Curly Bill Brocius
1845 - 1882
Curly Bill Brocius was born somewhere in Texas about 1840 – an ugly
gunslinger who'd kill a man on the least provocation and laugh over a
card game an hour later. He rode into Tombstone from Texas, where
he met up with one of the Clanton boys. He was invited out to the
ranch at Lewis Springs, just up the San Pedro from Charleston, where
Old Man Clanton, leader of the famed Clanton rustling empire, sat in
his big stuffed horsehair chair and ruled. From that day onward,
with young Clanton telling his old man what a gunslinging go-getter
Curly Bill was, the Texan was one of the fold.
Curly Bill had real character. He'd cut a man in two for
a dollar, or, as they used to say, steal a Camp Rucker mule for a glass
of whiskey. Curly Bill soon learned to hate the guts of Marshal
Wyatt Earp as he raised hell on Allen Street of nights with Frank
Patterson, Frank and Tom McLowery, Ike and Billy Clanton, Pony Deal,
John Ringo, and others. When Wyatt told them to unbuckle their
guns and store them behind the bar, they'd laugh in his face.
Curly Bill liked this sort of play.
Old Man Clanton took a real shine to the kinky-haired boy after he saw
him in action once or twice. He liked the way this muscular
six-footer took the lead and made his boys jump to it whenever they
robed the Wells Fargo or rustled a thousand head of cattle down into
Old Mexico or in Pima County. He was a born leader for sure, and
it was Clanton who always said that some day Curly Bill Brocius would
take over the leadership from him, and undoubtedly cut down lawman
Wyatt Earp when the big showdown came. Curly Bill Killed Marshal White
one night while drunk and reeling noisily out on Allen Street.
Marshal Earp cracked him over the skull and hauled him off to the
calaboose, however. Curly would never forgive Wyatt for
that. He had been drunk, this much was true, but when White
grabbed for his gun it had accidentally gone off, he said, and struck
the lawman in the belly. Curly Bill couldn't help that. Earp
didn't have to hit him.
With more than four hundred men (renegades all) working indirectly
under Old Man Clanton in waterhole camps from Tombstone down into New
Mexico, it was a big job and Curly Bill was a big help as he rode out
over this vast rustling empire – the largest America has ever
seen. They stole cattle from ranches all over southern Arizona,
horses from army posts, and longhorns from Old Mexico, one thousand,
sometimes two, at a clip. Their disregard for the international
border was a subject of hot debate in Mexico City, and in Washington,
President Garfield demanded that they be wiped out at any cost.
The Arizona Cattlemen's Association brought pressure to bear.
Curly
Bill was a fast gunslinger and many men had died who faced up to him
both in Tombstone and in Fort Thomas. It was Curly Bill who, with
Old Man Clanton, led his renegades into Skeleton Canyon where they
robbed seventy-five thousand dollars from the mule train and left
slaughtered Mexicans scattered up the canyon toward the San Simon – a
veritable massacre in Arizona history. This was nothing more than
a big joke to Curly Bill. He had a dozen or more slugs in his big
body from gunfights from Abilene and Texas to Tombstone and put no
importance on them whatever. Money was what counted.
This six-shooting star from the Texan galaxy was doomed. His
wanton killing as a county tax collector was too much for Wyatt Earp to
bear, along with the death of his lawman brother, Morgan Earp who was
gunned down in a poolroom in Tombstone.
In
March 1882, shortly after the famous OK Corral shoot-out, Wyatt Earp
formed his famous posse and rode out after Indian Charlie, Curly Bill
and others, and at Iron Springs waterhole came upon some of them by
surprise. He saw Curly Bill as the outlaw was squinting at him
over the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun. There was an explosion
and Wyatt felt his coat skirt jerk as the shot struck it, then Curly
Bill let out a yell and hurled the gun at him, which fell at the feet
of his rearing horse. In the next instant Earp let go with a
double load of his Wells-Fargo gun and 18 buckshot almost tore Curly
Bill in two as he was truck in the abdomen. He screamed in agony
and fell dead. The west was rid of one of the worst outlaws in
Arizona history.
Calamity Jane | Clay Allison | Curly Bill | Dave Mather
Doc Holliday | Jesse James | Jim Courtright | Joaquin Murrietta
John Ringo | John Wesley Hardin | King Fisher | Luke Short
Old Man Clanton | Pat Garrett | Wild Bill Hickok | Wyatt Earp
OK Corral | Artist - Lea Franklin McCarty