Ellsworth in 1867 was as desperate a place as any on the plains. “A man for breakfast” was the morning’s oath, and by dinner, the oath was often satisfied.

Things were rapidly getting out of hand when wagon master John Hancock and Frank Johnson killed each other in a suicide duel in Clara Grant’s crowded brothel/ dance hall on Sept. 11, 1867. Three bystanders were seriously wounded. In another barroom, and not in the street as one newspaper reported, a man by the name of Chaves drew his pistol and shot one man in the arm, but the wounded man’s pistol found its mark, leaving Chaves dead on the floor.

Frank Johnson and his brother Charley operated a saloon east of town that was considered too rough for most of the crowd that frequented Ellsworth’s dives. Known as the Halfway House, the Johnsons attracted the worst kind of men to their isolated den of iniquity.

Now that Frank was dead, Charley joined with George Craig to deliver a reign of terror to Ellsworth. Craig was a young wannabe desperado, newly-arrived from Leavenworth. With Charley Johnson at the head, the scoundrels were at least partly responsible for “frequently shooting and breaking into houses, resisting officers and defying the law.”

Col. James Albert Hadley related in the Feb. 7, 1903, edition of the Topeka Kansas State Journal that a friend of wagon master Hancock swore revenge on Charley Johnson for the death of his friend, even though the men had killed each other. Instead of going to Johnson’s Halfway House saloon, Allen waited for Johnson to return to Ellsworth.

The town had two main streets, each one parallel to the railroad tracks running east and west through town. Johnson naturally came into town on the street north of the tracks; it didn’t take long for Allen to spot him. Allen started across the tracks from the southwest. As Allen headed straight for his target, Johnson readily recognized that “his time had come.”

With his hand resting on his holstered pistol, Johnson waited in silence. “A hundred men watched from a distance. Neither spoke till they were close together. Each face was white and set.”

Words were quietly spoken between them as Allen closed the distance, but only heard by the two combatants.

Instantly, both pistols were out and flashed smoke and fire, but neither man fell. Shots echoed across the plaza until both pistols were empty. It looked as though Johnson was going to draw a knife from his boot, but before he could draw the knife, he collapsed.

Allen turned up the street, walked about 30 paces and suddenly sat down in the doorway of one of the saloons. He asked bystanders if Johnson was dead, and was informed that he was dying. Allen was helped to a hotel room and a doctor was summoned.

“All were astonished to learn he had two wounds, one so near the heart that the shock alone was dangerous.”

He died before morning.

Johnson, on the other hand, survived his wounds and returned to the Halfway House. Among the citizens of Ellsworth, there was strong and decided talk of forming a “vigilance committee.”

A correspondent for the Atchison Freedom’s Champion declared, “A very fast place is Ellsworth. Every day produces half a dozen fights and every night produces half a dozen fights and every night somebody is wounded or killed. It has evidently reached the zenith, and its population of blacklegs, gamblers, horse thieves and others of that ilk, are pushing out to Big Creek...”

A letter to the Leavenworth Times proclaimed, ”There is no greater burlesque upon civilization existing in this free and enlightened state than is the town of Ellsworth. ... No fouler birds ever congregated around the putrid carcass of a departed ox than those which frequent and tenant the brimstone-scented dens of the modern Sodom.”

The Topeka Record reported, “Col. Veale was out at Ellsworth last week. He reports that at least one man a day is murdered in that delectable town and that there is more gambling, drunkenness and vice in that place than he, with all of his experience, could possibly have imagined to be possible. If there is not virtue enough in Ellsworth County to drive out the rascals, other portions of the state will assist.”

Ellsworth officers were in a tight spot. Johnson and Craig had to be stopped. The lawmen caught them unawares, took them from their beds in the Halfway House and arrested them. Johnson recklessly swore he would kill the arresting officers. Vigilantes acted quickly, taking the prisoners from the officers in the middle of the night. The desperate men were escorted by the vigilantes to a large cottonwood, “its trunk hoary with age.” Ropes were thrown over a convenient limb and with the loop knotted about their necks, Johnson and Craig were hoisted into eternity.

The final episode was related in the Lawrence Daily Kansas Tribune. “Passengers from the west report quite a panic among the thieves, rowdies, gamblers and other flash characters of Ellsworth. A notice was found on the bodies of the two men hung there last week, stating that such would be the fate of all rogues, and in consequence, a heavy emigration is taking place. The vigilance committee avow it as their intention to keep up operations until the moral atmosphere is purified.”

Alas, flash characters would find a way to return to a fast life and, in many cases, a fateful death, on The Way West.