Bloody Bill Longley: The Mythology of a Gunfighter, Second Edition

Chapter 2 These Desperate Scoundrels and Out Laws

14 The Civil War ended in 1865, and Texas struggled to restore some equilibrium throughout its many communities. Young Bill Long­ ley reportedly dropped out of his schooling and acquired a six-shooter and a horse, like many other young men in those unsettled times. And thus began the confusing mixture of fact and fiction that complicates a straightforward telling of Long­ ley’s short criminal career. Some have written that in 1866, fifteen-year-old Long­ ley jumped a train in order to go to Houston, where he could get his hands on a pistol. This seems a little contrived, given the ready availability of firearms . However, as the story goes, in the teeming streets of Houston, he saw firsthand how “the newly-freed Negroes had taken over the new State Police and created clashes with the white man.” Long­ ley supposedly took up with another young white man, and having nowhere to stay, they decided to bed down in an alley. According to the story, they were confronted by a blue-uniformed black policeman swinging a lead ball on a leather thong, commonly called a mace. The officer demanded to know what they were doing and, instead of searching them, ordered them to undress. Long­ ley’s These Desperate Scoundrels and Out Laws Chapter 2 These Desperate Scoundrels and OutLaws 15 companion suddenly pulled a knife from under his shirt and stabbed the officer to death. Long­ ley grabbed the officer’s Texas-manufactured “Dance” revolver and the two boys fled. Long­ ley immediately returned to Evergreen, the proud possessor of his first firearm, or at least so the story goes.1 Unfortunately, there is no documented basis for this story and it seems a little far-fetched. Every authoritative source indicates that, indeed, Long­ ley and other young men in the Evergreen area, going out of their way to disrupt community tranquility through assault and robbery under the guise of performing a noble public service, became holy terrors to the local black citizens. Long­ ley later claimed that his lawlessness began in the spring of 1867. He said, “I have always known that I was doing wrong, but I got started when I was just a fool boy, led off by older heads, and taught to believe that it was right to kill sassy negroes, and then to resist the military law.”2 Early researcher T. U. Taylor talked with old-timers who claimed that Bill Long­ ley became an expert with the six-shooter, allegedly able to drill a tree with six balls as he galloped past astride a horse. He reportedly practiced constantly at a small creek near the Long­ ley farm. One witness said that he saw the young man empty two pistols simultaneously into a six-inch spot on the side of a dry goods box.3 Such tales of exceptional marksmanship are often “recalled” of notorious gunfighters. Sometime during this period, Long­ ley took up with Alabamaborn Johnson McKeown, four or five years older than he, the fifth child of Evergreen farmer James McKeown.4 James McKeown later became the first sheriff of newly created Lee County in 1874 and pursued Bill Long­ ley the following year. Long­ ley, young McKeown, and others allegedly pledged to disarm all the freedmen they found riding through the countryside, and Long­ ley claimed that they were generally applauded for it.5 Stories of general hell-raising by these young men abound. For example, Long­ ley allegedly entered into a horseracing partnership with McKeown, and they rode to various communities to participate in local races. Supposedly in 1867, as Taylor described one incident, 16  Chapter 2 Long­ ley and McKeown were forced to retreat from a certain race when they were “outnumbered” by freedmen. The two boys then went that night to the small village of Lexington, some seven miles north of Evergreen in Burleson County, and rode their horses into the midst of a Negro dance. Long­ ley allegedly fired indiscriminately, killing two men and wounding a number of others before riding off. Supposedly this gave him a reputation as a terrorist among black citizens of the area.6 However, as with other such tales, there is no corroboration of this incident in contemporary sources. In another incident, William J. “Will” Grant,7 a former schoolmate of Long­ ley’s, recalled for Taylor many years later how Long­ ley disrupted a traveling circus...