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chapter three A Texas Sheriff in 1902 andrew jackson spradley was forty-nine, a year older than the slain Duncan Hicks. In a photo taken when Spradley was first elected sheriff, he bears a resemblance to Bat Masterson—the infamous occasional lawman, occasional gunslinger, part-time sportswriter, and full-time card shark—who was of the same era. Each had a thick moustache, wavy, dark hair, and piercing eyes. By 1902 Spradley’s hair was streaked with gray and perhaps a bit thinner, but the moustache was still full. In a photograph taken that year, posed with one of his bloodhounds, Spradley looked the picture of a Texas sheriff: tall, stern, and tough. Like Hicks, Spradley was originally from Mississippi. One of nine children, he grew up in a hamlet called Fayette Hill in Simpson County, about thirty miles southeast of the state capital of Jackson. When he was twenty, Spradley and his brothers were considered the county champs in wrestling and boxing, according to a 1931 account written by former newspaper editor Henry C. Fuller. But the Hayes family had several strapping sons interested in taking the fisticuffs title away from the Spradleys. One of the older Hayes brothers challenged John Spradley—as the future sheriff was then known—to a bare-knuckle boxing match. Spradley’s account , as told to Fuller, was that he poured blow upon blow upon Hayes’s unprotected body, “finally knocking him down and giving him such a beating as perhaps no man ever received in that part of the country.”1 The beating—and the humiliation—didn’t sit well with the Hayes brothers, and matters came to a head a few weeks later. In a confrontation , one Spradley brother was shot by a Hayes brother, though not seriously . John Spradley whipped out an old cap-and-ball six-shooter, shot, and killed two of the Hayes boys. Though the killings were deemed self-defense, a family council determined it was time for John Spradley to move on. His uncle lived in Nacogdoches County, and, like so many before who deemed it best to seek a new life for whatever reason, Spradley was GTT: gone to Texas.2 By Spradley’s account, he caught a steamboat, probably at Vicksburg, A Texas Sheriff { 27 and then traveled upstream along the Red River to Shreveport. By the time he arrived, Spradley was nearly broke, with just thirty-five cents to his name. He later claimed to have walked the remaining ninety miles to Nacogdoches. The year was 1874. Spradley landed a job at a lumber mill, where he worked until 1880. He quickly garnered a reputation as someone not to be trifled with, and caught the eye of Sheriff Dick Orton, who that year appointed him his chief, and only, deputy.3 Orton resigned a scant month later, and the commissioners’ court appointed his brother, John, to replace him. But on August 15, 1882, John Orton also resigned, and Spradley, then twentynine , was appointed to take his place as sheriff. Spradley was elected on his own that fall, surviving a rather vicious campaign in which the circumstances of his leaving Mississippi were bandied about, forcing him to gather up a petition signed by Simpson County’s finest, who averred that Spradley was of good character and was welcome back any time. Still, the killings in Mississippi would be used by political opponents—Sentinel editor Haltom would become his bitterest —for much of his political career. His career nearly ended prematurely in the summer of 1884. Spradley had gone up to Linn Flat on a midsummer Saturday morning to take care of some business. On the way back a squirrel darted in front of his horse, and he shot at it twice, killing it with the second shot. He tied the dead squirrel to his saddle, likely planning on talking his wife into making some squirrel stew for supper. The sheriff recalled he had just two cartridges left in his pistol when he got back to Nacogdoches, where downtown was full of country people, many of whom were getting liquored up in one of the town’s ten or so saloons. Spradley said he was going to get some dinner when he was summoned to P. C. Richardson’s store, where a couple of drunks were raising a ruckus. He arrived to find three drunk men being held off by the shotgun -wielding Richardson. The sheriff arrested Bill Rogers, whom Spradley later described as a...

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