| Although he was a crack shot and had dealt
successfully with a lot of vicious outlaws, Deputy U.S. Marshal Bill Tilghman
didn't believe in unnecessary gunplay. In that respect, he typified the
great lawmen of the West far more than legend might lead one to believe.
Most successful lawmen realized the futility of trying to match wits and
skills with a trigger-happy outlaw. A good reputation as an accurate marksman,
backed by the awesome power of a shotgun, were often the best and only
allies of a Western sheriff.
Before he became a U. S. marshal, Tilghman
- who was born in 1854 at Fort Dodge, Iowa - worked as a buffalo hunter,
a saloon owner, and a police officer in Dodge City, Kansas. In 1889 he
was hired as a deputy U.S. marshal for the Oklahoma Territory, which soon
became the hangout of the deadly Bill Doolin gang of bank and train robbers.
Doolin was a member of the infamous Dalton gang, which he had reorganized
after the 1892 Coffeyville bank raid.
Among the deputy U.S. marshals that were
put on the trail of the Doolin gang were Tilghman, Heck Thomas, and Chris
Madsen, who soon became famous throughout the West as the Three Guardsmen.
In 1893 Madsen
and another lawman caught up with gang
member Ole Yountis and killed him when he resisted arrest. Deputy marshals
then killed Bill Dalton at Ardmore, Oklahoma Territory, in 1895, and the
next year Tilghman surprised and singlehandedly captured Bill Doolin himself
at Eureka Springs, Arkansas, without firing a shot. While awaiting trial,
Doolin escaped from the federal jail at Guthrie, Oklahoma, in July 1896,
but within a month Heck Thomas and a posse tracked him down. Ordered to
surrender, Doolin fired off a shot that went wild and he was instantly
killed by a blast from Thomas's shotgun. In 1898 Tilghman and Thomas cornered
"Little Dick" West, probably the last of the Doolin gang. When West came
out shooting, he too was killed by the lawmen.
After Oklahoma was admitted to the Union
in 1907, Bill Tilghman was elected a state senator and later served as
police chief of Oklahoma City. Upon retirement he agreed to become marshal
of the oil-boom town of Cromwell, Oklahoma. And so, in 1924, the 70-year-old
Tilghman once again pinned on his badge and strapped on his gun. Three
months later he was gunned down in the street by an unknown assassin.
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