Cowtown Gun Fight
Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2021 3:57 pm
LUKE SHORT VERSUS “LONGHAIR JIM” COURTRIGHT
February 8, 1887
Fort Worth, Texas
An easy nominee for “Last Great Duel of the Old West,” this clash between two prize gunfighters was sparked by a fairly mundane dispute over gambling hall kickbacks.
The players: Luke Short, a dapper gambler and saloonkeeper who’d once dealt for the house at the Oriental Saloon in Tombstone and recently had sold his stake in Fort Worth’s White Elephant Saloon; and Timothy Isaiah “Longhair Jim” Courtright, an ex-Fort Worth marshal who was back in Cowtown running a “detective agency” that was little more than an extortion operation.
When Courtright approached Short about protection money for the White Elephant, Short told him where to go.
“That’s when people started talking about something brewing between these two guys,” says Doug Harman, Western historian with the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame. “If any gunfight had a certain High Noon-style anticipation to it, it was this one.”
On the fateful night, a drunken Courtright entered town and called out Short. The two men stood face-to-face at close range outside the White Elephant. In one of the more well-documented but hard-to-believe draws, Short took off Courtright’s thumb on his first shot. Unable to cock his pistol, Courtright “border shifted” to his other hand too late. Short had already planted two bullets in his chest.
The duel’s aftermath wasn’t short on irony, notes Harman. “The building Courtright fell against when he died was a target practice spot called the Shooting Gallery. And to this day, the two men are buried just a few feet apart in Fort Worth’s Oakwood Cemetery.”
February 8, 1887
Fort Worth, Texas
An easy nominee for “Last Great Duel of the Old West,” this clash between two prize gunfighters was sparked by a fairly mundane dispute over gambling hall kickbacks.
The players: Luke Short, a dapper gambler and saloonkeeper who’d once dealt for the house at the Oriental Saloon in Tombstone and recently had sold his stake in Fort Worth’s White Elephant Saloon; and Timothy Isaiah “Longhair Jim” Courtright, an ex-Fort Worth marshal who was back in Cowtown running a “detective agency” that was little more than an extortion operation.
When Courtright approached Short about protection money for the White Elephant, Short told him where to go.
“That’s when people started talking about something brewing between these two guys,” says Doug Harman, Western historian with the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame. “If any gunfight had a certain High Noon-style anticipation to it, it was this one.”
On the fateful night, a drunken Courtright entered town and called out Short. The two men stood face-to-face at close range outside the White Elephant. In one of the more well-documented but hard-to-believe draws, Short took off Courtright’s thumb on his first shot. Unable to cock his pistol, Courtright “border shifted” to his other hand too late. Short had already planted two bullets in his chest.
The duel’s aftermath wasn’t short on irony, notes Harman. “The building Courtright fell against when he died was a target practice spot called the Shooting Gallery. And to this day, the two men are buried just a few feet apart in Fort Worth’s Oakwood Cemetery.”