The Saga of the W.F. & Co. Colt

William and Tom Grudgings’ killings

The Saga of the W.F. & Co. Colt

Butterfield Trail Adventures

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

 

           

            When my great grandfather’s PIT branded cattle watered on the Butterfield Trail west from Ft. Mason on the drive to Grant County in 1888, it wasn’t through Magdalena Gap they were trailed. They had to be driven by what today is known as Lion Tank. It was only there or by the Swope Place that wagons could have navigated westward on the Trail. It was also the only direct route that would have assured water within twelve miles of Ft. Mason.

            That water source was provided by the once flowing spring in the cut on the west side of our headquarter corrals and or from the well that once emptied into a small rock reservoir that was built adjacent to a house a half mile south from there. The trail can clearly be seen coming from the east to that location and then continuing northwestward from there to where it crossed Suman Ridge and on into the Uvas Valley and beyond.

            It was a manmade trail for sure. Cattle don’t use the northwest leg visible today nor do they use what the federal topographical maps indicate is the course of the trail through Magdalena Gap. If cattle don’t’ use it, you can bet your life a team of horses would have struggled to pull it, or, more likely, could have only used it one direction. That is where the government authorities say it went, though, so that establishes the official route for today’s administrative purposes.

            History is rewritten when administrative purposes deem it necessary.

            The W.F. & Co. Colt

            From the archives of Arizona State University, a picture was found.

It came from that university’s historical records of the now famous Empire Zinc strike in 1951. The strike was an angry affair led by the avowed communist, Clinton E. Jencks.  Jencks instigated the workforce and fought the company for wage and benefit controls. The caption of the picture was taken from a Jenck’s comment. He referenced Fayette (Trigger Happy) Rice in the photo. He misrepresented any propensity to shoot without reason, but the first and last names were correct.

            Rice had been deputized by Grant County Sheriff Goforth for the purpose of keeping the peace during the United Mine Worker hooliganism. He was the eldest son of Lee Rice the owner of those PIT branded cattle that watered at the rock reservoir along the Butterfield Trail in 1888. What was interesting to the observant wasn’t what Jencks had to say. It was the pistol on Rice’s hip. It was a single action Army model Colt .45.

With a perplexing serial number of 384797 (this number doesn’t exist in Colt archives), the firearm was engraved with ‘W.F. & Co.’ on the handle butt. The Rice family believes the initials signified Wells Fargo and Company. What ties the pistol to the Butterfield Trail was the representation it was ‘found’ on the Trail.

Mouth of the Mangus

Although the pistol was not fired during the strike, it was by no means a weapon of a lily white past. It had been used in deadly pursuit at least three times.

The first known episode occurred when the pistol appeared on the hip of Tom Woods, lawman of Grant County. Woods was pursuing outlaws in the Gila River Valley. Mr. Woods told the story to Rice years after the encounter and the events that make the gun yet more historically significant.

Woods encountered what he described as six outlaws at the mouth of the Mangus south from modern day Cliff on the Gila River. Woods was carrying what had to be a model 86 Winchester rifle in .45-.70 caliber. He also carried the pistol. His story related how the desperadoes ran single file around the corner of some structure. Each was shot in succession except the final man when the Wood’s rifle misfired. The exposed outlaw raised and deliberately aimed his own pistol at the lawman. Woods calmly and matter-of-factly finished the story.

“That fellow pulled the trigger and it, too, misfired,” he said. “Meanwhile, I was pulling my Dragoon (an actual mischaracterization of this Colt), and … it didn’t.”

The story of wider fame of the pistol occurred in 1893. The event was the killing of first of the Grudgings brothers at their ranch which is today near and within the administrative boundaries of the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. Six years before the Gila would become a Forest Reserve the upper river drainage was inhabited by small holdings where pioneering families were trying to stake their claim to ranching or farming operations. The Grudgings brothers had built a cabin that is still marked within the monument boundaries.

In anecdotal history of the area, they were ranching, but they had also become engaged in providing meat to the mining camp at Mogollon some 40 trail miles to the west. In a matter that probably escalated from killing game to seizing upon the more ready supply of dried meat in the form of beef, the brothers became convinced that Tom Woods was on to them. At that time, Woods was attempting to put his own outfit together. In fact, his operation would eventually become known as the XSX.

In their wanderings, the Grudgings found what they believed was a Woods camp. They concluded they could put their problem to rest with the dispatching of the two sleeping forms. What the brothers didn’t know was that the man they thought was Tom Woods sleeping under a tarp with another man was actually Tom’s son, Charles. The evidence revealed that the Grudgings killed both men by shooting them in the head.

The story the Rices tell comes from the conversations Tom Wood would have years later with Fayette when the two lived close together at the mouth of Mogollon Creek near the Hunter Place. Unlike several stories about the event suggesting there was a gap from the time of the actual killing until the first Grudgings brother was waylaid, the Rice version suggests the events were concurrent. When Charles didn’t come in with Francisco Diaz, Woods went looking for them. He found his son and Diaz where they had been shot dead and left. Charles had been shot through both hands as he covered his face.

Woods recovered the pistol of our interest from the bed of his son. He had given the pistol to Charlie.

He then claimed he trailed the perpetrators to the Grudgings’ cabin. The tracks went into the cabin and the same tracks left going north. He laid in wait 30 hours before he eventually spotted the pair coming off the Zig Zag Trail from the north. When William presented himself as a target, Woods shot him.

“I aimed and shot him in his cinch buckle (belt buckle),” Woods related. “He shore did buck and pitch!”

At the flash of the discharge, Tom Grudgings, leaned away from the line of fire over his horse’s side, skedaddled, and literally left the country.

William Grudgings was buried near the duo’s cabin. His gravestone was engraved and read, “Waylaid and murdered by Tom Woods” Nothing was said about the cold blooded killings of Charlie and Pancho.

Woods gave himself up and was arraigned on October 26, 1893. He was remanded to a deputy who put Fred Golden in charge of Woods. Supposedly yet another man by the name of Barrett accompanied Woods up the creek for a nature call and told him to ‘light a shuck’. Woods did.

The rest of the story was Woods, with the Colt on his hip, trailed Tom Grudgings home to Louisiana. He caught him in a canebrake, recognized him by the way he spit, and calmly called to him. Turning in wide eyed horror, Brother Tom was sent under to his maker … the deaths of Charles Wood and Francisco Diaz were vindicated.

The pistol was presented to Rice about 1927 shortly before Tom Woods died. Today, it is kept in a locked safe at the ranch home of Rice’s only surviving son. It remains a legend of New Mexico history, born of Sam Colt and the Butterfield Trail, and in the hands of what makes the value of history so important to the customs and culture of this land.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “Frank Rice tells another story of Woods. Woods stopped to visit a member of the Hooker family who arrived in the Gila Valley in 1877. Mr. Hooker was absent upon arrival, but shortly Mr. Hooker’s wife and Woods heard the darndest commotion. They looked out and across the flat came Hooker being chased by three Apaches. Woods calmly raised his .45-.70 and shot two of the Indians discouraging the third. Mrs. Hooker fell to her knees thanking God for the arrival of this angel. “It was no angel that saved Hooker,” Woods smiled and said. “It was his long laigs!”