Miller moved on, ending up in Fort Worth in 1900, where he gambled a little and speculated in real estate. He and his wife opened a rooming house, and Deacon followed his familiar pattern by joining the church. His real occupation, however–and maybe his hobby–was killing.

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These were the days of the great sheep wars, and Miller hired out to exterminate sheepmen at $150 per job. He may have killed as many as a dozen men, some anonymously, others on some excuse such as self-defense. He soon expanded his line of work to include murdering farmers whose fences got in the way of the great cattle herds.

In 1904, he ambushed Lubbock lawyer James Jarrott, who had staunchly and successfully represented several farmers against the big cattle interests. This time Killin’ Jim cut his man down with a rifle, shooting his helpless victim again and again as he lay writhing on the ground. ‘Hardest damned man to kill I ever tackled,’ said Miller.

Miller was moving up in the world. He had received $500 for dry-gulching Jarrott, and he began to strut the streets wearing a diamond ring and studs. He branched out into land speculation, promoting the sale of lots well submerged in the Gulf of Mexico. When his innocent salesman threatened to reveal the fraud in 1905, Miller shot him down in the men’s room of Fort Worth’s Westbrook Hotel. Again he escaped the law, this time on perjured alibi testimony.

The next year, 1906, Miller took a job in Oklahoma, still a year away from statehood. Up in the Chickasaw Nation, at a little town called Orr, U.S. Marshal Ben Collins had earned the permanent hatred of the outlaw Pruitt brothers by shooting and crippling one of them during an arrest. The Pruitts swore revenge, and they knew who to call.

One August evening, the roar of a shotgun split the night near the gate to Collins’ little farm. The young marshal had died hard, getting off four rounds from his revolver after the first load of buckshot knocked him from his horse. But another shotgun blast tore into his face, and he was dead by the time his frantic wife got to him.

The public was outraged, and a hard-driving investigation soon identified several conspirators, including the Pruitts and a chubby fingerman called Washmood. It did not take long to learn that Miller had killed Collins for $1,800.

As usual, Miller was both smart and lucky. As months dragged on before the trial, one conspirator died, and one of the Pruitts was killed by a lawman in an unrelated incident. Miller spent some time in jail, but by late 1907 he was out on bail. He returned to Fort Worth just in time to answer a call from a relative in New Mexico. He had been unemployed for a while, and now there was work for him.

This time his quarry was very big game indeed, and the pay was commensurate with the job. His target was none other than Pat Garrett, the legendary sheriff who had killed Billy the Kid back in 1881. The price tag was $1,500. They did not come any tougher than Pat Garrett, who had survived an assortment of gunfights with the worst of the Southwestern badmen. Garrett was semiretired now, after a career of ranching and law enforcement. He was living up in Dona Ana County, N.M., about 20 miles from Las Cruces, and he had become a major problem to powerful neighbors who coveted his land and the spring that watered it.

Financially strapped, Garrett decided to lease part of his range to Wayne Brazel, who, by prearrangement with Garrett’s avaricious neighbors, imported the unthinkable–goats. Garrett was appalled, and he sought any way to rid his range of these destructive beasts before they destroyed it entirely.

In January 1908, Deacon Jim appeared in Dona Ana County, posing as a cattleman in the market for grazing rights. He made an attractive offer to Garrett, who immediately began to dicker with Brazel to get those accursed goats off his land. Negotiations quickly broke down, however, and Garrett struck Brazel and told him exactly what kind of a man ran goats in cattle country.

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