Some called him a bullet shy of a full load, those that knew him. M.T. Chamber was born at a little bend in the Arkansas River called Wichita. Wichita was home, at one time or another, to many legendary outlaws and lawmen but none less notable than M.T. Chamber.
The oldest of one, M.T. was the first, and only, child in his family to attend kindygarden. Sadly, he was not cut out for public education, or any other scholarly endeavor for that matter, and was soon excreted for kissing all the little girls in the class and pulling their pigtails. Heck, they wouldn’t kiss him otherwise.
As a young boy, not going to school and all, M.T. spent a lot of time at his grandpa’s farm out in western Kansas. It was on the farm he learned to skin a catfish and shoot his first gun. His grandpa gave him a single shot .410 gauge shotgun at the start of pheasant season when he turned thirteen. Both his grandpa and his daddy knew better than to let M.T. carry a loaded gun. They let him hunt pheasant with them but, unbeknownst to poor M.T., his shotgun was never loaded. He often wondered why his gun made no sound, and why he never got any pheasant. When he inquired his daddy assured him there was nothing wrong with his gun, that he was just a lousy shot.
An idle mind being the Devil’s playground, it was no surprise when M.T. began hanging out with a pretty tough crowd. It was a, then little known, band of hooligans that called themselves, the James Gang. M.T. was younger than the Youngers and they wouldn’t let him go on robberies with them, mostly he just watered the horses. Later he would leave the James Gang and strike out on his own to form a lesser known group of outlaws called, the M.T. Chamber Gang.
Legend has it that the first robbery the M.T. Chamber Gang ever attempted was the stagecoach that ran from Wichita to Dodge City. One hot, windy afternoon they rode out of nowhere, hoopin’ and hollerin’, guns ablazin’, like a gang of Mexican bandits. The stage might have stopped had the driver known they were behind him, but he couldn’t hear them. It seems that no one in the M.T. Chamber Gang knew how to load a gun. They chased the stagecoach all the way to Dodge City. By the time they got there they were too tired to rob the stage and decided to have a drink down at the Long Branch Saloon.
It was there, in the Long Branch Saloon, that M.T. met the woman of his dreams. Actually, he met two women of his dreams, Fannie Oakley and her younger sister Booty Hill (she had been married before). M.T. couldn’t decide whether he liked Fannie or Booty the most. He liked them both. He would have married them both but they wouldn’t have it. So, they decided to flip a coin. Booty flipped the coin and M.T. called “heads” while it was still in the air. It came up “tails” and M.T. ended up marrying Fannie. Even after his marriage, he thought of Booty all the time.
It might have been a match made in heaven; Fannie Oakley was an accomplished shooter in her own right. Unfortunately, unlike M.T., Fannie kept her guns loaded. One afternoon she was polishing his pistol when the headboard knocked over her shotgun. It fell to the floor and discharged leaving a rather nasty and fatal gash in the side of his head.
While M.T. Chamber died that day, his memory lives on. You may even have cursed his name yourself, if you’ve ever drawn your gun, taken dead aim on the target, pulled the trigger, and heard that awful deafening silence you hear after firing...an M.T. Chamber.
News & Blogs
Home
Posts
Recent Posts
Help
Business Directory
Calendar
Advertising Rates
Contact Us
Login
Register
Topic: The Life and Death of the Almost Legendary Outlaw, M.T. Chamber (Read 12216 times)