Another bad guy that lived on the periphery of outlaw legends and never quite got his due. Plus John Joshua Webb was the perfect example of the 'white hat/black hat' syndrome so common back in the wild west, where 'Rule of Law' was merely a suggestion.

Webb was born in Keokuk, Iowa in 1847, the 7th of 12 children. The family moved all over and eventually Webb left home and became a buffalo hunter as a teenager. He drifted all over the west, hitting all the gunfighter hot spots of the day. After hanging out in Deadwood, SD and causing some trouble, he ended up in Dodge City, KS and that is where he first shows up historically in the paper as a well respected lawman. He was deputized by Bat Masterson and rode with Wyatt Earp in chasing bad guys all over the territory. He outgunned and arrested 'Dirty Dave' Rudabaugh, one of Billy the Kid's buddies, single handed.

He later became a hired gun for the Atchinson, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad in their battle with Denver and Rio Grande Railroad over access routes over the Rockies. This was back in the day when the railroads just hired private 'regulators' to duke it out.

Webb eventually ended up in Las Vegas, NM and opened a saloon with Doc Holiday. It was more of a front where Holiday could fleece drunk cowboys and get them to gamble away all their pay. This was a pretty going concern until Holiday shot one of his customers for pestering one of his whores and he skedaddled back the Dodge City.

Webb became the marshal of Las Vegas, while at the same time he was a member of the Dodge City Gang involved in all kinds of robbery and mayhem. Webb shot a man in a saloon and the town fathers decided to hang him. The wild west was dying fast and towns were getting fed up with these kind of guys and were hanging them right and left in the early 1880's.

Ironically Webb was in the same cell as 'Dirty Dave' Rudabaugh, a man he had arrested once before as a lawman. The chipped away at the stone wall and escaped. Rudabaugh went down to Mexico and was killed and Webb changed his name to Samuel King and moved to Arkansas where he died in 1882 of small pox at the age of 35, but still a free man.

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