Jesse Evans, Part 3

The most notable exploit of Company D occurred in the area of Fort Davis. Roberts recalled that about June 25, 1880, he received a telegram from Judge G. M. Frazer of Fort Stockton, asking for help. Numerous stores and other business firms had been robbed in recent months, and local authorities were unsuccessful in dealing with them. The military from nearby Fort Davis would not assist in civil matters, so Frazer called for help from Captain Roberts.
From his Menard County camp, Roberts sent Sergeant E. A. Sieker and Privates J. W. Miller, E. J. Pound, Nick K. Brown, Henry Thomas, R. R. Russell, D. T. Carson, S. A. Henry and George Bingham. Sergeant L. B. Caruthers of Company E also arrived on orders from Major Jones. The men scouted into the Davis Mountains and, on July 3, they finally caught up with a band, which resisted arrest. As Roberts later wrote:
They were about a mile ahead of the Rangers and the boys being eager to get to them struck a little faster gait, which move caused the robbers to leave the road they were on and strike for a canon some distance from the road.
The Rangers started straight for them at full speed, but the bandits reached cover first, dismounted, and took shelter behind the large rocks that fringed the area of the gulch. As horses are not all created equal, only four Rangers managed to get within close range. Sieker, Russell, Carson, and Bingham made up the quartet.
As the Rangers approached, firing commenced from behind those rocks, two bullets striking Carson’s horse and one through the brim of his hat, and Bingham was shot dead. Carson, Sieker and Russell dismounted, and as [robber] George Davis showed up from behind a rock to shoot, Sergeant Sieker and Carson fired at him almost simultaneously, Sieker’s bullet striking him in the breast and as he fell Carson’s bullet went through his head. [8]
Seeing this deadly work of the Rangers, the three surviving robbers broke and ran. Finally realizing they could not escape, they chose to surrender upon the promise they would not be harmed. In the excitement of the gunfight, the Rangers had not realized that Bingham was dead. When they did find out, they almost killed the surviving robbers. Sergeant Sieker, in charge of the scout, reported to Captain Roberts:
We charged the party and took their stronghold. Then we had the advantage, for the first time, and then they surrendered. Had I known Bingham was killed, at that time, I should have killed them all. But we had disarmed them before we knew it. They then prayed for mercy. [9]
The citizens of Fort Davis gave $500 in cash to the Rangers, and the citizens of Fort Stockton gave them $600. This scout was no doubt the most important one these Rangers ever performed. Jesse Evans, one of the robbers captured, had formerly been a pal of Billy the Kid. He was tried and found guilty of murder (for the death of Bingham) and sent to Huntsville State Prison. He managed to escape, however, and was never heard of again. [10]

(9) Sieker’s report appears in Ed Bartholomew’s Jesse Evans: A Texas Hide-Burner (Houston, Frontier Press of Texas, 1955), p. 52. Curiously, Sieker’s report was published in the Mason County News sometime in July 1880. Famed Ranger James B. Gillett clipped the item from that newspaper and preserved it in his scrapbook. He then sent it to J. Marvin Hunter’s magazine, Frontier Times, to be the feature of a short article, “Texas Rangers Battle With Outlaws in 1880.” This appeared in the August 1927 issue, Vol. 4, No. 11, pp. 1-3.
(10) Although other historians assert that Evans escaped and was never heard from again, Gillett, in his Frontier Times article, states: “Evans in trying to escape was shot and killed.” He identified the robbers as Evans, two brothers named Davis and the man killed, unknown.