Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen (38 page)

Despite the fact that it was a depressing, wind-blown locale more suited to snakes than humans, and owing largely to Kelley's abilities to tell tall tales, Mowry City attracted people from the East looking for a new life and a new location in which to pursue it.

The reactions of future hopeful residents of Mowry City, once they reached the promised land, have been lost to time, though in a reminiscence by S. M. Ashenfelter published in the
Silver City Independent
, there is mention of a thriving Mowry City in 1871 as having a “considerable population” and being home to two stores offering general merchandise, a hotel, a flouring mill, and a blacksmith shop.

But in the 1860s, Loreta Janeta Valezquez recorded her candid impressions of Mowry City in her now-famous book of 1876,
The Woman in Battle: a narrative of the exploits, adventures, and travels of Madame Loreta Janeta Valezquez, otherwise known as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford, Confederate States Army
:

Striking south-westward from Fort McRae we came to Rio de los Mimbres, near the head of which is Mowry City, founded by Lieutenant Mowry, who could not have had any very clear ideas as to what he was about when he attempted to make a settlement in such a place. Mowry City has a hotel, one or two stores, and more drinking-saloons than do it any good. That it will ever be much of a place I do not believe. There is not water enough in the river the greater part of the time to float two logs together, and in very dry weather one can step across it without wetting the feet. A sudden shower will, however, convert this puny creek in a short time into a raging river, which carries everything before it, and then it will subside as suddenly as it arose.

The 1861 Bascom Affair, which triggered the twenty-five-year-long Apache Wars, took the wind out of any further promotional plans Kelley may have had for Mowry City, and the settlement began its slow decline. By the 1870s the railroad came through, eliminating the need for stagecoach service and bypassing the town. This effectively drove the last nail into the warped-board coffin of Mowry City.

The few residents eventually drifted away or died of depression or snake-bite. What of Robert P. Kelley and his conniving cohorts? They never lived in Mowry City, so the loss was no great hardship to them. They were also never reprimanded for perpetrating what is considered as possibly the first (but certainly not the last) land swindle in the American Southwest.

As to the man who lent his name to the proceedings, Sylvester Mowry, a successful miner and author of several books, it's unclear if he was aware of the extent of the promoters' fabrications intended to lure settlers to Arizona. Given his lifelong zeal to see Arizona recognized as its own territory, it is conceivable he would have approved any scheme promising to usher in settlers to his beloved land.

M
ary Gleim was once known as Missoula's most maleficent madam (my, that's a whole lot of
M
s). In addition to taking part in the number-one trade for women in the Old West, prostitution, Mary Gleim was also one nasty piece of work. She was a convicted murderer, a glutton, an alcoholic, a thug, a bully, an abuser, a serial cheat, a blackmailer, a paranoid ranter, and so much more.

Born in 1849 to Irish parents, Mary was treated to a top education in England and was by all accounts a sharp cookie. Unfortunately, her demeanor was so caustic she made enemies easily. She married John Gleim from St. Louis, Missouri, and with hubby in tow, descended on Missoula in 1888.

Mary was a handful, literally and figuratively. Weighing in at close to three hundred pounds, the brutish fireplug of a woman soon became widely known in Missoula, as much for her formidable presence as for her drunken rages in which she physically assaulted numerous people. Victims of her wrath through the years included a number of her prostitutes, business rivals, probably her husband, a handful of Irish priests, and even her own attorneys—who were kept busy on a constant basis with her howling shenanigans.

Mary Gleim chose Montana as a place to set up shop largely because there was an already-established robust black-market trade with Canada, the very sort of business venture that most interested her. Soon Mary began dealing in smuggled merchandise that included opium, lace, diamonds, prostitutes, and Chinese laborers. Business was brisk, and by May of 1889 she had bought her first house of ill repute, which she called a boardinghouse for women.

Within a year she bought eight commercial buildings fronting the main route in Missoula's red-light district. It also wasn't long before she began appearing before the local magistrate on a variety of charges stemming from her drunken rages. Within a few short years, she became known as the Madame of Missoula because she had virtually cornered the market on that town's thriving bordello business. But the acquisition of her various and widespread real estate holdings did not come without a cost—frequently to the contractors employed to work on the buildings.

She was routinely hauled to civil court because she hadn't paid for work she had hired. She also had a habit of evicting and foreclosing on tenants who were unable to pay or were late with their payments. There was no wiggle room in a business deal with Mary Gleim. In 1893 alone, she was sued for nonpayment of back wages ten times, once by her lawyers. She inevitably lost the cases and paid the full restitution plus court fees.

In 1892 she engaged in one of her most famous attacks. In a drunken rage she attacked two priests, telling them they were not fit to wear their clerical robes, which she then proceeded to tear off them. She then smashed furniture and grew even angrier, howling in rage, when they remained passive and didn't defend themselves. She stormed out of the rectory, then with her wrath still in full bloom, she savaged the driver of the carriage she had kept waiting. Not surprisingly, she was hauled into court on three assault charges.

Two weeks later she was back in court, having smashed a bottle of beer over a man's head. In court on that charge, she railed and ranted, and her red-faced efforts resulted in two counts of contempt of court.

If she was cold in her business dealings, she was downright brutish in her dealings with her many prostitutes. She routinely beat them, cheated them out of their pay, and forced them to live in unacceptable conditions. Perhaps she was afraid she wouldn't have enough money to pay her lawyers for her constantly renewed court dates.

Her biggest incident to date came in autumn 1894 when she was convicted of the attempted murder of her biggest red-light district business rival, one Mr. C. P. “Bobby” Burns. She had a long history with Burns and was the person behind an incident in which he was whipped, then dragged by a team of horses.

Early in the morning of February 12, 1894, Bobby Burns's home in the heart of the red-light district was reduced to rubble by an immense explosion. Beyond all belief, Burns emerged alive, if battered, from the wreckage. Everyone in town knew just who was behind the savage attack.

Within a couple of weeks, several people were arrested, one of whom was later proven to be the man hired to enable the explosion. The case didn't go to trial until August, but by then the prosecutorial team had amassed sufficient evidence that they formally accused Mary Gleim of being the mastermind behind the bombing, even though she had conveniently been in San Francisco on business matters.

She was arrested and, because no one would act as bondsman on her behalf, she was forced to spend the time until the trial in jail. She was allowed into lockup with copious amounts of booze, most unfortunate for a woman in an adjoining cell. Once inebriated, Gleim proceeded to excoriate the hapless convict all night long, haranguing her with vile oaths and threats.

A series of postponements played out, then the trial finally began on September 8, 1894. It came out over the next few days that Mary had been quite vocal all over town about how badly she wanted Bobby Burns dead. She had even talked openly of poisoning his sugar bowl. Finally, on September 14, she was found guilty of attempted murder and the next day was sentenced to fourteen years of hard labor.

Instead of venting her rage in her usual custom, the bloated madam said nothing. But she must have known something no one else did, for by October of the next year, she was back in Missoula awaiting the commencement of a new trial. In the interim, she was allowed out on bail and promptly got up to her old shenanigans once more.

She brutally savaged one of her working girls, French Emma, bludgeoning her so badly the girl nearly died. When Emma appeared in court two weeks later, her eyes were still nearly swollen shut, her face was a bruised and battered mess, and as the
Missoulian
newspaper of February 28, 1896, put it, she looked like “a piece of high decorative art. Her eyes black and swollen . . . a deep brown-colored oil painting covering the side of her nose. One of her hands . . . lacerated, said to have been done by Mrs. Gleim's teeth.”

Gleim was found guilty of assault and ordered to pay a $250 fine on top of her attorney's $300 in fees.

And Gleim's good luck just kept raining down—within the month word came out that Bobby Burns, the sole material witness available to testify at Gleim's new trial (the others had killed themselves, left town, or otherwise disappeared), had a fatal heart attack. By the end of May 1896, Mary Gleim once again was free. But it wasn't long before she found herself back in front of the bench, defending her foul personage on a series of cases ranging from verbal assaults to third-degree battery.

In 1905 Gleim, now sixty, showed up again in court as a codefendant, charged with assault with intent to kill. It seems that Mother Gleim, as the press playfully called her, along with two hired goons, entered the home of one C. A. Clayton and “with bludgeon, loaded weapons, or instrument did cruelly and maliciously, wantonly, and unlawfully assault [him] by violent hitting, hammering, and striking him over the shoulders, in the face, [and] on the head and neck.”

Finally, the city of Missoula breathed a sigh of relief when on February 22, 1914, Mary Gleeson Gleim expired, no doubt in a fit of fiery anger, of influenza, at the age of sixty-nine. At the time of her death, despite recent losses totaling $135,000 in a failed brick-making venture, she was still worth nearly $150,000. With no will in place and no children of her own, a niece and nephew inherited her estate.

As annoyingly belligerent in death as she was in life, Mary Gleim was able to once more buck the status quo. Her headstone in the Missoula Cemetery faces the opposite direction as all the rest. The popular story is that she had requested it to be so, in order that she may wave to all the railroad workers who were her loyal customers. The more likely story, however, is that the stone her heirs had commissioned was too large for the space, so it was of necessity turned lengthwise.

SNARLIN' KITTY LEROY

Kitty LeRoy was a notorious woman of the Old West whose life story is as spicy and tragic as her demeanor was fickle and prickly. Just enough is known of Kitty's early life that she remains an alluring enigma. Born in Michigan in 1850, she began dancing for money by age ten, and within a few years began earning a living in dance halls. Somewhere along the line she also learned how to wield a mean pair of shooting irons. That skill would stand her in good stead—for a time, anyway.

Even more useful to young Kitty was the cultivation of her budding seductive powers over the opposite sex. Perhaps she overdid it, for by age fifteen young Kitty was a married woman. True or not, the story of how she decided to marry the man is amusing and somewhat in keeping with what little else is known about the young firebrand. She made it known she would marry whatever man in town would allow her to shoot an apple off his head. The winner was the only man foolish enough to let her try. She pierced the apple and not his forehead, so they married.

Alas, as with everything in her whirlwind life, wedlock didn't last. She would not, could not, keep herself tied to just one man. Kitty LeRoy lit out on her own and ended up in Dallas, Texas, working as a dancer, looking for ways to make more and easier money. She always earned enough to keep her in the comfortable life she was beginning to appreciate.

By the time she turned twenty, Kitty got hitched for a second time and, for a while she and her husband seemed happy. Perhaps at his insistence, she switched her occupation from dancer to faro dealer. She also took to blending gypsy-like fashions and male clothing into an eccentric style of dress the opposite gender found enchanting. Cowboys, miners, and dandies alike lined up for a chance to buck the tiger at Kitty's faro table. Her skills as a gambler blossomed, and her penchant for overarming herself also became apparent. She would often wear a brace of pistols and an assortment of derringers and knives beneath her skirts.

Having bucked and bilked Dallas for all they could, Kitty and her second husband decamped to California, where they intended to run their own gambling establishment. While there, Kitty got up to her old tricks and ran off with a new suitor. They were ill-matched, though, and during an argument one night, the spitting little hellfire attacked her new beau, scratching, punching, kicking, and biting him.