Luck was with James A. Gordon when he charged out of Fort Lupton, 24 miles northeast of Denver City, Kansas Territory, the morning of Sept. 22, 1860. Flourishing a revolver overhead, Gordon shouted at the vigilantes, “Shoot, you cowards, and follow me!”

Truth be known, Gordon was hoping to be shot and killed. He had killed a man while in a drunken stupor and his pursuers had a rope with his name on it. He couldn’t stand the thought of being hanged.

Bullets split the air around him as he dashed for freedom, but nothing met its mark. Several men mounted up to take up the chase, but one by one their horses gave out, having been pressed hard before arriving. Gordon’s horse had the advantage of an overnight rest. One man, identified as Babcock, followed Gordon south and claimed he had hit the fugitive with a blast of buckshot.

In his letter of confession, Gordon made no mention of being followed. “My horse gave out and could go no farther and I left him and went on foot.”

East of Denver, near present-day Watkins, Colo., Gordon bought a horse at the Box Elder stage station. That horse also gave out and after another walk, he laid down to sleep.

Going to a place called Bentley’s Mill, he was given a mule and told to ride as fast as possible. The mule carried him for three days to Bent’s Fort in present-day southeast Colorado. From there, Gordon wrote a letter to a friend in Denver. The letter was carried by a man who was going to the city.

Meantime, William Middaugh took up the mission of tracking Gordon. Middaugh was described as the Sheriff of Arapahoe County. In that isolated country, government organization was far from organized. Before the gold rush there were no settlements and the rush had begun less than two years before.

Recognized as part of Kansas Territory, legal jurisdiction was placed in far-away eastern Kansas. Depending upon who you asked, there were either several counties along the front range of the Rockies, or just one, Arapahoe County, for the entire region.

Adding to the confusion, others were trying to establish a new U.S. Territory called Jefferson over a wide swath of that western country. William Middaugh’s commission as Arapahoe County Sheriff was upheld more through the influence of a strong vigilante system than by a traditional system of government.

Sheriff Middaugh had entered the pursuit of Gordon after all trace of the fugitive had been lost. Traveling in a wagon, he searched the country south of Denver. By chance, he met a traveler who recognized the description given of James Gordon. Reaching in his saddlebag, he handed over Gordon’s letter, giving the officer solid knowledge of Gordon’s whereabouts.

At Bent’s Fort, Middaugh was told that Gordon had joined a train of 40 wagons going east along the Santa Fe Trail. The train reached eastern Kansas before Middaugh caught up to it. Middaugh was told that Gordon had left the train a few days before, traveling south.

Accounts differ, but apparently Deputy U. S. Marshal Armstrong (first name not reported), Leavenworth, joined Middaugh from Leavenworth. Coffey County Sheriff John Chess was enlisted at Burlington to continue the pursuit. The officers found Gordon at Humboldt and arrested him on Friday, Aug. 17, without incident.

Sheriff Middaugh had traveled 700 miles in eight days to capture James Gordon. Gordon was taken to Leavenworth with the expectation that Middaugh would escort him to Denver City by way of the Pikes Peak Express stagecoach, but Judge John Pettit had other ideas.

The judge announced that Gordon would be held at Leavenworth and given a preliminary hearing at that location on Sept. 17. The delay was meant to allow time to gather witnesses. Sheriff Middaugh took the stage to Denver, tasked with rounding up witnesses while his prisoner remained in a Leavenworth jail.

At Denver, A.C. Ford, “a lawyer with considerable ability,” stood for Gordon’s defense. He boarded the stage for “the States” Wednesday morning Sept. 5. About six miles out of Denver, a half dozen men in disguise stopped the stage and called for Ford to get out. Ford complied. The driver was ordered to pull out.

Ford’s body was later found “perforated by six buckshot and one large bullet.” A slip of paper with the words “Executed by the Vigilance Committee” was pinned to his coat. Vigilantes were suddenly very active along the front range.

A correspondent for the Missouri Democrat observed that “rumors of hangings have been rife on the streets here during the past 30 hours, and it is believed that six or seven more men have been found swinging from limbs of trees up and down the Platte and on Cherry Creek above town.”

No one on the front range of the Rockies was happy with Judge Pettit’s decision to hold James Gordon far from the scene of an innocent man’s murder. Sheriff Middaugh diligently performed the seemingly impossible task of traveling 1,300 miles round trip, collecting witnesses in Denver in order to deliver them to Leavenworth in three weeks’ time. Such was the life of a frontier lawman pledged to do his duty on The Way West.