In Idaho: A Killer Becomes a Mythic Hero

By Michael Riley

Most days, Owyhee County Sheriff Tim Nettleton worries more about overladen beet trucks than he does about desperadoes. The slightest reminder, however, turns the Idaho lawman's thoughts back to the frigid January day six years ago, when a quiet trapper named Claude Dallas ruthlessly gunned down two game wardens, instantly creating the Legend of Claude Dallas, and a major migraine for the sheriff. One recent day, as cold winds whistled across the jackrabbit badlands and swirled outside his cramped office, Nettleton kindled yet another cigarette, propped his scuffed cowboy boots on the desk and pondered the renegade Dallas, who's been on the loose since a jailbreak last Easter Sunday. Abruptly he blew out the match and turned, a flinty glare transforming his hound-dog eyes. The sheriff wanted Dallas, dead or alive. "If they'd bring one of his hands back from Mexico, I'd be happy, I guess," drawled the lean and lanky lawman. "I just wanta know something's been done."

Remarkably few neighbors share the sheriff's straightforward sentiment. Dallas, say his cheerleaders, is not a ruthless killer; rather, he's the last American hero, a vestige of the Old West, a virtual Jeremiah Johnson. In a land of thundering silence and splendid isolation, where a trapper can hike for days without stumbling across another's tracks, this version of the story has grown into a powerful myth. Sure, his fans admit, Dallas killed two men on that terrible day in 1981, but they were just game wardens, the lowly emissaries of flower-fondling environmentalists. Today, in what remains of the Old West, this harshland sustains, just as it destroys, and each man at times becomes his own law: justice is simply survival. This sovereign streak fuels a wicked disdain for any authority -- especially game wardens.

As the New West encroaches on the wilderness, any heroes are welcome. To his fans, Claude Lafayette Dallas Jr., a hardened 36-year-old, embodies bull- headed heroism. As a boy, Dallas read Zane Grey, trapped animals on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and harbored a dream to head West. In 1968 he did, and started as a buckaroo on a ranch in Oregon. Acquaintances called him gentle, quiet, a loner. Dallas earned a reputation as a hard worker and a fellow who'd stare you straight in the eye. "Buckarooing," he once explained in charming simplicity, "is just a man doing his job, working with livestock on horseback, doing whatever work that has to be done on horseback regarding livestock and cattle, you know." But as the cow business faltered, Dallas turned to trapping and hunting the backcountry from Tonopah in Nevada to Steens Mountain in eastern Oregon.

On that bitter day six years ago, Idaho Fish and Game Officers Bill Pogue and Conley Elms, chasing a poacher, trekked to Dallas' winter quarters at Bull Camp, a secluded stretch of sage about 110 miles south of Boise. They confronted Dallas and searched his camp, where they discovered deer meat and bobcat hides. Pogue, a no-nonsense officer with a flair for pen-and-ink sketches, told the poacher he'd broken the game laws. An argument ensued. Though Dallas claims Pogue started to draw first, the jumpy poacher blasted Pogue with his .357 Ruger Security-Six revolver, then spun and nailed Elms. He finished them off with a .22 Marlin rifle bullet behind the ears. After dumping Elms' body in the river, Dallas hauled Pogue's body about 80 miles southwest to Paradise Hill, Nev., and buried it in the desert.

With $100, a backpack and his guns, Dallas fled. He ran across the West for 15 months, until he was captured near Paradise Hill. During his 1982 trial, Dallas pleaded self-defense. The prosecution argued murder one. The jury found him guilty of voluntary manslaughter, and the judge sentenced him to 30 years. But the cagey Dallas spent only 39 months behind the chain link fences before snipping his way out almost ten months ago.

Lawmen guess Dallas hightailed it back to Paradise Hill, a one-blink junction in northern Nevada. Bloodhounds tracked his scent to a barstool, then to an unmade bed in a nearby trailer and finally to an abrupt end at Highway 95. Though every waitress and cowhand between Boise and Reno seems to know Dallas, no one admits spotting him since the jailbreak.

"They're trackin' a mountain man, they're not chasin' a city slicker," contends Margarette Eckstein, who runs a roadside coffee shop in Burns Junction, Ore. Eckstein remembers Dallas well. "He was a gentle man, minded his own business, bought his gloves and candy bars," recalls the grandmotherly figure. Though she admits Dallas did wrong, she won't help catch him. "I haven't seen him," Eckstein professes, adding in a conspiratorial stage whisper as she delivers the cheeseburgers, "and if I had, I wouldn't tell anybody."

Mere mention of Claude Dallas can spark a shoving match in any Great Basin saloon or diner. At the Koffeepot Cafe, several miles from the site of Dallas' trial, Tiny, an Idaho-size chunk of a man, bellows about Dallas while nursing a large RC Cola. His reverence for the poacher scarcely exceeds his antipathy for the law. "Pogue being a sumbitch," Tiny admits, "don't make it right that Dallas shot him in the head after shooting him once." But for Tiny, and others, a blistering rancor justified the first bullet.

Sympathetic Dallas fans abound. During his trial, one group of rapturous women was dubbed the "Dallas cheerleaders," and today others are pushing a petition to grant Dallas amnesty. They claim he did no wrong. Norma Hebbel, 61, explains, "Claude did what a lot of people would want to do. They should've given him a medal, not tried him."

Supporters say he belonged to the Old West: he lived by its simple rules of survival. To a point, Sheriff Nettleton agrees, but he must enforce the laws of the New West. "He was an individualist, made his own rules, lived by 'em," the sheriff observes. "But his rules and society's rules aren't the same. He sat around and thought about it, and shot and killed two game wardens." When the New West clashed with the old, Dallas lost.

Some folks in his old stomping grounds don't accept that fact. Down at the JS saloon, where Dallas played a few pool games, the door swings open with a creak. In ambles the mailman, an elderly fellow fond of flannel shirts and bright red Budweiser suspenders. Dallas? Known him for years. "It's hard to think that kid ever got into trouble. They just pushed him against the wall. He'd walk away from trouble if he could." The whole mess baffles Bar Owner Phyllis Sans. "It's just a damn shame it had to happen. Two men are dead, and one man's running for his life," she sighs, "but he's no desperado."

George Nielsen, who owns the Paradise Hill Bar just down the road, staunchly defends his young friend's "mishap." Though he helped Dallas escape after the Bull Camp massacre, Nielsen claims not to know the rebel's whereabouts. "If you gave me $10 million today and told me to put a finger on him, where he is," he claims, "I couldn't do it."

Yet wily Tim Nettleton is ready to wager a pint of whisky that Dallas will return, inevitably, to the badlands that begot the legend. He bases his confidence on rustic Idaho logic: "You kick a dog in the side, he'll make a big circle, and he'll come home. That's basically what happened to Claude before. He'll get kicked in the side and come home again." When he returns, the law will be ready.