Генри Ньютон Браун: Стрелок Дикого Запада и участник Линкольнского конфликта

American Old West gunman

the Louisiana judge

Henry Newton Brown (1857 – April 30, 1884) was an American Old West gunman who played the roles of both lawman and outlaw during his life. Brown was raised in Cold Springs Township, in Phelps County, ten miles south of Rolla, Missouri. An orphan, he lived there with his uncle Jasper and aunt Aldamira Richardson until the age of seventeen, when he left home and headed west. He drifted through various cowboy jobs in Colorado and Texas, supposedly killing a man in a gunfight in the Texas Panhandle.

In 1877, Brown landed in the New Mexico Territory, and became embroiled in the Lincoln County War. Brown joined Billy the Kid and cowboys as "The Regulators", working John Tunstall's Rio Feliz Ranch. On April 1, 1878, Brown, Billy the Kid, Jim French, Frank McNab, John Middleton and Fred Waite ambushed and murdered Lincoln County Sheriff William Brady, who was indirectly responsible for the death of Tunstall. Three days later, at the Gunfight at Blazer's Mill, Brown and the Regulators engaged in a gunfight with Buckshot Roberts, another man they believed involved in Tunstall's murder. Roberts received a serious gunshot wound from Charlie Bowdre which later proved to be fatal, but not before he managed to kill the Regulators' nominal leader, Richard M. Brewer. Retreating into proprietor Blazer's office, Roberts continued a prolonged firefight with Brown and the Regulators. He died the next day. The Lincoln County Regulators — fugitives now for the Brady killing — spent the next several months in hiding. Then on July 15, 1878, they became trapped, along with one of Tunstall's partners, Alexander McSween, in McSween's home in Lincoln by members of "The House" and some of Brady's men. Henry Brown was one of three Regulators not actually in McSween's house at the time, but instead was sniping at Brady's men from a grain warehouse behind the Tunstall store. He escaped with Billy the Kid and the others when the siegers set fire to the house. McSween was shot down while fleeing the blaze, and his death essentially marked the end of the Lincoln County Cattle War.

In April, 1884, Brown and Wheeler concocted a story convincing the mayor to give them leave to travel into the Indian Territory to hunt a murderer. With two Cherokee Outlet cowboys, William Smith and John Wesley, they rode to Medicine Lodge, Kansas, and attempted to rob the Medicine Valley Bank. Almost immediately, their attempt fell apart in disaster when gunfire erupted and two of the bank officers were shot. Most conventional accounts name Brown as bank president Wylie Payne's murderer. But T. A. McNeal, author of When Kansas Was Young, sat at his friend Payne's bedside as he lay dying and reports that Payne named Wesley as his killer. Wheeler (and possibly, Wesley) shot George Geppert, the bank's chief cashier who, just before he died, sealed the vault, preventing the robbers from escaping with any money. Brown and the outlaws fled under fire, pursued by a posse composed of 12 cowboys that happened to be in a stable directly across the street from the bank. The four fugitives, closely pursued by the posse, unwittingly rode into a box canyon several miles south of the town and were eventually forced to surrender. Later, incarcerated in the town's small jail, they anticipated a lynch mob, and were offered the opportunity to write letters to their loved ones. Brown did write a poignant letter to his wife. It read in part:
"Darling Wife: I am in jail here. Four of us tried to rob the bank here and one man shot one of the men in the bank. I want you to come and see me as soon as you can. I will send you all of my things and you can sell them. But keep the Winchester. It is hard for me to write this letter, but it was all for you, my sweet wife, and for the love I have for you. "Do not go back on me. If you do it will kill me. Be true to me as long as you live, and come to see me if you think enough of me. My love is just the same as it always was. Oh, how I did hate to leave you last Sunday evening. But I did not think this would happen. I thought we could take in the money and not have any trouble with it, but a man's fondest hopes are sometimes broken with trouble. We would not have been arrested but one of our horses gave out and we could not leave him [the rider] alone. I do not know what to write. Do the best you can with everything. I want you to send me some clothes. Sell all the things you don't need. Have your picture taken and send it to me. Now, my dear wife, go and see Mr. Witzleben and Mr. Nyce and get the money. If a mob does not kill us we will come out all right after while. Maude, I did not shoot anyone and didn't want the others to kill anyone. But they did and that is all there is about it. Now, my darling wife, goodbye. H. N. Brown."

Realizing that a lynching was imminent, Wesley removed his boot and with it, the shackle of the leg iron with which he had been shackled to Brown. Brown tied the loose end of the leg iron to his leg with his bandana allowing him to run unencumbered. Smith, handcuffed to Wheeler, was able to slip the handcuff over his small hand resulting, unknown to the gathering mob, in all four being free. When the lynch mob came at 9 pm and opened the door, Brown burst through the startled lynch mob to an alley alongside the jail. As he ran past, he was blasted with both barrels of a shotgun at almost point blank range. He died being nearly torn in half. Wheeler ran about 100 yards before being horribly wounded in a barrage of gunfire but lived long enough to hang with Smith and Wesley shortly afterward when the three were hanged on an elm tree by the mob.