The Hero Of Terroy: The Life And Times Of U.S. Marshal Arthfael Evans

By S.D. Gripton and Sally Dillon-Snape

This book marks the return of the epic Western; this tale of the remarkable Arthfael Evans; the Welsh-born boy miner; the New York Gang Member; the gunfighter, the protection officer and finally, and most famously, the U.S. Marshal and the man who almost single-handedly saved the town of Terroy during the summer of 1860 before Kansas even became a member of the Union States. At his time during all these lives standing with him from the age of eleven was Isobel Jones, the fiercely loyal Methodist girl who first ran away with him from Wales. Almost as deadly as Evans with rifle and pistol and knife, Isobel Jones remained with Evans throughout his career and throughout the Genmon Wars, when a rich rancher threatened a whole town because his wife had deserted him. She stood with Evans as he defended the town and attempted to build the new residents into some kind of defensive force against the Cowboys and ranch-hands sent to kill them. This is a wonderfully researched book about the life of both Arthfael Evans and Isobel Jones and the people they met on their travels, the lovers they took, the friends they made and the fights they fought. The most heavily researched book yet compiled by the remarkable author S.D. Gripton.

• Language: English
• Publisher: S.D. Gripton
• Release date: Mar 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463883532

S.D. Gripton

S.D. Gripton novels and real crime books are written by Dennis Snape, who is married to Sally who originate from North Wales and Manchester respectively and who met 18 years ago. I work very hard to make a reading experience a good one, with good plots and earthy language. I enjoy writing and hope readers enjoy what I have written. I thank everyone who has ever looked at at one of my books.

Book preview

The Hero of Terroy

The Life and Times Of

U.S. Marshal Arthfael Evans

An Authorized Biography

Compiled By

Sally Dillon-Snape

© Sally Dillon-Snape & Dennis Snape (2024)

The moral right of the authors is hereby asserted in accordance with The Copyright Act 1988

All characters and events in this publication other than those of fact and historical significance available in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons living and dead is purely coincidental

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher

This is the deeply researched story of Arthfael Evans; Welsh boy miner; New York gang member; gunfighter; protection officer; the man who went up against Wild Bill Hickok ten times in a fast-drawer competition; and, most famously, a U.S. Marshal, and the man who led the resistance during the Genmon Ranch wars and saved a town

With thanks to all those who allowed me to share their diaries and journals and oral memories. Without them and their ancestors, there would be no biography and the remarkable Arthfael Evans would be forgotten

This book is dedicated to the memory of Arthfael and Isobel Evans

R.I.P.

***

Chapter 1

Terroy

East Kansas Territory

Spring

1860

Shab Murdock had had his one good eye on the girl for weeks. In his mind, in his sick imagination, in his dreams, she happily slept with him in his tent, she loved his company and admired his manliness, which was some dream for Shab Murdock. In reality, he was less than a worm of a human being; a sniveling sly individual who knew only how to act sneakily and underhandedly and somebody who could never face up to any other grown-up person. He was a yellow-boned coward to his miserable core. He’d killed though; he’d stabbed and shot other men but only ever in the back; he’d ambushed men individually and as a member of various gangs that were made up of human beings almost as miserable and antisocial as he was hisself. Shab Murdock had robbed and cheated and killed and along the way he’d lost his right eye in a saloon bar brawl that he’d made his best efforts to step away from, but got caught up in nevertheless, and that’s why he’d only had one good eye on the girl. The other eye was covered with a filthy leather patch.

As he stood across the street from her home; hidden by the long late evening shadows cast by the corner of a newly built hardware store, stinking up the immediate area with his acrid body odor, being welcome almost nowhere, his leathers worn and shiny, his boots cracked and dust covered, his brown Stetson limp upon his head, his long hair a tangle of ruined tresses; he dreamed his dreams even while being fully awake and standing beneath the warmth of a fading spring evening. The girl he was watching was a beauty in a long green and white dress; the daughter of a preacher man; the town’s first preacher man; and Shab Murdock believed she was just right for him.

Shab had been born the son of strict Scottish religious migrants who had disowned him years earlier, who wanted nothing more to do with him after he stole from them and from their friends and he, in his turn, had lost all respect for his hard-working God-fearing parents. He had also abandoned his strict religious upbringing and turned feral. Shab Murdock was only twenty-years-of-age and he’d been on his own since he was twelve, he didn’t know much, but one thing he did know, the preacher’s girl was right for him.

It was still reasonably warm in the deep dark of night when he grabbed her. She slept on the ground floor of her home; a brand-new preacher’s house built by the church faithful; and she was fairly new to the town of Terroy, along with her preacher father and her hard-working, pretty mother. The girl believed that she slept safely with an open window, attempting to take advantage of any breeze that may develop during the warmth of the night. Shab Murdock knew the window would be open and he reached in, unhooked it and pulled it wide, slipping his five-feet-two-inch skinny frame through the space and into the girl’s bedroom, moving much as a snake moved as it crawled almost silently across hard scrub ground. He knew which room she slept in on the ground floor of the house; he’d studied her movements for long enough; seen her lantern being extinguished every night; imagined her climbing into bed. Inside the room he stood over her, leering down at her beautiful young face, her frame hidden beneath a white sheet, his mind already aflame with a sense of anticipation. She stirred momentarily, as if sensing his presence and he stepped back into the shadows of her bedroom until she quieted and began rhythmically breathing in sleep again.

If he was going to do it, he had to do it now before he lost his nerve so, with unfamiliar steely reserve, Shab Murdock stepped forward with unheard steps, placed his left hand over the girl’s mouth and dragged her up from her bed with his right, forcing her into him, pushing her face into his bony chest, holding her tight as she came to her senses and struggled weakly in confusion at what was happening to her. Before she could make any sound, Shab Murdock pushed open the window, leaned into it and lifted her out as he fell forward and rolled sideways along with her, down into the dust, his hand still over her mouth, still holding her tightly. He climbed to his feet with the girl held in his arms, he looked around, observed that he had not been seen by anyone and carried the girl away before she could make any significant sound.

He carried her through the darkness of Terroy; gas-lighting having not yet arrived in the small town as it had back East where Shab’s parents lived; and he strode and stumbled along a narrow gap between newly built stores and up the hill where Camptown was; Camptown being an area on a hillside above the new town where families tented close together in ex-Army canvas, until they could build their own homes and stores. Terroy was growing quickly now that the Territory had been given permission for people to develop the land, the population growing from barely seven hundred to over one-hundred-thousand in barely six years. All the houses in Terroy were being built along, or close to, the river. More people had arrived following the acceptance of the Wyandotte Constitution of 4th October of 1859, the fourth application Kansas had made to join the Union as a Free State, which had been accepted by the House in February of 1860. Anytime now, the Senate would accept the Constitution, the President would sign, and Kansas would become a Free State of the Union. The town of Terroy was benefitting from the Constitution and the vote in the House, people were moving in.

There was little movement in and around Camptown at that time of a deep starlit night; some fires burned low, solitary shadows moved between tents, Shab Murdock being one such shadow, holding the girl tightly to him.

The girl began to struggle as he carried her so he whispered in her right ear; If’n yo don’t lay still ah’ll drop yo down onto th’earth and kill you right here. Yor only chance of life is to stay still.

The girl lay still in his grip as Shab Murdock carried her away to a grubby tent that was set some distance away from all the others because he was a man not liked by the people of the Camp; he was a man not trusted; a man mostly despised; a man alone who stared with his one eye yearningly at females; a man who had no family in the Camp and no friends. He was not considered to be part of their community. Except Shab Murdock didn’t want to be part of a community, or be part of a family, he just wanted what he wanted. Inside his tent he threw the girl onto her back, knocking the air out of her. Thirty minutes later she lay dead, her throat cut.

Tying his few measly belongings in a bundle and lifting them to his thin shoulders, Shab Murdock moved away from the tent, climbed up on his stolen horse, settled into his stolen saddle and rode away. Barely anybody in Camptown noticed his leaving. He loved the wild West did Shab Murdock; it was a place where a man could get almost anything he wanted; all that man had to do was take it.

***

Terroy

In the town of Terroy, along by the river, with the sparsely grass-covered hill inland and central to it, homes were being built on land owned by a bad-tempered, tee-total, mean-mouthed, sanctimonious Scotchman named Angus McGivern, a rich Scotch immigrant Easterner, living in New York City, who’d purchased 160 acres, the most a man could purchase at that time, and who had built a hotel, bringing in builders to construct it. The Terroy Hotel was 12 rooms, a dining room, a meeting room but no bar and no saloon. Angus McGivern being a member of a strict Scottish temperance sect that frowned upon alcohol; as the centre-point for the new town. He named the town after his sons; Terence and Royston; neither of whom ever visited Kansas, their father visiting only once. He purchased his first 160 acres for $1.25 an acre and was selling it in one-acre plots for $6 dollars an acre and people were buying it. He was also considering purchasing another 160 acres through one of his son’s names adjacent to where the new town was being built. He thought he might charge $8 or $10 dollars an acre for that land for the new homes, maybe more.

The town considered that it wasn’t yet large enough to have an elected committee or council to organise the town so it had no appointed or elected Sheriff, the only lawman in the area being a US Marshal, who was often absent on business, who provided law enforcement for many similar towns that were springing up all over Kansas.

The newly arrived Reverend Keeler prayed to his God and cried with his wife and his parishioners and asked for comfort at the loss of his beloved daughter, Casey, murdered by a man the preacher had welcomed into his church, a man he had offered food to, the stinking little man from Camptown who’d run into the night.

The preacher, his wife and his new parishioners prayed to their God for justice, but they would have to wait.

***

The broad outline of this account is taken from articles in the defunct Terroy Daily News – a short lived, single-sheet newspaper of the time – printed 1860; and the journals of Reverend Jonathan Keeler, contemporaneous of 1860; published by consent; and the oral memories of Isobel Evans circa 1910; all by permission

***

Four Months Later

Osage

Osage County

Summer

1860

Shab Murdock was in the money. He was almost 100 miles away from where he’d killed the preacher’s daughter, living in the South of the Territory, where, only two nights previously, he’d been invited into a hotel room of one, Leonard Hartley, a businessman who had recently moved to town with a view to investing there. A somewhat cleaner Shab had been befriended by forty-to-year-old Leonard after a casual meeting in the saloon. Later still, following a meal together, back in the hotel room where Leonard Hartley was staying, Shab Murdock knocked him out, gagged him, bound him and pushed him beneath the bed Leonard had been expecting to sleep in. Shab Murdock then found, when he ransacked the room, a significant stash of cash, which meant he could now get hisself a drink or two before moving on, before Leonard Hartley was discovered. He was comfortably sitting in the saloon with five other men; his Palomino horse, the result of yet another robbery, tied up outside the saloon along with a dozen other horses; and he believed he was rich and satisfied with life…

…until Evans arrived.

Shab Murdock was inside the saloon throwing whisky down his neck as if there were a world shortage, buying for five other men who set around the table with him. He was happy beyond belief, for the first time in his life, he had money and he had friends.

Shab noticed Evans the moment he entered the saloon and his heart skipped a beat. Everybody in the place noticed Evans enter and lots of hearts skipped a beat.

For Evans had a reputation that traveled ahead of him. When he stepped into a place, justice followed as surely as death followed life. Those who had committed crimes and were present in the saloon that day all reached for their pistols though none drew them. Maybe it wasn’t him that Evans wanted, was what each man was thinking; maybe it was somebody else he was looking for. The saloon sank into a distinct lack of movement and a deep silence settled upon customers as they waited with collectively held breath.

Evans was an imposing-looking person; he stood six-feet-two-inches in his bare feet, was dark-haired, brown-eyed, clean-shaven and significantly taller in his fine boots and he was built like lean beef, sun-browned and with a tightness of bulk, flesh being nothing more than muscled coverng for his bones, no spare on him, no fat. He pushed all the way through a pair of saloon doors with long strides, his boots resonating loudly on the wooden floor, in the silence that often accompanied his entrances. He halted briefly in the comparative darkness of the bar after stepping in out of the sun, taking off his white hat, wiping his brow with the back of his hat-holding hand, adjusting his sight, giving any miscreant in the place the chance of shooting him before he replaced his hat, killing off that chance, as he looked around the room, every eye on him. A U.S. Marshal’s silver circular badge with the star central glistened on his chest in the gloom of the room.

The vast majority of customers knew who he was by sight; others only by reputation, but all knew him. He was Evans, US Marshal; composed in argument, obsessive in his pursuit of whatever felon he was chasing, not given to bribe or to threat, extremely quick with both knife and gun, always intent on serving his warrants. But as he stood alone only three long strides into the place, who he may be there to arrest was not the most urgent question on everybody’s lips. The most urgent question on almost every mans’ lips who knew him, or knew of him, as they sat or stood in the saloon, nobody moving, nobody talking, the question they all wanted answering was; where was the woman, the lady?

As Evans strode slowly on long legs across the room further towards the bar, his boots sounding like thunderclaps, men moving away from him, making room, the lady in question stepped quietly into the saloon, following Evans, as she always did. She held a brand new manually cocked lever action Spencer rifle with a 30-inch barrel in her hands, where a weapon of that type always seemed to be. The rifle was fed by a 7-shot tube held in the butt of the gun; she had other tubes in the pockets of her elkskin jacket; and she could load and fire 15-20 shots a minute if ever she was ever required to do so. Almost everybody in the Kansas Territories knew this fact and certainly almost everybody in the saloon in Osage knew it. She stared around the room without removing her brown leather hat; her long fair hair streaming from beneath it, tied back with a simple blue ribbon; her green speckled eyes sparkling in the gloom, dressed in leather pants and boots and check shirt, just like Evans. She took two steps into the saloon and set herself down at the nearest table, the men who were setting at it standing immediately, beating a hasty retreat to form a group at the bar.

Marshal Evans, the bartender said nervously into the silence, his voice sounding very loud, can I get you something; something for the lady, too?

The bartender knew better than to call her a woman; a common woman; he’d seen her reaction to that more than once, so now she was a lady to everybody who was required to speak to, or about, her.

I’ll take three glasses of water, Evans said without taking his eyes from the room, the soft Welsh accent in his tone of voice lost on most of the customers, to them he just sounded eloquent, or a word such as that that they knew of.

The bartender would never have served anyone else with such a ridiculous order, especially as one of the glasses of water would be for a black man, but he said nothing to Evans, he simply poured water into three glasses and laid them on the counter.

Thank you, Evans said, as he dropped a dollar coin noisily onto the bar and lifted two glasses from it, stepping to where the lady was set and laying one glass down on the table in front of her. She did not thank him or even look at him; she concentrated on the customers in the saloon and the holding of the rifle in her hands. Another glass of water Evans took out of the saloon to where Jacob Connah stood beneath the warm sun looking after the horses and the wagon. Evans leaned forward and handed down the glass of water and Jacob smiled up at him.

T’ank yo, Marshal, Jacob said as he took the glass and held it between his large hands.

No matter, Jacob, Evans replied. Is everything quiet?

Jacob nodded, turning his head to look up and down the main street, people moving across and along it, riders, wagons, men, women and children, dust rising from them all. This was good town in Jacob’s opinion, good people in it; a large church, a large Town Hall, a Sheriff’s office, somewhere Evans should have called in as a matter of courtesy to let the Sheriff know he was in town, somewhere into which he would call following the arrest of the miscreant, if the Sheriff didn’t attempt to intervene before then.

Seems like a nice place, Jacob Connah continued.

Evans had given Jacob his surname, after a town in North Wales near to where he was born; when he’d rescued him in Missouri from an owner who was beating him senseless with a leather belt as the young man knelt and cowered in the dust. Evans thought it was unbelievably cruel and wanton. As the slave-owner lifted his arm to strike one more blow, Evans grabbed the man’s wrist and almost yanked his arm from his body. The man squealed, Evans glowered and towered over the man, eventually offering one dollar for Jacob. What he actually said was; ‘I can shoot you now or I can offer you one dollar for your slave; which will it be?’ The slave-owner had the sense to accept the dollar after knowing Evans for something less than fifteen-seconds of his life, Evans being mightily furious at the treatment he’d seen meted out. As he and the slave stood in the dust and watched the man ride away into the distance, Evans turned to the look at him.

What’s your name? Evans asked.

Jacob, boss.

Do not call me boss; I am Evans; a US Marshal; call me Marshal. How old are you?

Dunno, bo…Marshal, they tell me ah’m about twenty-years.

Were you born into slavery?

Yuss, bo…Marshal.

Evans nodded his head slowly and cogitated.

Can you read and write?

Jest a lill bit, Marshal.

Good, that will stand good for you. If anybody asks, tell them you were bought by US Marshal Arthfael Evans of the Kansas Territories and that he set you free.

Jacob stared for a long, long time.

Free, Marshal? Yo means ah is a free slave?

You are no kind of slave, Jacob; you are a free man, free to think what you will and free to live as you wish and free to do anything you want to do. What would you like to do?

Jacob thought about the question for an equally long time.

Ah kinda hoped ah cud stay with yo a lill bit, Marshal? Jacob said.

Evans cogitated for some time again.

That would be fine, Evans had replied.

Evans was not quite twenty-six years of age when he rescued the slave; he was now thirty and Jacob was still with him; and he now had a surname, Connah, and Evans said that he was twenty-four.

He now drove the wagon that the lady rode upon, and which she used to drive before Jacob arrived; the lady also taught him how to read and write better; she taught him how to use a rifle and a knife and he thought he taught her things, too.

Evans sometimes had to leave them together in the middle of nowhere when he needed to speed off to somewhere to make an urgent arrest, based on the warrants he carried in his pocket, issued by a Judge. The three of them ranged far and wide and rode together over many hundreds of wild miles of Kansas Territory as Evans; one of the U.S. Marshals’ working the Territory; acted upon his warrants.

The Federal Warrant in his pocket on this occasion was for the arrest of one; Shab Murdock; a suspected murderer of a preacher’s girl. That was the only person Evans was currently interested in, of all the men in the saloon though there were many active criminals present; but Murdock was the only person, and murder was the only crime. Any further crimes Murdock might have committed didn’t matter to him, because if he was found guilty of the one he was charged with on the warrant, he was either going to hang or be shot. It was alleged that he’d committed the crime in the town of Terroy, by the river; a place that was Evans’ home town now, the lady and Jacob’s home town, too.

Evans looked up and down the main street. The place had come a long-ways since the first time he’d visited; it was now the eighty-fourth time Evans had carried a warrant in his pocket; the numbers sticking in his mind every time he served one.

Let me know if anything changes, Jacob, or if the Sheriff comes astorming along the street.

Ah will, Marshal.

Evans nodded and re-entered the saloon, walking immediately to the bar, reclaiming his own glass of water, sipping at it, not looking at the lady, looking firstly down at the bar then turning his back on it to study the customers in the room, leaning against it, his arms hanging loosely at his sides.

Gentlemen… he said in a loud whisper, making everybody listen, adding, …ladies… because of the three scantily-clad ladies standing at the end of the bar and because of the lady at the table, who smiled at him as she set at the table, the rifle still held in her hands, …I want no trouble today. I have a Federal Warrant in my pocket that I am legally bound to act upon for the arrest of one individual who is present here, today, in this saloon. Now I know that a few of you will be guilty of something or other and you are now thinking, is the warrant for me, but it is for one person only so the rest of you can relax. To keep the peace and to stop any misunderstandings before they happen I want everybody to lay their hands upon the table at which they are set, then most of us can remain, if not friends, then peaceful acquaintances.

It was a well-known method of working by Evans and many in the room, even the guilty ones, knew it. Slowly, hands were lifted and laid flat upon tables. Shab Murdock did not place his hands upon the table at which he was sitting because in his right one he held a loaded, cocked pistol; he’d heard of Evans but had never met him, never seen him before, though he knew him the instant he entered the saloon; and if the Marshal thought he was taking him in, he was very much mistaken, he would kill the somofabitch before he allowed that to happen and he cared nothing for reputation. He was setting at a table with five other men who he’d been buying drinks for, and they didn’t place their hands on the table either.

Okay, Evans whispered, we seem to have a little bit of an impasse here… barely anybody in the room knew what an impasse was, …so what I am asking now is for all the gentlemen with their hands on their tables to quietly, and temporarily, leave the saloon. They need not depart town or ride away; I am only interested in one person and if the lady allows you to leave you will be safe.

The lady snapped a bullet noisily into the barrel of the Spencer rifle and held it more aggressively, waving it around to indicate that men should begin to move. They moved slowly; nobody wanting to be the first individual out, so a group developed and they departed at the same time; they were probably the most innocent people in the bar; the rest followed slowly, sulkily, hands hovering over pistols as the lady waved her rifle at them and Evans stared unremittingly at the group of men who set around Shab Murdock’s table. Slowly, ever so slowly, the room was cleared of the innocent and not so innocent; the guilty ones taking advantage of Evans’ largesse; the lady allowing them to leave until only the six around a single table remained inside the saloon, along with the barman and the ladies at the bar, and none of those set around that table had their hands on the table.

Evans stepped towards them, the lady rising from where she set as she circled behind the men; the men twisting their necks to look for her, to keep her in view, Evans suddenly very close though not directly within a clear shot from Shab Murdock; he was standing in such a position that there was another man between the two of them; Shab Murdock squirmed uncomfortably in his chair.

Five of you can leave, Evans whispered loudly

Which five? Shab Murdock drawled loudly; sweat breaking out on his brow, the pistol heavy in his hand.

Not you, Evans stated. And if you don’t lay the pistol on the table now, you can die where you set. Your body will do for payment; I will have served my warrant. Lay the pistol on the table.

The five other men turned to look at him.

Shab… the man on his immediate right began.

Sir, Evans interrupted, I have no idea whether you have committed serious crimes or not, but Shab Murdock, whose arrest warrant I carry in my pocket, is accused of the murder of a preacher’s daughter. He will get his day in court before a Judge and a jury. If you leave now, you will have another day to live, or even more. If the five of you decide you are going to defend Shab Murdock then you will all die with him here, today. This is not a threat I make easily, gentlemen; in fact, it is not a threat I make at all; it is a statement of fact. If you think a suspected murderer is worth dying for, then that is the way it will be.

The man to Shab Murdock’s immediate right, the man who had spoken, jumped up to his feet and almost ran from the saloon, the only person taking any notice of him being the bartender. Shab was staring at Evans with his one good eye wide open, which was where he made his great mistake. It was while he was concentrating all his attention on the US Marshal that the lady stepped up lightly behind him. As he stared, and the other four men around the table prevaricated, the lady placed the cold end of the barrel of the rifle to the base of Shab Murdock’s neck. In shock, Shab Murdock allowed the pistol he held in his right hand to slip from his sweating grip and it clattered to the wooden floor with a jarringly loud noise. He had, like many before him, failed to keep a watch out for the lady. Luckily, considering Shab had the pistol cocked and loaded, when it hit the floor, it did not fire. Another man jumped up from the table and rushed from the saloon. The three remaining, turned to look at Shab, and when they turned to look back at Evans, he had his polished wooden-handled Colt .44 pistols in his hands, their 8-inch barrels unerringly aimed in the direction of their heads. There were 12 bullets in the joint cartridges just waiting to be fired, and the pistols were deadly up to 75 yards in Evans’ hands; at four feet a person could only imagine what damage the pistols could do to a head.

Now is the time for decisions, gentlemen, he whispered. Now is the time to live or die. Shab Murdock is not your friend and after we leave here today you will probably never see him again during the rest of your lives. Is he worth dying for; are you seriously going to resist his arrest?

There was a silence during which nobody moved.

No, we are not, a man at the table stated eventually, as he pushed back his chair and raised his hands to his shoulders. Did you do it, Shab; did you murder a preacher’s daughter?

I ain’t sayin’, Davy, not in front of no Marshall, Shab Murdock snarled, as all the men stood back from the table holding their