In April 1884, a lynch mob stormed a small jail in Medicine Lodge, Kansas, determined to seize four prisoners held inside. One of those prisoners was the respected city marshal of nearby Caldwell, a man whose dark past had remained hidden from the townspeople who trusted him. Henry Newton Brown had built a new life for himself as a lawman, but years earlier, he had ridden alongside Billy the Kid during the Lincoln County War. His transformation from outlaw to badge-carrier seemed genuine, and by the mid-1880s, Brown appeared to have left his violent history behind entirely.
He had married a young woman named Maud, purchased a new home, and earned such respect in Caldwell that grateful citizens presented him with an engraved Winchester rifle in appreciation for his service. That same rifle would later be used in a bank robbery. Brown was born near Rolla, Missouri, around 1857. He and his older sister were orphaned young and raised by relatives before Henry headed west as a teenager.
Details of his early years are thin, but according to cowboy author Charlie Siringo, Brown drifted into a cow camp in northern Texas, where he killed his first man after firing three shots at him. That alleged killing supposedly drove him further west into New Mexico. By the summer of 1876, Brown was working for L. G.
Murphy and Company in Lincoln County, the same outfit that would soon become central to the Lincoln County War. He quit that job, claiming he had been cheated on wages, and went to work for cattle baron John Chisholm. In February 1878, Brown secured a position with Englishman John Tunstall, a decision that changed everything. The Lincoln County War was a violent feud between two factions fighting for economic control of the region.
On one side stood the Murphy-Dolan faction, known as the House, which controlled the local store, held lucrative beef contracts with Fort Stanton, and employed a small army of outlaws. On the other side were Tunstall, his attorney Alexander McSween, and their allies, who had opened a competing store and bank, undermining the House’s stranglehold on commerce. That tension culminated in Tunstall’s murder, and Brown was one of the men riding with him on the morning of his death. Brown’s horse threw a shoe, forcing him to turn back, so he was not present when Tunstall was assassinated.
He was present the following day when Dick Brewer was sworn in as a special constable and issued arrest warrants for more than a dozen men charged with the killing. Brewer deputized Brown, Billy the Kid, Doc Scurlock, and several others, forming the group that became known as the Lincoln County Regulators. The problem was that Sheriff William Brady was aligned with the same people who ordered Tunstall’s murder, and the Regulators knew any prisoners turned over to him would simply be set free. They decided to take matters into their own hands.
On March 9, 1878, the Regulators killed Frank Baker, Buck Morton, and William McCloskey. Baker and Morton were aligned with the Murphy-Dolan faction, and Morton had been part of the posse that killed Tunstall. McCloskey was supposedly on the Regulators’ side, but they apparently did not trust him. Accounts differ on who shot whom, with various witnesses placing the blame on different members of the group.
Less than a month later, Brown was present when the Regulators ambushed Sheriff Brady and Deputy George Hindman in Lincoln. The men had slipped into town under cover of darkness and taken positions behind a wall near Tunstall’s store. When Brady and his deputies walked by the next morning, the Regulators opened fire. Brady and Hindman lay dead, and several others were wounded.
Just days later, the group found themselves in another gunfight at Blazer’s Mill. A former House rider named Buckshot Roberts arrived on a mule, hoping to collect a check for his recently sold ranch. In the ensuing battle, Roberts killed Dick Brewer, wounded John Middleton, and blew off one of George Coe’s fingers before the Regulators finally killed him. That action resulted in murder charges against the group.
The violence continued through the spring and summer. Brown was with George Coe when Coe shot a member of the Seven Rivers Gang in April, and weeks later, Brown and the Regulators killed Manuel “The Indian” Segovia, another man who had helped murder Tunstall. The war effectively ended following the five-day Battle of Lincoln in July 1878. Alexander McSween rode into town with around 40 men, including Brown and Billy the Kid.
The Regulators spread out and took fighting positions, but the situation stalemated until Colonel Dudley arrived with troops from Fort Stanton. Although Dudley claimed neutrality, his presence shielded the opposing faction long enough for them to set McSween’s house on fire. In the chaos that followed, Brown and George Coe fled town under gunfire. Tunstall and McSween were both dead, and many Regulators were now wanted fugitives.
Weeks later, Brown joined Billy the Kid and others on a visit to the Mescalero Reservation looking for fresh horses. By the time they left, Indian Agent Morris Bernstein was dead. Rather than continue fighting, the remaining Regulators stole a herd of horses and drove them to the Texas Panhandle, spending time in the town of Tascosa before going their separate ways. Billy the Kid headed back to New Mexico and into history.
Others scattered across the region. Brown remained in Tascosa, where, oddly enough, he pinned on a badge. The job did not last. His temper led to conflicts with locals, and he was fired for being always wanting to fight.
He found work at a nearby ranch but was fired for the same reason. Brown drifted through what is now Oklahoma before putting down roots in Caldwell, Kansas. The town had a reputation for violence, having lost several marshals to gunfire in recent years. Brown was sworn in as deputy to Marshal Bat Carr in July 1882, introduced in the local paper as one of the quickest men on the trigger in the Southwest.
This time, the job stuck. After just two months, Brown and Carr were credited with cleaning up Caldwell. Brown even took a side gig guarding strongboxes for the Cattlemen’s Association. By late December 1882, Carr had been removed from office, and Brown stepped in as his replacement.
Joining him as assistant marshal was Ben Wheeler, another former outlaw living under an alias. Wheeler’s real name was Ben Robinson, and he had been a deputy sheriff in Texas before turning to crime and fleeing the state. Despite their backgrounds, the pair maintained the peace in Caldwell effectively enough that grateful residents presented Brown with that fancy gold-and-silver-mounted Winchester. Brown used the rifle about a year later when he killed a gambler named Newt Boyce, who had been drinking heavily and making threats against both Wheeler and Brown.
Brown caught up with him outside a saloon, and when Boyce went for his gun, Brown shot him through the arm and side. Boyce died hours later. Just seven months earlier, Brown had killed a Pawnee man named Spotted Horse who had tried to break into a home and then reached for a pistol when confronted. Brown fired four rounds at him, missing the first three times before a bullet to the forehead ended the encounter.
By early 1884, life seemed good for Brown. He married Maud Levergold on March 26, 1884, and bought a new house just north of Main Street. The problem was that he could not afford it. His marshal’s salary did not match his new lifestyle, and he was struggling to make ends meet.
Rather than cut expenses or take a second job, Brown chose another path. On Sunday, April 27, 1884, barely a month into his marriage, he told the mayor he needed time off to hunt for a murderer down in the territory. Instead of heading south, Brown and Wheeler, along with two cowboys named William Smith and John Wesley, turned west toward Medicine Lodge. They arrived on April 30 during a heavy thunderstorm and dismounted behind the Medicine Valley Bank.
Smith stayed outside with the horses while Brown, Wheeler, and Wesley went inside. They ordered the bankers to raise their hands, but when bank president E. W. Payne reached for a pistol, chaos erupted.
The robbers shot Payne and gunned down cashier George Gephart. Before he died, Gephart managed to lock the vault, denying the robbers a single dollar. Across the street, a reverend heard the shots and alerted the town marshal, who recruited a small posse of local cowboys sheltering from the storm. One of them, Barney O’Connor, had been a foreman on a ranch where Brown once worked.
When Brown and his accomplices made their getaway, it was O’Connor who led the pursuit. Two and a half miles south of town, one of the outlaws’ horses gave out. The robbers rode into a box canyon and held off the posse for several hours before surrendering. As they were brought back to town, citizens were shocked to discover that two of the robbers were lawmen from a nearby county, one of them the Caldwell city marshal.
Later that evening, Brown wrote a letter to Maud from his cell. He told her he was in jail for attempting to rob the bank and assured her that he did not shoot anyone and had not wanted the others to kill anyone. He asked her to come see him and to keep the Winchester. He wrote that it was all for her and that if she went back on him, it would kill him.
Whether Brown was telling the truth about not killing anyone is debatable. A witness with the dying bank president reportedly identified the shooter as Brown’s accomplice John Wesley. Regardless, it did not matter to the people of Medicine Lodge. That night, a lynch mob of several hundred people stormed the jail.
Unbeknownst to them, Brown and the others had already slipped out of their shackles. When the mob pried the door open, Brown made a dash for freedom. A local farmer raised a double-barrel shotgun and fired both triggers, nearly cutting the former lawman in half. Wheeler made it about a hundred yards further before being shot multiple times.
Still alive when the mob caught up, he was dragged to a grove of trees by the creek, where he whispered a confession and begged for his life. His pleas were ignored. Wesley asked that his mother in Texas not be told how he died, and Smith asked that his saddle be sold and the money sent to his mother, also in Texas. Moments later, all three were hanged from an elm tree.
Citizens of Caldwell were horrified when news reached them. At first, they refused to believe their beloved marshal had tried to rob a bank. When reality set in, they sent a formal apology to Medicine Lodge and held a public auction to sell off the dead outlaws’ horses and saddles, with proceeds presumably going to the victims’ families. Maud did not sell the rifle but gave it away.
She eventually moved to Indiana, worked as a nurse in an asylum, and rose to become superintendent of the entire institution. In a short memoir she wrote near the end of her life, she mentioned her late husband only once, noting that she married H. N. Brown in 1883 and that he had passed away many years ago.
The engraved Winchester eventually made its way to Texas before being sold to a collector. In 1977, it was donated to the Kansas Historical Society and can currently be seen at the Kansas Museum of History in Topeka. Brown survived the Lincoln County War and climbed from orphan to respected lawman, only to throw it all away because he could not make the math work on his salary. His actions also destroyed other lives.
Cashier George Gephart left behind a wife and at least one child. Local papers wrote that he had been widely known and universally respected, a man of excellent business capacity with a comfortable home and pleasant family. Bank president Edward Payne also left behind a wife and several children. Later research has cast some doubt on the details of Brown’s early life.
Historian Matt Kidd, who is working on a new biography of Brown, has found no evidence that Brown killed anyone in Texas or that he ever hunted buffalo. Kidd also believes Brown was likely born in 1859 rather than 1857 and suspects that Wheeler and Wesley were the brains behind the robbery, possibly even using it as an inside job to cover up embezzlement.
