Deputy U.S. Marshal Jack Bridges stepped into the darkened Ellsworth barroom in search of four desperate horse thieves. Suddenly, he found himself face-toface with Jack Ledford and his gang. Supposing that their time had come, the desperadoes sprang on Bridges all at once.

With no time to go for his pistol, Bridges “fastening his teeth” to Ledford’s neck “held on as a vicious dog would to the neck of a bull.” All the while, Ledford’s three partners pounded and beat Bridges over the head with their revolvers until his cranium resembled a raw steak. As he lay motionless on the floor, they walked into the night and “LEFT HIM FOR DEAD.”

Bridges was carried to a doctor at the nearby drug store. His skull was fractured and several ribs were broken. He was described by fellow Deputy Marshal Charles Miller as “a short, wiry little fellow, about 5 feet, 4 inches tall and all backbone, and did not weigh over 95 pounds when in good health.”

As he lay recuperating from the barroom thrashing, Bridges swore he would kill Ledford.

Meantime, Ledford changed his operations to southern Kansas, choosing Wichita for his headquarters. There, he fell in love with Alice Harris, the stepdaughter of Henry Vigus, the owner of the Buckhorn Tavern and Hotel. She refused to marry an outlaw since he was recovering from a wound incurred during a recent stagecoach robbery. He “announced that he would give up the outlaw business.”

He seemingly purchased the Wichita House from P. C. Hubbard, renaming the hotel the Harris House in honor of his bride. The Leavenworth Bulletin exposed the truth behind Ledford’s apparent change of character, saying, “Ledford was nothing but an unprincipled ruffian. He drove Mr. Hubbard, the real owner and proprietor of the Harris House, out of the hotel at the point of a pistol.”

Ledford was hailed as one of Wichita’s outstanding citizens, but then those were the days when the town was ruled by questionable men, all with connections to the horse thief crowd.

Ledford employed Charlie Jennison, a known Colorado desperado, as his hotel clerk. The stage office with connections to “all points of the country” was in Harris House, giving Ledford regular information as to the stage coach business. At any rate, Bridges learned of Ledford’s whereabouts and prepared to take him in.

In 1894, Fred Sowers, a former Wichita groceryman, spoke of Bridges and Ledford in a Wichita Beacon interview. Bridges had told Sowers that he had ridden with Ledford during the war.

“That man was a devil,” Bridges said. “I saw him kill a sergeant and six soldiers that had been sent after him once, and he did it in walking less than 10 feet. He never got excited and he never missed his aim.”

For that reason, Bridges asked Fort Harker’s commanding officer for a company of soldiers and four scouts to serve a warrant for Ledford’s arrest.

“That one man is equal to a regiment in a fight,” Bridges said.

At 1 p.m. Feb. 28, 1871, Deputy Marshals Bridges and Lee Stewart rode into Wichita with 25 soldiers of the 5th U.S. Infantry, under the command of 1st Lt. E. L. Randall. After an exten- sive search, Ledford was discovered hiding in an outbuilding behind the hotel.

Eyewitness Sowers recalled the shootout in an 1894 Wichita Beacon interview. Ledford had little time to react when the officers rode into town. He was unarmed and the only pistols at his disposal were old and not his own. Ledford was cornered in the outbuilding and at the mercy of the approaching officers. Throwing open the door, Ledford triggered the pistols and even though they didn’t fire properly, two shots hit Bridges in the arm. Bullets split the air around Ledford as he rushed Bridges, who was lying prostrate on the ground.

“Yes,” Judge McCanles said, “I was there when Eli Fitzgerald threw a pistol over my head to Ledford and cried, ‘There’s a pistol that will work, Jack.’” “But Ledford never got hold of the pistol,” Sowers said.

When Ledford reached Bridges, he began beating the lawman over the head with one of the ineffectual pistols. Rising to his feet, Ledford walked toward Fitzgerald’s pistol while “a company of soldiers were peppering away at him.”

Meantime, Deputy Marshal Stewart had worked his way behind the outbuilding. Just as Ledford stooped to pick up the pistol, Stewart shot him in the back.

The lawmen continued firing as they carried the wounded Bridges away. Ledford staggered into a wholesale liquor store and fell to the floor. Friends carried him to the Harris House where he died in less than 30 minutes.

Sowers related Bridges’ final comment on the subject of his old nemesis, Jack Ledford.

“If he had had his own pistols the day he was killed, I and 11 other men would have bit the dust … Every bullet carried death with it when Jack Ledford pulled the trigger,” except on that ill-fated day in Wichita, when his pistols didn’t work on The Way West.

“The Cowboy” Jim Gray can be reached at 220 21st Rd., Geneseo, KS 67444, (785) 531-2058 or kansascowboy@kans.com.