Legends of the Old West - OUTLAWS Ep. 4 | “Dirty Dave Rudabaugh: Lincoln County Outlaw”

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

Dave Rudabaugh, known as Dirty Dave or Arkansas Dave, flees a murder in Las Vegas, New Mexico and ends up in Fort Sumner after the Lincoln County War. He joins Billy the Kid’s gang just in time to be pursued relentlessly by Pat Garret, the new sheriff of Lincoln County. After Billy and Dirty Dave are captured, Dave escapes jail and runs south to Mexico for his last hurrah. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial. For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. On YouTube, subscribe to LEGENDS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Busting a prisoner out of jail came with risks, and getting a prisoner out of the Las Vegas New Mexico J jail on North First Street was no exception. Also called the San Miguel County Jail, the facilities holding cells were adjacent to a plaza that connected law offices to the town's courthouse. There were only three cells in the jail, so one lawman could easily keep an eye on his prisoners. Ironically, a prisoner in one of the cells in the spring of 1880 was a lawman, or at least he had been until very recently. Josh Webb had been the town marshal for probably six weeks before he landed in his own jail.

The previous marshal had been killed in a shootout that resulted from a confrontation with four unruly cowboys. The previous Marshal and Josh Webb were part of a criminal syndicate in Las Vegas that was known as the Dodge City Gang. Members of the gang held various important and official roles in town and they used those roles to their advantage. In March of 1880, Marshal Webb confronted a man in a saloon and ended up shooting and killing the man. Webb claimed the man had been reaching for his pistol, and Webb fired in self-defense. But very quickly, people in Las Vegas started to believe that

the real reason for the confrontation was that Josh Webb wanted to steal the $1,900 that the man was carrying. Webb was arrested, convicted of murder, and sentenced to hang. Now he sat in jail waiting for his execution, and his friend, Dave Rutebaugh, wanted to break him out. Rutebaugh, also known as Dirty Dave Rutebaugh or Arkansas Dave Rutebaugh, had an interesting history with Webb. Dave had been a robber and a rustler in Arkansas and Kansas, and he had been arrested by Webb and Bat Masterson two years earlier after a failed train robbery. A few months later, Masterson hired Webb and Rutebaugh to act as gunmen during the Colorado Railroad Wars.

After the last big fight between gunmen who represented the two competing railroads in southern Colorado, Webb and Rutebaugh drifted south to Las Vegas, New Mexico. They joined the Dodge City gang that ran much of the town and made illegal money for several months. But the situation changed dramatically after Webb recklessly killed the man in the saloon. Webb's arrest threatened to upend much of the Dodge City gang's operation, and Dave didn't want to see his friend hang, so he organized a jailbreak.

By the end of April 1880, Dave and a pal named John Llewellyn had a plan in place. It really wasn't that complicated, nor did it need to be. They weren't assaulting a federal prison. They were trying to break one guy out of a jail that only had three cells and a single guard. But as with most of Dave's plans, the jailbreak went desperately and fatally wrong. Dave would be forced to go on the run again for at least a third time in his relatively short life.

As a fugitive, Dave would run out of the frying pan and into the fire by joining up with Billy the Kid in the last few months of the outlaw's life. from Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. And this season, we're telling the stories of infamous outlaws, Charlie Bowles, better known as Black Bart, Dirty Dave Rudebaugh, and the Doolin DalDalton Gang. This is episode four, Dirty Dave Rutebaugh, part two of two, Lincoln County Outlaw. Dirty Dave Rutebaugh, Part Two of Two, Lincoln County Outlaw Dave Rutebaugh and John Llewellyn,

who was nicknamed Little Alan, drew up a straightforward plan to break Webb out of jail. They would hire a carriage and ask the driver to wait nearby. The two partners would enter the jail, surprise the lone deputy who guarded the prisoner, grab Webb, and hustle him out to the carriage. The escapee and his helpers would be gone in a matter of seconds. The plan was simple, but the logic behind it was problematic, and the execution of it

was worse. The first issue was the idea to hire a carriage. Carriages were slow, and Dave would have been wiser to use horses. Second, the carriage driver would be an accomplice who could later turn against them. Third, it doesn't appear as though Dave and John told Webb that they were going to break him out of jail. Nevertheless, on the morning of April 30th, Dave and John hired the carriage and ordered the driver to wait in front of the Las Vegas jail as the two outlaws approached the building. The deputy who guarded the jail that morning was Antonio Valdez.

He wasn't surprised when Dave and his partner entered the jail. Dave said he was there to visit Webb and to give him a copy of the town's newspaper. Deputy Valdez allowed the visit, but a moment later, he was staring at the barrels of two revolvers. Dave and John pulled their pistols and demanded the keys to Webb's cell.

Deputy Valdez refused to give up the keys, and the outlaws opened fire. Valdez collapsed to the floor, and the outlaws panicked. Instead of grabbing the keys from the dying deputy and unlocking the jail cell, they snatched the keys and tossed them into Webb's cell. Dave and John rushed out of the jail, hopped in the carriage, and told the driver to speed away. Dave assumed Webb would unlock his cell and find his own way out of town. But Webb stared at the scene in confusion and made no attempt to pick up the keys.

Unbeknownst to Dave, Webb had filed an appeal in his case. If Webb escaped, it would have ended his legal options, and it would have confirmed his guilt in the court of public opinion. In the carriage that drove across town, Dave and John didn't know that their plan had completely fallen apart. When the carriage made it to East Las Vegas, the outlaws kicked the driver out and stole his rig. Dave took the reins and drove to a local hardware store where he hopped out and went inside. Dave pulled his pistol and threatened the store owner. Dave stole two pistols and two rifles and then raced out of the store,. Dave stole two pistols and two rifles, and then raced out of the store, hopped in the carriage, and sped off down the street. Behind Dave and John, the gunfire

and the commotion in town drew attention. Deputy Antonio Valdez was dead on the floor of the jail, and the citizens quickly formed two posses to chase the killers. The first posse failed to make any progress, but the second followed the carriage tracks for about 25 miles outside of Las Vegas. There, the posse found a disconcerting sight. The carriage and its horses had been abandoned at a sheep camp. According to a witness, Dave Rutebaugh and John Llewellyn stole water and fresh horses and took off. It was the first confirmed kill of Rutebaugh's criminal career, though no one would be shocked if there were others buried in his past. Dave Rutebaugh

was now a verified killer in addition to all of his other criminal activities, and he was on the run. In Las Vegas, Josh Webb's appeal partially failed. His conviction wasn't overturned, and he didn't receive a new trial, but his sentence was reduced from death to life in prison. Dave's attempt at a jailbreak was a failure, but as fate would have it, Rutebaugh and Webb would have another go-around in the near future. By then, things would be very different in New Mexico. After Webb's murder conviction was upheld and the attempted jailbreak led to the death of a deputy, the Dodge City gang began to crash.

Townspeople rose up against the criminal syndicate. Hyman Neal, the leader of the outfit who was known as Hoodoo Brown, was driven out of power and he fled the territory. The rest of the gang members scattered, and ironically for Dave Rudabah, Josh Webb decided to break out of jail. Webb did not relish spending the rest of his life in prison, so he joined a few other prisoners and they successfully escaped from the San Miguel County Jail. While Las Vegas was in upheaval, Josh Webb and Dave Rudabal were on the run at the same time. They would both face the same lawmen soon, but Rudabal would do so while he was an associate of Billy the Kid. Now streaming on Paramount Plus.

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We've got everyone where we want them. Mobland, new series now streaming on Paramount+. John, little Alan Llewellyn, suffered from rheumatism and tuberculosis. He was hurting mightily as he and Dave spent long hours in the saddle during their escape from Las Vegas. At some point, John told Dave that he couldn't continue. Depending on the source, John asked Dave to put him out of his misery, and Dave obliged. Regardless of how they parted ways, Dave Rutebaugh rode into Fort Sumner by himself at the end of April

1880. By that time, Fort Sumner had been a town much longer than it had been a military outpost. The Army Fort was constructed in 1863 to help supervise the new Bosque Redondo reservation for the Mescalero Apache, a reservation which Kit Carson was instrumental in establishing. As always on the frontier, a town developed around the fort. When the army closed the fort in 1868, the town stayed in place and kept the name of the military base. By 1880, Fort Sumner was the closest thing to home that Billy the Kid had. Henry Antrim, originally named Henry McCarty, also known as William H. Bonney, and nicknamed The Kid, would eventually become one of the most famous people in American history and would be known to the world as Billy the Kid.

When Dave Rutebaugh rode into Billy's adopted hometown in the spring of 1880, Billy had 14 months to live, and he was seven months away from beginning his cat and mouse game with Sheriff Pat Garrett. In the short space of three years, Billy the Kid had established himself as a notorious figure in New Mexico territory. He had been a ranch hand for a young Englishman named John Tunstall before Tunstall was murdered by gunmen who worked

for L.G. Murphy and Jimmy Dolan, two prominent men in a widespread criminal and political machine known as the Santa Fe Ring. After Tunstall's murder, Billy and other Tunstall supporters, who were called the Lincoln County Regulators, battled the Murphy-Dolan faction in the Lincoln County War of 1878. The Murphy-Dolan faction won the war, and afterward, Billy and a few of the surviving regulators were indicted for a murder that they likely did not commit. Billy eventually allowed himself to be caught and taken to jail because he thought he had secured a secret deal with the governor of New Mexico territory. Billy thought that if he provided testimony in court about a different murder, charges related to the previous murder would be dropped.

But in the summer of 1879, Billy believed the governor had backed out of the deal, and Billy escaped from jail. He laid low for six months, but in January 1880, he killed a man named Joe Grant in a saloon in Fort Sumner. And that's where things stood in April 1880, when Dave Rutebaugh showed up in Fort Sumner. One of Billy's friends was a rancher named Jim Greathouse, who ran a tavern and a stage station. It was through Greathouse that Dirty Dave met Billy the Kid. Dave felt right at home with Billy's crew. It was said by some that Dave was one of the few people who unnerved the Kid. Rutebaugh was unpredictable, and he could be nasty with little provocation. A close confidant of the Kid once said, If ever there was a living man the Kid was afraid of, it was Rutebaugh.

For the rest of 1880, Rutebaugh teamed up with Billy the Kid and his gang, which included Tom O'Follyard, Charlie Bodry, Tom Pickett, and a few others at various times. Dave helped them steal horses and army payrolls. He also aided gang members in holding up stagecoaches, but their crime spree hit a snag in November 1880. The gang stole a bunch of horses, and a posse eventually tracked the gang to Great House Station and Tavern. On the morning of November 29, 1880, the posse surrounded the ranch house. They captured the cook when the man went outside while preparing breakfast.

The posse used the cook to relay messages inside to the outlaws. In response to an order to surrender, the outlaws sent out a scrap of paper on which was written a brief message, Go to hell. Deputy Sheriff James Carlisle was one of the men in charge of the posse. At some point during the tedious exchange of messages, it was decided that Jim Greathouse would go outside as a hostage, and Deputy Carlisle would go inside to speak to the outlaws in person. Carlisle was inside for quite a while, maybe for hours, and the posse grew restless. The dramatic shift happened at about 2 p.m.

The reason will forever remain a mystery, but one of the men in the posse fired a single shot. Deputy Carlisle may have thought it was a warning shot that was supposed to be his signal, or he may have thought the worst-case scenario had just happened. The posse had executed Billy's friend, Jim Greathouse. Whatever the thinking, Carlisle dove through the tavern window and landed in the snow and shattered glass outside. He jumped up and raced away from the building.

Behind him, the outlaws opened fire. At least one bullet, and maybe as many as three, struck Carlisle and killed him. With Carlisle dead and about 75 shots exchanged between the two groups, the posse withdrew. When the outlaws believed it was safe, they exited the great house station and tavern, climbed onto their horses, and rode away. Billy the Kid, Dave Rudabah, and the others were in the wind. No one knew who fired the shot or shots that killed Deputy Sheriff Jim Carlyle. Later, Billy tried to blame the posse for killing the lawman with friendly fire.

Rutebaugh said at least three outlaws fired at Carlyle, but he stopped short of assigning blame or credit to a specific person. Either way, the shootout and the killing added urgency to the effort of Pat Garrett, the incoming sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico. Garrett was elected in early November, and he wasn't supposed to take office until January, but he started work early. The outgoing sheriff made Garrett a deputy so that Garrett could start tracking Billy the Kid right away. Garrett also received an appointment as a deputy U.S. Marshal so that he could chase

the outlaws across state and territorial boundaries, as Billy and his gang were known to move stolen horses between New Mexico and Texas. Garrett and Apasi hurried in pursuit of Billy's gang after the Great House shootout, and Garrett quickly caught a gang of horse thieves and fugitives, but it wasn't Billy's gang. Garrett ended up catching Josh Webb, who had been on the run for about seven months after escaping from jail in Las Vegas. Garrett quickly turned Webb over to the authorities in San Miguel County, and Webb went right back to the jail from which he'd escaped. A couple weeks after the interlude with Webb, Pat Garrett learned from a local cattleman

that Billy and his crew were headed to Fort Sumner for a night of entertainment and relaxation. On December 19, Billy the Kid, Dave Rudabau, and other members of the gang rode into town, and Pat Garrett and his posse were waiting for them. The posse opened fire, and the outlaws scrambled in every direction. As they galloped away from town, one outlaw was hit and fell dead, and Dave Rutebaugh's horse was badly injured. Outside town, Dave hopped onto outlaw Billy Wilson's horse to finish the escape. When the lawmen examined the body of the dead outlaw,

they hoped they had killed Billy the Kid. Instead, the dead young man was Tom O'Follyard, Billy's closest friend. A vicious snowstorm pelted New Mexico, and the frigid weather delayed Pat Garrett's pursuit. New Mexico, and the frigid weather delayed Pat Garrett's pursuit. But within four days, Garrett and his posse managed to track Billy, Dave, and the rest of the gang through the snow. The five gang members were holed up in a tiny stone house in an area known as Stinking Springs. The crude building had no windows and only one door, and it was the perfect trap. crude building had no windows and only one door, and it was the perfect trap. On December 23, 1880, Garrett and his posse moved into position near the house. Soon afterward, Charlie Bodrie, one of the original Lincoln County regulators, emerged

from the house to feed the horses. The posse opened fire and hit Bodrie multiple times. He was bleeding badly as he tumbled back into the doorway of the stone house. With Bodri blocking the doorway, the outlaws realized they would get shredded if they tried to make it to their horses. They had no other avenue of escape, no food, no water, and no hope of winning a shootout against Pat Garrett and his posse. water, and no hope of winning a shootout against Pat Garrett and his posse. According to Garrett, it was Dave Rutebaugh who waved a handkerchief in the doorway of the house and said the gang would surrender. Garrett promised that if they came out unarmed,

then he and his men would hold their fire. The four outlaws complied and stumbled out of the shelter. Garrett recalled that Billy and Dave were surprisingly cheerful when they were taken into custody. But Dave's attitude changed when he learned that he would have to go to Las Vegas to face a murder charge. First he was taken to Santa Fe, where he was charged with robbing stagecoaches and stealing federal payrolls.

He was convicted and sentenced to prison. Then he was shipped to Las Vegas to stay in trial for the murder of Deputy Sheriff Antonio Valdez during the failed jailbreak of Josh Webb. With the FIZ loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with Fizz. Switch today. Conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. Okay, Martin. Let's try one. Remember, big.

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The Ford It's a Big Deal event. Visit your Toronto area Ford store or Ford.ca today. The Las Vegas that Dirty Dave Rutebaugh returned to was vastly different from the one he had fled in a carriage eight months earlier. He had hurried out of town at the end of April 1880 after killing Deputy Valdez and failing to break out Josh Webb, and it was now the early part of 1881. The Dodge City gang was gone, and the townspeople were ready for a new direction. For Dave Rudabah, a guilty verdict was virtually guaranteed.

While Rudabah awaited the inevitable, he sat in a cell in the San Miguel County jail near his friend Josh Webb. Webb had arrived a few weeks earlier, after having been caught by Pat Garrett right before Garrett caught Rutabah. Webb and Rutabah sat in their cells month after month in 1881. In July, Pat Garrett killed Billy the Kid in Fort Sumner. Or didn't, depending on which story you want to believe. Two months later, in September, Dave Rutebaugh decided he was done waiting for his trial. No one knows exactly how Dave managed to procure wire and a pistol, but he used the wire to pick the lock on his cell.

Then with the pistol in hand, he crept down the hall and discovered the guard asleep in the jail. For reasons that are unknown and make no sense, Rutebaugh woke up the guard and fired a shot from the pistol. The alert ended his hope of escape, and he returned to his cell to face his trial. The prosecution had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Dave Rudebaugh committed the crime and that he had planned to kill Deputy Valdez. Rudebaugh refuted both claims by saying that he didn't kill Valdez. Rudebaugh said his partner, John Llewellyn, who was now dead, pulled the trigger.

The prosecution was not able to prove that Rudebaugh committed premeditated murder, but the jury returned a guilty verdict nonetheless. Dirty Dave Rutebaugh now had a date with the gallows, and even more motivation to break out of jail. A group of five prisoners, including Rutebaugh and Josh Webb, used a knife, a fire poker, and a pick to tunnel out of their cells. In December 1881, Dave Rutebaugh and Josh Webb escaped from jail and were fugitives once again. The two men headed east to Texas and said their final goodbyes. Josh Webb continued traveling east until he reached Arkansas,

where he reportedly lived under the name Samuel King until he died from smallpox in 1882. For the first time in a long time, Dave Rudaball was truly on his own. As such, his story became even more shrouded in mystery than normal. But the most popular story of his next adventure saw him continue his journey in ways. His life had already overlapped with legends of the West like Bat Masterson, Josh Webb, Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and of course, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. At the end of 1881 and the beginning of 1882, if there was one hot spot in the West

that would be logical for an outlaw to head to, it was Tombstone, Arizona. Newspaper accounts and eyewitnesses placed Dave Rudabah in the area around Tombstone in late 1881 or early 1882. One of the eyewitnesses was reportedly Wyatt Earp himself, who thought Rudabah might have been present at one of the most iconic moments of the Tombstone story and the Wyatt Earp biography. Rutebaugh was definitely not in Tombstone during the year and a half of tense buildup between the Earp family plus Doc Holliday and the outlaw gang known as the Cowboys. And Rutebaugh wasn't there for the gunfight that happened in a vacant lot on Fremont Street on October 26, 1881. He was running with Billy the Kid's gang in New Mexico at the time. But it's possible that Rutebaugh drifted to the

extreme southwest in time for the second half of the Tombstone City, the Earp Clan moved to America's newest boom town, Tombstone, Arizona. The town sprang up in record time around rich silver mines, and the Earps and Doc Holliday wanted in on the action. At the same time, a loose-knit group of rustlers and thieves known as the Cowboys operated in the area. For more than a year and a half, pressure built between the Earps and the Cowboys. On October 26, 1881, it exploded in the most famous shootout in American history, the gunfight at the OK Corral. Wyatt Earp, Virgil Earp, Morgan Earp, and Doc Holliday battled the Clanton brothers and the McClowery brothers. The result was three men

dead, Billy Clanton, Frank McClowery, and Tom McClowery, and two wounded, Virgil Earp and Morgan Earp. Four days after the gunfight, Ike Clanton, who had been unarmed and had run away when the shooting started, filed murder charges against the Earps and Holliday. A combative, month-long hearing before Judge Wells Spicer concluded with Spicer condemning the actions of the Earp faction but ruling in their favor. They did not break any laws. The cowboys and their supporters were outraged, and on December 28, 1881, they began their plan for vengeance. That night, Virgil Earp walked out of the Oriental Saloon and began to cross Fifth Street when shotgun blasts erupted from a vacant building on the other side of the intersection.

Virgil survived the ambush, but his left arm was crippled. And it's at about that time that stories start to place Dave Rudabaugh in Tombstone. If he were there, and if he had joined up with the cowboys, it's unlikely that they would have involved a new guy in a high-profile assassination attempt. Three months later, on March 18, 1882, gunmen successfully killed Morgan Earp. Rumors also swirled that Rudabaugh may have helped in the assassination, but he wasn't one of those who were identified afterward, and again, his participation is unlikely. The murder of Morgan pushed Wyatt to form a posse with Doc Holliday and several others

to hunt down the outlaws who had been attacking his family. Wyatt's relentless pursuit and take-no-prisoner strategy became known as the Vendetta Ride. And the most famous part of the Vendetta ride was the confusing but incredibly exciting shootout in the Wetstone Mountains west of Tombstone. Wyatt's posse rode to a well-known spring in the mountains, where the men expected to meet a courier who was bringing them money so they could continue their mission. To everyone's surprise, the posse found a group of cowboys at the spring who were led by Curly Bill Brocious.

A gunfight exploded almost immediately. According to the legend, Curly Bill fired a shotgun at Wyatt that peppered Wyatt's coat with holes but didn't hurt the man himself. Then Wyatt blasted Curly Bill with a 10-gauge shotgun that nearly cut Curly Bill in half. The shootout roared across the spring until the cowboys retreated. It was the last major action of Wyatt Earp's Vendetta ride, and the story was told and retold many times over the years. In competing accounts, Wyatt suspected that one of the cowboys that day was Dirty Dave Rutabah, but Wyatt wasn't sure. Then, according to a newspaper editor from Dodge City, Wyatt confirmed that Rutabah was at the shootout, but the story

will always be hotly contested. Regardless of whether or not Dave Rutabah was in southern Arizona and participated in any of the events surrounding the Earp War with the Cowboys, the wildest part of the Tombstone story was done by the summer of 1882. Most of the Earps and Doc Holliday were gone from the territory, and the Cowboys were essentially defunct. Dirty Dave Rutebaugh seemed to become a ghost for a few years, until his final hurrah south of the border in 1886. Dave Rutebaugh bid farewell to the United States and went to the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Bordering New Mexico and Texas, Chihuahua was a region full of cowboys and small communities, and Rutebaugh settled in Hidalgo del Paral. At one point, it was called the best silver mining location in Central America.

Silver still flowed into the city with regularity, and the influx of money sponsored an active nightlife. Saloons, bordellos, and cantinas operated late into the night. Rutabaugh tried to make a living as a cowboy, but then he became a rustler. When he grew tired of stealing horses and cattle, he tried his hand at being a butcher. Then he spent most of his time in the gambling dens, and he stopped trying to find work. When he was at the poker table, he applied the tricks taught to him by Doc Holliday in those long-ago days of 1877. But he didn't have Doc's ability for cards,

and his demeanor did not endear him to the people of town. Hard drinking and gambling were a volatile combination, and Dave Rudabah soon crossed a line. On the night of February 18, 1886, Dirty Dave was in a cantina as usual. He had allegedly downed a bottle of tequila before playing, so he was painfully drunk while trying to play poker. His irritability intensified because of the chatter coming from the other players at the table. Rudebaugh couldn't understand Spanish, despite his many days in Mexico,

and he thought the other players were mocking him. Dave's luck worsened as the game progressed. He loudly claimed that he was being cheated. One source said it was actually Dave who was cheating, and one of his opponents stood up and told him so in English. The man moved his hand toward his gun, and Dave drew his pistol and fired before the man cleared leather. As drunk as Dave was, he wasn't

so drunk that he couldn't shoot a man right between the eyes. As the dead man tumbled backward, another card player drew his gun and fired. The man missed, but Rutebaugh spun in his chair and shot the second man in the chest. Dave turned again and shot a third man. In seconds, two men were dead, one was wounded and the card game was well and truly finished. Dave stood up and walked out of the cantina only to find that the horse he had tied up out front was gone. When he turned back toward the cantina with his pistol in hand, his time was up, and his end would not be for the faint of heart.

Someone in or near the cantina shot Rudabal with a rifle. More shots followed, and the reports echoed through the cantina and the street. Rudabal's legs buckled, and he fell down dead in the street. People raced out of the cantina and other buildings and a mob began to swarm around the body of the 31-year-old outlaw. A man with a machete decapitated Dirty Dave Rutebaugh. Like a macabre parade, townspeople marched through the streets with Rutebaugh's head held aloft. Townspeople marched through the streets with Rutabaugh's head held aloft. One account claims the people put Rutabaugh's head on a spike.

They hastily buried his body in a nearby cemetery and later buried his head with it. Like many outlaws, his friend Billy included, rumors circulated that Rutabaugh did not die a terrible death in Mexico, but instead he returned to America, got married, raised a family, and turned himself into a cattle rancher. But of all the rumors associated with Dirty Dave Rutebaugh, the one where he lives out a quiet life as a family man and a rancher seems the most far-fetched. Next time on Legends of the Old West, we'll begin the story of Bill Doolin and the Doolin Dalton Gang. In the waning days of the Old West, the Dalton Gang and its successor, the Doolin Dalton Gang were some of the preeminent outlaws of the time.

Their story starts next week on Legends of the Old West. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week to receive new episodes. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials. And they also receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships are just $5 per month. This series was researched and written by Michael Meglish. The producer was Joe Guerra.

Original music by Rob Valier. I'm Chris Wimmer. Thanks for listening. I'm Chris Wimmer. Thanks for listening. Have you ever heard about the 19th century French actress with so many lovers that they formed a lovers union? Or what about the Aboriginal Australian bandit who faked going into labour just to escape the police, which she did escape from them.

It was a great plan. How about the French queen who murdered her rival with poison gloves? I'm Anne Foster, host of the feminist women's history comedy podcast Vulgar History. Every week I share the saga of a woman from history whose story you probably didn't already know and you will never forget after you hear it. Sometimes we re-examine well-known people like Cleopatra or Pocahontas, sharing the truth behind their legends. Sometimes we look at the scandalous women you'll never find in a history textbook. Listen to Vulgar History wherever you get podcasts. And if you're curious, the people I was talking about before, the Australian woman was named Maryanne Bug and the French actress was named Rochelle, no less name, just Rochelle. And

the queen who poisoned her rival is Catherine de Medici. I have episodes about all of them.