On Sept. 4, 1881, Isaac “Ike” Stockton turned in a member of his own gang for the murder of a Colorado lawman and collected a sizeable reward for the back-stabbing betrayal.
Born too late to fight in the War Between the States, the Stockton boys grew up on a ranch in north Texas. Ike had a head on his shoulders, which made him even more dangerous than younger brother Port, the trigger-happy type who never tired of killing.
From childhood it was hot-headed Port that got into trouble and Ike that got him out. Cast for life in their respective roles, each brother would play his part until the day he died.
The older Stockton was the first to leave home and his sibling did not catch up with him until 1874. Ike was working a “straight” job at the time tending bar in Lincoln County, New Mexico. They remained in the area for the next two years, marrying and starting families, before one of Port’s shooting scrapes forced them to relocate.
Port had too much to drink, as usual, and in a fit of intoxicated temper gunned down an unarmed patron in a Cimarron saloon. Ike found out his brother had been thrown in jail for the hanging offense and in short order masterminded a late-night escape.
The Stocktons pulled up stakes and moved with their wives and children to Trinidad just over the state boundary in Colorado. Two months later, drunken Port shot a second defenseless man to death, on this occasion over a game of cards, and again was slapped with a murder charge. But ever reliable Ike rushed to his rescue and broke his brother out of another jail.
Port’s volatile and often violent behavior forced the two families to stay on the move for the next four years. With his welcome completely worn out in southern Colorado, he doubled back to the New Mexico Territory and settled into a seemingly peaceful rut on a small cattle spread not far from Farmington.
But Port being Port could not keep from making enemies. He looked out the window of his modest cabin on Jan. 10, 1881, and saw Alf Graves riding by with several of his hired hands. The very sight of the rancher made Port’s blood boil, and he ran outside with his Winchester cocked and loaded to confront the passerby.
As Bill O’Neal tells it in Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters, “after a brief exchange of words, he (Graves) pulled a gun and began firing. He pumped five slugs into Stockton, and Port sank to the ground.”
Ike Stockton was a man of many talents, but he could not bring his 22-year-old brother back from the dead. He resisted the temptation to go gunning for Port’s killer and instead went quietly about his latest business of playing both ends against the middle.
Taking full advantage of his considerable charm and undeniable intelligence, Ike had convinced the decent, law-abiding residents of Durango, Colorado, that he was one of them and their benefactor to boot. The more skeptical inhabitants wondered where Ike’s money came from, but even they had to admit that unexplained cattle disappearances had decreased dramatically since he had come to town.
Behind his smiling and respectable front, Ike was actually the biggest rustler southwestern Colorado had ever seen. In a few short months, he had turned a ragtag assortment of open-range riffraff into an efficient criminal organization that kept New Mexico cow thieves on their side of the state line while leaving the herds in Colorado free for their taking.
Everything was going according to the surviving Stockton’s plan until the day in August 1881, that Bert Wilkinson shot to death the town marshal of Silverton. It so happened that the nineteen-year-old killer was a junior member of Ike’s gang, and he could not risk the teenager talking to keep his neck out of a noose. Ike, as part of his civic duty, volunteered to track down Wilkinson and deliver him for the stern punishment he so justly desired. Since they knew all the fugitive’s hiding places, Stockton and his right-hand man, Marion Cook, had no trouble locating Wilkinson, who never suspected a lynch mob was waiting for him in Silverton.
Twenty-five hundred dollars richer and a potentially incriminating voice permanently silenced, Ike congratulated himself on a dirty job cleanly done.
Back in Durango, there was a new sheriff in town. Barney Watson dug up an old murder warrant, signed by the territorial governor of New Mexico, with Ike Stockton’s name on it. Now all he had to do was wait for the inevitable return of the two-faced felon.
Ike refused to go meekly to jail on Sep. 30, 1881. He reached for his holster, but Sheriff Watson and his deputy beat him to the draw. They fired simultaneously and both bullets hit the same leg shattering the thigh bone.
A frontier doctor sawed off Ike Stockton’s leg that night in a desperate attempt to save his life. The operation was a success, but the patient died the next day – the same year as his brother.
“Texas Depression-Era Desperadoes,” Bartee’s book, along with ten different collections of his columns are available at the “General Store” on his web site barteehaile.com.
