Outlaw John Shaw's Last Drink in the Old West

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The Hash Knife Cowboys. They dug up their friend John Shaw to give him a proper send off, complete with whiskey.

Canyon Diablo, Arizona.

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Hello! I'm Mr. Ed

Blog Created: 3-11-2021

Last Updated: 8-5-2023

Greetings ~

Old West Outlaw, John Shaw took his last drink of whiskey after he was dead. Impossible you say? Well, not really. Here's what happened. And when you hear this story, you'll understand what they mean when the say, "The Wild West!"

John Thaw was an outlaw. On April 8, 1905, Shaw and a partner, William Smith, (real name: William Evans), walked into the Wigwam Saloon in Winslow, Arizona sometime around 1:30 in the morning. They both bellied up to the bar and ordered their drinks. As they were being served, they looked around the room and noticed a stack of nice, shiny silver dollars on a dice table across the room. Both Shaw and Smith drew their pistols and threatened the dice players. They grabbed the money from the table and quickly backed out of the door and ran off. In the act of the robbery, neither man touched their drinks on the bar.

A crowd of cowboys took off out of the saloon in hot pursuit but the pair were nowhere to be seen. However, while inspecting the surrounding area, a man found some of the silver dollars scattered on the ground by the railroad depot. The lawmen of the town decided that Shaw and Smith must have walked the tracks and then hopped a train leaving town. After talking with the depot agent who told them that a train had, indeed, just left a few minutes ago, Navajo County Sheriff Chet Houck and his Deputy, Pete Penberton tracked the two outlaws to Canyon Diablo, 25-miles west of Winslow. Once they arrived, they asked trading post owner, Fred Volz if he had seen the two men. While they talked with Volz, they noticed Shaw and Smith walking in their direction near the train depot.

Shariff Houck called out, "I want to look you over!"

Shaw laughed and turned around and yelled back, "You can't look me over!"

The Flagstaff Coconino Sun newspaper reported that Shaw drew his revolver and fire at such close range that the powder blast burned Houck's hand but the bullet passed through the Sheriff's coat and he was not harmed by it. The gunfight that followed would better be performed in a comedy roteen with a large cloud of smoke. After the shooting was over, while the group of four men, standing four feet apart and firing 21-shots, one man was dead but none of the others were very hurt at all.

The final shot that Houck fired killed John Shaw. Shaw had run out of ammo and was standing sideways reloading his pistol when Houck fired a bullet through Shaw's head.

As Houck was killing Shaw, Smith aimed at him to fire but Deputy Pemberton was faster and shot Smith in the shoulder. This caused Smith's shot to go wild and nicked Houck's waste with little affect which saved the Sheriff's life. In addition to the fatal shot that killed Shaw, the Sun reported that he had been hit a total of three times by bullets in the gunfight but the other two were not serious. Smith was also hit three times but none of his wounds were serious either.

A bullet also gazed Deputy Pemberton. He had loaded six rounds in his handgun when it was practiced to only load five. Keeping the hammer on an empty chamber in the revolver was a safety precaution. However, many would load the sixth chamber if they were planning on a shootout situation. Because Pemberton had loaded the sixth shot in his gun, he was able to fire on Smith and keep him from shooting Houck to death.

Trading post owner, Volz donated a long wooden crate from his store as a coffin for Shaw. The outlaw's body was put into the pine box and a grave was dug hastily at the town cemetery and he was lowered in and covered up and that was that. The lawmen then took Smith back to the Winslow hospital to be treated for his wounds.

That should have been the end to the story, but, it gets better.

The very next night word had spread through the Wigwam Saloon about the shooting and Shaw's untimely demise. The saloon was packed with cowboys from the Hashknife group, a Northern Arizona Cattle outfit. These men mostly had shady pasts that included cattle rustling, holdups and assaults and not many of them had any liking for the law. As they talked together about the shootout that took place last night over in Canyon Diablo, they all remembered Shaw and Smith didn't get to have their drinks before robbing the dice players. Now, it was one thing to go and get shot. But it was simply crazy not to drink your whiskey after you paid for it.

As the cattlemen talked they got all worked up over the deal and finally grabbed up their whiskey bottles and headed out the door of the saloon. Fifteen of them walked over to the train station and boarded the next train to Canyon Diablo.

When the men arrived at town, they headed to the trading post and pounded on the door waking up Volz. The trading post owner was pretty upset at being woke out of a sound sleep and let the cowboys know it. However, when they told him that they planned to dig Shaw up and give him his drink, Volz began to smile. He actually loaned them shovels. He also loaned them his Kodak square box camera as Sheriff Houck had wanted a photo of Shaw in the event there was any rewards being offered. The group of drunken men then took the camera and shovels and hobbled off toward the cemetery.

One of the cowboys named, Lucien Creswell later stated, “We stopped at the depot and had a few more drinks and then we went and dug the grave open with the shovels."

Shaw had a friendly grin on his face, “looking very natural, his head not busted open” by the bullet, he added. “Some of the boys almost cried when they saw Shaw lying there so lifelike,” but stiff as a board.

J.D. Rogers, the Hashknife’s wagon boss, told the men, “Let’s get him out. Let’s give him a drink and put him away proper. Somebody can say a prayer, which wasn’t done when they shoved him into that hole.”

Two men dropped into the grave and “lifted the body upward into reaching hands,” wrote Gladwell Richardson in Arizona Highways in 1963.

“They stood it up against the wood-picketed grave of another luckless man … and gave him a drink from a long-necked bottle, pouring the whiskey between the tight teeth, the death-fixed grin of a man who in life must’ve been easy going, happy-go-lucky,” Richardson wrote.

As dawn began to break, the men removed their hats and said a prayer over the open grave. Then they got John Shaw positioned in his coffin once again and dropped in the whiskey bottle that he had drank from, in case he needed more on his trip to...wherever. The lid of the box was nailed back on and the dirt was shoveled back on top of it.

Eight months after the Wigwam robbery and the cemetery event, Deputy Pemberton was gambling at Winslow’s Parlor Saloon and got very angry over his losses. Town Marshal Joe Giles tried to calm Pemberton, who was somewhat drunk and Pemberton shot Giles five times, killing him.

Pemberton was convicted of second-degree murder and sent to Yuma Prison, where William Smith was serving his sentence for the Wigwam robbery. History does not relate if the two men talked about their past differences or not or even if they met in prison. But I bet if they did, the conversation would have been worth hearing.

All that is left today of the cemetery whiskey event is the photographs that were taken that early morning by a bunch of drunken cattlemen who made sure that outlaw John Shaw got the drink that he had paid for. What a bunch of nice guys, huh?

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The following photos courtesy Arizona Historical Society; John Shaw Collection ~

John Shaw is removed from his coffin to have a last drink of whiskey.

Shaw is propped up against a picket fence around another grave for the photo to be taken, a smile on his face.

After the drinking, John Shaw's hat is put back on his head.

Shaw is put back into his coffin along with the bottle of whiskey.

Cowboys stand around John Shaw’s freshly opened grave.

The men were happen to have one last drink with their friend before putting him away for good.

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Click this link to read another weird story ~

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