Posted on 02/05/2005 4:19:04 AM PST by foolscap
Claude Dallas
(Ian Tyson, Tom Russell, 1986.)
In a land the Spanish once had
Called the Northern Mystery,
Where rivers run and disappear
And the Mustang still lives free,
By the Devil's wash and the coyote hole
In the wild Owyee Range,
Somewhere in the sage tonight
The wind calls out his name.
Aye, aye, aye.
Come gather round me, buckaroos,
And the story I will tell:
The fugitive Claude Dallas
Who just broke out jail.
You might think this tale is history
From before the West was won,
But the events that I'll describe took place
In nineteen-eighty-one.
He was born out in Virginia,
Left home when school was through.
In the deserts of Nevada,
He became a buckaroo.
He learned the ways of cattle.
He learned to sit a horse.
He always packed a pistol
And he practiced deadly force.
Then Claude he became a trapper.
He dreamed of the bygone days.
He studied bobcat logic
In the wild and silent ways,
In the bloody runs near paradise,
In the monitors down south,
Trapping cats and coyotes,
Living hand and mouth.
Aye, aye, aye.
Then Claude took to living all alone
Out many miles from town.
A friend, Jim Stevens, brought supplies
And he stayed to hang around.
That day two wardens, Pogue and Elms,
Drove in to check Claude out.
They were seeking violations
And to see what Claude's about.
Now Claude had hung some venison,
Had a bobcat pelt or two.
Pogue claimed they were out of season.
He says, "Dallas, you're all through."
But Dallas would not leave his camp.
He refused to go to town.
As the wind howled through the bull camp,
They stared each other down.
It's hard to say what happened next.
Perhaps we'll never know.
They were going to take Claude in to jail,
And he'd vowed he'd never go.
Jim Stevens heard the gunfire,
And when he turned around,
Bill Pogue was fallin' backwards.
Conley Elms, he fell face-down.
Aye, aye, aye.
Jim Stevens walked on over.
There was a gun near Bill Pogue's hand.
It's hard to say who'd drawn his first,
But Claude had made his stand.
Claude said, "I'm justified, Jim.
They were going to cut me down.
A man's got a right to hang some meat
When he's livin' this far from town."
It took eighteen men and fifteen months
To finally run Claude down.
In the sage outside of paradise,
They drove him to the ground.
Convicted up in Idaho,
Manslaughter by decree,
Thirty years at maximum,
But soon Claude would break free.
There's two sides to this story.
There may be no right or wrong.
The lawman and the renegade
Have graced a thousand songs.
So the story is an old one.
Conclusion's hard to draw.
But Claude's out in the sage tonight.
He may be the last outlaw.
Aye, aye, aye.
Dallas has chosen to decide for himself what laws to obey and what laws not to obey. Maybe when he's released, he'll run into somebody else who's chosen similarly.
Could this be a reason why he is seeing daylight so soon?
Agreed. Poetic justice would be for him to be attacked by the animals he poached..
The NRA should lease this guy a house right next door to Sarah Brady. I'd love to see how quickly she'd change her tune on handgun control.
" Idaho Killer Claude Dallas "
Lt. Frank Drebin: Hector Savage. From Detroit. Ex-boxer. His real name was Joey Chicago.
Ed Hocken: Oh, yeah. He fought under the name of 'Kid Minneapolis'.
Nordberg: I saw 'Kid Minneapolis' fight once. In Cincinnati.
Lt. Frank Drebin: No you're thinking of 'Kid New York'. He fought out of Philly.
Ed Hocken: He was killed in the ring in Houston. By Tex Colorado. You know, the 'Arizona Assassin'.
Nordberg: Yeah, from Dakota. I don't remember it was North or South.
Lt. Frank Drebin: North. South Dakota was his brother. From West Virginia.
Hey, San Francisco's Mayor Gavin Newsom does the same thing only he imposes his decisions on the populace.
Sometimes justice gets done.
Yeah, but last I heard, Newsom wasn't shooting law officers in the head in order to finish them off.
Isnt that the guy who was killed in small town with witnesses, but "No one saw a thing"?
Yep.
I sure hope any family they had has come to terms with this and don't personally own any firearms and can't be bothered to keep tabs on this vermin for a few weeks. That'd be a shame.
That's the one. Skidmore was in the news a couple months ago when a young pregnant lady was murdered and her baby cut out of her womb.
Any morning that has Frank Drebin in it is a good one. Thanks for the early laugh.
The jury was outraged at the sentence that was given to him. They thought it was far too severe. He has served much more time in jail than many who committed much nastier crimes.
Dallas had a reputation in the community as a man of integrity who could be counted on to do his job. Pogue had a reputation of someone who tended to ride a little roughshod over the people he confronted.
I worked with game wardens in two states, and was one for a while, and in my experience, they, as a group, were more unreasonable and obsessed with their "power" than most other peace officers.
Dallas wasn't willing to leave his animals without making arrangements, and was willing to give his word to turn himself in if he were just given a little time to make arrangements.
It was a tragedy all around, that could have been averted if either one of the parties involved had been willing to bend a little more.
From reading about the incident, my speculation is that the actual shooting occurred when Pogue noticed that Dallas was wearing a pistol, and quick drew his own in a panic. Then Dallas thought he was going to be shot, and drew his own weapon. He was just a faster and better shot than the wardens.
"Dallas' 30-year sentence was cut by eight years for good behavior."
Um, that doesn't look right. How many jailbreaks are allowed before its considered "bad" behavior?
When his Jacoby's have to spin up statements like this one...I gotta think he was guilty as sin.
Granted I wasn't there...and I can't imagine what was going on in everyone's minds at that camp.
Maybe you are right about game wardens...maybe they do have "heavy hands"...but I've not read about them shooting and killing too many people.
FRegards,
I remember the Skidmore town cop commenting on the McElroy case where Ken Rex died in his pickup from a hail of gunfire unleashed by townspeople. "Too bad about the Silverado."
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