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| Photoplay, March, 1925 |
Not much of Tom's life story is true, but it is all entertaining. Please excuse the racism.
Tom Mix's Own Story
The second installment of the fascinating story of one of the screen's most capable actors written exclusively for Photoplay.
I SAW two real wars after we'd settled things with Spain, before I settled down to private gunplay in what was then in truth the wild and woolly west -- the Great West of Yesterday.
The first of these, as I mentioned last month, was the Boxer uprising in China and it included some mighty snappy and promiscuous shooting, and some guerilla warfare after the Indian fashion which I have never seen bettered.
Now a regular battle, to my way of thinking, is not exciting. Folks that haven't been personally present at one probably can't comprehend that statement, but what I'm getting at is that there is so much noise and confusion about a battle, and the action being en masse, sort of prevents you from appreciating the high lights of the occasion. But trying to build a railroad across open country in full sight of the enemy has more thrills to a mile than any serial ever made.
Now I reckon most folks remember the Boxer uprising, which enlivened the first couple of years of the present century. The Boxers were a lot of religious fanatics over in China who had an idea that anybody that thought different than they did hadn't ought to be allowed to live -- leastways not in their country. So they got together and decided to run all other kinds of folks out of China. They were egged on some by the Dowager Empress, who held similar ideas, and pretty soon they made the mistake of selecting a few American missionaries and French priests and British officials for their victims.
The foreigners had to hide in the hills, and those that were close enough took refuge in the British Legation in Pekin and then the foreign powers began shipping in armies to rescue their people and to subdue these crazy Chinamen.
I was shipped over there pronto, with the 9th Infantry, in charge of a Gardiner gun and took some little part in the long and famous siege of Pekin, which was pretty dull most of the time, though the day our victorious armies marched into the fallen city was about as fine a sight as I ever saw. It was a beautiful old city, and different from anything I'd ever seen, and as a good deal of my sight-seeing had been done during wars I'd learned to keep my eyes open.
But the real excitement was when we were laying the new railroad between Pekin and Tien Tsing. It was mostly flat, open country, with only some bushes and an occasional tree, and those Boxers knew every inch of it and were roaming about trying their best to keep us from making that little strip of road. I was with a gun guarding the men at work, and every hour or so they'd begin popping at us from behind some bushes. They were just the color of the ground anyway, and they could crawl along on their stomachs like snakes. We had some tough skirmishes and lost a lot of men, but eventually we got our work done.
It was outside the walls of Tien Tsing, while we were besieging that city under Colonel Listenn, who was killed there, that I was wounded seriously again. The gun I was with was pounding away at one of the gates, when all of a sudden a shell busted right in front of us. It blew up the gun carriage and one of the wheel spokes was split right in two. It shot through the air like a knife and came right over and scalped me just as neat as an Indian chief could have done it. It peeled the top off my head and skinned my forehead right down to the skull bone and left my eyebrows hanging over my eyes.
I tumbled over into a ditch with a lot of other fellows who'd been wounded by the shell, and after a while they carted me off to a hospital and shipped me home on a hospital transport. I spent the next few months in a hospital in Washington, while the top of my head grew back on. I've still got the scars to show for that.
Right here I'd like to tell you a funny little incident about that ditch. Just a short time ago I was introduced to a distinguished French army officer. The minute I looked at him I started pirooting around in my memory to find out where I'd seen him before, and he had that same feeling about me. We got to visiting and gassing like men will, and pretty soon we discovered where we'd met before. We had both been mixed up in that same ditch outside the walls of Tien Tsing, and had tried to help each other with our wounds.
When I finally got well I decided that for a while I'd hook up with more peaceful pursuits, because I didn't like hospitals a little bit. So I got my disability discharge from the Army and wandered up to Denver, which was still pretty rough and ready in those days. A man I knew up there had a big business breaking horses and selling them to the British government -- the Boer war was on by that time -- and he gave me a good job breaking bronchos for him.
Well, I want to tell you right now that the most flabbergasted I ever was in my whole life was when I first saw part of the Boer army. I never saw so many whiskers in my whole life. All I could see in every direction was whiskers. They weren't just little beards, they were full length muffs, those were. I got an idea at first maybe they gave out the best jobs to the biggest whiskers because General Cronje and Oom Paul Kruger, president of the Dutch Transvaal Republic, had the two finest sets I ever saw. They were short, round, little men and didn't look much like our American troops, but they were grand fighting men, with the courage of lions.
I didn't turn out to be much help to the Boers, though, because in my very first battle, the battle of Spinecob, we were overpowered and forced to surrender and I was taken prisoner. The British government didn't know exactly what to do with us at first, because while we were prisoners of war -- there were quite a lot of Americans who had been captured with the Boers -- we were still American citizens. So they decided that the best thing to do was to ship us back to the United States, which they did. There were about a hundred of us, and I don't mind telling you that it was a pretty wild bunch of young adventurers and soldiers of fortune.
When we landed at the Philadelphia navy yard and I showed my honorable dis- charge papers -- some of the boys had left the United States Army without stopping to say good-by to Uncle Sam -- I started back west, and joined up with the 101 Ranch outfit, owned by the Miller Brothers.
From then on until I went into motion pictures in 1910, I lived my life on the plains and in the mountains of the Great West. And the Great West it was -- a land of adventure, of danger, of rich reward. It was a new country and law and order were by no means fairly established. The West of Yesterday has made unbelievable progress in the last quarter of a century, and its great ranches, its vast herds of cattle, its romantic and picturesque cowboys, its miners and its raw, wild little towns are gone forever. They had to go, to make way for the advance of civilization, but their passing makes many of us a little sad.
With them, has gone the cowboy of the old days, the most picturesque figure this nation ever produced -- the cowboy sitting so loosely and gracefully in his saddle, with his bronzed face and keen eyes, his bright handkerchief and big chaps. I hope the people of this country won't soon forget him, and I reckon they won't, for no one has been more splendidly sung in song and story and poetry.
I haven't room here to tell you much of the life we led. We worked hard, long hours. We slept under the stars. If I had a good horse and enough to eat, I was happy. And I learned there the simple philosophy that has never failed me and that will never fail any man -- to keep my mind and my body clean; not to eat too much; to sleep plenty in the open air; to keep myself physically fit always; to respect all women, shoot straight, play fair, care for the weak and overcome the evil.
I roamed all over Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, Wyom- ing and the two Dakotas. I worked on the ranches, I drifted back to the 101 Ranch outfit and went out with their Wild West show, I did exhibition riding and shooting and won a few contests, and I was an officer of the law in this great new country in a lot of different places.
It was during those years that I met Teddy Roosevelt again -- in San Antonio. I was sitting around singing some cowboy songs, or I guess it'd be better to say I was trying to sing them. The Colonel came over when I was through and said, "I am Teddy Roosevelt. I enjoyed those songs a lot." And I said, "Pleased to meet you, Colonel. I am Tom Mix." Well, if he didn't remember me, and when he came out to Oklahoma once to do some hunting, he asked me to be his guide. That was the biggest honor I ever had, and I'll never forget the man -- the big man -- I saw in those days. He typified all that was best of the Great West that he loved. When he was inaugurated, I went up to Washington to see it. I was so proud I reckon I acted like I'd been made president myself. And he hadn't forgotten us and entertained me and my gang that I'd brought along.
It was early in those days, too, that I got married for the first time. She was the daughter of a rancher in Oklahoma. Young folks make some queer mistakes like that. We did. And later my wife got a divorce -- and the second time I was the luckiest man that ever lived, but I'll come to that later on.
Most of my really thrilling adventures came while I was acting as officer of the law, and because of that and before I tell you about a few of them, there's one point I'd like to make. Those were the days of the war against the cattle thieves, the rustlers, and I suppose to folks nowadays it looks like we handled them in a pretty summary fashion. Well, I'll admit we didn't mince matters any with those birds, and we handed them out justice in severe and large doses. But it was necessary, and much as some of us hated it, it had to be done.
I expect our courts were kind of crude, but we never forgot our point and we had to settle things quick or we'd have been wiped out ourselves. We were fighting for our very existence in those settler days, and fighting against great odds, because cattle stealing was profitable and because of the vast stretches of unpopulated country it was easy and so the rustlers formed great organizations, and what was almost civil war prevailed. Cattle thieving had to be put down or the west could not survive. Distances were tremendous. Population was mighty small. The rights of property had to be guarded above everything, if we were to advance.
After the first great years, cattle raising was a hard toilsome business and a man was ruined if he lost many of his animals. Often, too, a man's life depended upon his horse, and to steal a man's horse was to aim at his life, so that horse thieves also were treated to swift punishment.
The cattle rustlers menaced all that was good in the west and feeling against them ran high.
At different times, I was sheriff of Montgomery County, western Kansas, of Washington County, Oklahoma, and of Two Buttes, Colorado, city marshal of Dewey, Oklahoma, and special enforcement officer in the same state, and I was a marshal in Montana. New Mexico and Arizona and a Texas Ranger. I allied myself with what looked to me was right, and I went ahead and acted for what seemed best under trying circumstances.
T guess when some of us look back now we wonder how we ever did some of the things we did, but in those days danger was so ever-present a man never gave it a second thought. I got a reputation for being pretty fast with a gun, but I reckon they thought I was better than I was. I was pretty quick on getting the drop, but a man had to be or he didn't last long. I could break a piece of thread held horizontally at thirty paces, but there were plenty of other fellows could do that, too.
I guess the biggest feather in my cap in those days was when I captured the Shonts brothers single-handed. They were a couple of famous desperadoes and rustlers down in New Mexico. And one spring they shot a couple of ranchers and run off the herd of horses they were waiting to bring down and sell for the round-up. That was the last straw and there was $750 reward offered for their capture.
Now in those days, $750 was a lot of money, so there was a posse formed and we started up into the Capitan mountains, where they were hiding, after them. Well, every fellow had his own ideas, and was looking to get the glory and the reward for himself if he could, so several of us left the posse to follow trails of our own. I was pretty sure I knew where they'd headed for and I wanted to bring them in myself if I could.
As it happened, I was right, and the next day I came upon their camp hidden down in a canyon I remembered. I hid up on the mountain that night, watching the smoke from their dugout and trying to keep warm, because there was a little snow falling, and along about dawn I slipped down into the corral. I knew there were two of them, and a cook, and I knew I'd have to get the drop on one of them so I'd only have one to fight, because I never did see a cook that was any good at fighting. Both the Shonts boys had the reputation of being quick on the trigger and dead shots, so I wasn't taking any more chances than I could help.
I hid behind a little shack in the corral and pretty soon one of the brothers came out to water the stock. He looked around, but the snow had kept on falling and covered my trail down the hill, so he didn't see anything to make him suspicious. I waited until he came in the corral and then I told him to stick up his hands quick. Well, in spite of me having the drop on him. he reached for his gun and I knew him too well to take any chances, so I had to let him have it and I damaged him quite a little.
The shot brought the other brother running with his gun in his hand. The sun was just coming up, and on the sikw it made an awful glare, so that for a minute when he opened the door it blinded him completely. He had on a belt buckle that caught the light, and showed him up to me like he'd been a target. I shot low. and got him through the leg. It brought him down hard and his gun flew out of his hand. I collected their guns then and took them into the dugout.
Well, I couldn't move them, because of the way they were shot up, so I had to stay in their dugout with them for four days. I'd told the boys which way I was going, and I figured when I didn't show up they'd come looking for me. I didn't trust that cook, so I had to cook and nurse those men alone and I didn't dare to go to sleep. I knew they were desperate -- capture meant death -- and would take any chance. They were part of a gang, too, and their men might come before mine did. So I couldn't go to sleep, and being shut up in a dugout for four days with men who want to kill you, even if you have got the drop on them, isn't good for the nerves.
At the end of four days my posse arrived and we made out to take them back to town.
I got the seven fifty reward all right, along with a lot of compliments, but it didn't do me much good, because I found out after those two boys had gone further west a whole lot than New Mexico, that they had a mother. And she hadn't known they were bad, and they'd always taken good care of her. It left her pretty flat broke, besides breaking her heart, and being as I was responsible for one of her boys going and indirectly for the other, too, I made her a little present of the money. It wasn't anything, because I didn't need money in those days, anyway.
That reminds me, that I got shot once by a woman. Can you beat that! It happened over in Arizona somewheres. There was a white man over there who had an Indian wife, and he'd been sticking up trains and stages a little too frequent and yet nobody had seemed to catch up with him. So one time after he'd stuck up a train and scared a lot of women into fits and shot the engineer, we made a concentrated hunt for him. It took me a couple of weeks to locate his hideout, which was a good one, and then I stayed up on the hill for three days with a pair of glasses, watching him. I wanted to learn his habits, and figure out how was the best way to come at him, because he was a dangerous customer and one of the greatest shots in the West.
I noticed he came out real early every morning to feed his horse. So one night I crept down -- it took me most all night, because I know men like that don't sleep very sound and if they saw a shadow they thought hadn't ought to be there they'd sure take a shot at it for luck -- and I hid in the manger.
When he came in, in the morning, I sure had the drop on him and there wasn't anything for him to do about it. I put him on a pony he had and tied his hands to the pommel of the saddle and his feet together under the horse and started him down the trail to get my own horse.
Well, I had sure overlooked his squaw complete, but in about two seconds I remembered her and I've never forgotten her since. She let go at me with a shotgun from the cabin, and it ripped a furrow along my back that looked like the Erie canal. It dropped me, stunned, and the horse with that bandit tied on him ran off down the trail as fast as he could go.
I lay there feeling sort of sick and scared to raise my head for fear this time her aim would be better, but everything was quiet and I decided she was through. I began working my way down the trail, and finally found my own horse. I rode on until I met a cowboy, and I deputized him and we started hunting this train robber. We found him, and he was pretty glad to be found. Nobody likes riding around on a horse he can't get off of and can't stop. We took him into town and I got my back washed up and everything was all right.
One little row I was in is pretty well remembered by old-time Westerners -- they call it the affair of the Lone Tree Ranch -- but it really didn't amount to so very much. At that time I was sheriff of Two Buttes, a Colorado town about 36 miles from the railroad and close to the Kansas border. It was right in the heart of the cattle country, and we were having a lot of trouble with organized rustlers.
It was funny how I got onto this man Blair, and how that battle actually started.
There was a man and his wife named Driscoll lived in Two Buttes, and one afternoon while Mrs. Driscoll was coming home, three Mexicans insulted her. Well, I didn't hear anything about it then and that evening while I was standing in the saloon talking to the proprietor, Driscoll came in. He never said a word, just walked right through and out the back door, into a little room behind the bar. There wasn't anybody around -- it was just about closing time. In a minute the barkeeper says to me, "Tom, there was a shot fired in that back room." I says, "Well, if there was they must have used a cap pistol, because I didn't hear it."
Just then the door swung open and Driscoll came back in. He looked kind of white and had his hand held close to him and I saw a little blood on it, but he didn't say anything and I thought he'd just got shot in the hand and wasn't hurt bad. I said, "Say, what's going on in there?" He says, "Three Mexicans insulted my wife and I found out they were in there, but -- they got away." Well, I didn't stop to listen. I started into that back room and out through the window, looking for any greaser that had insulted a white woman.
One of them I caught up the road aways, and I dropped him with a bullet in his ankle so he couldn't run. But it was an awful dark night, and there were barbed wire fences everywhere and the other two got away. I took this one Mexican back into the saloon, and there I found Driscoll had been shot through the stomach and was dying. I got the lights pulled down quick and stuck the Mexican under there so Driscoll could see him, and he identified him all right, and told me who the others were. I says to him, "Driscoll, why didn't you come and tell me about this, instead of taking the law in your own hands?" But he just looked at me, and I understood. It was his wife. He died that night.
As I came out of the saloon, a fellow came up and said he'd seen a Mexican hiding in a big mortar mixer down the street. We looked, but he was gone, but the next day I saw a Mexican riding out of town and he had mortar on his shoes, so I brought him back.
Well, I was busy with the trials and hangings for a couple of weeks, I had to testify and all, and couldn't get started out after the third murderer. When I did, strangely enough, it led me right into the biggest gang of cattle thieves that I was ever mixed up with. I found out that this Mexican was pretty smart and was a sort of lieutenant for a man named Blair.
Now Blair owned the Lone Tree Ranch, and I'd had my eye on him and it for some time. It was a bum ranch that had been practically abandoned before he took hold of it, because of its location. But it was near the borders of two other states. This man Blair was sus- pected of being the head of a lot of rustlers, and a sort of fence for the cattle thieves. I was sure all the stock he had was stolen, but he was an oily customer and none too easy to trap with the goods. He was a dangerous man to handle, and he had his gang pretty well organized as I soon found out.
I was pretty sure he was driving four or five steer off at a time, from across the state line, butchering them right on the Lone Tree Ranch, and selling the meat at outrageous prices to the big railroad grading camp down the road, and finally one day when I was trailing this Mexican that had shot Driscoll. I got evidence that satisfied me and that I reckoned would satisfy any Colorado jury that ever sat.
I rode back into town that night looking for some of my deputies to start out, because I wanted to move fast. But it just happened that there wasn't a soul I could lay my hands on. They were off on other jobs. I know this Mexican suspected what I'd got, and if he got to Blair in time, they'd cither get away or they'd barricade themselves in the ranch so it would mean a lot of people would get hurt when we tried to take him. So I decided the best thing to do was to ride over quick and quiet and try to take Blair myself, and take a chance on rounding up the others afterwards.
I started off at dawn on my horse Old Blue -- he was the most wonderful horse that ever lived and I loved him like a brother -- crossed east. It was a cold, bright February morning, and it was awful rough country. There wasn't much use trying to make time on those trails, but Old Blue knew I was in a hurry and he did his best. Along about noon I got a peek at the big old pine standing up all by itself against the blue sky -- that's where the ranch got it's name.
I slowed up and looked around cautious, but the place seemed deserted. I rode up as casual as I knew how and knocked on the door of the ranch house with my six-shooter. No- body answered and I got suspicious and pretty sore, for fear they'd beat me to it and got away. I knew Blair was one of the worst men and the biggest influences for evil in the country and I wanted to take him.
As I came around the corner of the house to the side that faced the barns and corrals, some'.hing hit me like an express train and knocked me off my horse. As a matter of fact, there were fourteen slugs of buck shot in me, and they all hit me right then.
Well, I was sure shocked and enraged, not only because it hurt like blazes, but to think I'd ridden into it, like some tenderfoot, and let those low-lived cattle thieves plug me that- away. It sure riled me worse than I'd ever been riled before in my life.
It happened that when I'd fallen off Old Blue I held onto my shot gun -- had that much sense left anyways. And while I lay there on the ground with it under me, cussing myself, I looked up through Old Blue's legs and saw something moving cautiously in the corral. I didn't know what it was, but I reckoned it must be evil or it wouldn't be around here, so I moved my gun under my stomach and shot. Well, it seems I got old man Blair right there and then. He thought he'd killed me when he saw me fall and was starting over keeping me covered when I fired. He had cashed in his whole stack of chips right then.
The two Mexicans ran into a kind of tool shed and barricaded themselves and I got up and started for it, shooting everything I had for all I was worth right at them. I shot so fast and so hard I made a kind of screen for myself I guess. I was plumb crazy by that time anyway. That buckshot was driving me loco and I was convinced that one of those men was the Mexican I wanted.
I kicked the door in shooting all the time, and then I jumped in sideways, quick, so they couldn't get me while I was in the light They both shot, one took some of my hair off and the other went through my left side.
I think it must have dazed me, for a second. Because I just stood there -- it was very dark -- thinking how sorry I was for those two poor ignorant souls. Low and ornery as they were, I felt sorry because I knew wrong never paid, and even if they killed me now. someone else would kill them later, and maybe thev'd never know any better.
And then, like a flashed warning, I saw in the man's eyes that he had located me and was going to shoot again. I must have moved pretty quick. One of them had climbed up onto a rafter, and I let him have it from my six-shooter just as the other guy fired. The man on the rafters fell and spoiled his partner's aim, and as they went down I shot again.
I got on my horse and rode the six miles over to the grading camp -- Old Blue doing most of the work and going as easy as he could because he knew there was something mighty wrong with me. We got there all right, and they took care of me, and finally shipped me up to Denver where they dug the lead out of me and in a year I was as good as new, though there were plenty of times in there when nobody would have offered you a white chip for my next breath. I was too tough to be killed by cattle thieves.
But maybe that was one of the things that started my mind to working on the trail that eventually led me into motion pictures -- a sort of desire to settle down.
(end of second installment)
AT the Los Angeles opening of "Merton of the Movies" a group of titled English vis- itors were watching the screen celebrities arrive, with a good deal of interest.
It was a typical movie opening, with a great many stars present, and after she had seen forty or fifty of them parade to their seats, one of the English ladies said breathlessly, "There doesn't seem to be anything but motion picture stars. Isn't it amazing?"
Just then a man came down the aisle. The lady regarded him with interest. He was tall, and very dark, his black hair showing just a few distinguished threads of silver. He carried himself with an air, and his evening clothes were cut in most elegant fashion, but just suffi- ciently different from those about him to make him stand out from the crowd.
"Now there," said the lady, "is someone who isn't a movie star. That's the first person I've seen that made me think we might be at home in London, or at the opera in Paris. He looks rather like — " and she mentioned a certain grand duke, "I wonder who he is? Probably a diplomat or one of their Californian million- aires— they used to be dons, didn't they?"
She continued to wonder who the distinguished looking gentleman could possibly be, until finally I took pity on her and told her.
It was Tom Mix.
Tom Mix's Own Story
By Himself
The second installment of the fascinating story of one of the screen's most capable actors written exclusively for Photoplay.
I SAW two real wars after we'd settled things with Spain, before I settled down to private gunplay in what was then in truth the wild and woolly west -- the Great West of Yesterday.
The first of these, as I mentioned last month, was the Boxer uprising in China and it included some mighty snappy and promiscuous shooting, and some guerilla warfare after the Indian fashion which I have never seen bettered.
Now a regular battle, to my way of thinking, is not exciting. Folks that haven't been personally present at one probably can't comprehend that statement, but what I'm getting at is that there is so much noise and confusion about a battle, and the action being en masse, sort of prevents you from appreciating the high lights of the occasion. But trying to build a railroad across open country in full sight of the enemy has more thrills to a mile than any serial ever made.
Now I reckon most folks remember the Boxer uprising, which enlivened the first couple of years of the present century. The Boxers were a lot of religious fanatics over in China who had an idea that anybody that thought different than they did hadn't ought to be allowed to live -- leastways not in their country. So they got together and decided to run all other kinds of folks out of China. They were egged on some by the Dowager Empress, who held similar ideas, and pretty soon they made the mistake of selecting a few American missionaries and French priests and British officials for their victims.
The foreigners had to hide in the hills, and those that were close enough took refuge in the British Legation in Pekin and then the foreign powers began shipping in armies to rescue their people and to subdue these crazy Chinamen.
I was shipped over there pronto, with the 9th Infantry, in charge of a Gardiner gun and took some little part in the long and famous siege of Pekin, which was pretty dull most of the time, though the day our victorious armies marched into the fallen city was about as fine a sight as I ever saw. It was a beautiful old city, and different from anything I'd ever seen, and as a good deal of my sight-seeing had been done during wars I'd learned to keep my eyes open.
But the real excitement was when we were laying the new railroad between Pekin and Tien Tsing. It was mostly flat, open country, with only some bushes and an occasional tree, and those Boxers knew every inch of it and were roaming about trying their best to keep us from making that little strip of road. I was with a gun guarding the men at work, and every hour or so they'd begin popping at us from behind some bushes. They were just the color of the ground anyway, and they could crawl along on their stomachs like snakes. We had some tough skirmishes and lost a lot of men, but eventually we got our work done.
It was outside the walls of Tien Tsing, while we were besieging that city under Colonel Listenn, who was killed there, that I was wounded seriously again. The gun I was with was pounding away at one of the gates, when all of a sudden a shell busted right in front of us. It blew up the gun carriage and one of the wheel spokes was split right in two. It shot through the air like a knife and came right over and scalped me just as neat as an Indian chief could have done it. It peeled the top off my head and skinned my forehead right down to the skull bone and left my eyebrows hanging over my eyes.
I tumbled over into a ditch with a lot of other fellows who'd been wounded by the shell, and after a while they carted me off to a hospital and shipped me home on a hospital transport. I spent the next few months in a hospital in Washington, while the top of my head grew back on. I've still got the scars to show for that.
Right here I'd like to tell you a funny little incident about that ditch. Just a short time ago I was introduced to a distinguished French army officer. The minute I looked at him I started pirooting around in my memory to find out where I'd seen him before, and he had that same feeling about me. We got to visiting and gassing like men will, and pretty soon we discovered where we'd met before. We had both been mixed up in that same ditch outside the walls of Tien Tsing, and had tried to help each other with our wounds.
When I finally got well I decided that for a while I'd hook up with more peaceful pursuits, because I didn't like hospitals a little bit. So I got my disability discharge from the Army and wandered up to Denver, which was still pretty rough and ready in those days. A man I knew up there had a big business breaking horses and selling them to the British government -- the Boer war was on by that time -- and he gave me a good job breaking bronchos for him.
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| Photoplay, March, 1925 |
In the interests of truth, I got to state that we weren't any too fussy about the way we broke those horses. Seeing they
were going over to England and get into a war right away, and we'd probably never see them again, we mixed in a few
outlaws in every load, too, just to sort of clear the country of them. We'd take them out to the corrals and spend
a couple of days quieting them down sufficient to pass the inspector, and off they'd go to the war.
Pretty soon I got to thinking I'd never been to South Africa, where this little argument with the Boers was in progress, and maybe I'd better go and see what it was all about, for the sake of my education. So I shipped over with a boat load of our horses, getting a place as a hostler.
We landed in Africa just about the time the trouble was starting around Ladysmith and I took my string down there.
Those horses, as I've admitted, hadn't been broke so that a lady could ride them by any means, and being on ship- board so long they'd plumb forgot what little they had been taught. Moreover, those horses had been broke by cowboys without any artillery hung on them and entirely devoid of sabres.
I want to tell you that when those Tommy Atkins, with sabres a-rattling and all sorts of other instruments and buttons jingling, mounted my bronchs, it sounded in two minutes like somebody had thrown a dozen kitchens down the side of a mountain. Those horses had no sabres in their curriculums whatever, and they objected to them with what you might call ostentatious vim and vigor. The British army was busier with those cayuses for a few days than they were with the Boers. But pretty soon we got them all rounded up again, and I started in breaking them right and proper.
The Tommies were crazy about American riding, and I used to give exhibitions on the parade ground in the afternoon, combining my work with their pleasure, because some outlaws in that outfit sure needed right smart attention before they could be brought to see life in the right way.
Just the same, my sympathies were with the Boers and I decided, they being the underdog as it were, that as soon as I got my work cleaned up I'd go off and join the Boer army. Being on the sidelines was getting a little tiresome.
Pretty soon I got to thinking I'd never been to South Africa, where this little argument with the Boers was in progress, and maybe I'd better go and see what it was all about, for the sake of my education. So I shipped over with a boat load of our horses, getting a place as a hostler.
We landed in Africa just about the time the trouble was starting around Ladysmith and I took my string down there.
Those horses, as I've admitted, hadn't been broke so that a lady could ride them by any means, and being on ship- board so long they'd plumb forgot what little they had been taught. Moreover, those horses had been broke by cowboys without any artillery hung on them and entirely devoid of sabres.
I want to tell you that when those Tommy Atkins, with sabres a-rattling and all sorts of other instruments and buttons jingling, mounted my bronchs, it sounded in two minutes like somebody had thrown a dozen kitchens down the side of a mountain. Those horses had no sabres in their curriculums whatever, and they objected to them with what you might call ostentatious vim and vigor. The British army was busier with those cayuses for a few days than they were with the Boers. But pretty soon we got them all rounded up again, and I started in breaking them right and proper.
The Tommies were crazy about American riding, and I used to give exhibitions on the parade ground in the afternoon, combining my work with their pleasure, because some outlaws in that outfit sure needed right smart attention before they could be brought to see life in the right way.
Just the same, my sympathies were with the Boers and I decided, they being the underdog as it were, that as soon as I got my work cleaned up I'd go off and join the Boer army. Being on the sidelines was getting a little tiresome.
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| Photoplay, March, 1925 |
Tom Is Taken Prisoner
Well, I want to tell you right now that the most flabbergasted I ever was in my whole life was when I first saw part of the Boer army. I never saw so many whiskers in my whole life. All I could see in every direction was whiskers. They weren't just little beards, they were full length muffs, those were. I got an idea at first maybe they gave out the best jobs to the biggest whiskers because General Cronje and Oom Paul Kruger, president of the Dutch Transvaal Republic, had the two finest sets I ever saw. They were short, round, little men and didn't look much like our American troops, but they were grand fighting men, with the courage of lions.
I didn't turn out to be much help to the Boers, though, because in my very first battle, the battle of Spinecob, we were overpowered and forced to surrender and I was taken prisoner. The British government didn't know exactly what to do with us at first, because while we were prisoners of war -- there were quite a lot of Americans who had been captured with the Boers -- we were still American citizens. So they decided that the best thing to do was to ship us back to the United States, which they did. There were about a hundred of us, and I don't mind telling you that it was a pretty wild bunch of young adventurers and soldiers of fortune.
When we landed at the Philadelphia navy yard and I showed my honorable dis- charge papers -- some of the boys had left the United States Army without stopping to say good-by to Uncle Sam -- I started back west, and joined up with the 101 Ranch outfit, owned by the Miller Brothers.
From then on until I went into motion pictures in 1910, I lived my life on the plains and in the mountains of the Great West. And the Great West it was -- a land of adventure, of danger, of rich reward. It was a new country and law and order were by no means fairly established. The West of Yesterday has made unbelievable progress in the last quarter of a century, and its great ranches, its vast herds of cattle, its romantic and picturesque cowboys, its miners and its raw, wild little towns are gone forever. They had to go, to make way for the advance of civilization, but their passing makes many of us a little sad.
With them, has gone the cowboy of the old days, the most picturesque figure this nation ever produced -- the cowboy sitting so loosely and gracefully in his saddle, with his bronzed face and keen eyes, his bright handkerchief and big chaps. I hope the people of this country won't soon forget him, and I reckon they won't, for no one has been more splendidly sung in song and story and poetry.
I haven't room here to tell you much of the life we led. We worked hard, long hours. We slept under the stars. If I had a good horse and enough to eat, I was happy. And I learned there the simple philosophy that has never failed me and that will never fail any man -- to keep my mind and my body clean; not to eat too much; to sleep plenty in the open air; to keep myself physically fit always; to respect all women, shoot straight, play fair, care for the weak and overcome the evil.
I roamed all over Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, Wyom- ing and the two Dakotas. I worked on the ranches, I drifted back to the 101 Ranch outfit and went out with their Wild West show, I did exhibition riding and shooting and won a few contests, and I was an officer of the law in this great new country in a lot of different places.
Tom Meets "T. R."
It was during those years that I met Teddy Roosevelt again -- in San Antonio. I was sitting around singing some cowboy songs, or I guess it'd be better to say I was trying to sing them. The Colonel came over when I was through and said, "I am Teddy Roosevelt. I enjoyed those songs a lot." And I said, "Pleased to meet you, Colonel. I am Tom Mix." Well, if he didn't remember me, and when he came out to Oklahoma once to do some hunting, he asked me to be his guide. That was the biggest honor I ever had, and I'll never forget the man -- the big man -- I saw in those days. He typified all that was best of the Great West that he loved. When he was inaugurated, I went up to Washington to see it. I was so proud I reckon I acted like I'd been made president myself. And he hadn't forgotten us and entertained me and my gang that I'd brought along.
It was early in those days, too, that I got married for the first time. She was the daughter of a rancher in Oklahoma. Young folks make some queer mistakes like that. We did. And later my wife got a divorce -- and the second time I was the luckiest man that ever lived, but I'll come to that later on.
Most of my really thrilling adventures came while I was acting as officer of the law, and because of that and before I tell you about a few of them, there's one point I'd like to make. Those were the days of the war against the cattle thieves, the rustlers, and I suppose to folks nowadays it looks like we handled them in a pretty summary fashion. Well, I'll admit we didn't mince matters any with those birds, and we handed them out justice in severe and large doses. But it was necessary, and much as some of us hated it, it had to be done.
I expect our courts were kind of crude, but we never forgot our point and we had to settle things quick or we'd have been wiped out ourselves. We were fighting for our very existence in those settler days, and fighting against great odds, because cattle stealing was profitable and because of the vast stretches of unpopulated country it was easy and so the rustlers formed great organizations, and what was almost civil war prevailed. Cattle thieving had to be put down or the west could not survive. Distances were tremendous. Population was mighty small. The rights of property had to be guarded above everything, if we were to advance.
After the first great years, cattle raising was a hard toilsome business and a man was ruined if he lost many of his animals. Often, too, a man's life depended upon his horse, and to steal a man's horse was to aim at his life, so that horse thieves also were treated to swift punishment.
The cattle rustlers menaced all that was good in the west and feeling against them ran high.
At different times, I was sheriff of Montgomery County, western Kansas, of Washington County, Oklahoma, and of Two Buttes, Colorado, city marshal of Dewey, Oklahoma, and special enforcement officer in the same state, and I was a marshal in Montana. New Mexico and Arizona and a Texas Ranger. I allied myself with what looked to me was right, and I went ahead and acted for what seemed best under trying circumstances.
T guess when some of us look back now we wonder how we ever did some of the things we did, but in those days danger was so ever-present a man never gave it a second thought. I got a reputation for being pretty fast with a gun, but I reckon they thought I was better than I was. I was pretty quick on getting the drop, but a man had to be or he didn't last long. I could break a piece of thread held horizontally at thirty paces, but there were plenty of other fellows could do that, too.
I guess the biggest feather in my cap in those days was when I captured the Shonts brothers single-handed. They were a couple of famous desperadoes and rustlers down in New Mexico. And one spring they shot a couple of ranchers and run off the herd of horses they were waiting to bring down and sell for the round-up. That was the last straw and there was $750 reward offered for their capture.
Now in those days, $750 was a lot of money, so there was a posse formed and we started up into the Capitan mountains, where they were hiding, after them. Well, every fellow had his own ideas, and was looking to get the glory and the reward for himself if he could, so several of us left the posse to follow trails of our own. I was pretty sure I knew where they'd headed for and I wanted to bring them in myself if I could.
As it happened, I was right, and the next day I came upon their camp hidden down in a canyon I remembered. I hid up on the mountain that night, watching the smoke from their dugout and trying to keep warm, because there was a little snow falling, and along about dawn I slipped down into the corral. I knew there were two of them, and a cook, and I knew I'd have to get the drop on one of them so I'd only have one to fight, because I never did see a cook that was any good at fighting. Both the Shonts boys had the reputation of being quick on the trigger and dead shots, so I wasn't taking any more chances than I could help.
On the Trail of Outlaws
I hid behind a little shack in the corral and pretty soon one of the brothers came out to water the stock. He looked around, but the snow had kept on falling and covered my trail down the hill, so he didn't see anything to make him suspicious. I waited until he came in the corral and then I told him to stick up his hands quick. Well, in spite of me having the drop on him. he reached for his gun and I knew him too well to take any chances, so I had to let him have it and I damaged him quite a little.
The shot brought the other brother running with his gun in his hand. The sun was just coming up, and on the sikw it made an awful glare, so that for a minute when he opened the door it blinded him completely. He had on a belt buckle that caught the light, and showed him up to me like he'd been a target. I shot low. and got him through the leg. It brought him down hard and his gun flew out of his hand. I collected their guns then and took them into the dugout.
Well, I couldn't move them, because of the way they were shot up, so I had to stay in their dugout with them for four days. I'd told the boys which way I was going, and I figured when I didn't show up they'd come looking for me. I didn't trust that cook, so I had to cook and nurse those men alone and I didn't dare to go to sleep. I knew they were desperate -- capture meant death -- and would take any chance. They were part of a gang, too, and their men might come before mine did. So I couldn't go to sleep, and being shut up in a dugout for four days with men who want to kill you, even if you have got the drop on them, isn't good for the nerves.
At the end of four days my posse arrived and we made out to take them back to town.
I got the seven fifty reward all right, along with a lot of compliments, but it didn't do me much good, because I found out after those two boys had gone further west a whole lot than New Mexico, that they had a mother. And she hadn't known they were bad, and they'd always taken good care of her. It left her pretty flat broke, besides breaking her heart, and being as I was responsible for one of her boys going and indirectly for the other, too, I made her a little present of the money. It wasn't anything, because I didn't need money in those days, anyway.
Shot by a Woman
That reminds me, that I got shot once by a woman. Can you beat that! It happened over in Arizona somewheres. There was a white man over there who had an Indian wife, and he'd been sticking up trains and stages a little too frequent and yet nobody had seemed to catch up with him. So one time after he'd stuck up a train and scared a lot of women into fits and shot the engineer, we made a concentrated hunt for him. It took me a couple of weeks to locate his hideout, which was a good one, and then I stayed up on the hill for three days with a pair of glasses, watching him. I wanted to learn his habits, and figure out how was the best way to come at him, because he was a dangerous customer and one of the greatest shots in the West.
I noticed he came out real early every morning to feed his horse. So one night I crept down -- it took me most all night, because I know men like that don't sleep very sound and if they saw a shadow they thought hadn't ought to be there they'd sure take a shot at it for luck -- and I hid in the manger.
When he came in, in the morning, I sure had the drop on him and there wasn't anything for him to do about it. I put him on a pony he had and tied his hands to the pommel of the saddle and his feet together under the horse and started him down the trail to get my own horse.
Well, I had sure overlooked his squaw complete, but in about two seconds I remembered her and I've never forgotten her since. She let go at me with a shotgun from the cabin, and it ripped a furrow along my back that looked like the Erie canal. It dropped me, stunned, and the horse with that bandit tied on him ran off down the trail as fast as he could go.
I lay there feeling sort of sick and scared to raise my head for fear this time her aim would be better, but everything was quiet and I decided she was through. I began working my way down the trail, and finally found my own horse. I rode on until I met a cowboy, and I deputized him and we started hunting this train robber. We found him, and he was pretty glad to be found. Nobody likes riding around on a horse he can't get off of and can't stop. We took him into town and I got my back washed up and everything was all right.
One little row I was in is pretty well remembered by old-time Westerners -- they call it the affair of the Lone Tree Ranch -- but it really didn't amount to so very much. At that time I was sheriff of Two Buttes, a Colorado town about 36 miles from the railroad and close to the Kansas border. It was right in the heart of the cattle country, and we were having a lot of trouble with organized rustlers.
It was funny how I got onto this man Blair, and how that battle actually started.
There was a man and his wife named Driscoll lived in Two Buttes, and one afternoon while Mrs. Driscoll was coming home, three Mexicans insulted her. Well, I didn't hear anything about it then and that evening while I was standing in the saloon talking to the proprietor, Driscoll came in. He never said a word, just walked right through and out the back door, into a little room behind the bar. There wasn't anybody around -- it was just about closing time. In a minute the barkeeper says to me, "Tom, there was a shot fired in that back room." I says, "Well, if there was they must have used a cap pistol, because I didn't hear it."
Just then the door swung open and Driscoll came back in. He looked kind of white and had his hand held close to him and I saw a little blood on it, but he didn't say anything and I thought he'd just got shot in the hand and wasn't hurt bad. I said, "Say, what's going on in there?" He says, "Three Mexicans insulted my wife and I found out they were in there, but -- they got away." Well, I didn't stop to listen. I started into that back room and out through the window, looking for any greaser that had insulted a white woman.
One of them I caught up the road aways, and I dropped him with a bullet in his ankle so he couldn't run. But it was an awful dark night, and there were barbed wire fences everywhere and the other two got away. I took this one Mexican back into the saloon, and there I found Driscoll had been shot through the stomach and was dying. I got the lights pulled down quick and stuck the Mexican under there so Driscoll could see him, and he identified him all right, and told me who the others were. I says to him, "Driscoll, why didn't you come and tell me about this, instead of taking the law in your own hands?" But he just looked at me, and I understood. It was his wife. He died that night.
As I came out of the saloon, a fellow came up and said he'd seen a Mexican hiding in a big mortar mixer down the street. We looked, but he was gone, but the next day I saw a Mexican riding out of town and he had mortar on his shoes, so I brought him back.
Well, I was busy with the trials and hangings for a couple of weeks, I had to testify and all, and couldn't get started out after the third murderer. When I did, strangely enough, it led me right into the biggest gang of cattle thieves that I was ever mixed up with. I found out that this Mexican was pretty smart and was a sort of lieutenant for a man named Blair.
Among Cattle Thieves
Now Blair owned the Lone Tree Ranch, and I'd had my eye on him and it for some time. It was a bum ranch that had been practically abandoned before he took hold of it, because of its location. But it was near the borders of two other states. This man Blair was sus- pected of being the head of a lot of rustlers, and a sort of fence for the cattle thieves. I was sure all the stock he had was stolen, but he was an oily customer and none too easy to trap with the goods. He was a dangerous man to handle, and he had his gang pretty well organized as I soon found out.
I was pretty sure he was driving four or five steer off at a time, from across the state line, butchering them right on the Lone Tree Ranch, and selling the meat at outrageous prices to the big railroad grading camp down the road, and finally one day when I was trailing this Mexican that had shot Driscoll. I got evidence that satisfied me and that I reckoned would satisfy any Colorado jury that ever sat.
I rode back into town that night looking for some of my deputies to start out, because I wanted to move fast. But it just happened that there wasn't a soul I could lay my hands on. They were off on other jobs. I know this Mexican suspected what I'd got, and if he got to Blair in time, they'd cither get away or they'd barricade themselves in the ranch so it would mean a lot of people would get hurt when we tried to take him. So I decided the best thing to do was to ride over quick and quiet and try to take Blair myself, and take a chance on rounding up the others afterwards.
I started off at dawn on my horse Old Blue -- he was the most wonderful horse that ever lived and I loved him like a brother -- crossed east. It was a cold, bright February morning, and it was awful rough country. There wasn't much use trying to make time on those trails, but Old Blue knew I was in a hurry and he did his best. Along about noon I got a peek at the big old pine standing up all by itself against the blue sky -- that's where the ranch got it's name.
I slowed up and looked around cautious, but the place seemed deserted. I rode up as casual as I knew how and knocked on the door of the ranch house with my six-shooter. No- body answered and I got suspicious and pretty sore, for fear they'd beat me to it and got away. I knew Blair was one of the worst men and the biggest influences for evil in the country and I wanted to take him.
As I came around the corner of the house to the side that faced the barns and corrals, some'.hing hit me like an express train and knocked me off my horse. As a matter of fact, there were fourteen slugs of buck shot in me, and they all hit me right then.
Well, I was sure shocked and enraged, not only because it hurt like blazes, but to think I'd ridden into it, like some tenderfoot, and let those low-lived cattle thieves plug me that- away. It sure riled me worse than I'd ever been riled before in my life.
It happened that when I'd fallen off Old Blue I held onto my shot gun -- had that much sense left anyways. And while I lay there on the ground with it under me, cussing myself, I looked up through Old Blue's legs and saw something moving cautiously in the corral. I didn't know what it was, but I reckoned it must be evil or it wouldn't be around here, so I moved my gun under my stomach and shot. Well, it seems I got old man Blair right there and then. He thought he'd killed me when he saw me fall and was starting over keeping me covered when I fired. He had cashed in his whole stack of chips right then.
Tom Does Some Shooting
The two Mexicans ran into a kind of tool shed and barricaded themselves and I got up and started for it, shooting everything I had for all I was worth right at them. I shot so fast and so hard I made a kind of screen for myself I guess. I was plumb crazy by that time anyway. That buckshot was driving me loco and I was convinced that one of those men was the Mexican I wanted.
I kicked the door in shooting all the time, and then I jumped in sideways, quick, so they couldn't get me while I was in the light They both shot, one took some of my hair off and the other went through my left side.
I think it must have dazed me, for a second. Because I just stood there -- it was very dark -- thinking how sorry I was for those two poor ignorant souls. Low and ornery as they were, I felt sorry because I knew wrong never paid, and even if they killed me now. someone else would kill them later, and maybe thev'd never know any better.
And then, like a flashed warning, I saw in the man's eyes that he had located me and was going to shoot again. I must have moved pretty quick. One of them had climbed up onto a rafter, and I let him have it from my six-shooter just as the other guy fired. The man on the rafters fell and spoiled his partner's aim, and as they went down I shot again.
I got on my horse and rode the six miles over to the grading camp -- Old Blue doing most of the work and going as easy as he could because he knew there was something mighty wrong with me. We got there all right, and they took care of me, and finally shipped me up to Denver where they dug the lead out of me and in a year I was as good as new, though there were plenty of times in there when nobody would have offered you a white chip for my next breath. I was too tough to be killed by cattle thieves.
But maybe that was one of the things that started my mind to working on the trail that eventually led me into motion pictures -- a sort of desire to settle down.
(end of second installment)
AT the Los Angeles opening of "Merton of the Movies" a group of titled English vis- itors were watching the screen celebrities arrive, with a good deal of interest.
It was a typical movie opening, with a great many stars present, and after she had seen forty or fifty of them parade to their seats, one of the English ladies said breathlessly, "There doesn't seem to be anything but motion picture stars. Isn't it amazing?"
Just then a man came down the aisle. The lady regarded him with interest. He was tall, and very dark, his black hair showing just a few distinguished threads of silver. He carried himself with an air, and his evening clothes were cut in most elegant fashion, but just suffi- ciently different from those about him to make him stand out from the crowd.
"Now there," said the lady, "is someone who isn't a movie star. That's the first person I've seen that made me think we might be at home in London, or at the opera in Paris. He looks rather like — " and she mentioned a certain grand duke, "I wonder who he is? Probably a diplomat or one of their Californian million- aires— they used to be dons, didn't they?"
She continued to wonder who the distinguished looking gentleman could possibly be, until finally I took pity on her and told her.
It was Tom Mix.
