Curly Bill's Shotgun

[Capt. Hamp Cox]

The following is from:

Wyatt Earp Tells Tales of the Shotgun-Messenger Service, by Wyatt Earp
Published: San Francisco Examiner, California, August 9, 1896



And now for the story of how Curly Bill became the proud proprietor of a Wells-Fargo shotgun. Charley Bartholomew was a messenger who used to run on the coach from Tombstone to Bisbee. Once every month he was the
custodian of a very tidy sum of money sent to pay off the miners.
Naturally enough such a prize as that did not escape the attention of such audacious artists in crime as Frank Stilwell, Pete Spence, Pony Deal and Curly Bill. In fact, the four desperadoes I have named, with one other, planned a masterly holdup which they executed with brilliancy and dash. It happened this way:

The coach carrying the miners' wages had got out of Tombstone about twenty miles when the industrious quintette made their appearance on horseback, three on one side of the road and two on the other. They did not come to close quarters, but kept pace with the coach at a distance of 300 or 400 yards on either side of the road, pumping into it with their Winchesters, and aiming to kill the horses and the messenger. Of course Bartholomew's shotgun might as well have been a blowpipe at that range, and if he had a Winchester with him he did not use it to any effect.

These Indian tactics proved eminently successful in breaking down the
nerve of the men on the stage, for after they had run for a mile with an occasional lump of lead knocking splinters out of the coach, Bartholomew told the driver to stop--an injunction which he obeyed very gladly, the robbers came up and made them throw up their hands. They took everything there was to be taken, which amounted to $10,000 and sundries. Among the sundries was Charlie Bartholomew's shotgun, with which Curly Bill afterwards tried to fill me full of buckshot, with results fatal to himself. Having marched all hands into the brush the rustlers rode off.

[Steel Horse Bailey]

Very interesting.  I wonder what happened to the shotgun after Wyatt got it?

[Big Hext Finnigan]

Great stuff, Hamp!
Keep it coming..

[Capt. Hamp Cox]

The rest of the article is at http://home.earthlink.net/~knuthco1/HistoricalDocuments/SFsrticle1source.htm

[Bear Rider]

Steel Horse,

IIRC, Wyatt didn't get the shotgun. Brocius was killed in a confused night engagement resulting from a chance meeting, with the Earp faction retreating under fire.