Enid News columnist Phil Brown had a column I enjoyed reading in today's (July 5) Enid News:

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˜The bigges' outlaw Oklahoma ever had'

By Phil Brown Commentary
The only thing I have in common with the late Pulitzer Prize winning author Marquis James is we both had the same job for the same newspaper in the same town, which I like to think affords me some measure of kinship, even though it be ever so slight.

We were both reporters "” though decades apart "” for the old Enid Daily Eagle. It was an afternoon newspaper owned by Bill Taylor, which merged in 1923 with Judge M.C. Garber's Enid Morning News. It was a partnership that lasted for 65 years. Both newspapers were sold in 1988.

But back to Marquis James and my feeling of kinship:

I have read several accounts of the capture and eventual death of outlaw Dick Yeager, billed as the most notorious outlaw in the Cherokee Strip, and I have written a column or two about him myself, but none of the stories cover the same ground with the same thoroughness that James' version does. His training as a beat reporter certainly pays off in this story.

As a little boy, James went to Garfield County Jail with his mother and shook hands with the badly wounded outlaw in his cell.

In James' book "The Cherokee Strip," subtitled "A Tale of An Oklahoma Boyhood," he describes in detail the wounding and capture of Yeager, the jail on our downtown Square where he was confined and the almost side-show-like atmosphere that existed around the jail during Yeager's confinement there.

Here, in pretty much James' own words, with a few left out, is his story of the sad last days of the notorious Cherokee Strip outlaw's life:

It begins with Dick Yeager and Ike Black holed up in the Gyp Hills (Gloss Mountains) west of Enid.

Their plan was to escape from the hills to the Cherokee Nation. They fought pitched battles with pursuing posses in their attempt to escape, but failed. It wasn't long before a posse came upon Yeager and Black sleeping one night. One member of the posse fired too soon ... and missed, wakening the two bad men, who shot their way out of the trap.

It was just a short time later Yeager and Black were ambushed near a settler's shack when they stopped for food. Black was killed and Yeager was wounded. He fled the scene on foot, stole a horse but soon abandoned it. He was tracked into Alvin Rosa's cornfield. Sheriff Thralls sent Ad Poak and Tom Smith to track him into the stand of corn that was more than head high to a tall man. They found Yeager stretched out on a mound of bad soil where no corn would grow.

His clothing was tattered and torn and stained with blood. He wore one boot and one shoe. A six-shooter and a rifle lay near his right side. Ad Poak called out to Yeager to raise his hands, "We've got you!" he yelled.

Yeager opened his eyes and blinked, and when his right hand moved toward his pistol Poak and Smith fired. It didn't kill him. He was taken to the county jail located in the center of Enid's Square, about where the post office is located now.

James described the jail as being enclosed with a high slate-colored fence topped by four or five strands of barbed wire. At each corner of the fence a deputy sheriff armed with a Winchester sat on a box.

People came from some distance to see the infamous outlaw. He was a big man, and strangely he was viewed by the public as some sort of a folk hero, despite the fact he had killed a lawman in Kansas and two settlers in Oklahoma and escaped twice from the jail at Guthrie.

James said wet blankets were hung on the walls of the cell in an effort to keep down the heat. The brindle jail pup with which Yeager had made friends lay on the damp cell floor panting. James said the cell smelled like medicine. James shook Yeager's hand and the bad man told him: "Young man you can tell 'em you shook hands with the bigges' outlaw Oklahoma ever had."

A short time later Yeager's fever began to rise, and Dr, McKenzie told him he would not survive the night.

The doctor asked him if there was anyone he wished to see, or anything he wanted to say, and Yeager replied, "Nobody to see Doc, an' nothin' to say."



Brown is a retired News & Eagle editor.