In the rugged expanse of the Arizona Territory, under the watchful gaze of the rising sun over Canyon Diablo cemetery, a peculiar scene unfolded. Fifteen hardened cowboys gathered around a man named John Shaw, offering him a final drink of whiskey. The only catch? John Shaw was already dead.
This seemingly impossible scenario isn’t mere folklore; it’s a documented event, corroborated by photographs and eyewitness accounts. The tale of Shaw’s posthumous drink perfectly encapsulates the Wild West – a place not just of ruggedness and danger, but also of unexpected oddities and darkly humorous moments.
A Saloon Robbery and a Deadly Showdown
The story begins in the early hours of April 8, 1905, at Winslow’s Wigwam Saloon. John Shaw and William Smith, also known as William Evans, swaggered into the saloon around 1:30 a.m. Ignoring the drinks they ordered, their attention was quickly drawn to a tempting stack of silver dollars on a nearby dice table. In a flash, the two men brandished their pistols, robbing the dice players of $271 before hastily retreating into the night.
Their hurried escape left a trail of silver coins near the railroad depot, a fatal clue for law enforcement. Navajo County Sheriff Chet Houck and Deputy Pete Pemberton swiftly deduced that the robbers had fled along the train tracks. Their pursuit led them 25 miles west to Canyon Diablo, where they sought information from Fred Volz, the local trading post operator. Volz provided a description of the suspects, and moments later, Smith and Shaw themselves appeared, heading towards the depot.
“I want to look you over,” Sheriff Houck declared, approaching the pair.
The hot-headed Shaw reacted instantly and aggressively. “You can’t look me over!” he retorted.
Drawing his weapon with lightning speed, Shaw fired at point-blank range. The Flagstaff’s Coconino Sun reported that the shot was so close it singed Houck’s hand with powder burns. Miraculously, the bullet only grazed the sheriff’s coat.
What ensued was a chaotic and intense gunfight, a “gunman’s opera” played out under pressure and gun smoke. Four men, separated by mere feet, exchanged a volley of 21 shots in a matter of moments. When the smoke cleared, one man lay dead – Outlaw John Shaw. Remarkably, despite the close-quarters gun battle, no one else was seriously injured.
In the end, it was Sheriff Houck’s final shot that felled Shaw. The outlaw had run out of ammunition, and as he turned, Houck fired a bullet that pierced his head, ending the gunfight.
Deputy Pemberton’s last shot found its mark as well, striking Smith in the left shoulder as he aimed at Houck. The impact threw off Smith’s aim, and his bullet only grazed the sheriff’s stomach, narrowly saving his life.
The Coconino Sun detailed the aftermath, reporting that Shaw sustained a fatal head wound and three other hits, while Smith also suffered multiple, though non-life-threatening, injuries. Pemberton himself received a graze wound. Interestingly, Pemberton had loaded all six chambers of his revolver, defying the common practice of leaving one chamber empty to prevent accidental discharge. This risky move, loading a sixth round, proved decisive, giving the lawmen the firepower advantage and ultimately saving Sheriff Houck’s life.
“Let’s Give Him a Drink”: A Post-Mortem Toast
After the deadly shootout, Fred Volz provided a simple pine box for Shaw’s burial. Smith, wounded but alive, was taken to a hospital in Winslow. News of the dramatic gunfight and robbery quickly reached the Wigwam Saloon, now packed with cowboys from the Hashknife, a large cattle operation in Northern Arizona.
Many of these cowboys were no strangers to bending the law themselves, with reputations for cattle rustling and a general disdain for authority. However, what truly incensed them was the detail that the robbers hadn’t even touched their purchased drinks before the chaos erupted. To these cowboys, being shot was one thing, but being denied a paid-for whiskey was an outrage.
Fueled by whiskey and a sense of Wild West justice, fifteen cowboys decided to take matters into their own hands. Grabbing their own bottles of whiskey, they boarded the next train to Canyon Diablo. Arriving late at night, they roused a bewildered and irritated Fred Volz from his sleep.
Initially angered by their request, Volz eventually relented, lending them shovels for their bizarre mission. He even handed them his Kodak box camera, recalling that Sheriff Houck had wanted a photograph potentially for reward purposes.
Cowboy Lucien Creswell recounted the events: “We stopped at the depot and had a few more drinks and then we went and dug the grave open with the shovels.”
They found Shaw’s body remarkably preserved. According to Creswell, Shaw had a “friendly grin” and appeared “very natural, his head not busted open” by the bullet. The sight of the deceased outlaw, seemingly so lifelike, moved some of the cowboys. “Some of the boys almost cried when they saw Shaw lying there so lifelike,” despite his rigor mortis stiffness, Creswell noted.
J.D. Rogers, the Hashknife’s wagon boss, took charge. “Let’s get him out. Let’s give him a drink and put him away proper,” he declared. “Somebody can say a prayer, which wasn’t done when they shoved him into that hole.”
Two cowboys climbed into the grave and lifted Shaw’s body out, passing it up to the waiting hands of their comrades. As described by Gladwell Richardson in a 1963 Arizona Highways article, “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.”
As dawn broke over the desolate cemetery, the cowboys removed their hats, mumbled a prayer for the deceased outlaw, and placed the whiskey bottle from which Shaw had symbolically drunk into the coffin before reburying him.
An Unlikely Prison Reunion
The strange tale of Outlaw John Shaw’s final drink doesn’t end with his reburial. It has a bizarre postscript that further underscores the unpredictable nature of the Wild West.
Eight months after the gunfight in Canyon Diablo, Deputy Pete Pemberton, fueled by alcohol and anger over gambling losses, shot and killed Winslow town marshal Joe Giles in the Parlor Saloon. Pemberton was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to Yuma Prison.
In a twist of fate, Yuma Prison was also where William Smith, Shaw’s partner in crime, was serving his sentence for the Wigwam Saloon robbery. History doesn’t record the conversations between the two former adversaries in the prison yard. One can only imagine the strange discussions they must have had about their shared gunfight experience and the even stranger events that followed in the Canyon Diablo Cemetery, where an outlaw named John Shaw received a truly unforgettable last drink.
As John Wayne famously said in “The Shootist”: “I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, and I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people and I require the same from them.” Perhaps Outlaw John Shaw lived, and died, by a similar code, even if his final send-off was anything but ordinary.
