Order was restored, a vote taken, and the candidates of the businessmen—Fred C. Zimmerman and Morris Collar, Tyler’s neighbor merchants—won a slim victory over the favorites of the sporting crowd, A.J. Peacock and “Colonel” Charles Norton, a notorious gambler and con man who would later be lynched in Sweetwater, Texas. It was judged that “the action of this convention is a rebuke to the roughs who for many years have manipulated the affairs of the county.” Combine this with the election in April 1876 of George Hoover as mayor and his choice of Larry Deger as marshal, and the merchants must have felt they had gotten the upper hand at last.

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However, they had not reckoned with the consequences of prosperity. In 1875-76 there were nearly 250,000 head of cattle driven to Dodge along the Western Trail. This spate of trade, taking up where the dwindling buffalo market left off, was an irresistible lure to scoundrels looking to pluck the trail-weary cowboy, his pockets packed with months’ wages. By late summer 1876, reports from Dodge told of a tidal wave of gamblers, confidence tricksters and other sports flooding in just as some police officers lit out for the latest gold strike, in the Black Hills. The Hays City Sentinel, September 13, noted, “Gamblers are congregating at Dodge and Larry Deger has his hands full.” A gambler fleeced a cattle buyer out of $800 and the citizens rose up, captured the grifter and thrust him into jail.

Alarmed at the lack of manpower to handle the explosion of crime, they organized a vigilance committee and addressed the following pointed note to each and every gambler, “Sir: You are hereby notified to leave the city before 6 o’clock a.m., of Sept. 17th, 1876, and not return here.” It is not known how many pasteboard artists took the hint. But it is certain that however many did, they did not stay away for long.

The general election of November 1876 announced to anyone who could read the cards that the reprieve from lawlessness and disorder would be temporary. The Ring that had controlled the affairs of Ford County since 1873 had coalesced around the county commissioners: Chairman Alfred J. Peacock, Charles Rath, Andrew J. Anthony and, for a time, A.C. Myers, who shortly after resigning from the board became chief of a horse theft gang headquartered in the Panhandle—not a radical change in his line of work, some would have said. Rath and Anthony were both business associates of the politically powerful Robert Wright. He and Anthony had been partners since 1867, when they became post sutlers at nearby Fort Dodge. Other members of the Ring were County Clerk Sweeney, Sheriff Charles Bassett, Treasurer Herman Fringer and Township Trustee Peter L. Beatty.

The election overturned the victory of the upright businessmen in the July convention: Wright was elected state representative; Fringer probate judge, defeating Richard Evans; Beatty retained his office, winning handily over Zimmerman; and a newcomer from Missouri, Mike Sutton, took over as county attorney. The Ring, in fact, was morphing into what would come to be known as the Gang, the ruling party for the remainder of the decade. The only missing crony  was William F. Sweeney.

Sweeney’s plot to hook John Tyler’s barbershop, that tempting property on the main thoroughfare of a suddenly booming cattle town, had gone awry almost from the start. First, he lost possession of it to his intended dupe, who showed himself frighteningly adept with razor or shotgun. Then, turning to the law, Sweeney likewise ran against a roadblock. On June 8, 1876, he filed an appeal to recover the barbershop, but before it could be adjudicated, Sweeney himself went missing, not only from Dodge but also from his wife, the fascinating Bessie, a woman who never lingered alone for long.

The county commissioners, meeting on August 10, 1876, declared, “Whereas William F. Sweeney, the duly elected and qualified County Clerk of Ford County Kansas, has absconded from the County of Ford and has been absent from and neglected the duties of his Office since the 24th day of July…we the Board of Commissioners of Ford Co. Kansas hereby declare the office of County Clerk of Ford County to be vacant.” The reason for his absconding became clear a little over a week later when it came out that he had forged and fraudulently put into circulation a county warrant made out to himself for $125. It may well be that Sweeney, familiar as he was with the tortuous course of the law, realized that when his audacious swindle failed to succeed and Tyler did not bolt even with a murder charge hanging over his head, the game was up.

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