On April 19, the El Paso Times reported: The ‘Texas Cowboy,’ as he has been styled, who shot Rayner, is quietly sojourning in Paso Del Norte, Mexico, waiting the development of things on this side. Mr. Rennick instead of being the proverbial cowboy, is a quiet unassuming man, well-to-do and well connected in Texas, and while he explores the necessity for the dreadful tragedy which resulted in the shooting of Rayner, he is confidently waiting the earliest time when he can have the matter judicially investigated in the courts of El Paso county.

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On June 26, 1885, in justice’s court, a hearing was held before Justice of the Peace Lewellyn H. Davis. A.P. Criswell took the stand first and recounted the events from the moment that Rayner accosted Rennick until the shooting. Criswell’s brother, M .W. Criswell, another Gem Saloon gambler, added a few details, and Cahill recounted his part in the Rayner-Rennick affair, without mentioning his own fatal encounter with Linn. Although other witnesses had been subpoenaed, no others were called. Rennick declined to make a statement. Davis then ordered that Rennick be bound over to the district court for trial in September 1885.

Rennick was soon a free man, and he never stood trial. On June 28, the Times reported that Rennick was exonerated because the dreadful necessity of killing his opponent was forced upon him. He left El Paso after that, and his trail faded into oblivion except for a few bits and pieces. A few nights after the gunfight at the Gem, three masked men pushed their way into the back room of the saloon, apparently intent on robbing the faro bank.

Look recalled: They walked up to the faro table and threw their guns down on it. One of the players jumped up, and the man with the shotgun jumped back, and the gun went off, accidentally, I presume, cutting the ear off of this fellow Harry Williams, the powder burning his face very badly, the load of buckshot hitting the layout and glancing into the lookout’s knee, Bob Cahill, leaving quite a number of buckshots in his leg…. Both parties ran each way, the robbers running back out, and the dealers and players running out the front way, leaving the room empty.

A few nights after that, Look said, three men came out of the cane brakes near the bridge at the spot where he had met Rennick and entered Bossilier’s Brewery in an attempted robbery. Again, however, plans went awry. Bossilier grappled with the man with the shotgun, who he recognized as Rennick, and was about to take the gun away when another of the robbers shot the brewery owner in the head. Look recalled that he had later met Rennick in Monterey, Mexico, and that Rennick had admitted that he was the man with the shotgun in both bungled robbery attempts. Rennick apparently remained in Mexico. In 1909, an El Paso newspaper article on the Rayner-Rennick fight said that Rennick was still living in Mexico City, a hopeless morphine addict.

Bob Cahill also left El Paso. During the gold rush, he went to Alaska, got rich in Nome, and eventually moved to New York City. Ham Rayner, who was described by one old-timer as one of the most vain men I ever knew, eventually moved back to El Paso, where he became a perennial candidate for public office and something of a local celebrity.

In the long run, the Gem Saloon shootout made little difference in the community. The El Paso Lone Star deplored what had happened in an editorial the day after the fight and called for strict enforcement of the no-gun ordinance of the town as a means of ridding El Paso of men who glory in being called ‘bad.’ The Herald was more philosophical: The victims have no one to blame but themselves. Their train of life collided with loaded revolvers and they have gone down forever in the smashup.

Rayner and Linn were not the first to die in a burst of gunfire in El Paso, and they would not be the last. Bass Outlaw, John Wesley Hardin, John Selman, Manny Clements and more would spill their blood in El Paso saloons and on her streets before the violence subsided more than 20 years later. Such sanguinary affairs as those in the Gem Saloon that April night in 1885 became the metaphor that defined the West for generations, even for many who saw the passing of the frontier firsthand.

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