Mean As Hell: The Life of a New Mexico Lawman

By Dee Harkey, Charles R. Brice and Gene Roberts

New Mexico rancher and lawman Dee (Daniel R.) Harkey describes himself as having “been shot at more times than any man in the world not engaged in war.” Mean as Hell, originally published in 1948 when Harkey was 83, is his detailed, witty autobiography about his youth in San Saba County of west Texas, where in 1882 he learned from his brother Joe, the sheriff, to “be damned sure you don’t get killed, but don’t kill anybody unless you have to” and his adult life in Eddy County after moving to Karlsbad (then Eddy) in 1890.

Harkey served as a New Mexico peace officer from 1893 until 1911. Among the many cattle rustlers, train robbers, and other outlaws he confronted were Jim Miller, whom Harkey fingers as Pat Garrett’s real killer, and the Dalton Gang. Harkey observes that, in 1948, “cattle stealing has gone out of fashion. We’ve gotten civilized. Instead..., we now have statesman who practice nepotism, pad the public payrolls and graft as much as they think they can get away with (in an honorable way, of course) just like the folks back east.”

Readers interested in many aspects of the territorial and outlaw West will enjoy Dee Harkey’s lively stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Borodino Books
• Release date: Dec 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789127782

Dee Harkey

DANIEL RILEY “DEE” HARKEY (1866-1958) was a lawman credited with cleaning up the criminal dives in early-day Carlsbad, New Mexico. Born near Richland Springs in San Saba County, Texas, on March 27, 1866, he married Sophia Caroline New (1869-1935) in Beeville, Texas, on August 4, 1886. He later visited Carlsbad, then Eddy, and returned to Texas. In 1892, he moved his family to the little settlement of Eddy in New Mexico and operated a meat market on South Canal Street. He was appointed Deputy U.S. Marshal in 1893 and held this position for many years. He was a peace officer until 1911, during which time he was a deputy sheriff of Eddy County, cattle inspector for the Cattle Raisers Association of Texas and the Cattle Sanitary Board of New Mexico. Harkey retired in 1911 from public service and engaged in extensive ranching, livestock and farming in the Black River area, 15 miles south of Carlsbad. In 1934, he again took up residence in his Carlsbad home, which was established in 1903, where he resided until his death on June 17, 1958, aged 92. Harkey recorded his gun-toting, criminal chasing history in the book, Mean as Hell, in 1948. CHARLES R. BRICE (18970-1963) was a Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court, who had a distinguished 32-year career as a judge in New Mexico, beginning first at Roswell as a District Court judge. Born in Kaufman County, Texas in 1870, he was admitted to law practice in New Mexico in 1904. He was elected a judge of the former Fifth Judicial District in 1918. After entering law practice in Santa Fe in 1926, he was elected to the State Supreme Court in 1934. He retired in 1950, aged 80, and died in 1963.

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Text originally published in 1948 under the same title.

© Borodino Books 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

THE LIFE OF A NEW MEXICO LAWMAN

MEAN as HELL

by Dee Harkey

Foreword by Judge Charles R. Brice of Roswell

Line drawings by Gene Roberts

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 4

PREFACE 5

FOREWORD 6

ILLUSTRATIONS 8

1 — THIRTEEN OF US CHILDREN 9

2 — ON MY OWN 13

3 — DEALING WITH BAD MEN 19

4 — I GET MARRIED 28

5 — I MOVE TO NEW MEXICO 34

6 — EDDY COUNTY ORGANIZED, 1889 38

7 — SIX SETS OF DUTIES 49

8 — FREE PASS THROUGH MEXICO 53

9 — MEN WHO MADE LAW 59

10 — JOHN WESLEY HARDIN AND WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 66

11 — WHEN BUTCHERS WERE RUSTLERS 70

12 — TROUBLE: DAVE KEMP 77

13 — THE LIFE OF MARTIN MOROE 83

14 — THIS WAS THE WEST 86

15 — SITTING IT OUT WITH CLABE 92

16 — BAD MEN AND FRIENDS 99

17 — MEAN AS HELL 106

18 — THE GARRETT-LEE FEUD 116

19 — THE DALTON GANG IN NEW MEXICO 120

20 — CLOSING YEARS 134

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 139

DEDICATION

To the memory of my beloved wife

SOPHIE NEW HARKEY

whose uncomplaining devotion and fortitude

through all those troublous times, supported

and encouraged me in my hazardous work, this

volume is dedicated

PREFACE

IN OFFERING THIS LITTLE BOOK TO the public, I am only too well aware of its many shortcomings. Fellows like me don’t write books. My only purpose in writing this one is to leave some sort of a firsthand account of what the conditions were. I want to tell how people lived out here in the wide open spaces in the beginning, when there really were spaces and they really were wide and open.

This was the West. It was a country of considerable crime, and great friendships. We thought we understood what made some men commit their crimes, even when we were doing everything we could to prevent them. This was a developing country, with the uncertainties of all new development; I will not preach too much, but if sometimes I say what I think about the old days, and the new times, I believe that is my privilege, as it is yours to disagree. But I will write what I know about personally, and you may draw your own conclusions about me, and about the times I write of, and about the outlaws I dealt with, the meanest in the world.

Before I undertook to write this, I asked a friend about getting some educated person to do the writing, and he said, Hell, no, Dee, don’t do that! You’ll lose the flavor and tang of your story if you do. And to my reply that I didn’t know what to write about or how to say it, he said, "Just tell the story of your life from the time you were born until you retired from public service. Tell it just as you have told parts of it to me. It’s the story people will be interested in, not the words. They can find plenty of them in the dictionary."

And because my friend’s advice happens to be the only way I know, I have adopted that method. I only hope that the same miraculous good luck which stuck by and protected me against the bullets of the early day bad men will still hold out against the potshots of literary critics who may deplore my literary errors. I will neither admit nor deny any charge that I have broken every rule of grammar and of literary composition. I just wouldn’t know. So, like the lawyers used to plead sometimes when some criminal I had arrested was arraigned before the court, and they did not want to plead him guilty and yet didn’t want to go to trial, I’ll just plead nolo contendere, and let it go at that. I only wanted to tell my story, not to educate anybody.

I am indebted to Mr. Robert Bunker, of the University of New Mexico Press, for the selection of incidents for publication and the order of their arrangement.

D. R. (DEE) HARKEY

FOREWORD

THE INCIDENTS IN THIS BOOK ARE related in the words of Dee Harkey. It is his story, told in his own way. From personal knowledge, and knowledge gained from the Old Timers residing at Karlsbad when I moved there in 1903, I am confident that every episode related is true, but usually understates Harkey’s part in it. He tells the story without bragging, embellishment, or attempt at dramatization, as one would relate the ordinary events of the day. No ghost writer or collaborator revised or edited the manuscript. Mr. Robert Bunker, of the University of New Mexico Press, who selected the incidents narrated from a hundred or more, (many of those not included should be preserved as history of the times) felt that any revision would destroy the original flavor of the book.

When Dee’s father, the Rev. Harkey, was dying he burdened his sixteen-year-old son Joe with a family of twelve younger children. The responsibility was assumed and, considering the times, the environment, and his youth, Joe did a splendid job in performing the trust. Joe was not yet eighteen years old when selected as second in command of a company organized to fight the Comanche Indians.

There must have been fine blood in the Harkey boys for them to have lived through such times and in such environments and come through as respected citizens. Three of the boys died natural deaths; three were assassinated, each being just twenty-one years of age at the time; and two are living. The five girls have died. The three boys who were peace officers have remarkable records. They dealt with the toughest criminals the world has ever known, yet none ever killed a man while acting officially, though they often took desperate chances with their lives.

Two of the three that were murdered at twenty-one years of age each killed his slayer before he died. The third was shot from a house, and the wounded boy put three bullets through the door from which the shot came. His murderer was killed, before his victim died, by one of the Harkey brothers—which one, we are not informed.

I came to New Mexico in 1903 and soon met Harkey. My association with him was close, and we have been intimate friends for forty-five years. I lived in West Texas and New Mexico for sixty years and was well acquainted with many of those men, good and bad, about whom Harkey has written. I have known many of the officers of the West who constantly risked their lives in their efforts to enforce the law. Harkey was the peer of any and far superior to all but a very few. Ordinarily a Western officer in those days never gave a man who had attempted to murder him a second chance; but Harkey simply could not kill a man after he had the drop on him, though he could have saved himself and his family much worry had he killed Kemp, Slaughter, Bush, Merchant, Baker, and others after the first attempt of each to murder him. But he could not kill a disarmed man, though he endangered his own life many times by not doing so.

The trailing of thieves and murderers was a dangerous business, but except on unusual occasions Harkey did his trailing alone. When an outlaw captured him in the snow he not only talked the man out of killing him, but induced him to surrender. Most officers would have been well satisfied to escape death; but not Harkey. When force was impossible he successfully used persuasion.

Much is left to the reader’s imagination in reading of the capture of Slaughter and his companion after Harkey trailed them to the roundup in Arizona; but how that incident might have been dramatized! He had the thieves handcuffed before the eighty cow men knew it. He moved back a few steps and told the wagon boss he was going to take them, and proceeded to do so over the protest of the boss, backed by eighty well-armed men. The very audacity of the capture helped him through; and, too, both he and Henry Harden were well known, and the boss of the outfit no doubt thought the loss of face was better than the risk of a fight for a couple of thieves.

I was living at Memphis, Texas, when Jim Miller moved there after he was acquitted of the killing of Bud Frazer. He had joined the Texas Rangers, and was operating in Hall and adjoining counties in West Texas. He bought a hotel at Memphis, which was operated by Mrs. Miller. Counting the eleven men Miller told me that he had killed prior to moving to Memphis, he was credited with having killed nine others, though he was not tried for all these murders. If he did kill all of these men, and I have reasons to believe he did, he was the slayer of twenty men at least, though he told me he never kept a notch stick for the Mexicans he killed along the border. He darkly hinted to me that he had killed others, but he did not disclose their identity. He never smoked, drank, gambled, or swore. He was just a killer—the worst man I ever knew.

Dee Harkey is now in his eighty-third year, and is among the last of the brave officers who helped to rid the Southwest of thieves and other outlaws. His once dancing, steel blue eyes are dim from cataracts, and his gun hand is not so steady, but he is mentally alert, with a memory for names and events that is most remarkable. He takes a keen interest in the affairs of today, and will never grow old in spirit, though his body is frail.

Harkey’s exploits deserve to be recorded as a part of the history of Texas and New Mexico. It is fortunate that he has been induced to write this book, which I believe will prove fascinating reading for those who are interested in the history of the Southwest.

CHARLES R. BRICE

Roswell, New Mexico

January 1, 1948

ILLUSTRATIONS

Chief Justice of New Mexico, who was saved from assassination by Dee Harkey

CHARLES R. BRICE

Hung by a mob at Ada, Oklahoma

THE END OF JIM MILLER

AND FRIENDS

Who has been shot at more times than any man in the world not engaged in war

D. R. (DEE) HARKEY

1 — THIRTEEN OF US CHILDREN

I WAS BORN MARCH 27, 1866, AT RICHLAND Springs, San Saba County, Texas. My parents died in March and April in 1869, when I was three years old. There were only fifteen days’ difference in their deaths. There were thirteen of us children in the family, eight boys and five girls. It was my father’s request that Joe, my oldest brother, who was seventeen years old, take charge of the family and property and raise us children. John was the second oldest boy. Joe and he ran the farm in 1869 and 1870.

In those days, the Comanche Indians depredated in that country. They killed many people, and stole and carried off everything they could get hold of. In 1870, 110 Indians surrounded the field where Joe and John were plowing and attempted to cut them off from the house. They succeeded in cutting Joe off at the field fence gate. John, however, beat them to the house. We still used flintlock rifles, muskets, and cap and ball pistols; but some had Spencer repeating rifles. John got off his horse at the gate, ran into the house and got a pistol to take out to Joe. He threw the pistol to Joe, intending for him to catch it, but it fell to the ground. One of the Indians leaped off of his horse and picked it up before Joe had a chance to get it. He shot it off several times over Joe’s head, trying to make him give up the horses. During this time, John ran back into the house and got a Spencer rifle and a pistol for each of them and carried them back. Then he and Joe took the horses to the barn and fastened them up. The barn was made of hewed logs, and it was impossible for the Indians to break into it to get the horses. Then they went back to the house and gathered up the children that were scattered all about and took them into the house so that they could protect them.

Annie, one of my sisters, was on the creek fishing when she heard the horses’ feet as the Indians were running around the field trying to cut Joe and John off from the house. She thought it was a bunch of cow punchers rounding up cattle, so she climbed a tree to watch them, and discovered it was Indians.

Another sister, Julia, was cut off from the house on the opposite side of the creek, and before her brothers could rescue her, she had cried and screamed until her tongue had swollen and she could not talk. Annie had sent me to the house with the fish. I was in the yard when John ran into the house to get the pistol for Joe.

We ran out of food while the Indians had us surrounded. At that time almost everyone used tobacco and they bought it by the caddy. A caddy contained about twenty-five plugs. There was a caddy of tobacco under the bed and a barrel of homemade molasses in the house. I got hungry, so I took a plug of tobacco and dipped it in the molasses and then licked the molasses off the tobacco. After a few licks, I was very sick. When the older ones got me straightened out from this tobacco drunk, Joe and John hitched two yoke of oxen to a big, homemade wagon with one of those big, blue beds on it. One rode on each side of the wagon, each of them armed to keep the Indians from attacking us. They took us over to Uncle Bille Harkey’s place, on the San Saba River. We were kept there until the Comanches left our place.

The Indian raids were a nightmare to the pioneers for years. Our bedding consisted, in those days, of a feather bed to sleep on and a feather quilt to cover us. We had plenty of those nice, roomy beds, but when we got home, the Indians had broken into the house, tore open all the ticks, poured all the feathers out, and took the ticks, so we had nothing left in the way of bedding. They also cut down all the corn in the field and carried it out and fed it to their horses.

At that time, the people of the community organized a ranger company, called the Minute Company, to fight the Indians. A man by the name of Dan Roberts was made captain of this company. He was an uncle of Mrs. J. F. Hinkle, of Roswell. Joe, my brother, was made his lieutenant. John was left to take care of the property and us children, and Joe went with the company.

This work with the Minute Company was not any part-time business, but a full time job, and for a time we did not see much of Joe. But, in 1873, the Texas legislature passed a law making all Rangers peace officers. The Minute Company became peace officers also. Joe quit them because some of his men were under indictment and he didn’t want to arrest them, so he came home.

I was working for Captain Woods the winter when I was six; he was a Confederate soldier in the Civil War. I carried in chips, rustled milk calves, and milked his cows for twenty-five cents a day; but there was plenty for me to do for Joe when he came home, so I went with him. Joe rigged up a wagon and team, and he would buy cowhides, or chickens, or anything else he could sell, and carry them to Austin to market. Then he would load his wagon with any kind of produce he thought the farmers and ranchers would buy, and while he was selling out this load, he would buy cowhides and poultry again and go back to Austin to sell it. Joe took me with him on all these trips.

Of the thirteen of us, only John stayed at the farm after those next two years. In 1873, my oldest sister, Jane, died. Julia married and moved to Live Oak County, Texas, and took Martha with her. Levi also went to Live Oak County, and worked for Ammons and Harmon there. When Sarah (Diden) married she took my youngest brother, Eli, and my youngest sister, Annie, to live with her. Jim went to work for Wash Tanklesee, on the Concho River in Tom Green County. Jeff went to work for Dave Adams, on Onion Creek in McCulloch County, and John stayed at the farm.

Then, in 1874, Joe married and moved to Kimble County, Texas. He took me and Mose, my younger brother, with him. He settled on a little creek, called Little Saline, and engaged in truck farming. Mose and I did the farming. He made lots of sauerkraut and sold it with his garden products to the soldiers at Fort Mason, and the Rangers who were camped up in Menard County.

Joe was restless and did not sleep very well. Mose and I did all the milking as well as the farming, and many times we would stay at the corral after we had finished milking at night, and ride the calves and have a generally good time. When we would go back to the house, if we woke Joe up, he would think it was daylight and send us back to milk the cows again. Many times when we went back, we just lay down in the corner of the fence and went to sleep. Joe sometimes got uneasy about us and he would hunt us up, and usually he would give us a switching when he found us.

He always sent me after the work horses early every morning. One morning, I went after them and I heard a lot of bells ringing and I wondered what was the matter. When I got to the work horses, I caught one of them, put my bridle on him and unhobbled him, then I got on him bareback and rode up on a hill where these bells were ringing to see what had happened. When I got up there, eight Comanches had almost all of the horses in the country rounded up. They saw me about the time I saw them.