The Wild West of Yester-Year
The Three Guardsmen
By Rachel Kovaciny
If I asked you to name three famous lawmen who helped tame the Wild West, you
might say people like Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Pat Garrett, Wild Bill Hickok,
or the Earp brothers. Each of whom could fill up my whole column by themselves.
I may write about them at some point, but today, I’m here to share a little
about three lawmen who teamed up to take down some of the most famous outlaws of
their day.
Deputy US Marshals Bill Tilghman, Heck Thomas, and Chris Madsen joined forces
around 1890. They set about cleaning up the lawlessness in what is now part of
Oklahoma state, then called Indian Territory. Together, they reportedly
apprehended over three hundred lawbreakers by the end of the decade.
The outlaws they hunted down nicknamed them the Three Guardsmen. As they
continued to fight crime year after year, they lived up to the name. Even if
you’ve never heard of them, you’ve undoubtedly heard of one criminal gang they
broke up: the Doolin Gang, known as the Wild Bunch. After Heck Thomas and Chris
Madsen dissolved the Dalton Gang, its surviving members formed this gang. The
Doolin Gang loved to rob banks, trains, and stagecoaches, then run across the
border into Indian Territory to hide.
Five Native American tribes governed Indian Territory, but had no jurisdiction over white people, so outlaws turned the area into a sanctuary for bad men. It was common for peace officers venturing into the territory to get shot outright before they could find the people they were pursuing. (If you’ve ever read the book True Grit by Charles Portis, or seen one of the movie versions, you may recall this is the situation faced by Mattie Ross and Rooster Cogburn.) The Three Guardsmen invaded the lawless regions to hunt down outlaws otherwise immune to justice.
A large group of US Marshals surrounded the Doolin Gang in Ingalls, Oklahoma, in 1893, to smash the gang. That effort, known as the Battle of Ingalls, resulted in the death of three marshals and two innocent bystanders. Seeing that a large force of lawmen was ineffective at fighting these outlaws, US Marshal Evett Nix pulled the Three Guardsmen off their other duties and tasked them with bringing the Doolin Gang to justice. For years, they pursued members of the gang all across the west, capturing or killing the principal members. Each of the Three Guardsmen brought unique abilities to the team. Bill Tilghman was a Midwesterner who excelled at tracking. Heck Thomas was a Georgia-born sharp-shooter. Chris Madsen was a Danish immigrant with a talent for organization and planning. Relentless in pursuing their duties, they made a formidable peacekeeping force. After smashing the Doolin Gang, the Three Guardsmen went their separate ways. The increasingly civilized territory no longer needed their combined forces. Though all three continued to serve as deputy US Marshals for some years after, each eventually moved on to other jobs.
Heck Thomas became the chief of police in Lawton, Oklahoma, where he died in
1912. Bill Tilghman served on the Oklahoma state senate for a time before
becoming town marshal for the city of Cromwell, Oklahoma. He was murdered there
in 1924. One month later, the town burned to the ground. While no culprit was
ever officially found, it’s widely believed Chris Madsen and some of Tilghman’s
other lawman friends set the blaze because the town sought no justice for
Tilghman’s murder. Chris Madsen served with Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders
during the Spanish American war. He later became the US Marshal over all of
Oklahoma state. He died in 1944 at 93.
The Three Guardsmen serve as a shining example of courage and tenacity in
pursuit of justice. I think it’s a shame they’re not remembered as widely as
other lawmen of the era, but they never sought notoriety in life. Their simple
aim was to uphold and defend the law, and they had incredible success in
accomplishing that goal.