Pulling a Slick One A cowboy ruckus covered up a murder in Caldwell, KS.

On December 16, 1881, a group of rowdy cowboys hurrahed Caldwell, Kansas.  But it really was a ruse.  The cowboys repeated the behavior the next day, but this time started shooting.  One of the men who was hit was Mayor Mike Meagher, who died soon after.  The cowboy leader, Jim Talbot, killed Meagher for fatally shooting a relative of his three years earlier (a fact not discovered until the 1990s).

Talbot escaped and made his way to California.  He was gunned down in 1896—supposedly by Mike Meagher’s brother John, who was never arrested.