In the lawless expanse of the twin territories where chaos held sway and the trackless frontier was filled with cutthroats and thieves.

Three men rose to the call of duty with a singular mission to bring law and order to the untamed land.

A man they called the hanging judge told marshals to bring them in dead or alive.

They used their wits and formidable skills to hunt down the criminal gangs and trigger the biggest gun battle in the history of the West.

Their story is a chronicle of courage, resilience, and the relentless pursuit of justice in the face of overwhelming odds.

Marshals Bill Tilghman, Heck Thomas and Chris Madsen.

They are the three Guardsmen.

Every April, people from all over gather in Guthrie to celebrate the land run of 1889 that opened Oklahoma and Indian territory to white settlement.

The Victorian costumes stand out along the parade route and moving through the crowd is a group of reenactors dressed as the lawmen who made it safe to settle.

We go to Guthrie every year for the 89ers day for the anniversary of the Oklahoma land run.

We've been to churches, we've been to RV parks.

We have gone to senior citizens dinners and lunches.

Anybody that will invite us and bring us in and let us give us an opportunity to share the living history with them.

I've come to actually enjoy portraying, you know, Bass Reeves' character.

It's just a lot of fun.

Nice boots!

I put on the chaps and the boots and the spurs, you know, big hat but the mustache has to come on.

My wife won't let me keep it 150 years ago, what would become Oklahoma was a very different place.

A unique set of circumstances had created a problem on the Western frontier.

In 1875, the Indian Territory had become a haven for white outlaws who could hide out in the Indian territory it was a really vile place to be.

I mean, it was murderers and rapists and extortionist and everybody else, any kind of evil.

They're robbing the trains, they're robbing the banks, they're killing people.

And it's time for the government to establish itself and fix These kind of problems.

There were no extradition laws there was no extradition to go and retrieve them from Indian territory, to stand trial for crimes that they committed elsewhere.

So it was a magnet.

Indian territory was a magnet for these people.

The Indians had jurisdiction over their own people.

They had their own court system, they had their own law enforcement, but they could not touch a white person.

And that's why the white people came in because they knew they had free reign if nobody could touch them.

And when they arrived in Indian territory, they didn't just go into hiding they continued their criminal activities.

So Judge Parker saw to it that a lot of deputy U.S.

Marshals were appointed and they were given the task to go out and round up these outlaws for the crimes they were committing in Indian territory.

In March of 1875, President Ulysses S Grant appointed judge Isaac Parker to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas.

The first thing he realized, he couldn't do it himself.

And so the first thing he did is he authorized the federal marshal to go out and hire 200 deputies and send them out there and, you know, start executing the search warrants and all this stuff and haul them home back to the Fort Smith.

Put 'em in jail.

More who were killed in Indian territory than anywhere else in the United States.

And it was Judge Parker's responsibility.

That was his jurisdiction.

Judge Parker was responding to that, and he stepped up and did what had to be done.

Judge Parker signed in 129 U.S.

Marshals and out of that 129, 62 of them died in the line of duty.

One of the first men sent to find and bring in the criminals was a former slave gunfighter, scout and tracker, who spoke several languages, including Cherokee and Creek.

Bass Reeves had been in the Civil War and he had also been in the Indian territory for several years.

And he knew the language over there, and he knew the customs of these people.

So he came back to Fort Smith, and the judge hired him on the spot.

He captured over 3000 felons himself.

That's amazing.

With the help of his Native American friends, you know, they would give him clues as well.

This guy, this these crooks or whatever, into the territory.

And he was the only one that they would talk to.

Out of his entire career, out of all those people that he went after, I think it was anywhere between 14 and 17 that he actually had to shoot.

And he was a dead shot.

Gun, pistol, rifle.

The outlaws in Indian Territory could cross the Arkansas River, for example, into Oklahoma territory.

Well, those tribal law enforcement officers, most of them known as lighthorsemen, they didn't have any authority in Oklahoma territory.

So when those outlaws crossed over that border, they couldn't pursue them.

And not all of the deputy U.S.

Marshals in the Indian territory could cross that border.

They didn't they weren't marshals in Oklahoma territory.

But Heck Thomas was.

Heck Thomas was commissioned in both and he could chase those outlaws.

And he did and could cross back and forth that border and pursue specific gangs who had been robbing banks and robbing trains.

The son of a Georgia cotton planter, Heck Thomas became a courier at the age of 12 in the Confederate Army.

After the war, his family moved to Texas, where he worked as a guard and later as a railroad detective.

He ordered a big double barreled ten gauge shotgun with heavy buckshot load and then two ivory handled pistols worth $200 and bought a conductor's coat with tails high waist turned his pistols and hung them out where people would see them and walked up and down the plank at the railroad.

Let robbers know they what they were in for.

When he's carrying that big, heavy 10 gauge.

He kind of got a reputation for carrying around that big gun, and then he had done it for about two years.

And Judge Parker heard about him being brash young train guard carrying the big gun and offered him a job as a US marshal.

And he was a tall, well-dressed southern gentleman, but possessed an inner hardness and skill as a man hunter.

Lot of them when they heard who it was coming after them, would lay their guns down and come and surrender to him and take their chances with Judge Parker.

He was known as the guy that could track these people down.

And he did.

He would bring them back to to Fort Smith a wagon load at a time.

Some of the other more famous lawmen they have stated, "He was the best of us all."

With the land run of 1889, a new court opened in Guthrie.

It became the hub for 75 to 100 deputy U.S.

Marshals in the territory.

Marshal E.D.

Nix had said, you know, bring them in alive if you can, you know, dead, if you have to.

And then Dale later, later on goes no just bring them in dead, And so he is, effectively circumventing, their right to a fair trial, you know, the right to, innocent until proven guilty.

Among the worst was the Dalton gang in the early 1890s.

They were busy robbing banks and holding up trains and stagecoaches in Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas.

The leaders, Bill Doolin and Bob Dalton, were joined by Bob's brothers.

It would take the best lawman in the territory to bring them in.

Three Guardsmen were three Deputy U.S.

Marshals appointed by E.D.

Nix, who was the actual marshal and they were tasked with going and hunting down the Doolin and Dalton Gang.

The three Guardsmen were Bill Tilghman, Chris Madsen and Heck Thomas.

As a boy, Bill Tilghman met Wild Bill Hickok and immediately knew he wanted to be a lawman.

Bill Tilghman lived as a young boy on the frontier and they were settlers.

And as he grew older, he moved further west and became involved in some frontier pursuits and was a buffalo hunter at one time.

And then he became a long man in Dodge City and then ended up coming to Oklahoma after the land run of 1889, then became a Deputy U.S.

Marshal.

Chris Madsen was born in Denmark.

He told stories of adventures fighting in the Danish army and the French Foreign Legion in 1876.

He crossed the Atlantic and joined the U.S. Army.

He was looking for adventure, which it certainly did give him, because now he was going to be an Indian fighter and he spent 15 years in the Army.

And after he got out of the army, he was asked to become a deputy United States marshal, Great shot.

You know, he was competitive marksman.

In the Territory, there were 22,500 plus arrests, total arrests made by all of the marshals together.

Bass Reeves, Bill Tilghman, Heck Thomas and Chris Madsen each arrested over 3000 people.

Each of them.

Those four guys had over half of the arrests made in the territory in that era.

By 1892, the lawman were putting pressure on the gangs and Heck Thomas was closing in on the Dalton gang.

On October 5th, the gang made a fatal mistake.

He was chasing them from Indian territory across the Arkansas River and into Oklahoma territory.

And he was right on their trail hounding them.

And what the Dalton doing guy ended up doing is crossing the border into Kansas, just a few miles to the town of Coffeyville they want to roll in and rob these 2 banks at the same time, get the money and go hide out for a while people saw what was going on and spread the alarm.

And these townspeople grabbed guns wherever they could as fast as they could.

Then they opened up on the Dalton-Doolin gang and gunned them all down.

Four of the Dalton Gang, were killed in the shootout.

Emmett Dalton was shot 23 times but survived.

He served 14 years in prison for second degree murder.

The town marshal and 2 civilians were killed in the shootout.

Bill Doolin didn't make it to Coffeyville.

He was with them and his horse came up lame and he kind of had had to fall back.

From the survivors.

Doolin formed a new gang.

For a time, they were the most powerful outlaw group in the Old West.

Their hideout was 11 miles east of Stillwater, in a little town of Ingalls.

And then the situation came along in 1893 when a large group of lawmen out of mostly out of Guthrie that did not include Tilghman and Thomas or Madsen, chose to go after the Doolin Gang in Ingalls, Oklahoma, which was in a unique location east of Stillwater, and it was bounded on one side by the Cimarron River and on another side by the Arkansas River.

It formed kind of a triangle and it was a perfect spot to be in for an outlaw to hide out, because if they found out that the lawmen were coming, they could cross that Cimarron River and be in Indian territory, or they could cross that Arkansas River just a few miles away and be in a different jurisdiction.

The marshal here in Guthrie E.D Nix makes he finds out that that's where they are.

They put together a posse, they go up, they have a plan.

You know they're going to let them play the night out.

And then, you know, in the early in the morning when they're not in the right head, they're going to go in and, arrest everybody.

When they arrived and surrounded Ingalls and one of the lawmen rode down the street and stopped at the livery stable, he asked about the outlaws and a person said, there's one right there.

Well, the outlaw saw himself being pointed and took his rifle and opened fire.

And that started what's known as the Battle of Ingalls, which was the biggest gunfight gun battle there ever was in the Old West.

You had the Doolin gang on one side in Oklahoma law and mostly deputy U.S.

Marshals on the other side shooting at each other from various places all over town.

One of the outlaws went up to the second floor of the Oak Hotel, giving him a superior advantage.

He had the high ground and he started shooting the marshals and killing them, shooting them in the back.

They rode away and won.

They won the Battle of Ingalls and left three lawmen dead along behind them.

From that point going forward, the government officials told those deputy U.S. marshals to bring them in dead or alive.

Doolin killed Deputy Marshal Richard Speed during that shootout and was now the most wanted man in the country because of the relentless pursuit by the three Guardsmen.

By the end of 1894, they had either captured or killed most of the gang.

Doolin was on the run, first to New Mexico, then Kansas, and finally Arkansas.

Tilghman tracked him to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, because Bill Doolin had arthritis in his wrists and in his hands.

And he had gone over there to see if the you know, we'd heard about the quote unquote, healing waters over there in the springs, Bill tracked him there.

And he got like a preacher's collar and put it up around his throat, you know, and put on a black coat so he'd look like a preacher.

Tilghman got the jump on him.

They took the railroad back to Guthrie and they arrived in Guthrie.

And people were there.

It was a lot of people.

It was a big deal.

A lot of excitement.

Doolin wasn't behind bars for long.

On July 5th, 1896, he escaped the jail in Guthrie.

16 prisoners actually escaped, but they overpowered a guard and got out and were gone, you know, and they pretty quick caught everybody except for Bill Doolin.

It was Thomas and his posse, his passing men that had tracked down Bill Doolin near Lawson.

Thomas hollered for him throw up your hands.

And Bill Doolin chose not to comply and raised his Winchester and fired shot off at them and Heck Thomas and the posse responded and shot him down.

He opened up with double barrels with both the barrels and the big ten gauge.

And the doctor counted 17 puncture wounds on him.

He was dead before he hit the ground.

He got a reward for it.

Instead of spreading it out with some of the other lawmen, he ended up giving most of it to his widow and the little boy because they were having to start a new life.

For the Three Guardsmen, breaking the Doolin-Dalton gang was the high point of their career.

Bill Tilghman went on to become the sheriff of Oklahoma County and then a state senator in 1924.

Governor Martin Trapp asked Bill to bring the oil boom town of Cromwell under control.

Chris Madsen, when Chris found out about it, he told well, he said, you know, Bill, you're 70 years old, you're not as fast as you once were.

He said, You sure you might want to rethink that?

Because you're liable to go down there and get yourself killed and Bill said, I'll be okay.

And on October the 30th of 1924, a guy by the name of Wiley Lynn, who was prohibition agent.

But he was on the take.

He'd get everybody their whiskey and they'd pay him under the table and Tilghman knew about that.

Well, the two of them, they didn't get along at all.

He didn't like Wiley Lynn And Wiley Lynn didn't like him.

The federal prohibition drives into town.

Gets out and discharges a firearm supposedly to check it out and see if it was working.

Tilghman hears that shot, comes forward to see what's going on.

The federal probation agent confronts Tilghman.

There's a struggle and Tilghman holds the hand with that gun away.

And the federal prohibition agent pulls a second gun and shoots Tilghman at point blank range.

Shot him through the lung.

This was 10 minutes before midnight on October 31st.

And 10 minutes after midnight on November 1st, 1924, He passed away.

His body lay in state in the Capitol building in Oklahoma City for almost two weeks.

And that's the longest any body body ever laid in the state in the state of Oklahoma before and since.

Thousands, literally thousands of people came to see him, Bat Masterson, who gave him his first job as a lawman, said that he was the best of all of us.

In response to Tilghman's murder, Governor Trapp created the Oklahoma State Bureau of Identification and Investigation The forerunner of the OSBI.

it was the first time in the United States that a state law enforcement agency was created that combined those two functions: ID, which was this newfangled thing called fingerprinting with investigation.

After resigning as U.S.

Marshal, Heck Thomas became the first chief of police in Lawton, Oklahoma.

Heck was the oldest one of the three and he had been shot several times in the late 1800s.

And the doctors then didn't know medicine that good.

And they say, Yeah, you've been shot but it's far enough away from your heart, it's not going to kill you.

He had about four pieces of lead in him and when he was young, his liver and his kidneys could fight off the poison from the lead poisoning.

And so he died at 62 when his liver and his kidneys gave out on him.

Ever the adventurer Chris.

Madsen joined the Rough Riders and was later appointed the U.S.

Marshal for the entire state of Oklahoma by President Theodore Roosevelt.

He was 60 years old when he was appointed the chief of police in Oklahoma City.

At age 93, he was actually bent over in his room.

He lived with his son and daughter in law, was lighting a small furnace and he fell.

They found him, put him in bed.

He said, I'm fine, no problem.

After the end of the day, he was hurting so bad, they finally convinced him to go to the doctor.

He had a broken hip and they put him into the hospital and he died in the hospital there from his complications.

The legacy of the Oklahoma lawmen continues to shine brightly.

Their selfless dedication, courage and commitment.

Set the standard for every man and woman to wear a badge as long as there are those who are willing to fight for justice, There will always be hope for a brighter tomorrow.

And in that hope, we find the strength to persevere, to overcome, and to build a future worthy of the sacrifices made by the Three Guardsmen.