Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen (39 page)

Too much a gentleman, he refused to raise a hand to a woman. This only served to fuel Kitty's hot temper further and she dashed from the room, returning momentarily dressed as a man, demanding he fight back. Still, he rebuffed her. So Kitty LeRoy pulled a six-gun free of her holster and when he refused to draw his, she shot him. He dropped, bleeding and no doubt confused beyond measure by this vicious little hellcat with whom he was in love. Kitty sent for a man of the cloth, who married them while the groom lay dying. The new husband continued writhing in his agonies for a few more days, then expired.

Freshly widowed, and realizing the only real money to be made resided in gold-rich mine camps, she headed to the hot town of Deadwood, South Dakota. She caught a ride on a wagon train, traveling with Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. Once Kitty arrived, she found work readily as a prostitute, an occupation with which she had some familiarity. In time she realized her dream and christened her own establishment—the Mint Gambling Saloon. She also took on a fourth husband.

This one, a somewhat successful prospector of German origin, intrigued her for a time . . . until his savings dwindled. As she had with past paramours, she became surly and instigated arguments with the hapless digger. It all came to a head one night when she conked him on the bean with a bottle and told him to hit the road.

All this while she built up the Mint's business, providing soiled doves as well as booze and gambling to her eager clientele. By this time she was a well-known character in Deadwood, fawned over by the men—even as she filched gold from their pokes through her faro games—and dallying freely with a number of them. Kitty remained armed to the teeth, carrying a number of weapons at any one time, including a Bowie knife down her back and a pair of revolvers in her skirt pockets.

She had turned the heads of many miners, then just as quickly earned their enmity as she skinned them for all their dust. Her highest haul for one evening's play was $8,000. She was accused of shooting and/or stabbing anyone she caught cheating at one of her games, though her own were likely rigged.

In due course, Kitty LeRoy married a fifth and last time, to a prospector by the name of Samuel R. Curley. If Kitty's previous marriages had been spark-filled, tempestuous affairs, this one was downright explosive. Curley was not the sort of husband to sit idly by while his voluptuous young bride carried on with a handful of other men, among them her recent ex-husband. It is also believed she carried on with Wild Bill Hickok and notorious gunman Sam Bass.

All of Kitty's shenanigans came to a head on December 7, 1877, when hubby five tracked her down to the Lone Star Saloon. He found out what room she was in, stormed up the stairs, cornered her, and they voiced a loud argument. Shortly thereafter, folks downstairs heard a gunshot, quickly followed by another.

Though in Deadwood the sound of gunfire was a daily occurrence, the fact that these shots came from Kitty's room and not the bar heightened the overall sense of alarm. The ragtag band of saloon patrons stormed up the stairs—and when the gunsmoke cleared, the scene was a grim one.

There lay Kitty LeRoy, on her back, looking as if she were asleep, save for the smoking bullet hole in her chest. Beside her lay her husband, Sam Curley, dead of a messy self-inflicted shot to the head.

The tempestuous lovebirds were buried in separate coffins, but side by side, in the same grave at Ingleside Cemetery in Deadwood. Some time later their bodies were reinterred to the Mount Moriah Cemetery overlooking Deadwood.

LUCKY LOTTIE DENO

One of the Old West's most famous gamblers went by a number of names, mostly because she didn't want her family back East to know she was a gambler. She had told them in letters that she was the wife of a wealthy Texas cattleman.

The name she is most known by, Lottie Deno, is but a bastardization of a common phrase coined by a cowboy who claimed she'd made a whole “Lotta Dinero” off him. She was an Old West woman of mystery, known variously as Faro Nell, Maud the Mystic, and Queen of the Pasteboards, though her given name was Carlotta J. Thompkins. And she was one heck of a gambler.

But dallying with cards was more than a pastime. To Lottie, gambling was life itself. And it was an addiction she would discover early on in her life in Kentucky, where she was born on April 21, 1844, into a well-off and prim Episcopalian family.

In addition to her unusually keen abilities as a gambler, she cut a comely figure—she was a handsome redheaded woman, described by someone who knew her as “a fine looker . . . in manners a typical Southern Lady. She had nothing to do with common prostitutes . . . she was not a ‘gold digger.'”

She was also accompanied for many years of her life by her black nurse-maid, Mary Poindexter. Poindexter, it was said, was so devoted to Lottie that once on a walk together along the Mississippi River's bank, she spied a coiled rattlesnake ahead of Lottie on the trail and threw herself upon it rather than let Lottie get bitten. Mary's wound resulted in a painful, protracted sickness and an amputated finger. This imposing character could always be found sitting just behind young Lottie at the dealer's table, keeping a sharp eye out for cheats.

On one occasion, as Lottie worked a riverboat on the Mississippi, she was accused of cheating by a soldier for the Union Army. In all likelihood he had witnessed a swindling slip in her formidable gambling skills, but his mistake was in lunging for her. He never got much of a chance to prove his claim because big Mary muckled onto the youth and overboard he went.

Lottie had cultivated an air of respectability about herself, going so far as to forbid cursing, smoking, and drinking at her games table. And by the time she made it to San Antonio, she was a widely known and well-liked dealer. All this despite the fact that she had an annoying habit of peeling all of a man's money right out of his pockets.

Lottie was at home in San Antonio, as that town was a gambler's 'round-the-clock playground. She found steady work as a dealer at a respectable establishment called Frank Thurmond's University Club and was quite an attraction to all those lonesome cowpokes. They gladly left off their bad habits for a chance to sit in on a few hands with the lovely Lottie Deno. Soon enough she had earned the nickname “Angel of San Antonio.”

Lottie, however friendly to the gamblers, was all business, earning a percentage of each night's take. She had also fallen in love with the owner, Frank Thurmond, a no-nonsense fellow, part Cherokee, and friend to Doc Holliday. He was forced to defend himself one night over a poker game and ended up killing a man with his Bowie knife, which he wore down his back on a leather thong. Frank left town as threats to his life rained in.

Soon after, Lottie followed and caught up with Frank in Fort Griffin, working at a gambling den called the Bee Hive. She quickly became top faro dealer in the place and her considerable gambling skills helped her one evening win all of infamous gunman-gambler Doc Holliday's cash, $3,000, in a hot game of faro. This led, in part, to a two-pistol stand-off between Lottie and none other than close confidante of Doc Holliday, Big Nose Kate Elder. The incident has been documented enough that the basic facts ring true. As Kate regarded her partnership with Holliday as a love match, she became convinced that Lottie was horning in on her man.

It is said that Holliday was fond of Lottie, though to what extent we are unaware. The two women squared off right there in the saloon, possibly with drawn six-guns. Ever quick on the draw himself, Doc leapt between the two wildcats and managed to subdue them before rising tempers led to gunplay.

Faro is an addictive card game not known for its equitable outcome for players, and the house rarely fared poorly. Good faro dealers were worth their wage in a gambling establishment, and women who happened to also run a game could usually count on raking in big-ticket takes at the end of a night's play. That's because the players, often ranch hands and miners looking for a bit of excitement of an evening, were also more often than not love-starved and always eager for the chance to wile away a few hours—and a goodly portion of their hard-earned money—in the company of a lady, even if they knew full well her game was likely rigged.

Lottie was just such a woman, a serious and accomplished gambler, though the jury's out as to whether Lottie truly was a swindler, as well. Odds are the truth lies somewhere in the gray area between all of those designations. Though it might be a stretch to paint Deno with the swindler brush, it's doubtful she could have attained the level of earnings she did, at such a consistent level and for such a sustained period, without working every possible angle for her own benefit.

Given that her game of choice as a dealer was faro, the most-rigged card game of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States, and given that crooked faro equipment could be found in nearly every gambling establishment in the nation, it's no wonder Deno came out a winner so often and for so long. Especially when she did all she could to play up her winsome ways, wield her pious demeanor, and flash her coquettish smile. And it worked like a charm.

Lottie was, as are all professional gamblers, always on the scout for a way to pad her nest, as illustrated in a now-famous incident from her days at Fort Griffin. She was dealing faro one evening when two rowdies accused each other of ill use at a card game.

With the first sign of tension, the various games about the room stalled, chips and cards in midplay, cigars smoking silently as heads turned to see what the trouble might be. Only the dealers used the interruption as opportunity, eyeing the unguarded cards of their fellow players.

Smokey Joe was the first to stand, sending his thin wooden chair slamming backward to the floor, sparks fairly shooting from his eyes and venom slicking his sneering lips. “Get up, cheat!” he snarled to his opponent, a swarthy gent named Monte Bill.

Bill was slower to his feet, but for a reason—though his eyes were locked on Smokey Joe's, and showing no less hatred, his right palm already slid upward across the smooth leather of his holster. By the time he stood, his revolver was seated in his hand, his thumb cranking back on the hammer.

But if he thought he had the drop on his opponent, he was mistaken, for Smokey Joe was no dullard and had done the same as Monte Bill. They stared at each other across the card-strewn table. Scarcely a heartbeat passed when each man squeezed trigger and sound, smoke, and ragged flashes filled the room.

Each of the two hotheads dropped where they stood, Monte Bill making more of a mess of the task than Smokey Joe, slamming the table edge and sending cards, chips, an empty bottle, two glasses, and coins scattering.

Afraid of more gunplay, everyone in the place bolted for the door, running low, hands covering their hatless heads. Not long after, the sheriff, Bill Cruger, pushed in fast through the front door. Scanning the room he saw two dead men, blue smoke from their close-in exchange of gunplay thinning and rising to the high ceiling. The only other soul in the room was the handsome young redheaded woman, Lottie Deno, the popular faro dealer, still sitting at her table.

“Miss,” he said, bending low and examining the dead men. “I cannot for the life of me understand why on earth you did not leave when the shooting began.”

She offered a slight smile, her head canted to one side, her eyes on her hands as they arranged cards atop her table. “But then you have never been a desperate woman,” she said in a low, almost-whisper of a voice.

But according to a handful of folks who were there that night, in staying put, Lottie had acted true to her inner dealer. When play resumed some time later, the money that had been on her faro table had somehow disappeared in all the hubbub. No one dared question the demure Southern lady. But a good many gamblers suspected her purse contained more cash than it had before the shooting.

Frank and Lottie spent five years in Fort Griffin, then decamped to New Mexico, marrying there. And trouble followed as Frank once more settled a scrape with his knife, again killing his combatant. Though it was ruled self-defense, the Thurmonds decided enough was enough and left the gambling life behind. They made a home in Deming, New Mexico, where Frank invested in mining ventures and real estate, and in time became a vice president of the Deming National Bank.

Lottie, too, quit professional gambling, save for one incident in 1892 when she hosted a charity poker game that netted Deming's St. Luke's Episcopal Church, a church of which she was a founding member, $40,000.

Lottie remained steadfast and true to her husband, Frank, for forty years, until his death in 1908. She lived many more years alone before cashing in her chips in 1934. Decades after her death, she was the inspiration for the character of Miss Kitty on the long-running television show
Gunsmoke
.

W
hen is a thief a swindler? Are all swindlers thieves? Is the converse true? Admittedly there is a difference between the two, though with many shades of gray between. Considering the skulduggery of organized and premeditated wholesale theft of big critters from people who not only owned them but relied upon said critters daily, it's a safe call to say that rustlers were a swindling bunch.

Perhaps not all cattle and horse thieves were swindlers, but there were a select few who were so good at thieving, and seemed to do it with such a high degree of panache and a relish for the pursuit, that they are very much like the riverboat gamblers and con artists on street corners who, one surmises, would do so even if they had alternative means of support.

The Old West's most notorious rustler, Dutch Henry Born, who came into the world on July 2, 1849, to German immigrants in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, didn't set out to be a rustler. But he tasted the sweetness of easily picked fruit and discovered it was a flavor he liked very much.