Billy The Kid Part 3: The House Always Wins — Until It Doesn’t

Show Notes

Before Billy the Kid ever drew his gun, before the Regulators ever swore vengeance, Lincoln County was already lost—sold, signed, and sealed by a handful of men who turned commerce into tyranny.

In Dark Dialogue: Gallows & Gunfights – The House Always Wins — Until It Doesn’t, John and Angela open the record on the empire that ruled the New Mexico Territory through ledgers, credit, and fear. From Lawrence Murphy’s mercantile monopoly to James Dolan’s violent enforcement, from John Riley’s quiet corruption to Jesse Evans’ bloody loyalty, this episode traces the roots of the Lincoln County War to their true source: greed.

Follow the rise and fall of The House—the cartel that bought a county, buried its rivals, and learned too late that even empires built on fear eventually crumble. Featuring detailed historical reconstructions, courtroom-style storytelling, and immersive sound design, this installment of Gallows & Gunfights takes you straight into the smoke and politics of the Old West’s most infamous feud.

🔔 Listen Now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.
👍 Like, Follow, and Leave a Review to help others find the show.
📢 Share this episode with anyone who still thinks the Old West was simple—because the truth is darker than the legend.
💀 Join the Dark Dialogue Collective and explore more untold cases at www.darkdialogue.com.
📧 Send your thoughts, theories, or case tips to [e-mail].
🕯️ And remember… The jury of history never adjourns.
Let the past take the stand — and the guilty face the gallows.

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

What is Dark Dialogue: Gallows and Gunfights?

Gallows & Gunfights explores the real history of the American frontier—where violence, survival, and reputation shaped life in the Old West.

Hosted by Dark Dialogue creator John McColl, the series examines the outlaws, lawmen, and conflicts that defined the era, separating documented events from the myths that grew around them.

From the Lincoln County War and Billy the Kid to lesser-known cases buried in frontier history, each episode breaks down what actually happened—and what didn’t.

Gallows & Gunfights focuses on one goal: cutting through legend to uncover the truth behind the West.

John: The Old West wasn't
built on gunpowder alone.

It was built on ledgers,
on loans, land deeds.

And men who learned that
control over a county could be

bought one signature at a time.

Before the regulators ever drew
their revolvers, before Billy the

kid ever carried a warrant, there
was the house, not a home, but an

empire in Lincoln County, New Mexico.

The house wasn't made of wood or brick.

It was made of monopoly.

Its foundation was greed.

Its walls were built from corruption and
fear, and its architects were three men.

Lawrence Murphy, James Dolan, John
Riley, Irish immigrants turned merchants.

Soldiers turned profiteers partners
in one of the most ruthless cartels

the frontier would ever see.

They came west under the flag
of enterprise, but stayed

under the banner of power.

They owned the store,
the bank, the contracts.

The law and soon enough, the sheriff
himself to do business in Lincoln.

You went through the house or
you didn't do business at all.

The locals called it a store.

The people who understood
called it what it was a kingdom.

From its counters, debts
were written like sentences.

Credit was offered to ranchers
who could never pay it back.

Their cattle and land eventually seized in
the name of repayment, Murphy and Dolan.

Closed soldiers sold whiskey to outlaws
and buried competition be beneath a

pile of legal Ritz and paid deputies.

When a young English rancher named John
Henry Tunsell dared to open a rival

store, the house decided to collect,
not with invoices, but with bullets.

Tonight we open the record on
the man who ran Lincoln County

before the shooting started.

The kings behind the curtain, because if
the regulators were born out of vengeance.

The house was born out of greed, and
before Billy, the kid became a legend.

He was simply one more pawn,
trapped inside their game.

And the game where the rules were written
by the rich, the sheriff held the cards

and the deck was stacked from the start.

The case of the house
is now before the court.

Angela: Hey,

John: Angela.

How's it going?

Angela: Hey, John.

I'm good.

How are you?

I'm good.

Yeah,

John: trying to kinda get back
into the swing of things a

little bit, so that's good.

Angela: Soggy, raining out there.

John: Oh, it is freaking pouring.

Angela: Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

John: So I have to know before we jump
into this episode, somebody watch,

somebody did, and unfortunately I was
dealing with the hospital and the life

flights and all the nonsense, so I didn't
really get to talk to you about it, so

Angela: because I refused to
make that important over your

family's medical business.

Come on, I'm dying to know

John: what, what are your thoughts?

It was

Angela: good.

I liked it.

I'll watch it again.

John: Yeah,

Angela: yeah, yeah.

I did crochet while I watched it.

John: Well, I expected that,

Angela: but I did watch it
and I will watch it again.

So,

John: yeah,

Angela: it's freak.

I have now watched young
guns, let it be known.

John: Now we gotta work on young guns too.

Angela: Yeah, we almost did,
but we didn't have time.

John: Yeah.

Angela: So,

John: yeah.

Yeah.

Angela: It's on there.

It's on there.

John: Cool.

So now maybe you'll kinda
get some of my references.

Yeah.

Angela: I was actually getting
them while I was watching it.

I was like, huh, wonder if this
would be better had I have watched it

before this, because I knew what was
coming and I knew who the people were.

Ready.

And Shandy's like, are you
sure you haven't watched this?

I was like, well, but in the
office I have, 'cause John's

almost all played it out.

So

John: yeah,

Angela: pretty much.

That's pretty much how it went.

Yep.

I was like, I know what's happening.

I know who that is.

I, whatever.

John: Well that's cool.

That must be, I'm doing an okay job.

Yeah.

That's my description, so, alright.

Angela: That's also why I watch movies
before I read the book because it just,

it irritates you when you read the book
then watch the movie and you're like, they

left this out in this, out in this out.

John: Oh, I know.

And it's always so a
lot that they leave out.

Angela: Yeah.

I always watch the movies
before I read the book.

John: Yeah.

All right, well, welcome back listeners
to Dark Dialogue, gallows and Gunfights.

The show where the Old West takes
the witness stand and history

itself is cross examined under oath.

Angela: This isn't the cowboy
story they sold in theaters.

No white hats, no guaranteed
heroes, just the raw truth of power,

corruption, and the blood that
bought control of an entire county

John: exactly before the
regulators rode for vengeance.

Before Billy the kid ever fired a
shot, there was the house, a machine

run by men who treated Lincoln County
like their own personal empire.

Murphy, Dolan, Riley.

They didn't just sell goods, they
sold justice to the highest bidder

Angela: and the people who couldn't
afford to buy in paid with their

land, their cattle, or their lives.

What started as business turned into
tyranny and Lincoln became less of a town,

then a company store with a jail attached.

John: Tonight, the curtain pulls back.

We'll meet the men behind the house,
the alliances they built, the laws

they broke, and the greed that
turned the New Mexico territory

into a powder keg waiting to blow.

Angela: If you're listening on Spotify,
apple Podcast or YouTube, take a second

to like follow or leave a review.

It really does help us more
than you know, and it keeps the

frontier open for the next case.

John: And don't forget to share the
show with someone who still believes

the Old West was simple because
they're about to find out just how

complicated justice really was.

Court is in session.

Let's introduce the house.

Every empire starts with one man who
decides the rules no longer apply to him.

In Lincoln County, that
man was Lawrence G. Murphy.

He didn't build his power with a gun.

He built it with paper
signatures and debt.

And before long every rancher,
soldier and storekeeper in the

territory owed him something.

Here's how it started the charge.

Building an empire out of hunger and debt
and leaving a county drenched in blood.

He was the first king of Lincoln
County, not crowned by title, but

by Credit Lawrence G. Murphy, an
Irish immigrant, born in Wexford in

1831, arrived in America with nothing
but ambition and a soldier's grit.

At 17, he joined the US Army trading
famine for a rifle in a uniform he served

across the wild edges of Texas and New
Mexico, learning the one skill that would

one day make him powerful logistics.

Murphy was no gun slinger.

His weapon was supply his battlefield,
the ledger as a quartermaster.

During the Civil War, he mastered the
art of procurement, how to move food,

cattle, and ammunition across the hungry
land, and more importantly, how to profit

from it, those who could control the
flow of goods controlled survival itself.

And when the war ended, Murphy
brought that lesson to the frontier.

By 1869, he implanted his empire
in Lincoln, New Mexico, founding

LG Murphy and company to locals.

It was just a general store to Murphy.

It was the cornerstone of domination.

He held the supply contracts for
Fort Staten and the Mescalero

Apache Reservation, feeding soldiers
and settlers alike, and charging

every rancher in the valley.

Whatever price he pleased before
long Murphy's operations swallowed,

the county whole, joined by his
proteges, James Dolan and John Riley.

The enterprise grew into what
people would come to call the

house, but this was no home.

It was a fortress of greed built on
inflated prices, impossible debts,

and political corruption so thick.

It stained the very badge
of the sheriff's office.

Murphy owned the store.

He owned the bank.

He owned the law.

And anyone who dared challenge
him from a struggling rancher to a

rival merchant face ruin or worse,
when John Toto, a young English

rancher and his ally, Alexander MCs
Swen, a lawyer tired of Murphy's

Monopoly, opened a competing store.

Murphy saw more than business competition.

He saw insurrection and in the west.

Rebellion wasn't handled in court.

It was handled with rifles.

Murphy's men, deputies, wrestlers
hired guns, carried out his will.

Contracts became warrants.

Commerce became war.

The result was one of the most
violent feuds in frontier history.

The Lincoln County War, Murphy himself
would not live to see its end by 1878, his

body was failing ravaged by cancer and.

As the fullest flew across, Lincoln
Murphy retreated to Santa Fe, transferring

control of the house to Dolan.

He died that October.

His empire intact.

His reputation in ruins
the verdict of time.

Lori G. Murphy was the architect of the
house, a man who built wealth from rations

and power from desperation to some.

He was a businessman, disciplined,
shrewd, and visionary to others, he

was a tyrant in a merchant's coat.

A man who bled Lincoln County
dry with a smile on a handshake.

He never drew a gun in anger, yet his
pin signed the orders that sparked a war.

He never stood in the street at High
Noon, yet his ambition pulled the

trigger on a generation of violence.

History's verdict.

Is this.

Murphy didn't just control Lincoln County.

He created the system that corrupted it.

His empire of debt and influence set
the stage for the regulators, for

Billy the kid, and for the chaos that
would define the New Mexico territory.

The man who taught the frontier
how to sell justice never

learned how to buy peace.

And just to note, he did not get
shot in the forehead in the middle

of the freaking street by Billy
the kid as he rode into the sunset.

Yeah.

He died of freaking cancer in
a much less glamorous fashion.

Angela: Yeah.

My brain was like, I remember
something about that being wrong.

John: Yeah.

Read the whirlwind Murphy.

Okay, so when Lawrence g Murphy's
H Health failed, the kingdom

that he built didn't crumble.

It just evolved.

Every empire need needs a successor.

And the house found one in a man
who learned its every trick, every

ledger line, every backroom deal.

James Joseph Dolan, he wasn't
the visionary that Murphy was,

but he was colder, harder, more
willing to draw blood where Murphy

Perfor preferred to sign papers.

Dolan had come west as a soldier too, a
fellow Irishman who served under Murphy

in the Ninth Infantry, but where Murphy
built his empire through commerce.

Dolan intended to keep it through fear.

With Murphy dying in Santa Fe, Dolan
took the reins of the house, tightening

his grip on Lincoln County, like a vice.

He controlled the deputies, the
courts, and the gangs that did

the dirty work in the shadows.

He made enemies fast and he made
sure that they didn't live long.

If Murphy had built the house with a
ledger, Dolan fortified it with a gun.

The war for Lincoln County
wasn't born in a courtroom.

It was born in Dolan's ambition,
and it's here that the story

turns from business to blood.

So let's call the next witness, James j
Dolan, the charge turning monopoly into

murder and proving that when greed meets
power, blood is always the final currency.

He called himself a businessman.

The people of Lincoln County
called him something else.

James j Dolan, the Apprentice
who inherited the house.

Born in county, Galloway Ireland on May
2nd, 19, 18, 48, Dolan came to America

as a child chasing the same promise that
had lured so many of his countrymen,

freedom, fortune, and a place to belong.

What he found instead was war.

At 14, he joined the Union Army,
serving until the end of the Civil War.

That experience hardened him.

A boy molded into a soldier.

A soldier molded into something colder.

When the guns fell silent in the East,
he followed the scent of Opportunity

West Landing in Fort Staton, New Mexico.

That's where he met Lawrence G. Murphy.

A man twice his age already a
power player, already carving

his name into the frontier.

Murphy took Dolan under his wing and
what began his mentorship quickly

became a masterclass in manipulation.

At LG Murphy and Company Dolan
learned that control wasn't about

guns or gold, it was about credit.

If you owned a man's
debt, you owned his life.

Together with Murphy and John
Reilly, Dolan helped transform

the store into an empire.

The one, everyone in Lincoln County
would come to know, fear and the house.

They supplied Fort Statin and
the Mescalero Apache reservation

padding contracts, inflating
prices, and tightening their grip

on every rancher in the valley.

Dolan became the enforcer, fiery,
proud and utterly ruthless.

He wasn't content to run the books.

He wanted to run the territory.

In 1873, he nearly shot a Fort
Statin officer during an argument.

And when corruption forced Murphy
and Dolan out of the Fort Dolan

did not retreat, he recalibrated.

They reestablished themselves in
Lincoln, building their monopoly,

brick by brick, debt by debt.

But then came John Henry Tunstall
young, polished English and

unafraid to challenge the throne.

With lawyer Alexander MCs, Swen and Cattle
Bear, and John Chm at his side, Tunstall

dared to open a competing store for Dolan.

This wasn't business, it was betrayal.

He responded the only way that
he knew how with violence.

He financed the Jesse Evans game, paid
deputies to look the other way and

turned the house into a war machine.

When Tunstall was ambushed and
murdered in February of 1878,

Dolan wasn't just behind it.

He bankrolled it.

That killing, and the spark that
ignited the Lincoln County War, a

feud that would consume 19 lives and
dragged the territory into chaos.

Dolan issued bounties on rivals,
hired assassins, and used his

political clout to stay untouchable.

Even when Attorney Houston Chapman, who
investigated McQueen's death was gunned

down in the street, burned and mutilated.

Dolan escaped prosecution justice like
credit was something he'd already bought.

When the smoke cleared, Dolan
owned what he'd fought for.

Constable's land the store
and a political seat.

He became Lincoln County
Treasurer and even served in the

New Mexico territorial Senate.

But victory had its price.

The empire he'd inherited turned
poisonous alcohol, dulled his mind.

Scandal followed his name, and
the loyalty that he demanded from

others dried up with his fortunes.

On February 6th, 1898, Dolan died at
his ranch in Lincoln County, a hollow

man surrounded by the ghosts of those
he'd buried beneath his ambition.

The verdict of time James J Do.

James j Dolan was the living embodiment
of corruption on the frontier.

A soldier turned merchant, a merchant
turned tyrant, where Lawrence Murphy

built the house through business.

Dolan maintained it through blood.

He learned from the best
and died by his own lessons.

His contracts outlasted.

His conscience.

His empire outlived his honor, and
though the records list him as a

politician and a rancher history
knows him for what he truly was, the

enforcer, who proved that in Lincoln
County, justice was never blind.

Blind.

It was bought.

When James Dolan finally drank
himself into obscurity, the empire

that he fought to keep didn't vanish.

It simply changed hands.

Every kingdom has its generals,
its traitors and its survivors.

And in the house, one
man survived them all.

John Riley, he wasn't the
gunman, he wasn't the mastermind.

He was the quiet one.

The accountant in the corner who kept the
books balanced while the bullets flew.

Where Murphy built the foundation
and Dolan enforced it, Riley made

sure that it never fell apart.

He learned early that in Lincoln
County, the most dangerous weapon

wasn't a Winchester, it was a ledger.

Riley stayed calm while Murphy's Health
failed in Dolan's temper, ignited wars.

And when both men were gone, he was still
standing, holding the keys, the contracts,

and the last remnants of the house
they'd built on debt, deceit, and blood.

If Murphy was the architect and Dolan
the muscle, Riley was the one who

turned the monopoly into a legacy,
cold, efficient, and quietly profitable.

He didn't need gun smoke to leave a mark.

He let the numbers do the killing.

Let's bring the final partner
of the house to the stand,

the charge, writing the rules of
corruption in ink instead of blood,

and proving that silence can be
just as deadly as a six shooter.

If the house was an empire, John
Re was the man who made sure

the foundation never cracked.

Born in Dingle Bay, Ireland in 1850,
Riley came to America like so many

others, chasing the promise of a
better life only to find himself in a

country still bleeding from civil war.

He enlisted with the California
column marching across the

southwest, under the union banner.

But when the gunfire stopped,
Riley didn't go home.

He went into business, and business
in New Mexico meant opportunity for

the, for the bold and the ruthless.

That's where he found Lawrence
G. Murphy and James Dolan, two

countrymen carving out their own
empire in the dust of Laken County.

Together they built LG Murphy and Company,
the mercantile and banking powerhouse

that would become known and whispers and
curses alike as the house where Murphy

was the architect and Dolan the enforcer.

Riley was the strategist.

He was the numbers man.

The contract broker, the quiet operator
who understood that power didn't just

come from bullets, it came from paperwork.

He helped secure government contracts
to feed Fort Statin and the Mescalero

Apache Reservation, leveraging his
connections in legal knowhow to turn

simple trade into total domination.

Credit flowed through re's ledgers
like blood through the veins, and soon

every rancher in merchant in Lincoln
County found themselves owing the

house more than they could ever repay.

Riley's strength wasn't in his aim.

It was in his ability to
turn the law into a weapon.

He twisted credit, manipulated
deeds, and bought influence

from sheriffs and judges alike.

When someone couldn't be bribed, they
could always be bled dry by debt.

But even men of numbers in Inc.
Cast long shadows, Riley's name

appeared in more than one gunfight.

He was tied to local disputes
and suspected in violent

confrontations, including the
one that left respected citizen.

Juan Patron badly wounded to the
common settlers of Lincoln County.

Riley wasn't just a businessman.

He was the face of quiet cruelty, the kind
that smiled while taking your last dollar.

When John Todd stole and Alexander McSwain
opened their rival store at 1877, Riley

stood squarely behind Murphy and Dolan.

He kept the accounts balanced, the
bribes flowing, and the deputies

loyal all while the killing began.

And when Tunstall fell in 1878, murdered
on the open range, Riley's fingerprints

were there, not on the trigger, but on
the paperwork that made it all possible.

The Lincoln County War wasn't
just fought in the streets.

It was fought in ledgers, in courtrooms,
and in the back rooms of Riley's making.

He understood what most men never
did the law in the right hand do more

damage than a Winchester ever could.

When the smoke cleared in,
his partners were gone.

Murphy did.

Dolan ruined, Riley did
what he always did best.

He moved on.

He married in Las Cruces in 1882, bought a
ranch in Colorado and lived quietly until

1916 when pneumonia finally claimed him.

He died a wealthy man far from
Lincoln, far from the ghost that he

helped to create the verdict of time.

John Reilly was the last
pillar of the house.

The man who outlived the
gunman and outsmarted the law.

He never stood in the street, dual,
never ordered a posse, and never

fired the shot that killed John Tuns.

He didn't need to.

His power was quieter
and far more enduring.

He proved that corruption doesn't always
wear a badge or brandish a weapon.

Sometimes it wears a vest, keeps neat
records and smiles across the counter

while it takes everything that you own.

When the legends of Lincoln County
were buried, re's name faded from the

headlines, but his signature remained on
the documents that made the war possible.

In the ledger of history, John
Reilly's balance sheet was full

of profit, power and of blood.

Every empire has its generals.

Men like Murphy, Dolan and Riley who
made their power visible in stores and

contracts and in the barrel of a gun.

But behind the house stood another figure,
quieter, wealthier, and far less exposed.

His name was Emil Fritz.

He wasn't a gunfighter, he
wasn't a sheriff or a politician.

He was the money.

The investor whose wealth gave Murphy
and Dolan the fuel they needed to

expand their monopoly and enforce
their grip on Lincoln County.

Fritz didn't make speeches
or lead posses into battle.

His power was written in numbers in
banking records, land deals, and silent

loans that turned the wheels of the house.

When others reached for
rifles, he reached for ledgers.

But make no mistake, his
influence was just as deadly.

Without Emil Fritz's financial backing,
there would have been no empire to

defend, no monopoly to fight over, and
perhaps no Lincoln County War at all.

Now let's turn the page and
call Emil Fritz, the investor

in the shadows to the stand.

The charge leaving behind,
not bullets, but a fortune and

sparking a war from the grave.

Emil Fritz was not a gunman or a lawman.

He was a soldier, a traitor, and
eventually the quiet financier

whose money helped build the house.

Born in Stut, Germany in 1832,
Fritz K. Cross the Atlantic during

an era when opportunity lured
thousands of Europeans to America.

He spent time in California during
the Gold Rush, then traded his

pickax for a uniform, joining the
Union Army during the Civil War.

He rose to the rank of Captain
later earning a Bret promotion

to Lieutenant Colonel.

His service took him west, where he
became a cap commander at Fort Staton, the

varied place that would shape his future.

It was there that Fritz cross
paths with another young officer

who saw the potential of supply
and trade, Lawrence G. Murphy.

Together they began as army traders
providing goods for soldiers and settlers.

When Murphy's standing with the
military soured, he and Fred's

left the Ford and established their
mercantile operation in Lincoln.

It was the foundation of what
would soon be feared across

the territory as the house.

Fritz himself wasn't known for violence.

His role was quieter.

Establishing land holdings, building
a modest wrench near Lincoln, and

ensuring the operation had the
stability of capital and contracts.

But in a region ruled by debt
and dependency, money was every

bit as deadly as a cult revolver.

By the early 1870s, Fritz's Health
began to fail suffering from

kidney disease and tuberculosis.

He returned to Germany in
1874 at just 43 years old.

He died far from Lincoln County, but in
death he left behind more than memories.

He left an insurance policy worth $10,000,
an enormous sum for the time, and it

was this policy, not his life, that made
Emil Fritz one of the most consequential

figures in Lincoln County history.

When Alexander McSwain collected the
payout, he refused to hand it over

to Murphy and Dolan, who claimed
it as a debt owed to the house.

The dispute over Emil Fritz's
insurance money ignited, simmering

tensions becoming one of the sparks
that set off the Lincoln County War.

Fritz never fired a shot, never
ordered an ambush, and never

rode with Posses in the night.

Yet his death and the fortune that
he left behind became fuel for a

feud that claimed nearly 20 lives
and etched itself into legend.

The verdict of time.

Emil Fritz was the quietest
of the house's founders.

A man remembered less for what
he did in life than for what his

estate triggered after his death.

He was a soldier who traded his
uniform for commerce, a businessman

who partnered with Murphy, and
ultimately the financial backbone

of Lincoln's most powerful monopoly.

But history remembers
him as something else.

The man who set fire to a powder keg
without ever striking the match, his

insurance policy became blood money
and his absence helped fuel one of

the old west most infamous feuds.

He lies today in Stut, Germany, far from
the dusty crossroads of Lincoln County.

Yet the shadow is it of his fortune.

Stretches across the history
of the American frontier by the

timing made Fritz's fortune set.

Lincoln County on fire.

The house had already begun to shift from
guns and ledgers to something even colder.

Paperwork and politics, the power players
were dying off, but the money still had to

move and someone had to keep the accounts
straight while the bodies piled up.

That man was Edgar Walls.

He wasn't a rancher,
a gunman or a soldier.

He was a banker.

One of the few men in Lincoln who
understood how to make a killing

without ever touching a gun.

Walls, handled the money, balanced
the debts, and made sure that

every dollar taken in blood was
properly recorded in black ink.

If Murphy, Dolan and Riley built
the house and Fritz financed it.

Walls ensured it survived.

He managed the flow of credit,
legitimized corruption through banking

ties, and gave the empire its most
powerful disguise, respectability.

When the war came, men like Billy,
the kid fought it with bullets.

Men like Edgar Walls
fought it with signatures.

Let's turn the page to the next man
who turned numbers into weapons.

Edgar Walls, the banker who
kept the books on blood,

the charge keeping a dying empire solvent
and ensuring that even as men bled in

the streets, the accounts still balanced.

By the late 1870s, the house was cracking.

Lawrence Murphy was dead.

James Dolan was drowning
in debt and scandal.

Riley had, van had vanished
into quieter pursuits, and yet

somehow the machine kept turning.

That was thanks In no
small part to Edgar Walls.

He wasn't born into the Lincoln
County conflict, but he arrived

when it needed him the most.

A banker sent to keep the crumbling
empire afloat walls was tied by both

blood and business to one of the
most powerful men in the southwest.

Thomas Bitten Catone attorney, land
barren and master manipulator behind the

Santa Fe ring, the political machine that
ruled New Mexico like a private kingdom.

Catone held the mortgage on Dolan's
assets, and when the house began to

collapse under the weight of corruption,
Catone sent in his man to take control.

Edgar Walls, walls arrived in Lincoln,
not as a fighter, but as a steward.

His job was simple, protect cat's
investment, manage the store, and ensure

the Dolan factions money and influence
didn't vanish with their credibility, but

nothing in Lincoln County was ever simple.

The feud had already turned to
blood and by the time walls walked

through the doors of the Murphy
Dolan store, Lincoln was a war zone.

Rival factions, Dolans men on one side,
MCs, Swains, and tonsils on the other

were poised for the showdown that would
define the county for generations.

During the five day battle in July of
1878, walls was, was reportedly present

in Lincoln as the last great confrontation
unfolded, fires raging, bullets tearing

through walls, and the town itself
burning under the weight of its own greed.

He wasn't there to shoot or to die.

He was there to make sure
that when the smoke cleared

the money still had an owner.

That was the quiet truth of men.

Like Edgar Walls, they never had to
pull a trigger to control the outcome.

While gunmen fought for ground,
men like walls decided who

owned the land beneath it.

After the war walls remained in business
proof that those who deal in paper

often outlived those who deal in lead.

He lived until 1935 dying peacefully
in San Diego, California, far

from the ruins of Lincoln.

The verdict of time.

Edgar Walls was not a villain
by reputation, but he was

an accountant to villains.

He represented a new breed
of frontier power, educated,

connected, and untouchable.

When the old guard of the house
fell to disease, debt and violence,

walls ensured their legacy and
their creditors stayed alive.

He was the living bridge between
the frontiers, blood feuds, and

the quiet takeover of New Mexico by
the Santa Fe ring, where lawyers,

bankers, and politicians replaced
gunfighters as the architects of power.

In the courtroom of history, Edgar Wall
stands as the bookkeeper of the fallen,

the man who made sure that even after
the war was over, the balance sheet of

the house still came out in the black.

But in the late 1870s, the house had
money, land, and political power, but

what it didn't have anymore was control.

Their ledgers could bully the honest,
and their contracts could bankrupt

the weak, but paper doesn't stop
a bullet to enforce their rule.

The house needed muscle, not
merchants, not bankers, gunman.

And that's when they turned
to Jesse Evans and the boys.

Evans was everything.

Murphy, Dolan and Waltz weren't
young, fearless, and mean

enough to do their dirty work.

Without hesitation, his gang moved
through Lincoln County like wildfire,

stealing cattle, intimidating
witnesses, torching businesses, and

killing anyone who stood between the
house and its control of the valley.

They called themselves cowboys.

The law called them outlaws, but in
Lincoln County, they were employees.

Hired protection, paid intimidation,
the trigger hand of the house.

When lawyers couldn't silence the
opposition and bankers couldn't buy

obedience, Jesse Evans and his men made
sure the message was delivered another

way, loud, bloody, and permanent.

They didn't just enforce debts,
they collected them in blood.

Now the courtroom of history calls its
next witness, Jesse Evans, and the boys

who rode beside him, the enforcers who
turned the house's, greed into war,

the charge murder, wrestling, and
serving as the gun hand of Laken

County's most corrupt empire.

If the house was a fortress built
on greed, Jesse Evans was the man

who guarded its gates with bullets
instead of laws born in 1853,

possibly in Missouri or Texas.

Evans wasn't raised for
gentleness or obedience.

He came of age in the chaos of the
frontier, a place where survival

and sin walked hand in hand.

He started his life on the edge of
respectability working for cattle

ranchers like John Chisholm, but it
didn't take long for him to learn

that there was faster money to be
made on the other side of the brand.

By his early twenties, Evans had formed
his own crew, a vicious and loyal

band of thieves and gunfighters known
across New Mexico and West Texas as the

Jesse Evans gang, or simply the boys.

Evans gang was made up of some of
the hardest men in the territory.

Frank Baker, Tom Hill, pony deal, and from
time to time, even Billy, the kid rode

among them before choosing a different
path and becoming their bitter enemy.

They wrestled cattle, robbed stage
coaches raided ranches, and enforced

their will with cold precision.

When violence became currency in
Lincoln County, Jesse Evans was the

one everyone knew, could collect.

And that reputation drew
attention, powerful attention.

When the Lincoln County were erupted,
the Murphy Dolan faction desperate for

muscle, turned to Evans and his crew.

They didn't need a sheriff.

They needed killers.

Evans delivered in February 18th, 78.

Jesse Evans and the boys ambushed and
murdered John Tunstall, the act that lit

the match for the Lincoln County War.

From that moment, Evans
wasn't just a criminal.

He was a soldier for hire, fighting on
behalf of the house his gang carried

out, raids, assassinations, and
ambushes across the county, attacking

the regulators, burning property and
hunting McSwain supporters like prey.

Even hardened men feared him.

Billy, the kid himself once admitted
that he'd rather negotiate than cross.

Jesse Evans head on.

He was there when Frank McNabb was cut
down when the battle of Lincoln turned

the town into a war zone, and when
blood became the language of business.

When the war ended,
Evans didn't fade away.

He simply returned to what he knew best.

Killing for profit.

In 1879, he and his men murdered.

Attorney Houston Chapman.

A crime so brazen.

It reignited the outrage that had barely
cooled since the war, since the wars end.

But the law was finally catching up
after a gun fight in Presidio, Texas,

where Evans killed a Texas ranger.

He was captured, tried and sentenced
to Huntsville State Prison.

It should have been the end of him, but
like any outlaw worth, the legend, Jesse

Evans refused to stay caged in 1882.

During a prison work detail,
he vanished, escaping into the

wind, never to be seen again.

Some say he died in Mexico.

Others swore they sigh.

Years later, gray and smiling
in a border town saloon.

No one ever proved a thing.

The verdict of time.

Jesse Evans was the perfect outlaw
for the perfect storm, charming,

violent, and unflinchingly loyal
to whoever paid him the most.

He wasn't a politician,
a merchant, or a soldier.

He was a weapon.

When the house needed enforcers,
he became its trigger hand.

The living embodiment of the greed and
brutality that ruled Lincoln County.

His gang didn't fight for
justice or for survival.

They fought for money, power,
and the thrill of being feared.

And when the war ended, Evans
left behind nothing but ghosts

and a legend that refused to die.

In the history of the American
Frontier, Jesse Evans stands as proof

that the West wasn't tamed by law.

It was bought, fought, and burned
into submission by men like him.

By the time Jesse Evans and the boys
had soaked Lincoln County in Blood,

the house had learned one truth.

Loyalty could be bought,
but it never came cheap.

When they needed even more men
to fight their war, they didn't

look to soldiers or deputies.

They looked to Drifters, ranch, hands,
and outlaws, who lived by one rule.

Whoever paid the best
owned their trigger finger.

That was the Seven Rivers Warriors.

They came out of Seven Rivers, New
Mexico, a settlement halfway between

nowhere and the Badlands, a place
where the law barely bothered to ride.

These men weren't bound
by cause or conscience.

They weren't fighting for the
house or for the regulators.

They fought for whoever put the
most whiskey on the table and

the most cash in their hand.

They were a loose brotherhood of ranchers,
wrestlers, and opportunists, A temporary

army of outlaws that would soon help
decide the fate of Lincoln County.

And when the war broke open,
they become the higher guns

that gave the house its numbers.

With Evans and the boys leading the
charge, the Seven Rivers Warriors

rode in behind them burning homes,
ambushing rivals, and helping

drive McSwain's men into retreat.

They turned the fight into something
bigger than business, a campaign

of chaos that swallowed every
ranch and river crossing for miles.

They weren't loyalists,
they were survivors.

And when the dust settled,
they rode off just as easily

as they'd ridden in pockets.

Heavy and conscience is empty.

Next on the docket, the men who
turned mercenary and whose bullets

carried no allegiance but greed.

The Seven Rivers warriors, hired guns
who fought for pay, not for principle,

the charge fighting for both sides of
the law, and proving that in Lincoln

County, justice and outlaw often rode
the same horse in the Badlands of

southeastern Lincoln County near a
stretch of water called Seven Rivers.

A different kind of army took shape.

They weren't hired gunmen, not at first.

They were small ranchers, the kind who
scraped by on hard land and harder luck.

Men caught between the endless
herds of John Chisholm's cattle

empire and the unforgiving emptiness
of the New Mexico frontier.

When Chisholm's Livestock swallowed
the grazing range and his influence

smothered smaller operations,
resentment turned to rebellion.

That rebellion became a gang.

They called themselves the Seven Rivers
warriors, led by him, Henry m, Hugh

Beckwith, and his brothers Bob and John.

The Warriors were a volatile mix of
ranchers, wrestlers, and roughnecks

who decided that if the system was
rigged, they'd play by their own rules.

They stole cattle, raided corrals, and
ran their own shadow economy across

the dry basins of Lincoln County, not
just for profit, but for survival.

But when the Lincoln County War broke
out in 1976, survival found new meaning

the Beckwith, along with their men,
threw in with the Murphy Dolan faction,

not because they admired the house,
but because they despised its enemy.

John Chisholm, whose alliance with John
Tung Dolan, Alexander MCs Swen, made

him the natural target of their anger.

And so the Seven Rivers Warriors became
the house's newest hired guns fighting

a war that they didn't start from
then, that they didn't like against

ranchers, that they'd once worked beside.

They worked closely with Jesse
Evans and John Kinney's Gangs Riot

as reinforcements and enforcers.

They attacked Tunsell's men raided
McSwain's properties, and turned

the link and turned Lincoln County
into a battleground of burnt fences,

stolen herds, and murdered rivals.

But what made them truly dangerous wasn't
just their guns, it was their badges.

Several members, including Bob Beckwith,
Wallace Allinger, Bob Allinger, held

official law enforcement positions.

Beckwith and Wallace Allinger were
Deputies Undersheriff William Brady,

while Bob Allinger was a sworn US marshal.

That meant the same men who
burned out farms by night could

arrest their victims by day.

The line between law and
outlaw didn't just blur.

It completely disappeared.

Their notoriety peaked with the killing
of regulator, Frank McNabb, the capture

of Franco and their bloody participation
in the Battle of Lincoln in 1878, where

Bob Beckwith was shot dead amid the chaos,
but victory was short-lived after the

war, their unity dissolved faster than
the smoke that rose from Lincoln's ruins.

Greed, guilt and
vengeance tore them apart.

Former allies turned on each other and
the Once Fears seven Rivers warriors

destroyed themselves from a end.

By the end, the gang was gone.

Scattered across the southwest,
their badges stripped, their

names reduced to footnotes in
a few that had outlasted them.

The verdict of time, the Seven Rivers
warriors were the frontier's, truest

reflection men trying to survive
in a world run by power and profit.

They began as ranchers fighting
monopolies and ended as killers for

hire trapped in a war where loyalty
was a luxury no one could afford.

Their story is proof that in Lincoln
County Justice wore two faces, one

carved in brass and pinned to a vest,
and the other hidden behind a loaded gun.

The Seven Rivers, warriors, outlaws
deputies, and everything in between.

By the time the Seven Rivers
Warriors had turned the frontier

into no man's land, the house
still wasn't finished recruiting.

They had politicians to buy and
bankers to balance the books, but

what they needed most were soldiers.

And when the lock couldn't provide enough
muscle, they turned south to accrue,

already notorious from Silla to El Paso.

Men who didn't fight for loyalty,
land or justice, they fought for pay.

They were the John Kinney gang.

Kenny's outfit was one of the
meanest and most organized outlaw

groups in New Mexico territory.

A mix of deserters, drifters, and
career criminals who made their living

the only way that they knew how.

By taking what others couldn't
protect, they wrestled cattle,

robbed freighters, and sold their
services to whoever could afford them.

And during the Lincoln County War,
that employer was the house while

Jesse Evans and the Seven Rivers
Warrior handled the local bras, brawls.

John Kinney's men brought precision
trained fighters who knew how to ambush,

intimidate, and vanish before dawn.

Their ranks included gunman who
had later become infamous in their

own right men like Pony deal.

Jess Evans and Dirty Steve
Stevens names whispered in

saloons from Roswell to Tucson.

They fought not for a cause, but for a
contract raid McSwain's allies escorting

Murphy Dolan shipments and adding their
firepower to the house's campaign of fear.

Wherever the Kenny Gang road, the
message was clear resistance meant

ruin, but even mercenaries have limits.

And when the smoke began to
clear, Kenny's men scattered.

Some hanged, some vanished, and
some like their leader turned their

notoriety into uneasy truces with
the very law that they once to fight.

Next on the stand.

John Kinney and his gang, the
mercenaries of Mesilla men who fought

for gold, not glory, and left Lincoln
County bloodier than they found it.

John Guinea's in young guns.

You remember him?

Charlie was terrified.

He's concern.

Angela: I'm still over here.

John: Yes I am.

Charlie was terrified of John Kinney.

It's, it's, it's John.

It's John Keen.

It's John Keen.

It.

It's John.

Thank you very much.

Charlie.

Before the Lincoln County War, before
the house began buying loyalties

by the bullet, every kind of outfit
already ruled the borderlands hard

men who live by no law but survival
and no allegiance but profit.

They called themselves
the John Kinney gang.

Though in the border towns and Badlands,
most folks knew them by another name.

The Rio Grande Posse led by John
Kinney, a former army sergeant who

traded his uniform for an outlaws coat.

The gang carved its reputation
out of the south of the

southern New Mexico territory.

Based in Donna Ana County.

They operated like a roaming
militia, equal parts, cattle

thieves, bandits, and hired killers.

Their early years were soaked in violence.

They wrestled cattle on both sides of
the border, robbed ranchers and stage

lines, and weren't afraid to square
off with soldiers or sheriffs alike.

In 1875, they crossed a line even by
outlaw standards, a deadly gunfight

with US Calvary troops in Las Cruces.

That left soldiers and civilians dead.

From that moment on, the Kenny
Gangs name carried the weight of

infamy From Illa to El Paso, the
gangs rank shifted constantly.

Man came and went, but the names
that remained became legend.

Jesse Evans Pony Deal.

Jim McDaniels all rode under Kenny's
banner at one time or another.

They were young, mean and efficient,
the kind of men who could turn a cattle

trail into a graveyard before breakfast.

When the Lincoln County War
erupted, the house needed

muscle to back their monopoly.

Kenny had men trained, armed and ruthless,
and he didn't ask many questions.

Sheriff George Pepin deputized
him and his gang turning

outlaws into lawmen overnight.

Their badges may have been official,
but their actions were not.

Under Murphy and Dolan's payroll,
the Kitty gang fought the regulators

burned property, raided safe houses,
and joined the Battle of Lincoln.

A siege that left the town smoldering
and the power balance forever changed.

They were the muscle that gave the house
teeth, and when it came to killing.

They didn't distinguish between legality
and vengeance, but wars end and hired.

Guns always move on.

After the smoke cleared, the
Kenny gang drifted south again.

Some joining other outlaw outfits like
some and scouts, others dying in anonymous

shootouts that barely made the papers.

As for John Kinney, the man who
started it all, his story didn't

end in a bleeds of gunfire.

The law finally caught up to him in 1883
when he was convicted of cattle wrestling.

He served a short term behind
bars before walking free.

And in a strange twist of fate, he
later rejoined the US army during the

Spanish American war, from Deserter
to outlaw, from outlaw to soldier.

John Kinney was the frontier's
most adaptable survivor.

His gang may have been born in
blood, but he died in peace, leaving

behind a legend that blurred the
line between bandit and mercenary.

The verdict of time, the John Kinney gang
was the hired gun of the borderlands.

A ban of soldiers without a
country outlaws with discipline

and killers for rent.

They didn't ride for honor or vengeance.

They rode for pay and for
the thrill of watching.

Men with power realized that
money couldn't buy safety forever.

Their legacy is written
in both ink and blood.

A testament to how lawlessness wasn't
the opposite of order in the old West,

it was often its twin, the Rio Grand
Posse, where the Army's discipline met

the outlaws creed and where the frontier
learned that justice was always for sale.

By the time the house had filled
its ranks with mercenaries and

outlaws, Lincoln County was less
a town and more a battlefield.

Every man had chosen a side or had
one chosen for him, but for one

gunman, his choice would ignite
the bloodiest chapter of them all.

His name was William Buck Morton, though
most knew him simply as Billy Morton.

Morton was no hired thug.

Fresh off the trail.

He was a seasoned ranch hand, a
marksman, and a man whose loyalty to

the house was as deadly as his aim.

He had ridden with Jesse Evans, fought
beside the Seven Rivers warriors and knew

how to make violence look like business.

When the conflict between Murphy Dolan and
TTO McSwain turned from words to bullets,

buck Morton became the point of the spear.

He wasn't paid to threaten.

He was paid to finish.

And it was Morton who rode that
February day in 1878 alongside

Jesse Evans and Tom Hill.

When the ambush came, the one that
left John Henry Tunstall face down in

the dust, his life ended by the men.

He'd refused to bow to that killing.

That single act of murder on
the open range became the spark

that set Lincoln County ablaze.

The regulators would rise from it,
Billy the kid would be forged by it.

And every man who rode with
Buck Morton that day would soon

find himself marked for death.

Now, the court of history calls
forward the Nest witness, William Buck

Morton, the gunman whose bullets began
the war that would define the west,

the charge, murder, ambush, and
the single gunshot that lit the

fuse of the Lincoln County War.

By 1878, William Buck Morton or Billy
Morton, depending on who was telling

the story, had already made a name for
himself on the wrong side of the law.

He wasn't just an outlaw, he
was a man of divided loyalties.

A wrestler wearing a deputy's
badge, writing for a sheriff

who took orders from the house.

Morton had started as a cowboy
in a cattle hand, but ambition

and violence carried him further.

When Sheriff William Brady deputized
him, it gave Morton's crimes a thin

layer of legitimacy, the kind that
made murder look like law enforcement.

He rode with Jesse Evans, served the
interests of Murphy and Dolan, and

when the time came to silence their
most dangerous rival, John Henry

Tunstall Morton didn't hesitate.

On February the 18th, 1878, along a
lonely stretch near Blackwater Creek,

Tunsell's horse bolted under fire.

Morton and his fellow riders closed in.

The Englishman's body was found
moments later, shot in the head

execution style and left in the dust.

That killing didn't
just take a man's life.

It started a war.

Within days, the regulators were
born, a posse sworn to bring justice

to the men who killed Tunstall.

Their first order of
business buying Buck Morton.

They chased him for days through the
desert, cornered him near Blackwater

Canyon and captured him alongside
fellow gang member Frank Baker.

For several tense days, Morton was
marched under guard, Dick Brewer, Charlie

Bowry, and the young Billy, the Kid.

Among his captors, the regulators claim
that Morton and B tried to escape.

History remembers it differently.

Two gunshots echoed through the canyon.

Both men were dead
before the dust settled.

The death of Buck Morton
didn't bring peace.

It brought blood.

The regulators had taken revenge
and Murphy and the Murphy Doen

faction vowed to return at tenfold.

Each killing justified the next
until Lincoln County became a

graveyard of grudges and ghosts.

The verdict of time, William
Borton stands as a symbol of the

West's greatest contradiction.

A man sworn to uphold the law who
instead became its executioner.

His bullet killed John Tunstall and
his death in turn fueled the vengeance

that defined the Lincoln County War.

He wasn't the first to die in that
feud, but he was the first who had

to that the deputy, the outlaw, the
spark bug Morton, the man who who shot,

still echoes through Lincoln's dust.

When Buck Morton fell into the
regulator's hands, he wasn't

alone riding beside him that day.

A rifle across his saddle and a bounty
on his head was another gunman whose

name never carried the same weight, but
whose fate was sealed by the same war.

His name Frank Bakker.

Bakker was a wrestler gun hand,
and a member of the Jesse Evans

gang, one of the many men who had
traded their brand for a bull.

When the house began paying
for protection, he wasn't a

leader, he wasn't even notorious.

But in Lincoln County, that didn't matter.

You only had to ride with the wrong
men to die for the wrong cause.

When John Tunstall was gunned down on
that cold February morning in 1878, banker

rode in the same company as Morton and
the killers who fired the fatal shots.

That single act, an ambush turned
execution, made him a marked man.

The regulators swore an oath of
vengeance, and within weeks, Bakker and

Wharton were running for their lives.

The posse that hunted them, led by
Dick Brewer, with Billy the Kid,

Charlie Bry, and Doc Scurlock among
its ranks, caught up near Blackwater

Canyon after a long and desperate chase.

For four days, the prisoners were
marched under armed guard, weary,

silent, and resigned to their fate.

When the march ended, so did their lives.

The regulators claim Bakker
and Mor tried to escape.

But the truth whispered
even then was simpler.

The regulators executed them
justice by the gun Frontier style.

Frank B break's names faded into the
background of the blood soaked feud,

overshadowed by legends like Billy the
Kid, buck Morton and John Tunstall.

But for those who study the war, his death
marks a turning point, the moment when

vengeance stopped, pretending to be law.

Next to take the stand.

Frank Baker, the forgotten
gunman, who paid the price for

a crime that changed the West,

the charge.

Murder, ambush, and dying by
the same justice he once claimed

to serve in Lincoln County.

Loyalty was a currency and Frank,
Frank and Frank Baker spent his

on the wrong side of history.

He was a man who wore two faces, deputy
by day, outlaw by night, a gun for

hire, a peace officer when it paid,
and a loyal enforcer for the house.

Baker rode with Jesse Evans and the men
who brought order through intimidation,

deputized by Sheriff William Brady.

He helped turn badges into weapons,
symbols, not of law, but of

ownership by the winner of 1878.

His allegiance was clear.

He stood with Murphy and
Dolan, the merchants who ruled

Lincoln County like kings.

When John Tunstall refused to kneel to
them, Bakker saddled up with Buck Morton

and the posse that hunted him down.

On February 18th, 18th 78, TTO was
cornered and killed, shot in cold blood.

As his horse bolted in terror,
the single gunshot tore through

more than just flesh and bone.

It ripped open the heart of Lincoln
County and set in motion, one of the

bloodiest F the West would ever know.

The regulators sworn in to
avenge their employer's murder.

Put Baker's name at the top of their list.

They found him three weeks later,
riding with Morton near the Pecos River.

Captured after a hard chase, baker
was shackled, marched across miles

of desert and held under guard
by Dick Brewer Billy the Kid.

And Charlie Bowry, the regulators
said he tried to escape the truth.

They executed him.

Frontier Justice.

Quick and final.

Two shots at Blackwater Creek
and the bodies of Baker and

Morton left where they fell.

Their desks didn't close the chapter.

They tore it white or open,
each killing begot another.

Each act of vengeance demanded its
reply, and the war that began with

John Tunsell's blood would not end
until Lincoln itself lay smoldering

and ruin the verdict of time.

Frank Bakker was both deputy and outlaw.

Lawman and killer.

A man caught between
ambition and survival.

He rode for a cause built on greed,
and died in the name of justice

turned vengeance in the end.

His story is the story of the link of
Lincoln County itself, a place where

every man claimed the law was on his
side, and none of them were right.

The deputy who rode for
power and died for it.

Frank Baker, another casualty in the
war of the West could never forget.

By the time Frank Baker and
Buck Morton met their end in

the dust of Blackwater Creek.

The war for Lincoln County was no
longer about cattle or contracts.

It had become personal,
bloody unforgiving.

And in that growing chaos rode one
of the wildest, most unpredictable

men the frontier ever produced.

Tom Hill.

Hill wasn't a businessman or a rancher.

He wasn't even a soldier
of fortune like the rest.

He was a wonderer with a gun, an outlaw
who drifted between gangs, trading,

loyalty for liquor, and bullets for coin.

He'd ridden with Jesse Evans, fought
beside Buck Morton and earned a

reputation for speed temper and
recklessness that even the hardest men

in Lincoln County didn't want to test.

But what made Hill truly dangerous
wasn't his aim, it was his impulse.

He didn't plan ambushes, he started them.

When John Tussle was murdered in February
of 78, witnesses said Hill was there,

one of the gunmen who helped corner the
English rancher and fired the fatal shots.

Some accounts claim it was
Hill's Bullet that struck first.

Others say he was just
another trigger in the smoke.

Either way, his name
was etched into history.

The moment Tunstall hit the ground,
the regulators wanted him next,

but Hill didn't wait to be hunted.

He struck first, not long after Tunsell's
death in a skirmish near the Pecos.

He drew his gun and went down
in the exchange shot dead before

the war even hit its stride.

His death didn't make the headlines.

It didn't change the course of the
war, but it added another ghost to

a long list of names that Lincoln
County would never vary properly.

Tom Hill Outlaw gunman, and the wild
card in a feud that no one controlled.

He didn't live long enough to
see what his violence helped

unleash, but the war that he helped
start, it was only just beginning

the charge.

Murder, ambush, and setting the spark that
ignited Lincoln County's deadliest war.

But before the smoke of the Lincoln County
War ever darkened the horizon, there was

Tom Hill, a gunman with a short temper,
a quicker trigger, and no fear of dying.

On the wrong side of history Hill
wasn't a strategist or a hired deputy.

He was the kind of man who solved
problems at gunpoint and let

someone else count the cost.

Later, a restless drifter with
a reputation for violence.

He found his place among the Jesse Evans
gang, a crew already thick with wrestlers,

killers, and mercenaries for the house.

Together they became the Murphy Dole.

In fact, iron Fist.

The men who made sure no rival business,
no defiant rancher, and no outsider

challenged their rule in Lincoln County.

On February 18th 78, that Defiance had
a name, John Tunstall Hill Road with

Jesse Evans, buck Morton, and Frank B. As
they tracked Tunstall through the scrub

land north of Lincoln, when the ranchers
horse spooked and bolted, the posse

gave chase Moments later shots rang out.

Eyewitnesses would later argue who fired
first, but most agreed on one thing.

Tom Hill pulled the trigger
that ended John Tunsell's life.

It was the gunshot heard round
Lincoln and county, the one

that transformed a business feud
into a full scale frontier war.

Hill kept riding with the Evans gang after
the murder raid ranches and terrorizing

tunsell's ally allies under the banner
of Murphy and Dolan, but in a land

where revenge rode faster than justice.

His time was short.

Just three weeks later on March
the ninth, 1878, during a botched

cattle raid near Tularosa Hill's,
violent streak met its match.

Local ranchers opened fire, and when
the smoke cleared, Tom Hill was dead.

Jesse Evans wounded beside him.

His gang scattered into the desert.

Wind hill.

Death came swiftly, but the fire
he started would rage for years.

By the time his body cooled, Lincoln
County was already drowning in

blood revenge, killings, ambushes
and burning homesteads, marking the

landscape that he helped destroy.

The verdict of time.

Tom Hill was the kind of man, the
frontier created and destroyed an

equal measure, too reckless for
peace, too fearless for mercy.

He didn't plan the Lincoln County
War, but his bullets started it.

And though he died before the conflict
reached its darkest hours, his shadow

lingered over every killing that
followed Tom Hill, the outlaw who

struck the match and burned with it.

There's not near as much young guns
to reference when you're talking

about a house, because they didn't
really freaking, they really

Angela: isn't.

John: No.

I mean, I don't know if Tom Hill, if
like Henry Hill, who Billy the kid shot

first in young guns in the outhouse.

Mm-hmm.

And he says Henry Hill.

Well, Heidi.

And then he jumps out into a full of pee.

Um, I don't know if, oh,
yeah, that's not a good thing.

I don't know if that was like Tom
Hill, if it, I don't know for sure.

Angela: Oh,

John: it's, there's not near as
many of the, the houses side really

represented in, in any real detail.

I mean, some of the names are thrown
out there, like Sheriff Pepin and John

Kinney and stuff, but they didn't really
build out those characters so much.

So.

But the next one was
definitely in younguns.

Okay.

So by the time Tom Hill fell in
Tula in a Rosa Gunfight, the war

he helped start was burning through
Lincoln County, like brush fire.

Every gun that fired seemed
to birth another feud, another

vendetta, another death.

But not every man who found himself in
the crosshairs had gone looking for it.

Some were just unlucky enough to live
in the wrong county at the wrong time.

That was Andrew l Buckshot.

Roberts Roberts wasn't
an outlaw or a lawman.

He was a tired frontiersman trying
to sell his land and leave New Mexico

behind before the war swallowed it whole.

He'd once done business with the house and
that was enough to make him a marked man.

In Lincoln County,
guilt didn't need proof.

It only needed rumor.

So when the regulators rode out
looking for anyone tied to T'S killers,

they found Roberts at his cabin near
Blazer's Mill, 12 men against one.

They called for his surrender.

He answered with his rifle what
followed would become one of

the most famous standoffs of
the entire Lincoln County War.

A lone gunman who wanted no part of
the fight, forced to defend himself

against the very war that refused to
let him leave it next to take the stand.

Buckshot Roberts, the man who didn't start
the fight, but sure as hell finished one.

The charge defiance, survival,
and refusing to surrender

when the war came to his door.

Andrew Buckshot Roberts was a legendary
figure of the frontier, part soldier, part

survivor, and one of the most unexpected
combatants in the Lincoln County War.

Born in 1831, Roberts was a Texas
ranger and a Civil War veteran.

A man hardened by years of conflict
and marked by it the buckshot buried in

his, in his soldier from an old wound,
gave him his nickname and a lifetime

reminder that he was never easy to kill.

By the late 1870s, Roberts owned a modest
ranch in the Ru Doso Valley near Lincoln.

Though he had done some business
with Mur, with the Murphy Dolan

fact, he had no loyalty to any side.

He was a frontiersman ready to sell
out, pack up, and move on before the

violence consumed everything around him.

But in Lincoln County,
neutrality didn't exist.

Once the regulators marched
your name, there was no way out.

On April 4th, 1878, Roberts rode into BL
into Blazer's Mill to collect a payment

unaware that a large group of regulators,
including Billy, the kid, Charlie

Bowry, and Dick Brewer, were waiting.

They demanded his surrender,
believing him, aligned with the house.

Roberts refused taking cover behind
a carpenter shop as the standoff

erupted into one of the fierce
gunfights of the Lincoln County War.

Outnumbered 12 to one.

Roberts fought like a man
determined to die on his own terms.

He wounded several regulators, including
Charlie Bowry and John Middleston,

and with a single deadly shot he
killed regulator leader, Dick Brewer.

Despite being hit multiple times
himself, Roberts held his ground

until his body finally gave out.

He died later that evening from his
wounds, but not before earning the

respect of every man who faced him.

So as you can see, a little bit
different than in the movie.

Yeah.

It's when he come in to collect
a bounty for all of their heads.

It didn't quite play out that way.

No.

But Brian Keith played that
role freaking flawlessly.

I say it.

Guy was such a badass actor.

He was really freaking good.

So the verdict of time
from Fuck Shop Roberts.

Well, he didn't fight for a
faction or a fortune or a name he

fought because he had no choice.

In a war built on greed, betrayal, and
vengeance, he became the rarest thing.

Lincoln County ever saw a man who stood
alone for nothing but his own survival.

He didn't start the fight, but
when it came for him, he damn sure

finished it by the 10 buck shot
Roberts fell at Blazer's Mill.

The war had already claimed too many men
who never meant to fight it, but Lincoln

County wasn't running out of willing guns.

The battle lines were drawn deeper.

Now, the house on one side, the
regulators on the other, and every

man wearing a badge had to choose
which master he was gonna serve.

For Robert Bob Beckwith, that
choice had already been made.

A small rancher turned.

Deputy Sheriff Beckwith was part
of the Seven Rivers warriors, the

band of rough men who walked the
thin line between lawman and outlaw.

He rode for Sheriff William Brady
stood with Murphy and Dolan and fought

to keep their power intact while
Lincoln County burned around him.

When the call came to defend
the house during the Battle of

Lincoln, Beckwith didn't hesitate.

It was July of 1878, and the town
had become a battlefield smoke,

dust, and gunfire choking the air
as the regulators made their stand.

Amid the chaos, Beckwith took
his position, badge glinting

faintly through the haze.

Moments later, a bullet tore through him.

He fell dead in the street.

Another lawman turned casualty in
a war that no law could control.

Next to take the stand, Robert w Bob
Beckwith, the deputy who rode for the

house and met his end defending it.

Angela: I struggle with the
name Bob for back in the day.

John: Yeah.

Angela: I don't know why.

John: Really?

Angela: Yeah, just Bob doesn't
seem like it back in the day name.

John: There's more than one in this story.

We've also got Bob Bollinger
that we'll be talking about too.

Angela: That doesn't sound right.

Bob seems to two now.

Bob's a pretty old I know, but
it just doesn't feel right.

John: The charge Lawman, outlaw
and enforcer for the house.

Robert w. Bob Beckwith, I Can't,
was one of the most feared and loyal

members of the Seven Rivers Warriors.

The gang of ranchers turned gunman who
fought on behalf of the Murphy Dolan

faction during the Lincoln County War.

Born in 1850 in New Mexico to Hugh
Beckwith and refugee Recon io.

Good job.

I think so.

Bob was raised in the volatile ranchlands
of Southeastern Lincoln County, a

place where rusting and gun fighting
were as calm and as branding irons.

When war came to Lincoln County,
Beckwith stood firmly with the house.

He wasn't just another gun in
the saddle, he wore a badge.

Serving as Deputy Sheriff under
Sheriff William Brady Beckwith enjoyed

the legal protection that allowed
him and the Seven Rivers warriors to

carry out raids, cattle thefts, and
violent reprisals with near impunity.

To the public.

He was law enforcement to the regulators.

He was an outlaw with paperwork.

In April, 1878, Beckwith rode with
the posse that ambushed Frank McNabb,

ABST Sanders, and Frank Coe killing
McNabb and capturing Coe in one of

the bloodiest skirmishes of the war.

It was a calculated move, one that
sent a clear message to anyone daring

to oppose the Murphy Dolan empire.

But the violence Beckwith helped
unleash would circle back on

him before the summers end.

By July, 1878, the war reached
its peak at the Battle of Lincoln.

The town was a war zone.

Bullets whistling through the adobe
walls smoke curling from the burning

rooftops in every alley hiding death.

Beckwith fought alongside other
house loyalists as they laid siege

to the Mc Sween home where the
regulators made their last stand.

When the regulators tried to break on July
19th, Beckwith was caught in the storm.

Accounts differ, but most say that
it was Billy, the kid's bullet that

found him cutting him down in the dust
and the chaos of the final escape.

His death ended one of the most
brutal chapters of the for the Seven

Rivers Warriors, and marked another
toll in the endless cycle of revenge

that defined the Lincoln County War.

The verdict of time, Bob Beckwith was
the embodiment of Lincoln County's

corruption, a lawman who enforced
monopoly through gunfire and fear.

He fought not for justice, but for power,
and yet when the smoke cleared, he met the

same fate as the outlaws that he hunted.

He rode for the house, killed for
it, and finally died defending it.

Proof that in Lincoln County, even
the law had blood on its hands.

Angela: Dan Law.

John: Oh, here's another one for you.

So, by the time Bob Beck was fell in
the streets of Lincoln, the war had

become more than cattle and contracts.

It was a vendetta machine
feeding on blood rumor and pride.

Every man on both sides had his list, and
every list was getting shorter by the day.

But before the flames consume Lincoln
County before the ambushes and the house

burnings, there was one moment, one spark
that said the whole thing roaring to life.

And that spark came from a man named
Charlie Lolly, cooler Crawford.

Angela: I can get on board with that one.

John: Yeah.

You like, yeah, I like that one.

Lolly cooler.

Yeah, I'm good.

Crawford was a hard drinker, a quick
temper with a six shooter and a loyal

ally to Lawrence Murphy and James Dolan.

He wasn't a strategist or a leader.

He was the kind of man the house
used when they wanted a problem

handled without paperwork.

By early 1878, the Aaron Lincoln
was thick with tension, too many

threats, too many guns and too much
whiskey, and then came the gunfire.

In a drunken confrontation, Crawford
opened fire on a, on Alexander

McSwain's attorney Houston Chapman,
outside the saloon, an act of sudden

violence that tore away the last thin
layer of civility in Lincoln County.

The killing, inflamed tempers shattered
any hope of restraint and set off a blood

feud That became the Lincoln County War.

Now the courtroom of history calls its
next witness, Charlie Lolly, cooler

Crawford, the hothead gunman whose
bullets turned a rivalry into a war.

And is Charlie Crawford in Younguns

Angela: is a

John: bad guy?

Mm-hmm.

Angela: I don't remember.

John: Just barely.

That's when they're stuck
in the mc sweeten house.

And Billy Hollers that he says,
Hey, sheriff Pepin looks like he got

Charlie Crawford down there with you.

Ah.

And he says, oh yeah, we got a lot of him.

Boom.

Hey Pepin, Charlie
Crawford's not with you.

Anyway.

So the charge Sharp, shooting
siege, and turning the high

ground into a killing field.

Charlie Loller Lolly, cooler Crawford.

Where did that name come from though?

Do we know?

I don't think, sorry,
I don't, it's not even

Angela: important, but I need
to know the unimportant things.

John: Yeah, I don't think I know
where that name came from, honestly.

Angela: How dare you.

I

John: know, I'm sorry.

Angela: You know this about me by now.

I'm gonna ask you the weirdest questions.

John: This is true,

Angela: that mean nothing.

John: So Charlie Lolly, cooler Crawford.

Was a marksman, a gun for hire,
and one of the most deadly members

of the Seven Rivers Warriors,
and to see if I can find it.

The Outlaw band aligned with
the Murphy Dole infection

during the Lincoln County War.

No one is no one for his
precision with a rifle.

Crawford wasn't the type
to charge into town.

With six shooters blaring, blazing, he
preferred to fight from a distance where

one good shot could settle a score.

By July of 78, the war had reached
its bloody crescendo at the Battle of

Lincoln, a five day siege that turned
the dusty settlement into a battlefield.

Crawford took his position high above
the town Jo joined by Lucille Matoya and

another Mexican picket from that ridge.

The trio reigned death down upon
the besiege regulators trapped

inside the McQueen's Adobe house.

Armed with a long range Buffalo rifle.

Crawford became one of the house's most
valuable assets during the standoff.

Each shot from the ridge struck the walls
like thunder, forcing the defenders to

stay low and return fire blindly through
the smoke and the shattered plaster.

For days.

He helped pin the regulators inside
while Lincoln burned around them.

But on July 18th, 1878, the man who had
hunted from the hills became the hunted

from somewhere within town regulator.

Fernando Herrera raised
his rifle and took aim.

A shot estimated between 756 and
900 yards, one of the longest

on record in frontier history.

The bullet struck true
shattering Crawford's back and

dropping him where he stood.

He lay under the sun for hours before
his allies managed to reach him.

By the time they brought him
down into town, it was too late.

There was no doctor, no
comfort, and no miracle waiting.

Charlie Lolly Cooler Crawford died
from his wounds, one of the final ca

casualties of the siege he helped sustain.

Angela: It was meant sarcastically as
an insult to his luck and intelligence.

John: Interesting.

But does it say what Lolly
cooler is supposed to mean,

Angela: uh, as a derogatory
moniker given to Charlie Crawford

by his enemies, the Tunstall men.

Huh?

That's all it says.

Very interesting.

It's meant to be

John: an insult.

Angela: Be an insult to
his look and intelligence.

John: Well, there you have it.

There you have it.

And that by the way, is a
freaking incredible shot.

Eight to 900 yards.

Yeah, with probably like a Winchester 73.

I mean, that's unbelievable.

I mean, for now with like a 30 out
six or something, it's nothing.

But back then, that's an incredible shot.

Anyway.

Angela: Anyhow, meanwhile,
back at the rest,

John: the verdict of time, Charlie
Lolly, cooler Crawford was the embodiment

of the frontier, gunman, cold eye,
calculating and lethal from a mile away.

His skill is a sharpshooter, made
him a weapon of the house, but it was

another man's bullet fired from equally
steady hands that brought him down.

He lived by distance, precision,
and control, but in Lincoln

County, even the best shot
couldn't escape the reach of fate.

By the time Charlie Lolly, cooler
Crawford fell from the ridge, the Battle

of Lincoln was in its final hours.

The regulators were pinned, the
house was burning, and the sound of

the rifle fire rolled through the
valley like thunder refusing to fade.

But for every gunman who went
down there always seemed to be

another ready to take his place.

One of those men was Charles Dutch,
Charlie Crewing, a survivor, a

hired gun, and one of the last
of the house's, hard cases still

standing when the smoke cleared.

Cooling wasn't as famous, wasn't a
famous outlaw or a local rancher.

He was a professional, a drifter with a
mean streak and a steady trigger finger,

the kind of man you paid to do a job and
didn't ask twice about the details he'd

ridden with the Seven Rivers warrior stood
guard for Dolan's men and fought through

the bloodiest stretches of the Lincoln
County War, from open skirmishes on the

plains to the last desperate shootouts
in the streets of Lincoln itself when

the war was over and the bodies buried.

Grueling was one of the few
left alive to tell about it.

But like most of the houses, gunmen
survival didn't mean peace, it just

meant living long enough to carry
the weight of what he'd done next.

To take the stand, Charles Dutch Charlie
crewing the Gun for Hire who outlasted

the war, but never outran its ghost.

I

Angela: like his name.

John: Dutch Charlie?

Angela: Mm-hmm.

John: You like it better
than lolly cooler?

I do.

I do

the charge Enforcer, gunman and
loyal soldier for the house.

Charles Dutch Charlie Crewing was one
of the many shadow with figures who

fought and bled for the Murphy Dolan
faction during the Lincoln County War.

As a member of the Seven
Rivers Roy Warriors.

Crewing wasn't a leader or a lawman.

He was a fighter, A hired hand
free war that devoured every man

who thought he could control it.

He rode wherever the house needed muscle,
working as both enforcer and gunman.

His rifle serving the interest of
Murphy Dolan and their powerful allies.

Like most of the seven Rivers men, crewing
lived in the gray space between law and

outlaw, wearing a badge when it offered
protection and discarding it when the job

called for blood instead of paperwork.

Cooling's most infamous moment
came in the spring of 1878.

During the siege of Lincoln that followed
the French Ranch gunfight, a chaotic

skirmish that left regulator Frank McNabb
dead and Ab Saunders badly wounded.

As the battle rage, George Cove perched
to top, Alexander McSwain's home

spotted crawling across the valley,
lifting his rifle code lined up what

witnesses later called a miraculous
shot over 350 yards, a near impossible

distance with Frontier iron sight.

He pulled the trigger and
the bullet struck home.

Dutch Charlie Crowing fell
seriously wounded the regulators

shouting and triumph as one of the
house's hardest guns went down.

After that cooling
disappeared from history.

No records confirmed whether
he lived or died of his wound.

Only that his name never resurfaced.

Once the Lincoln County War ended, like so
many who fought under Murphy and Dolan's

Banner, he simply vanished into the dust.

One more gunman swallowed by
the aftermath of the war, he

helped fight the verdict of time.

Dutch Charlie Crewing was a product
of the Lincoln County War's chaos.

A fighter without fame,
fortune, or forgiveness.

He wasn't remembered for who he was,
but for the shot that took him down in a

conflict where every man thought he was
untouchable, ING's fall reminded them all.

No one in Lincoln County was out of range.

The story of the house isn't
about good men and bad men.

It's about what happens when ambition
outgrows morality, when money replaces

mercy and when power unchecked,
unchallenged, and unrelenting

turns a county into a battlefield.

From the beginning, Lawrence Murphy
and James Dolan saw Lincoln County,

not as a home, but as a kingdom.

They controlled the stores, the
banks, the land, and the law itself.

Their word was business.

Their business was law.

And for a while it worked.

But the frontier has a way of pushing.

Back when John Todd and Alexander
McSwain rode into town, they

weren't just opening a ramble store,
they were threatening an empire.

And the empires, when cornered
don't compromise, they crush.

That's when the house unleashed its army.

Jesse Evans and his crew, the
boys, men who lived by the

gun and died by it faster.

The Seven Rivers Warriors outlaws with
badges, wrestlers with deputy stars,

men who blurred the line between law
and murder, the John Kinney game,

professional Killers for Hire, who
brought military precision to frontier

violence, and behind them all men
like Murphy, Dolan and Riley, counting

Prophets while others counted bodies.

Each name we've spoken tonight was
another brick in that bloody empire.

Buck Morton and Frank Bakker, who
killed for the house and paid for it

in kind Tom Hill, who may have fired
the first shot that ignited the war.

Buckshot Roberts, the man who wanted
to, to want it out, but couldn't

escape the chaos that found him.

Bob Beckwith, Charlie Crawford and
Dutch Charlie Crewing, soldiers of

Fortune who traded their lives for
someone else's power when it was over.

Lincoln wasn't a town, it was a scar.

Buildings burned, men's buried,
families scattered and reputations

shattered beyond repair.

The men of the house had won battles, but
they had lost everything that mattered.

Murphy was dying, Dolan's
fortune collapsing, and the

county itself left in ruin.

Their greed had devoured them.

Brick by brick, deal by
deal, bullet by bullet.

And yet their story lingers because
it's not just a tale from the old West.

It's a reminder etched
in dust and gunpowder.

That power once taken by
force, always ends in blood.

The Lincoln County War wasn't legend
born of lawlessness lawlessness.

It was born of control of men trying
to own a land that refused to be owned.

Every shot fired in those canyons
echoed far beyond New Mexico.

It became part of the larger
American story, a story of greed,

loyalty, and how far men will go to
protect what they think is theirs.

And though most of those men
are long gone, their ghosts

still whisper in the wind over
Lincoln County's old Main Street.

You can still feel the weight of their
choices, their ambition, their arrogance,

and the price they paid for both.

Next time on Gallows and Gunfights,
we'll continue our descent into

the darker corners of the house.

We'll meet the lieutenants, the
shooters, and the survivors men

who carried the cause forward.

When the empire began to crumble, because
in the West, the fight never ended.

It just changed hands.

You can buy loyalty, you can
buy the law, but you cannot buy

peace, not in Lincoln County.

Not in this lifetime.

Keep your powder dry and your
conscience cleaner than theirs.

That closes today's case on the
house, the empire that tried to own

Lincoln County and everyone in it.

Greed built it.

Loyalty, bled for it, and history.

Never let it rest.

Angela: If you've been writing
with us through this story, make

sure to like, follow and share the
show wherever you're listening.

It helps more folks find their
way into the courtroom of history.

John: Leave us a rating and a review too.

Every review helps us climb the
charts and keeps these stories

of the American frontier alive.

For the next listener
looking for the truth.

Grit and justice.

Angela: Follow the Dart Dialogue Network
on Facebook, X, YouTube, and Substack

for updates behind the scenes posts and
upcoming episodes from all of our shows.

John: Your support, your likes,
shares, and reviews are what

keep this community strong.

So saddle up, spread the word
and help us keep the legends

talking and the guilty answering.

You can continue your support on
Patreon or on Patreon, or on coffee.

Your support is how we're able
to continue to do this work.

Angela: Next time, we'll keep digging
into the men who fought for the house

and the ghosts they left behind.

John: Until then, keep your powder dry.

Your aim true, and your
conscience clear because the

jury of history never adjourns.

Let the past take the stand and
the guilty face, the gallows.