us. Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. Shopify is also the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across 175 countries. Because businesses that grow, grow with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash realm, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash r-e-a-l-m now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in. shopify.com slash realm. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer.

And this season, we're telling the stories of the Three Guardsmen, the trio of U.S. Marshals who neutralized some of the worst criminals in the Old West. This is Episode 1, Heck Thomas, Fort Worth Detective Association. Henry Andrew Thomas was born on January 6, 1850, in Athens, Georgia, the home of a small college called the University of Georgia, which featured fewer than 100 students. When Henry, nicknamed Heck, was 10 years old, his family moved to Rome, Georgia, where his father took a job as a tavern keeper. According to Heck's wife, the boy idolized his father. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Heck's father and uncle joined the Confederate cause, and 12-year-old Heck Thomas ran away from home to do the same.

Heck's father first served as captain and quartermaster of the 4th Battalion, 35th Georgia Infantry, Stonewall Jackson's Corps. His uncle was quickly promoted from colonel to brigadier general of the same unit. The details are understandably elusive, but the story of how young Heck Thomas joined the war goes like this. In June of 1862, Heck's father was badly wounded during the six-day battle at Mechanicsville in Virginia. A few months later, he was well enough to return to combat, and he took his son with him as a courier. The day after Heck and his father reached Stonewall's army, the Second Battle of Manassas broke out. A member of his uncle's brigade killed Union General Phil Kearney, the one-armed Mexican war hero.

Kearney's horse, saddle, and sword were turned over to Heck Thomas for safekeeping. Thomas considered this his first real badge of honor. Then in September of 1862, Stonewall Jackson drove his army into northern Virginia. He captured Harper's Ferry and 14,000 Union prisoners. Heck's uncle's brigade was ordered to guard the prisoners while the rest fought at Chantilly and Fredericksburg. Confederate General Robert E. Lee gave an order to have Carney's horse and belongings returned to his widow. The etiquette of war at the time demanded it. Little Heck Thomas was instructed to ride Carney's large horse through the battle lines with a white flag in order to complete the mission. According to Heck's biographer, it was the proudest moment of his life.

But it was one of the last highlights of his wartime experience. In the winter of 1863, Heck Thomas contracted typhoid. He was sent home in such bad shape that his parents expected him to die. He recovered, but the Confederate States of America did not. By 1865, people in the South struggled to find food, clean water, and medicine. Heck was now 15, and his family was starving like so many others. He sat in front of his father's store, its shelves almost empty. When two drunk Yankee soldiers walked by, one of them snatched the rabbit fur hat off his head and tore it to shreds. Heck cursed the man as traitorous and deceitful scum. Then he leapt up

and beat the man to a pulp. After cracking the man's jaw and laying him out, the other soldier got his bearings and held a gun to Heck's head. At that point, Heck's father appeared in the doorway with a hatchet. The soldier wheeled around to face Colonel Thomas, and Heck saw his chance. While the man was distracted, Heck jumped on him and knocked him sprawling into the street. Grabbing him by the hair, Heck shoved the man's sprawling into the street. Grabbing him by the hair, Heck shoved the man's face hard into the dust. After taking the soldier's weapon, Heck's father managed to pry his son off the soldier. When the soldier got to his feet and saw Heck's father standing there with a hatchet in one hand and his own pistol in the other, he supposedly screamed and ran away. But there was a bright spot to all of

the anger and confusion surrounding Heck's young life. His father earned a job as Atlanta's first city marshal, and soon, Heck Thomas followed in his father's footsteps. Heck's parents wanted him to become a minister when he grew up. At least his mother did. She encouraged him to enroll at Emory University, where his uncle had gone to school. He did, and there he developed a fondness for poetry and the arts in general. But college just wasn't for him, and he soon left. At the age of 18, Heck joined the Atlanta police force. He was the

youngest man on it, and his first major test came when he found himself embroiled in one of the area's riots, a riot that, by his own admission, he may have started. According to Thomas and the Atlanta Constitution newspaper, a fight began when he and another officer, Jack Smith, arrested a former slave named Andy Whitaker. It's not clear why they arrested Whitaker, but while they were on the way to the station house, they came across a torchlight procession of what Thomas referred to as radical Negroes.

Supposedly, the group assaulted the officers and demanded Whitaker's release. As Thomas later quoted, the battle was on right then and there, and I think I started it. Six other officers rushed to their aid. Onlookers told of how the youthful officer kept to his feet even while he was being beaten by clubs. All the while, he blew his whistle for help. He was shot in the right arm and again in the right leg. While he was down on the ground with gunshot wounds, Thomas propped himself up on his elbows and continued to fire.

Supposedly, the shots helped turn away the advancing rioters and end the engagement. Heck Thomas recovered and continued working on the Atlanta police force for the next five years or so. His reputation as a fearless officer grew. In 1871, he married his paternal cousin Isabella, better known as Belle. A year or so later, maybe because Belle thought police work was too dangerous, Heck Thomas changed jobs. He accepted a position as a clerk for a wholesale grocery firm. In December of 1872, their first child, a son, was born. They named him Henry after his father. For a while, Thomas considered training to become a minister,

but he grew disillusioned when he discovered that the pastor of their church was committing adultery with another parishioner. He didn't leave the Methodist church, but he abandoned his plans for becoming a minister, and after that event, he felt like he really needed to make a change. In 1873, at the age of 23, Heck Thomas started reading about Texas. It was considered the frontier, the rapidly expanding west with land for farms and ranches and towns. He developed what he called a severe state of Texas fever. His cousin Jim Thomas had just started a job in Galveston

as a messenger with a Texas Express company. The Thomases took a trip to Texas to check things out. It seems that Heck loved what he saw, but his wife did not. The idea of raising children in this harsh frontier environment did not appeal to her. The young family went back to Georgia, where Heck continued his job as a clerk for the grocery business. In July of 1875, the Thomases had a baby girl. They named her Belle after her mother. But even though things were going well for them in Georgia, Heck couldn't get Texas off his mind.

He was restless. He pleaded with his wife to give the Lone Star State another chance. She kept saying no. Finally, he couldn't stand it any longer. He told Bell that he would go to Texas with or without her. He obtained letters of recommendation from several prominent members of the community. In those days, letters like these virtually assured that an able-bodied and respectable person could get a job in just about any town. Finally, Bell gave in. They packed up and left for Galveston in late 1876 or early 1877.

They were starting a long journey, but they didn't know that the journey would be much longer than expected. Heck's new job would take him to an even wilder frontier about 500 miles north of Galveston called Indian Territory. Thomas was assigned as an express messenger on a segment of the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railroad. Express messenger companies had contracts with railroads to transport and guard valuables on the trains. Thomas rode the stretch from Galveston, which is on a barrier island off the coast of Houston, to Denison, which is about 80 miles north of Dallas and Fort Worth. Denison is right next to the Red River, which separated Indian Territory from Texas. Four years earlier, it was built in conjunction with the railroad,

and it was better known as the Katy Depot. It was an important commercial hub at the time, and in 1875, it featured, among other things, the dental office of a fellow from Georgia who was only one year younger than Heck Thomas, John Henry Dock Holliday. Sadly for this story, Dock had already moved on from Denison by the time Heck Thomas started making the run from Galveston. But Thomas soon met his first major adversary, the notorious outlaw Sam Bass. his first major adversary, the notorious outlaw Sam Bass. Sam Bass and Heck Thomas were born just a year and a half apart, but they had vastly different childhoods. Bass was orphaned at 12 and raised by an uncle in Indiana. At 19, Bass made his way to Mississippi and worked at a sawmill. At 19, Bass made his way to Mississippi and worked at a sawmill.

In his spare time, he became an excellent shooter, and he also learned to cheat at cards. Bass eventually moved to Texas, where he found a job handling horses for the Sheriff of Denton, which is about 40 miles north of Dallas and Fort Worth. He bought a Sorrel horse from the Sheriff and started racing it, and soon he won enough races to leave the job. He drifted down to San Antonio, where he met a bartender named Joel Collins. Collins was a frequent cattle driver, and he invited Bass to join him on his next trip. Collins bought a herd of several hundred cattle.

To finance the venture, he signed several promissory notes that he would pay after the cattle were sold. He invited another man, Jack Davis, to join him and Bass to drive the herd north to Ogallala, Nebraska. There, they sold the herd for $8,000. Now, all of that was fine. The problem was, they never returned to Texas to pay off the notes. Instead, they headed to Deadwood, South Dakota. They figured they could use their cattle money to gamble, and then mine for gold on the side. But when they arrived in Deadwood in the fall of 1876, they found snow and freezing rains. That made mining really difficult, so they moved on to other pursuits. They ventured into the freight business, and then bought a saloon complete with a brothel on top.

Finally, they bought a quartz mine. Bass refused to say why, but it evidently went bust very quickly. With no money left, the trio decided their only way to solvency was to rob trains. Joel Collins was supposedly the mastermind of their first job. They learned that large shipments of gold were being sent over the Union Pacific, and so, over several weeks in late August 1877, the men gathered a few other desperate and reliable men for their venture. They picked Big Spring Station outside Ogallala in western Nebraska. The reason they chose Big Spring was because it was only a water station, so they figured there would be few railroad workers in

the area. And they were right. On Tuesday evening, September 18th, Joel Collins, Sam Bass, and 11 other desperados held up the train when it came into the depot. They broke into the safe and made off with nearly $60,000 in gold and about $500 in currency. For good measure, they smashed the telegraph machines to stall law enforcement. The gang quickly separated and went their own ways. Within a few weeks, several of them were captured. Collins and two others were killed while resisting arrest. Sam Bass made it safely back to Denton, Texas. There, he started planning the train robberies that would bring him face-to-face with Heck Thomas. the train robberies that would bring him face-to-face with Heck Thomas.

Sam Bass's portion of the robbery money only lasted a few weeks. He flashed money around and spent it almost as fast as he'd stolen it. So, he decided to form a new gang. In the spring of 1878, he gathered a bunch of other criminally-minded men. They established several hideouts along the border between Texas and Indian Territory, including one above Denton. The new gang struck on February 22, about 25 miles north of Dallas. A messenger at the station of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad was going about his work as usual, and then he heard the words, throw up your hands and give us your money. As it happens, that express messenger was Jim Thomas, cousin of Heck Thomas.

Bass and his crew put a gun to Jim's head and made him open the safe. They stole nearly $1,500. At the end of the train's run in Galveston, a bunch of Jim's fellow workers, including Heck Thomas, gathered to talk to him. He was shaken. He kept reliving the experience, trying to figure out how he could have stopped the criminals. Cousin Heck didn't have an answer for him, but he vowed that if he ever encountered Sam Bass, it would be the last encounter of Sam Bass's life. Heck Thomas, his cousin Jim, and a lawman for the railroad managed to track one of the robbers to a nearby town.

Bass was still at large, but Thomas came up with a plan. He figured that sooner or later, Bass would try to rob the train again at some other point along the line, and he was right. On the night of March 18, 1878, Heck Thomas was doing his job as usual when his train was held up in Hutchins, Texas. The robbers forced the engineer to take the express car 400 yards down the track so they could keep their guns trained on the employees. Heck, Thomas was inside the car, where he had set up a bunch of decoy packages inside the safe. He then buried most of the real money, about $22,000, in the ashes of the train's stove. He left only about $90 in silver out in the hopes the robbers

wouldn't know what they were missing. Sam Bass and his crew lit a fire under Thomas' express car in order to force him to open it. The details aren't clear, but Bass and his accomplices either smashed through the car with an axe or Thomas simply opened it when the car became too hot. Either way, Thomas was expecting such a scenario. Unfortunately for Thomas, he was shot twice during the robbery. It isn't clear if it was by one of the robbers or his own conductor or brakeman when they fired at the criminals. The wounds were only superficial, but the buckshot gave him a permanent scar under his eye. The criminals left with the decoy packages. Thomas yelled at his engineer to take off before they discovered the ruse. When the train finally reached Galveston,

Thomas received medical attention and also received a reward from the rail company for his bravery. But he knew Sam Bass and his gang would strike again, and they did several more times. None of the other express messengers stood up to the gang like Heck Thomas did. That was understandable given the terrifying circumstances, but it also meant that Thomas made a name for himself because he did stand up to the robbers. The Texas Rangers eventually put an end to Sam Bass in July of 1878, which is a story we'll definitely tell in the near future. In addition to Heck Thomas' $200 reward from the Express Company and the accolades he received from newspapers, politicians, and lawmen,

he received a promotion from express messenger to express agent. It came with a raise in salary and the ability to move his growing family to a nice house in Fort Worth. It also put him on a direct route to a permanent career in law enforcement and the lawless wilds of Indian Territory. and the lawless wilds of Indian Territory. Heck, Thomas and his wife, Belle, had two more children while living in Fort Worth. Belle hated the city, and Thomas loved it. But she went along with it, even in 1885,

when her husband's employer started cutting the pay of its employees to stay afloat. Thomas ran for city marshal, and lost. But he was determined to be a member of law enforcement one way or another. And so after he lost the election, Thomas decided to take his destiny into his own hands. He opened his own business, and called it the Fort Worth Detective Association. His first client was a wealthy rancher who desperately wanted someone to track down two cattle rustlers named Jim and Pink Lee. The Lee brothers were terrorizing northern Texas and southern Indian territory. The reward for the rustlers was split between the state of Texas and the rancher. was split between the state of Texas and the rancher.

It was $3,500, a big amount in 1885, and it was payable whether the Lee brothers were delivered dead or alive. Thomas had to think about it. The money was tempting, but he knew it was going to be a really dangerous job. The Lees killed four men during a recent attempt to arrest them. Two of those men were the rancher's brothers, and the rancher pleaded with Thomas to take the case. Thomas promised he would think about it. The Lee brothers were hiding out in Indian territory north of Texas, and nobody went in there unless they absolutely had to. Much of Indian territory was rugged and untamed. The terrain provided a number of natural hideouts for thieves and murderers. Lawmen could quickly and easily

find themselves in the middle of an ambush. A lawman who knew that as well as anyone was Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves. By this point, Reeves had been crisscrossing the Badlands for nearly 15 years. Heck Thomas wasn't a federal marshal yet, but he knew the law. And the law said that the Indian nations had their own tribal laws and police forces. The only way a white man could legally stay in the territory was to marry a Native American woman. And that's what the Lee brothers did. Several more posses from Texas tried and failed to capture the Lees. Heck, Thomas dithered, knowing that he had no authority in Indian territory. But finally, on June 5th, he succumbed to the lure of excitement and set off for the border. He had an idea. On the way north, Thomas stopped to pick up his good friend, Jim Taylor,

whom he'd met while chasing the Sam Bass gang. Taylor had a deputy marshal's commission, so Thomas proposed an idea. What if they used Taylor's authority as a marshal to ride into Indian territory and flush the Lees back down to Texas? Then they could legally arrest the killers and collect the reward. It sounded like a good plan to Jim Taylor, and they started their trip. When Heck Thomas set out for Indian Territory that day in June, he weighed 171 pounds. When he returned to Fort Worth exactly three months later, he weighed 132 pounds. It was a long, blisteringly hot summer in Indian

territory. Heck and Jim didn't flush the outlaws back into Texas, but they figured the outlaws would have to come back to Texas at some point to steal more cattle. Thomas, Taylor, and their posse stayed close to the outlaw's trail. Then, on September 7, 1878, Thomas got lucky. He received a tip from a rancher who thought the brothers had cut his pasture fence. Thomas, along with Taylor and the posse, crept up to the man's homestead and hid in the brush. Several hours later, they watched the outlaws bring up their horses to drink and rest. From 40 yards away, the posse hollered for the Lees to surrender. The Lees chose to go down fighting. A shootout roared to life in the North Texas ranch, and when the gun smoke cleared, the Lee brothers were dead. No one in Thomas' posse was wounded. Heck Thomas and Jim Taylor collected the reward,

which had risen to $7,000. Movers and shakers in Fort Worth swarmed Thomas, begging him to run for sheriff or take a job with the Texas Rangers. But much to the chagrin of his wife, Belle, Heck Thomas wanted none of that. The day the Lee brothers were buried, the self-made detective started filling out paperwork to become a deputy U.S. Marshal at Fort Smith, Arkansas. He thought the Lee gang might be the hardest chase he ever gave, but he was wrong. That came courtesy of the killers known as the Wild Bunch, or, more formally, the Doolin-Dalton Gang. Next time on Legends of the Old West, Heck Thomas plays a role in forming the legendary trio of

lawmen known as the Three Guardsmen. They hunt the thieving, murderous Doolin Dalton gang and try to tame the lawlessness of Oklahoma territory. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week for new episodes. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials and exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships begin at just $5 per month. This series was researched and written by Julia Bricklin. Original music by Rob Vallier. Copy editing by me, Chris Wimmer, and I'm your host and producer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening.

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