ROUGH AND READY
Cowboy, buffalo hunter, Indian fighter, rustler and lawman Ben Daniels was on intimate terms with both sides of the law. He nonetheless enjoyed the favor of 26th U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, who stuck by Ben in the face of determined and embarrassing political opposition and appointed him U.S. marshal for Arizona Territory. Daniels had served with Roosevelt and the Rough Riders in the 1898 Spanish-American War, thus forging a bond of shared experience and loyalty that transcended the brutal politics of the United States at the turn of the 20th century.
Benjamin Franklin Daniels, born on Nov. 4, 1852, in LaSalle County, Ill., to Aaron and Mariah (née Sanders) Daniels, was the youngest of nine children. In 1854 his mother, four sisters and two brothers died of cholera while his father was away from home. Ben appeared dead but was rescued by the attentions of a neighbor who revived the baby with a dose of brandy. Sisters Elizabeth and Maria also survived the scourge. Aaron Daniels remarried a widow named Esther Stickley, 21 years his junior, who had four boys, and this second marriage produced three more children. When Ben was 11 the family moved to Franklin County, Kan.
At age 16 Ben left home to seek work in Texas and for the next few years did turns as a cowboy and buffalo hunter. Meandering back up the trail to Kansas, he made the acquaintance of such Dodge City notables as Bat Masterson, Fred Singer and Bill Tilghman. In 1877 Daniels saw action as an Indian fighter, participating in a retaliatory campaign against Comanche raiders with a company of buffalo hunters in cooperation with the Army. Soon thereafter he again escaped death, surviving a bout with smallpox. Young Daniels was indeed something of a scrapper. In one ugly fight an adversary bit off the lobe of
