In the raw frontier world of the American West, where the rule of law was often enforced at the point of a gun, few names carried more weight than that of Dave Rudabaugh. A feared outlaw and leader of a gang that terrorized Kansas, Texas, and Colorado, he became so infamous that even the legendary Wyatt Earp was dispatched to track him down. But Rudabaugh’s path to notoriety was not built on a single dramatic heist; it was a long career of theft, violence, and narrow escapes that would ultimately lead him from the saddle of a cattle thief to a jail cell, and finally to a grisly end in a dusty Mexican town. Born in Fulton County, Illinois, in July 1854, Rudabaugh’s early life was shaped by tragedy and movement.
His father was killed during the Civil War, and while still a boy, his family relocated to Eureka, Kansas, in 1870. He later lived in Greenwood County, Kansas, before heading west along the cattle trails to Colorado. Little is known about his life in those years, but it was during the 1870s that he earned a grim nickname, Dirty Dave, for his infrequent bathing and his habit of wearing dirty clothes. By the middle of that decade, he had risen to lead a gang of thieves in Texas, and his criminal operations soon spread beyond the borders of the Lone Star State.
One of his more notable robberies came in November 1877, when Rudabaugh and his men raided a Santa Fe railroad construction camp in Kansas. The crime was bold enough to draw the attention of federal authorities, and Wyatt Earp received a commission as a Deputy United States Marshal with the task of hunting the outlaws down. Earp tracked Rudabaugh across more than four hundred miles, finally catching up with him at Fort Griffin, Texas. Arriving at the Shanssey Saloon, Earp asked the owner, John Shanssey, about Rudabaugh’s whereabouts.
Shanssey told him the outlaw had been there earlier in the week, but he could not say where he had gone. He then directed Earp to Doc Holliday, who was known to play cards with Rudabaugh. Earp approached the meeting with Holliday cautiously, well aware that the dentist gambler did not play by conventional rules. But that evening at the saloon, Earp found Holliday surprisingly willing to talk.
Holliday told him he believed Rudabaugh had returned to Kansas. That first meeting laid the groundwork for a lifelong friendship between the two men. Earp passed the information on to Bat Masterson, an important step that would eventually lead to Rudabaugh’s capture. In an attempt to avoid Earp, Rudabaugh headed back to Kansas, where he tried to hijack a train on January 27, 1878, near Kinsley.
The attempt failed, but within days Sheriff Bat Masterson and his posse, which included John Joshua Webb, caught up with Rudabaugh and his partner, Edgar West. When Rudabaugh reached for his gun, Webb intervened, forcing him to surrender. Four other accomplices were arrested in the following days. While his partners were sent to prison, Rudabaugh told his associates he planned to turn over a new leaf and live an honest life.
He was soon released and promptly resumed his lawless ways, heading to New Mexico. By 1879, he had reunited with some of his old partners and, over the next six months, the group ravaged the area around Las Vegas, New Mexico, carrying out a series of train and carriage robberies. They became known as the Dodge City Gang, a collection of notorious figures that included Mysterious Dave Mather, Carson Hoodoo Brown, and City Marshal John Joshua Webb, who had once been Rudabaugh’s rival in Dodge City. On October 14, 1879, a group of masked men stopped a train near Las Vegas and made off with $2,085, three pistols, and every lantern on board.
Two years later, after his final arrest, Rudabaugh admitted to his part in the robbery. The gang’s violence soon escalated. On January 22, 1880, four men, TJ House, James West, T. John Dorsey, and William Randall, caused trouble at the Close and Patterson Variety Hall.
When Field Marshal Joe Carson asked them to check their weapons, they refused. A fierce gunfight broke out, and Carson was killed. Mysterious Dave Mather stepped in, fatally shooting Randall and abandoning the wounded Dorsey, while TJ House managed to escape. The Dodge City Gang was determined to track down the fugitives.
On February 5, they learned that Dorsey and House were hiding at Juan Antonio Dominguez’s mansion in Buena Vista, some thirty miles north of Las Vegas. A party that included John Joshua Webb, Dave Rudabaugh, and five others surrounded the house and demanded the men surrender. Dorsey and House complied, but only after receiving assurances of safety from citizens of Las Vegas. Those promises proved worthless.
As soon as the prisoners were brought into the old town prison, a mob of vigilantes stormed the facility and overpowered the guards, intending to hang both men from the windmill in the town square. Before the mob could carry out its plan, however, Mrs. Carson opened fire on them, helping the accused killers escape justice for her husband’s murder. The gang resumed its spree of robberies, but the law was closing in.
On March 2, 1880, John Joshua Webb was arrested for the murder of Mike Kellerer. A large mob formed, demanding Webb’s blood, but the Dodge City Gang, led by Rudabaugh, managed to hold them off. On April 30, Rudabaugh and an accomplice, John Allen, stormed the sheriff’s office with the intention of freeing Webb. Their escape attempt failed, and in the chaos, Rudabaugh fatally shot the jailer, Antonio Leno.
Webb’s conviction was later appealed, and his sentence was reduced to life in prison. Some time afterward, Rudabaugh and another gang member, Tom Pickett, took refuge in Fort Sumner, where they joined forces with the infamous Billy the Kid. According to various accounts, Billy the Kid was afraid of only one man, and that man was Dave Rudabaugh. On November 30, 1880, Billy the Kid, David Anderson, and Rudabaugh set out for White Oaks, New Mexico.
There they encountered Deputy Sheriff James Redmond, who took cover behind a building and opened fire. The locals joined the fight, and the outlaws were chased out of town. Their freedom did not last long. On December 23, 1880, a posse led by Pat Garrett captured Rudabaugh, Billy the Kid, Billy Wilson, and other members of the crew.
They were taken to Las Vegas, but the danger of a lynch mob forced the officers to move them to Santa Fe. In February 1881, while on trial, Rudabaugh pleaded guilty to several counts of grand larceny and was sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison. He was later found guilty of murdering Deputy Leno Valdez and sentenced to death by hanging. He was taken to the Old Town Las Vegas jail to await execution, where he rejoined John Joshua Webb, who was still serving his time.
Meanwhile, Billy the Kid was held in Lincoln, New Mexico, from where he escaped on April 28, 1881. He was quickly tracked down and killed by Pat Garrett on July 14, 1881. Rudabaugh had no intention of sharing that fate. After one failed escape attempt in which a fellow inmate named Thomas Duffy died, Rudabaugh and Webb devised another plan.
Two months later, the two men, along with five others, dug a hole large enough to escape, and they succeeded. Rudabaugh fled to Arizona, where he joined the Clanton faction in their feud with the Earp brothers. He may have been involved in the murder of Morgan Earp and in the plot to kill Virgil Earp, and he may also have been present at the Iron Springs gunfight, in which Curly Bill Brocius was killed. When the Clanton gang broke up, Rudabaugh crossed into Mexico, where he worked as both a cowboy and a barber.
On February 18, 1886, he was involved in a card game in Parral, Chihuahua, when the mood turned tense over allegations of fraud. Rudabaugh quickly pulled his pistol and shot two men dead, wounding a third. He calmly walked out of the tavern unharmed, but when he could not find his horse, he returned a moment later. Someone fired from the darkness, hitting him multiple times, and he died.
Days later, his killers paraded through the town with his severed head carried on a pole. For a man who had once been the most feared outlaw among both lawmen and desperadoes alike, it was a bitter and brutal end.