At the end of the civil war, there was in New Mexico, with what was known as the California Column, which joined the forces of New Mexican volunteers, an officer known as Major L. G. Murphy. After the war, a great many men settled near the points where they were mustered out in the South and West. It was thus with Major Murphy, who located as post-trader at the little frontier post known as Fort Stanton, which was founded by Captain Frank Stanton in 1854, in the Indian days. John Chisum located his Bosque Grande ranch about 1865, and Murphy came to Fort Stanton about 1866. In 1875, Chisum dropped down to his South Spring River ranch, and by that time Murphy had been thrown out of the post-tradership by Major Clendenning, commanding officer, who did not like his methods. He had dropped nine miles down the Bonito from
Fort Stanton, with two young associates, under the firm name of Murphy, Riley & Dolan, sometimes spoken of as L. G. Murphy & Co.
Murphy was a hard-drinking man, yet withal something of a student. He was intelligent, generous, bold and shrewd. He "staked" every little cow man in Lincoln county, including a great many who hung on the flanks of John Chisum's herds. These men in turn were in their ethics bound to support him and his methods. Murphy was king of the Bonito country. Chisum was king of the Pecos; not merchant but cow man, and caring for nothing which had not grass and water on it.
Here, then, were two rival kings. Each at times had occasion for a beef contract. The result is obvious to anyone who knows the ways of the remoter West in earlier days. The times were ripe for trouble. Murphy bought stolen beef, and furnished bran instead of flour on his Indian contracts, as the government records show. His henchmen held the Chisum herds as their legitimate prey. Thus we now have our stage set and peopled for the grim drama of a bitter border war.
The Pecos war was mostly an indiscriminate killing among cow men and cattle thieves, and
it cost many lives, though it had no beginning and no end. The Texas men, hard riders and cheerful shooters for the most part, came pushing up the Pecos and into the Bonito cañon. Among these, in 1874, were four brothers known as the Harold boys, Bill, Jack, Tom and Bob, who had come from Texas in 1872. Two of them located ranches on the Ruidoso, being "staked" therein by Major Murphy, king for that part of the countryside. The Harold boys once undertook to run the town of Lincoln, and a foolish justice ordered a constable to arrest them. One Gillam, an ex-sheriff, told the boys to put on their guns. On that night there were killed Gillam, Bill Harold, Dave Warner and Martinez, the Mexican constable. The dead body of Martinez was lying in the street the next morning with a deep cross cut on the forehead. From that time on for the next five years, it was no uncommon thing to see dead men lying in the streets of Lincoln. The Harold boys had sworn revenge.
There was a little dance in an adobe one night at Lincoln, when Ben Harold and some Texas men from the Seven Rivers country rode up. They killed four men and one woman that night before they started back to Seven Rivers.
From that time on, it was Texas against the law, such as the latter was. No resident places the number of the victims of the Harold war at less than forty or fifty, and it is believed that at least seventy-five would be more correct. These killings proved the weakness of the law, for none of the Harold gang was ever punished. As for the Lincoln County War proper, the magazine was now handsomely laid. Only the spark was needed. What would that naturally be? Either an actual law court, or else—a woman! In due time, both were forthcoming.
The woman in the case still lives to-day in New Mexico, sometimes spoken of as the "Cattle Queen" of New Mexico. She bears now the name of Mrs. Susan E. Barber. Her maiden name was Susan E. Hummer, the name sometimes spelled Homer, and she was born in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Susan Hummer was a granddaughter of Anna Maria Spangler-Stauffer. The Spangler family is a noble one of Germany and very old. George Spangler was cup-bearer to Godfrey, Chancellor of Frederick Barbarossa, and was with the latter on the Crusade when Barbarossa was drowned in the Syrian river, Calycadmus, in 1190. The
American seat of this old family was in York county, Pennsylvania, where the first Spanglers settled in 1731. It was from this tenacious and courageous ancestry that there sprang this figure of a border warfare in a region wild as Barbarossa's realm centuries ago.