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Robert Clay Allison, vicious killer and self proclaimed ‘shootist’, was born in 1840 in Tennessee. As he grew into manhood, he became feared for his wild mood swings and easy anger. He joined the Confederate Army at the beginning of the Civil War. His service didn’t last long, however. He was discharged as a result of his ‘personality problems.’ The discharge report stated that he was ‘incapable of performing the duties of a soldier because of a blow received many years ago. Emotional or physical excitement produces paroxysmals of a mixed character, partly epileptic and partly maniacal.’
After his discharge, Clay worked for a while as a cattle hand. In the Autumn of 1865, he went to live in the Brazos River Territory of Texas with relatives. He became a trail hand, driving cattle into New Mexico. In 1870, he acquired his own ranch in Colfax County, New Mexico. His emotional and, perhaps, physical problems had already earned him a reputation as a man to be feared and one definitely not to be crossed, especially when drunk. Newspapers were already reporting that he had killed up to 15 men.
His first substantiated killing occurred in late 1870, Allison was drinking in a saloon when he was approached by a woman who hysterically told him that her husband had gone crazy and killed a number of ranch hands at their cabin before killing their own infant daughter. Allison rounded up a posse and set out for the ranch. They found the ranch owner in a drunken stupor but no bodies. A few days later, however, bones were found on the ranch and the man was arrested. A few days later Allison, in a fit of rage against the alleged perpetrator broke into the jail and dragged the man out where he hung him before cutting off his head. Allison rode for 29 miles into Cimmaron with the head impaled. He then proudly displayed his trophy at the local saloon.
Episodes like this only enlarged Allison’s bad reputation. It inevitably attracted other killers, who were anxious to gain a reputation as the slayer of ‘wild’ Clay Allison. One such was Chunk Colbert. Colbert came into town and invited Allison to join him for dinner. Just as after dinner coffee was being served, Colbert reached under the table and levelled his gun up towards Allison. The perceptive Allison followed suit. Colbert’s gun nicked the table and was deflected. Allison now coolly drilled his bullet into Colbert’s head. Later he was asked why he would consent to eating with a man who was intent on killing him. His reply? “Because I didn’t want to send a man to hell on an empty stomach.”
Shortly after this encounter Allison again demonstrated his maniacal behaviour when he entered Cheyenne at the head of a trail herd of cattle. He had a terrible toothache. He called on the nearest dentist. The dentist, however, began to drill on the wrong tooth. Allison exploded out of his chair and bolted out of the room on his way to the other dentist in town who properly extracted the tooth. He then returned to the first dentist, forced the man into the dentist’s chair and began to force a pair of forceps into his mouth, intent on pulling one of his teeth. In the process he pulled off half of the man’s lip.
Shortly thereafter, Allison had a dispute with a neighboring rancher. Never one to accept the normal way of doing things, Allison came upon a unique way to sort out the problem. The two men would dig a grave and lay alongside it an unmarked tombstone. They would then both descend into the grave pit, naked and armed with only Bowie knives. The man who survived would have the tombstone engraved for the other. After the grave was dug, the two men set a date for the encounter and went their ways.
The Bowie knife grave encounter, however, never took place. Allison was carrying a load of supplies home from Pecos, Texas on July 1, 1887 when a sack of grain fell from the wagon. Trying to halt it’s fall he fell from the wagon. In the next instant one of the wagon wheels rolled across Allison’s neck. His neck was broken. Clay Allison died on the highway, stuck under his own wagon. Unlike most gunfighters of his ilk, he didn’t die in a blaze of gunfire or on the end of a hangman’s noose. He was 47 years of age.
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