34. Turning Into a Lawman
Upon his release, Jim Miller became a hired hand in a ranch owned by a cousin of John Wesley Hardin. His boss was killed by Ballinger’s City Marshall in 1887, and soon thereafter, the Marshal was ambushed by somebody wielding a shotgun and was severely wounded. The Marshal survived, but lost an arm to amputation. Miller was the prime suspect, but there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him for the attempted killing.
Miller then relocated to the Texas-Mexico border, where he became a deputy sheriff in Reeves County, then town marshal of Pecos. He was a killer cop, and gained a reputation for murdering Mexicans, claiming that they were trying to escape. In 1894 he got into a feud with the county sheriff, who shot him in the arm, the groin, then emptied his six shooter into Miller’s chest. He survived, because he had been wearing a steel plate over his chest.
