The two Flake brothers stood reading the telegram from Nat Greer, discussing the message.

Thursday, December 8th, 1892, ‘dawned bright and clear, cool and crisp’. There had been an exchange of telegrams that morning with Holbrook, the county seat. Nat Greer was asking if there was an individual in Snowflake matching a specific description. Charles had answered yes, the stranger had been in town since Monday. The man referred to was well armed, had plenty of money, was in possession of a good mount, and gave the name of “Will Mason”. Greer asked in his last telegram that the man be arrested, that he was believed to be the robber that had held up a bank in San Marcial, New Mexico only last month. A part of this final, fateful telegram was that the stranger was a dangerous man. “Be sure to have assistance enough to arrest him” Greer warned. He offered a hundred dollar incentive.

Charles Flake was, as well as a prominent businessman, the Justice of the Peace in Snowflake, and was the closest thing to a lawman that existed in the town. All of thirty years old, wife and four young children, another on the way, he was in the prime of his life. But he was no lawman, any more than his brother James.

James said: “hadn’t we better speak to father and have him go along?”

“No,” replied Charles, “we can take him all right.”

Their father was, of course, the indomitable William Jordan Flake, Mormon pioneer and one of the founders of the town of Snowflake. Perhaps if the two brothers had let their father read the telegram, or perhaps if Nat Greer had been more forceful in his language, a tragedy could have been avoided. As it is, the two young businessmen went to get their guns, something they probably rarely carried. (Charlie went home for his gun, Jim got one from the store).

Who was the man that the Flake brothers were about to try to arrest, Mason being only one of the desperado’s aliases? Described as “a treacherous left-handed wretch”, as well as “brave and fearless”, he seemed to have no shortage of names. If one article is talking about this man under yet another pseudonym, his family was ‘rich in aliases’. Tim, Tom, Jim, Billy, Will, last names Mason, possibly Fox, possibly Thompson, Taylor, Morgan, the San Marcial bank robber is best known by the name James Mason Taylor. That’s most likely the name he was born with, if his grave has a tombstone, that would be the most likely name on it.

If Billy Fox was one of Taylor’s names, his Yuma Territorial Prison record has his ‘nativity’ as Texas, which leaves one speculating if this Taylor was related to the Taylors of the Taylor/Sutton feud, which was not so much a feud as it was an excuse for the Taylors to steal horses and cattle, and commit depredations from 1868 through 1881 in three southwestern counties of Texas. As the years passed, the desperado Taylors of Texas would be found and gunned down all over the west in the midst of crimes.

A theatrical company was being formed, with Charles as the manager. There’s no more details than that in the source papers, whether it was strictly Snowflake folk, or if they intended to tour, but the play “My Very Last Proposal” had been chosen, and Charles had been “working at it.” 

James and Charles, having fetched their guns, now debated on how to approach the suspect. Mason/Taylor was staying at Mrs. Hall’s boarding house (possibly also known as the Minnerly Hotel), and at that particular moment was sitting on the back porch of the house, in one article making repairs on a gun belt. Another article has him ‘whittling the head of a cartridge’.

The brothers decided that Charles would approach the stranger and engage him in conversation.

There’s just such gentility here. The Flakes were honestly trying to bring this bank robber in with no violence. It might have been that they’d noted how young he was. By most reports, in December 1892, James Mason Taylor was no more than twenty years old. While two articles give his age as twenty-three, most have him at nineteen.

His age belied the man. If one accepts that Billy Fox and James Mason Taylor are the same person, the desperado that the Flake brothers were approaching had lived a tragic, even traumatic life.

Why might the San Marcial bank robber be Billy Fox of the Fox brothers, a very youthful pair of horse thieves in 1890? Because Billy “Kid” Thompson, a train robber, said so, in 1894. In the course of regaling newspaper reporters with stories of his criminal adventures as he awaited trial for train wrecking, Thompson claimed that the Fox brothers’ last name was actually Taylor, and that Billy had robbed a bank. In the wake of the Snowflake incident of 1892 an article reported that the bank robber’s name was either “Billy Taylor or James Taylor.”

Thing is, ‘Kid’ Thompson was a congenital liar. A New Mexico lawman had traveled to Los Angeles, California to accuse Thompson of robbing a bank there. Thompson denied it, and then went on to talk about the Fox brothers, claiming Billy had done the bank robbing.

In early 1890, two and a half years before the San Marcial bank robbery, the Fox brothers, Billy, 17 or 18 years old, Frank, 15, maybe 16, stole three horses. An Arizona posse jumped both boys, deep in California, and did something that took incredible courage, but also suggests that the law perceived they were dealing with juvenile delinquents. The Sheriff of Maricopa County got close enough to Billy that he stripped the boy’s revolver out of its scabbard, and had Billy in shackles before he could move. Frank, similarly freed of his weapon, managed to wrest away from the deputy, and on foot made a break for it. Unarmed fifteen-year old Frank Fox died that day, shot in the back by a lawman as his brother Billy helplessly watched.

This incident was written up in Desert Magazine, ‘Forgotten Tragedy at Carrizo Wash’, June, 1941. It’s a piece of San Diego (California) back-country lore. Legend has it that Billy swore vengeance upon the lawman that killed his brother, but that the old vaqueros that had befriended the boys urged him to set aside his vendetta, and that Billy Fox ultimately married and became the foreman of a ranch south of the border. To this day, Frank Fox’s grave is a monument to stoic cowboy suffering in the face of adversity and misfortune. So what actually happened to Billy Fox is what this writer has been after for years, and if Billy Fox is James Mason Taylor, it seriously changes up the legend.

When Charles Flake was fifteen, his family pulled up stakes and moved from Utah to Arizona. In Black Canyon along the Little Colorado, their cattle gave out, couldn’t go any further. Young Charles was put in charge of the valuable animals, and left behind for three months. The cattle misbehaved, it was cold and lonely, but his father came back for him, and they proceeded on to Taylor, Arizona. Charles had proved his mettle.

Charles would continue demonstrating his worth. In a speech from the 1985 Snowflake Pioneer Days, H.A. Henderson spoke about Charles’ harrowing mission to the Deep South, humorous only in retrospect, and a demonstration of Charley’s good humor, then told how Charles had a ‘knack for making money’, setting up one form of business after another, making great friends with the local Indians, Apaches, who came to call him ‘brother’, practicing all the virtues of his Mormon faith, caring for the destitute when he could. With his brother James, he built a two-story brick store in Snowflake, the bottom floor for the business, the second story for dances and parties. Active in the church, a force, along with the whole Flake family, for Good, capital ‘G’ on purpose, Charles Flake was a builder, a creator, a pioneer in his own right.

Even if Billy Fox isn’t James Mason Taylor, this would be at least the second brother to die violently. December 8th, 1887, eerily five years to the day, older brother Johnny Taylor, a cowboy for the Aztec Land and Cattle Company, had made the mistake of liquoring up and riding his horse onto the portico of Pages Saloon in Winslow. Revolver drawn, he demanded somebody come out so he could shoot him. Somebody leaned out a window and knocked Johnny Taylor off his horse. Head shot. If other reports are correct, the first time James Taylor killed was when he was thirteen. His victim; yet another one of his brothers. No sources give the particulars of this incident, whether it was an accident or on purpose, but the point is, the Flake brothers’ life experience had absolutely nothing in common with the man they were approaching to arrest.

Still in speculation mode, Billy Fox was taken back to Phoenix, where his lawyer argued in preliminaries that Billy Fox could not be tried for horse theft. Stolen in another county, Maricopa County sheriff did not have the authority to arrest Billy Fox for horse theft.

Billy Fox was tried and convicted, not for stealing horses, but passing a bad check in Phoenix when the brothers had rode through with the stolen horses. Billy would spend a year in the Yuma Territorial Prison, released in early 1891, where Kid Thompsons was serving a three-year sentence, for grand larceny, stealing a horse.

James Taylor, then under the name Tom Taylor, worked for the Aztec Land and Cattle Company, the Hashknife, that summer of 1891.

By early 1892, though, Billy Fox was arrested in the Oklahoma Territory. In a bit of déjà vu, a Federal marshal from Texas rode up to Billy, both men on horses, and stripped Billy’s sidearm out of its scabbard before Billy could move. The crime he was accused of was being part of the gang that robbed the train at Red Rock in Oklahoma and an attempted train robbery just across the border in Texas. The newspaper reporting all this gloated over the fact that this proved the Dalton Gang hadn’t held up the train at Red Rock, Billy Fox never having been associated with the Daltons. They also pressed that Billy Fox was ‘not his right name, but it will do for now’.

Of course, the Dalton Gang had robbed the train at Red Rock. By July 27th, the The Okarcha Times was contending that the Law had got the wrong man. Did Billy’s lawyer argue that the Texas lawmen didn’t have the authority to arrest Billy Fox in Oklahoma, especially since most of the legal proceedings occurred in Wichita Kansas?

That is the last heard of Billy Fox. It’s also the end of the speculation. Unless otherwise noted, here are the facts as known.

On November 23rd, 1892, the day before Thanksgiving, in the middle of the day (one report gives 7:00, which would have been just after dark), what many papers declared the ‘boldest case on record’, a lone man with a handkerchief hiding his face, walked into Jasper Broyles General Store in San Marcial, pulled a gun on the six men sitting around the stove, and ordered ‘Hands up.’ Broyles had contracted with the railroad to act as a private bank for the employees of the line. He had a large safe, and according to at least one article, there were two pistols hidden within.

There are several versions of what happened after that. One variety has the robber entering, putting the six customers there up against the wall, ordering Broyles to open up the safe and fill a bag. In the middle of the robbery, a customer walks in, and the cool robber calmly puts the newcomer in the line. When the sack of wealth is handed to him, the desperado walks casually to the door, exits, mounts his horse and rides off unmolested. One version has him at some point spilling some of the coin. Nonchalantly the thief kneels, gathers up the coin, and resumes his escape.

Another version has him entering the store with a pistol in each hand, putting the six men up against the wall, sending Broyles back to the safe which is in sight. There is a pile of coin sitting on top of the safe. The masked thief removes the handkerchief hiding his face, piles the coins onto it, wraps it up and walks out with this money, having never opened the safe at all. The hostages recognize the thief as someone who has been hanging around town for a while, and was known as a ‘bad man’. The customer who came in the middle of the robbery is identified as Bass Allen. This bit of minutia suggests that this article was written locally, since the journalistic quip, ‘names are news’ is only true if people recognize the name. In this particular version, the bad man backs up to the exit, then fires a volley of shots in the air as he steps out the door. The amount stolen, depending on the article, is $1,000.00, $1,200.00, $1,500.00, and according to the talkative Kid Thompson two years later, $5,000.00. The article that mentions Bass Allen reported $900.00.

Some articles ridiculed the seven, and then eight hostages, for having so meekly surrendered to a lone highwayman. Several articles, though, ask what this bank robber had that chilled his victims so. One article opined that the free-booter was ‘no novice in his line, judging from his business like methods.’

Kid Thompson contended that there was at least one other person involved in the robbery, Mysterious Dave Taylor, who Thompson described as a ‘tin-horn gambler that lost his nerve’ when it came time for the actual robbery. Then Thompson, in yet another interview, contends that John Short, or maybe Long, was part of the gang that robbed the bank. Was there someone outside, bowing out at the last moment in the actual robbery, as Thompson contends, but still assisting in the escape? Was it Thompson? Was it something Thompson fabricated to entertain the reporters interviewing him and change the subject from a bank robbery he supposedly committed three years before the San Marcial incident?

The bank robber was reported to have spent the night ‘two miles down from San Marcial’ in a Mexican’s home’. As an aside, the Fox brothers spoke fluent Spanish.

Enter Deputy Sheriff William Goodwin of Socorro County, New Mexico.

His name is spelled Goodwin, Goodwyn and Goodin, but other than that, there is nothing about this man except for his immediate actions related to this one incident in the papers of the day. The Socorro County Sheriff’s department has no records that date back to 1892, and the present Sheriff couldn’t suggest any other source in the county that might be able to help. The Socorro County Historical Society could not offer anything, and so Deputy Goodwin can only be known by the newspaper articles.

The bank robber, still unnamed in the papers, but certainly known by the law, headed due south to Cuchillo Negro, a small farming hub fifty miles from San Marcial, but instead of continuing south, the robber went west and north, up to Luna Valley, the terrain he covered rough and sparsely populated even today, slipped across the border into Arizona, to Nutrioso, then to Springerville, St. John, Concho, and then Woodruff, all the while being pursued by Goodwin, who must have been sending back messages to Socorro whenever he could, as his location is plotted out by newspapers across the west. At Woodruff, Goodwin assumed the desperado would head twelve miles north to Holbrook, catch a train, maybe disappear. Goodwin was wrong. The thief went south, roughly twenty-five miles to Snowflake. Taylor/Mason/Fox did this entire route from San Marcial to Snowflake in roughly thirteen days.

It must have been a grueling race, close to four hundred miles, some of it rough country. Even on a good horse, in good weather, day after day, it would have been wearing on man and beast. It was late November, Early December. Days were short, nights were cold.

So when the stranger who called himself Will Mason reached Snowflake and took a room at Mrs. Hall’s boarding house, it’s not surprising he paused and took a breath, rested. It was a fatal mistake.

Goodwin, “From inquiries set on foot on his arrival in Holbrook” determined his prey was not there.

The New Mexico lawman contacted Nat Greer of Apache County to tell him of his purpose there. This is a mystery. While Nat Greer is called sheriff in many written memoirs, Osmer Flake referring to Greer as ‘an officer’ he was never the sheriff of Apache County. He might have been an occasional deputy, drawing $9.00 in ‘Constable Fees’ from the county that April, but in 1892, O.B. Little was sheriff as well as tax collector of Apache County, which still included what today is Navajo County. Nat Greer was an occasional employee of the county treasurer. Why Goodwin didn’t contact the sheriff is unclear, but 1892 had been a bad year for Sheriff Little. An accused horse thief attacked him with an ax, the sheriff apparently was only an occasional fixture in Holbrook, the county seat. He disappeared from the papers around September 1892. While listed as sheriff as late as December 1892, he’s nowhere in the papers of the day.

Why wasn’t Under Sheriff Nelson contacted?  There had been a scandal, the Under Sheriff found derelict in his duties as the county jailer. It is possible Nelson was disgraced and out of the picture, dismissed. The position of Under Sheriff actually disappears from the county’s roster in 1893. Still, how did it fall to the county treasurer to take up this criminal case?

Even if Greer wasn’t acting sheriff, Bill Goodwin’s pursuit of the New Mexico bank robber in the Arizona territory became completely legal in the eyes of the Law. He had informed the local authorities he was there, we can assume he presented the warrant for the bank robber’s arrest. The Desperado now had a name and a description, and as several newspapers would state later, Taylor was suspected of many crimes across Apache County. When Greer requested Charles Flake to arrest the suspected bank robber, Charley and Jim had the legal authority to do so.

Greer’s final telegraph read as follows: “Description of man wanted. Upper lip curled up slightly. Small keen black eyes. Has Winchester forty-six, (sic) and no scabbard. Has white handled six-shooter, forty-five, always carries it in waistband of trousers and shoots left-handed, is riding a good-sized bay horse. He is a dangerous man. Be sure to have assistance enough to arrest him, if he is the party wanted. You will be paid one hundred dollars if he is the man, and is held until my arrival to-night. Search him closely as he has considerable money about his person or in saddle-pockets and hold it also - Nat Greer.”

December 8th. Christmas must have been in the air in Snowflake. Charles, with four children, must have been acutely aware of the approaching holiday, only sixteen days off. Is there anything more magical than celebrating Christmas with small fry?

Charles had gone home for his gun. “Charles spoke in a jocular manner to his wife when asked about what he was going to do & answered, “I am going to arrest a bad man.” She went to caution him, but he said he could tend to the fellow & with other careless remarks he left the house …”

It was just before one in the afternoon when the Flake boys’ plan was set in motion.

Charles Flake approached the young man on the back porch and engaged him in conversation. Mrs. Hall’s boarding house is described as not much more than a log cabin. It was on the same block, though, as Charles Flake’s home. One article has Charles hailing Mrs. Hall and making small talk that must have included the stranger. One memoir has Mason cleaning his pearl-handled revolver, Charley commenting that it was a good-looking gun, and that Mason actually handed the weapon over to Flake so he might inspect it.

Some articles go into great detail, some excruciatingly graphic. One has both men just walking up and informing Mason that they had a warrant, and that the stranger immediately resisted. “As the Flake boys were grappling with him he shot over his shoulder at James, striking his left ear, the powder burning his face. Almost instantly he fired a second shot at Charles, the bullet passing through his neck …”

Another article tells a completely different chain of events:

The Flakes determined to “get on each side of Taylor and each get hold of an arm, thus preventing any mishap. Charley succeeded in securing the right arm, but the young fellow was too spry and Jim failed to get hold of his left. Taylor, who is said to have been very quick with the pistol, swung around, pulled and fired with his left hand, killing Charley instantly, and then turned his attention to Jim, shooting him through the ear. Before he could shoot again, Jim had got his pistol out, fired and killed Taylor.”

Still another has the killer having shot both men, simply walking away.

“Jim Flake grabbed his left arm, but the outlaw drew his gun, fired across his left shoulder and stunned his captor with a glancing bullet. He then shot Charles Flake and quickly walked off; but Jim Flake recovered in time and shot him dead.”

The article from the Salt Lake Herald, where a reporter must have actually traveled to Snowflake to investigate wrote: “James said,

“My friend I am authorized to arrest you.”

“The man answered: “By what authority?” and at the same time stepped back, drew his revolver and fired. As James caught his right arm, the ball passed through his left ear. Quick as lightning both men fired, this time James aimed at the robber and the robber at Charles. Both men fell near together …”

The article continued:

 “James sprang over the bleeding form of the stranger and raised his dying brother in his arms and said “Charley speak to me, can’t you speak?”

In Lucy Flake’s autobiography, Charles’ mother, “To The Last Frontier”, James literally inserted his thumb into Charles’ wound, trying to stop the bleeding, and at some point asked,

“Dear brother, you are going, have you anything to say?”

Charles opened his eyes and smiled, but never said a word.

John Hunt, a lifelong friend, came to the door of William Flake’s home, where the pioneer founder was sitting reading a paper. He and his wife had heard the shots, but assumed it was someone shooting food.

“William, come with me. Charley is dying and Jim is wounded.”

The town was slow to react. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Ultimately Charles was placed on a door and taken to his home. He never spoke again, even though he may have been aware of his surroundings. He lingered for a time, some reports are four hours, others from 1:30 to 3:00 pm, ultimately succumbing to his wound.

Allen Frost, a resident of Snowflake who wrote a piece for the Deseret Evening News, must have been present for the coroner’s inquest: “James fired at the robber almost at the moment that Charlie was shot. The bullet entered at the right corner of the mouth, tearing away the teeth and passing out the left cheek. This paralyzed him (Taylor), and as he fell another bullet from James’ gun passed through his head killing him instantly.”

James Flake, wounded, powder burns to his left cheek, blinded in his left eye, had at that moment what Bat Masterson called ‘perfect nerve’ drawing and firing on Taylor even as Taylor fired on Charles, the reports ‘sounding as one shot’.

Other memoirs pointedly placed the second round even with Taylor’s nostrils, under the left eye, exiting the back of Taylor’s head.

In the last telegraph from Holbrook to Snowflake, Greer states that the suspect carried a “white handled six-shooter, forty five,” and “always carries it in waistband of trousers.” Why would a professional gunman carry something that could weigh two and a half pounds in anything other than a holster? Billy Fox had been in this situation twice before, where lawmen had stripped his weapon from him, and Fox would know what to do to defeat this ploy, have his gun where it wasn’t expected.  He might have also learned to shoot left-handed to avoid that disarming ploy.

The Law didn’t have the authority to arrest Billy Fox when they killed his brother Frank. They might not have had the authority to arrest Billy Fox in the Indian Territory. When the Flake brothers informed James Taylor that he was under arrest, his immediate response, and last words on this earth were, “By what authority?”

Although other articles talk about the death of James Taylor’s brother Johnny, one article, going into great detail about Tom Taylor being a Cowboy with the Hashknife, mentions that Taylor had a brother killed, ‘while resisting arrest.’ Johnny didn’t die resisting arrest, Frank Fox did.

In the tight-knit community of Snowflake, there was both shock and a sense of loss that quickly turned to acrimony.

Why hadn’t Nat Greer warned the Flakes better? There were seven notches on the stranger’s revolver, and it was learned that this Will Mason, James Taylor, was supposed to have killed his own brother at thirteen. Why not tell the Flakes boys that, give them some idea of what they were going up against?

The St. John’s Herald went so far as to publish the complete content of the last telegraph, contending it proved Greer had warned the Flakes what they were facing, but it also states that Greer, and we can assume Goodwin, intended to be there in Snowflake that night. Why not ask the Flakes to keep an eye on Taylor until they got there, and then have a real posse press Taylor? Also, why were the Flakes offered a hundred dollars to arrest Taylor when the reward on the bank robber’s head was a thousand? Tell someone a job to be done is worth a thousand dollars, that someone might ask what makes the job so difficult, and approach the job more warily and prepared.

Jim Taylor walked out of Jasper Broyles’ store with at least a thousand dollars. When his body and possessions were searched, they found twelve dollars and twenty-three cent on his person and belongings.

What happened to the money?

If the one set of articles are correct, the stolen money was in coins. A thousand dollars-worth of coins, 1892, gold selling for sixteen dollars an ounce, silver less than a dollar, would be heavy, and Taylor covered a lot of circuitous ground before he got to Snowflake. He had worked for the Hashknife, so he might have run across acquaintances on the path he took. Did he leave the money with someone for safekeeping? Or did a shy gang member take the money in a direction Goodwin knew nothing about?

Charles’ funeral was held at the Snowflake Stake House, Saturday, December 10th, 1pm. The local Indians, Apaches, who Charles had befriended, stood outside to honor him. Someone, something had been lost, and it hurt.

Charley’s mom had opined that her son seemed very aware of his mortality, as if he anticipated his death, and had set about leaving a substantial fund for his wife and children. Still, the children would not have their father that Christmas, or any day after.

Charles’ widow asked his brother Osmer Flake to finish Charles’ diary. He hadn’t written in it for two years. Osmer began this process December 11th, 1892, the day after the funeral.

“In Sept Flake Brothers started to build a large brick store ... About this time a great friend of ours Geo. A. Gardner had a dream which troubled him very much. He come down to the Store & told the boys, in the presence of others, “Boys, I had a dream about you and I dreamt I saw a desperado come and kill Charley & Jim killed him. Now I saw this as plain as could be & I want to warn you to be careful.”

“No one thought about this anymore until after the killing then they remembered what George told them 3 months before.”

You can visit Charles’ grave at the well-maintained Snowflake Cemetery. In the last fifty years a new stone has been placed on his final resting place, the original red sandstone marker having eroded over the last hundred and twenty four years.

Deputy Goodwin took Jim Taylor’s body to Holbrook, and from there by rail to San Marcial, where Broyles and other witnesses identified the thief. Without the money recovered, it’s a logical question. Did in fact James Taylor hold up Jasper Broyles’ store in San Marcial, or was it somebody else, and Goodwin chased the wrong man?

All the articles pointedly state Broyles identified the body of Jim Taylor as the man who held him up. Considering Taylor had two holes in his head, his face perforated, his teeth taken out from one side to the other, the corpse a week old by the time it got back to San Marcial, how could anyone possibly tell? Is this why a lawman from New Mexico turned up two years later in Los Angeles and accused Kid Thompson of the crime?

James Mason Taylor was buried at San Marcial, a town that no longer exists, except for its three cemeteries. His name, or any of his many aliases, does not appear in the lists that exist online of the marked graves of the cemeteries, and there are no dates on any remaining stone that are close to 1892. James Mason Taylor is somewhere in the rows of unmarked graves in the unkempt cemeteries of a long-gone town, and he is, for the most part, forgotten as well. He was reported as the last of his clan, all his brothers killed violently.

James Flake would spend the rest of his life with a bad eye, hearing seriously affected in the one ear that was shot and mangled, yet be a contributing member to town and church until the day he died. When asked about the incident, he would not only state his remorse at the death of his brother, but also the necessity of killing Jim Taylor.

Was Billy Fox, tragic hero of San Diego back-country lore, the murderous criminal James Mason Taylor of Apache County? Though the circumstantial evidence, and the blunt contention of a two-bit train robber, says he is, it is still not absolute. Kid Thompson’s details and dates are skewered and self-serving, the rest of the facts are up for debate and speculation. Anyone out there knowing any more, All Help Sincerely Appreciated.

This December 8th (2017) marks the 125th anniversary of the tragic death of Charles Love Flake.