ATDDTA(10) Hairy Vags And Hair-Triggers [282:26-38]

[Keith]

[282:27] "a troop of state Guardsmen"

The Colorado Volunteer Militia, predecessor of the Colorado Army  
National Guard, was originally formed in 1860. The Militia Act of  
1903 organized the various state militias into the present National  
Guard system.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Army_National_Guard#History

In the year 1864, Colonel John Chivington led a group of Colorado  
volunteer militia against a peaceful Arapahoe and Cheyenne Indian  
camp located west of Denver. Using both cavalry and cannon, they  
effectively wiped out this camp, killing an estimated 150 men, women,  
and children. History has recorded many of the very gruesome details  
of torture and corpse disfigurement committed and bragged about by  
the militia. This incident, now known as The Sand Creek Massacre, was  
widely celebrated in Denver as a major victory in the Indian wars  
(Boettcher, 1996).

In the year 1914, the governor of Colorado sent Colorado militia to  
obliterate a coalmine workers camp located south of Pueblo Colorado  
near a coalmine owned by J. D. Rockefeller. Attacking with machine  
guns and an armored car, the militia killed twenty people, including  
twelve women and children. The Denver newspapers reported this as a  
victory over immigrant miners, who were being completely unreasonable  
in their demands against an American mining company. It is now known  
nationally as the Ludlow Massacre (The Ludlow Massacre, 2005).
   http://www.mindrelief.net/demographic_situation_denver.html

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[282:32] "vagging bee"

(def.) vag (Webster's Unabridged):

Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): vagged; vagged; vagging; vags
: to arrest as a vagrant
  <have them all vagged ... in a week -- John Lardner>

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[272:35] Hair-Trigger Bob" [272:37-38] "Bob Meldrum"

[Baggs, Wyoming] ultimately made efforts to preclude such shenanigans  
[by the Wild Bunch] and employed a reputed former gunfighter, Robert  
D. "Bad Bob" Meldrum (1866 - ?) as town marshal. Meldrum provides one  
of Wyoming's continuing mysteries. Indeed, Meldrum's reputation was  
such that former Pinkerton operative Charles Siringo referred to him  
as the "man killer" town marshal. In the 1890's, Bad Bob had  
apparently been associated with Tom Horn in some of Horn's alleged  
killings. In 1902 and 1903, Meldrum was employed as a deputy town  
marshal in Telluride at the time of a bitter mine strike in which  
miners attempted to settle the issue with dynamite. Meldrum was  
apparently employed at the behest of the Telluride Mine Owner's  
Association. The use of dynamite by miners as a method of resolving  
disputes continued in 1905 in Idaho. In that year former Idaho  
Governor Frank Steunenberg was assassinated by a dynamite bomb  
planted by a member of the Western Federation of Miners. The governor  
of Idaho did not take kindly to the killing of one of his  
predecessors and arranged for the kidnapping in the dark of the night  
of three national union officers including the National President  
from their homes in Denver and spiriting them to Idaho where they  
were charged with ordering the killing. Meldrum at the time of the  
trial in 1907 was employed by the Pinkertons as a bodyguard for the  
prosecution. The national president, Bill Haywood, represented by  
Clarence Darrow was found not guilty, but the union was fairly well  
destroyed. The defense cost some $50,000.00. The remnants of the  
Union became a part of the Industrial Workers of the World. During  
World War I, Haywood was charged with federal offences, jumped bond  
and fled to the Soviet Union.

By 1911, Bad Bob was town marshal. On Janaury 12, 1912, Meldrum's  
dinner at a local rooming house was interrupted by a telephone call  
from the mayor complaining of some intoxicated men creating a ruckus  
at Jim Davis' Saloon. At the saloon, Meldrum found four cowboys,  
including John "Chick" Bowen, "hollering." After warning the men,  
Bowen left. Shortly, thereafter the ruckus moved to the street. The  
four then proceeded to the Elkhorn Hotel where they had supper. Upon  
their emerging from the hotel, Meldrum attempted to arrest two of the  
cowboys including Bowen. Bowen and Meldrum got into an altercation in  
which Meldrum ended up with a broken nose and the unarmed Bowen ended  
up dead from one of several shots fired by Meldrum.

Since hollering was only a municipal ordinance violation, deadly  
force was not authorized to effectuate an arrest. Meldrum was charged  
with first degree murder. Bail was denied. At trial, Meldrum was  
found guilty of second degree murder, but the conviction was reversed  
in 1915 on the basis that the jury was not correctly charged as to  
the burden of proof on circumstances which would have permitted a  
conviction of manslaughter.

While in prison, Meldrum apparently attempted an escape by leaping  
from a prison wagon, but only suceeded in breaking his hip which  
eventually healed. In prison he learned leather working. Upon his  
release from prison, Meldrum opened a saddlery in Walcott. In 1926,  
the saddlery burned down and Meldrum disappeared his fate unlearned.  
In 2004, the Star-Tribune reported that a skeleton was found north of  
Rawlins. The skeleton had a bullet hole in the skull and a healed  
broken hip. Hopes that the disappearance of Bad Bob had finally been  
solved, however, were soon dashed. The skeleton was three inches  
shorter than the reported height for Bad Bob. Thus, the mystery remains.
   http://www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com/butchnm.html

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