Death on His Shoulder

 

From Michael Smith 

He was fast with a rope, faster with a gun, and too wild for the fences men tried to build around him. Then, in 1896, on a cold stretch of track near Rio Puerco, New Mexico, Code Young — cowboy, outlaw, drifter — met the end every man like him carried in his shadow. Born in Texas and raised on cattle dust, Young started as a ranch hand near Roswell before drifting into the wrong company: George Musgrave, Bob Hayes, and the Christian brothers — men who’d trade saddles for six-shooters when money ran thin. They called themselves the High Fives Gang, robbing trains, post offices, and banks from New Mexico to Arizona, living fast on the edge of the map.

It wasn’t the money that drove him — not really. Code rode for the rush, the kind that came when a train whistle cut the night and every heartbeat sounded like gunfire. On July 20, 1896, he helped rob the general store and post office in Separ. Two weeks later, he was in Nogales, guns drawn in another desperate bid for cash. But luck has a way of turning, and on October 2, 1896, it finally did. Hiding behind a water tank, Code and his men tried to stop the eastbound Atlantic & Pacific. They didn’t know a U.S. Marshal named Will Loomis was aboard. The first shot shattered a lantern — the second found Code. He dropped to the dirt, calling out, “I am shot, I can’t come, I’m done for.” His partners rode off into the dark, leaving him behind in the cinders.

By dawn, his body lay under a white sheet in Albuquerque, still wearing the dust of the desert he loved. Folks came to see him — lawmen, cowhands, and curious townspeople — staring at the quiet face of a man who’d lived too hard and died too young. He was buried in Fairview Cemetery on October 5, 1896, without a marker, without a prayer. But stories of Code Young didn’t stay buried. They lingered in saloons and rail yards, whispered by men who swore they’d ridden with him. And maybe that’s all he ever wanted — not to be good, not to be rich, just to be remembered, even if it was for dying with his boots still on.