Slingin' Seamus
James Larcus | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | March 19, 1847 |
| Died | September 1, 1882 (aged 35) Somerville, Afoncord |
| Occupation | Outlaw, seminarian |
| Years active | 1870-1882 |
Slingin' Seamus (born James Larcus; March 19, 1847 - September 1, 1882) was an outlaw and gunfighter of the Urcean frontier. Although famous in his own time for successfully robbing eighteen trains, he became more famous posthumously in the public imagination in his role as gunfighter, particularly for his rivalry with Marcus Enni and his last stand at Somerville, which became the template for gun duels in future Levantine media.
Early life
James Larcus was born in Urceopolis in March of 1847, a time when the city was continuously growing and was subject to the rising Industrial Revolution. While conditions in the city were not as bad as some examples abroad, Larcus almost certainly grew up in conditions of urban squalor living in industrial neighborhoods. His own journal recollections, written in the 1870s, recounted both parents working in the factories as he roamed the streets. Following a turbulent upbringing, Larcus enrolled in the Catholic seminary in 1865. Seminary records indicate Larcus was bright and grasped theological concepts but was often quarrelsome with other seminarians and teachers. His own recollection stated that, following four years in seminary, he began to have various sexual encounters around town with prostitutes and married women; a popular legend says he maintained eighteen concurrent girlfriends at the height of these activities. In late 1869, his activities were discovered by seminary leaders, and Larcus fled the city for the southern frontier before authorities could catch him. A warrant was issued for his arrest citing fornication, adultery, and breaking the vows he took as a seminarian. Larcus arrived in what would later become Afoncord following several long and dangerous months of travel on 18 February 1870. Larcus is thought to be one of the first men to take the Eastern Via, a different route than the traditional way to the frontier, which involved Larcus traveling to Ardricampus through Harren on a boat across the Magnag, then heading to the frontier interior from the east rather than the west. Unlike many of those who would follow him on the Eastern Via, Larcus took this route not for a specific purpose, but because he thought it would aid him in evading the law.
Initial criminal career
Having arrived in Marianapola in modern Afoncord in 1870, Larcus began using a number of pseudonyms in order to procure odd jobs to sustain himself, the most used one being "James Donio". While some of these roles were legal, most of them involved participation in cattle rustling gangs and other criminal enterprises which needed larger numbers of people. Larcus had never fired or held a gun before arriving in Afoncord, but at age 23 quickly became proficient with it. On May 19, 1870, he shot and killed a man whose wife he was having an affair with when the two were caught together. Larcus had to flee town and took up residence in the nearby town of Aliana, which he would call home for the remainder of his life. Following this episode, Larcus more fully committed to the life of an outlaw; his own recollections state that "running, womanizing, and making talers" were his true calling. It was around this time, when he joined the Gaius Mór gang, that he first acquired the nickname "Slingin' Seamus" for his proficiency with a firearm.
Gaius Mór gang
In Aliana, Larcus continued to take various gun for hire jobs before meeting Gaius Mór, a well known cattle rustler and criminal in the Afoncord area who had been active since 1857. Larcus worked for Mór in various capacities from 1871 to late 1872, though as an associate rather than gang member. After a successful solo carriage heist in October 1872, Larcus joined the Gaius Mór gang which consisted of Mór, Larcus, and three others.
As part of the Mór gang, Larcus eventually took the role of being the lead gunslinger and most dependable fighter the gang had, making him Mór's trusted second in command. During his time with the gang, Larcus killed his second person and several others on top of it; his own recollection claimed he killed fifty men with the gang, but historians believe the figure to be closer to ten.
Gaius Mór's death - and the dissolution of the gang - would become a heavily disputed incident, both within contemporary outlaw circles and by modern historians. In July 1874, the gang launched a bank robbery in Perlesania, a town not far from Aliania. The robbery appears to have been a setup by local authorities, however; though the gang managed to break into the safe, the sheriff and deputies arrived far earlier than could have been reasonably anticipated. Two members of the gang, Marcus Enni and Michael Colla, were sent away by Mór with the money while Mór, Larcus, and the other member of the gang bought them time. The third member of the gang was killed by a shot to the head by a sheriff's deputy; what happened next was contentious. Some say, including Larcus's testimony, that Larcus and Mór stood side-by-side fighting off the deputies before Mór was shot and decided to give Larcus time to escape. Another account, circulated in newspapers and by the authorities, indicated that both men managed to escape but that Larcus shot Mór. The newspapers attributed various motives to this version - a disagreement between the two about the direction of the gang, Larcus's disappointment with his lesser share of their criminal gains, or a woman Larcus wanted that Mór was currently in a relationship with. Historians are greatly divided on which version occurred, but in any event, on July 10 1874 Mór was dead and only three members of his gang - Larcus, Enni, and Colla - survived. It appears that Colla believed Larcus's innocence whereas Enni did not and went his own way. Enni and Larcus would remain rivals for many years to come.
Aliania boys
With the end of the Mór gang, Larcus and Michael Colla began to work as a duo in various criminal enterprises, but for the most part this period between gangs - which lasted from July 1874 to May 1875 - was spent cattle rustling, the area in which Larcus had the most experience to date. Referred to simply as the "Aliania boys" by the papers and contemporaries, Larcus and Colla spent most of this time living outside of town due to the negative reputation Larcus had incurred on himself. As Marcus Enni had taken the lion's share of the bank robbery proceeds with him, the two began plotting the biggest job yet - the robbery of a government train which was passing near Aliania. The new Lustenstád Railroad, running north to south from Cálfeld to Lustenstád, provided a new wave of opportunities for Afoncord's criminals, as would the connecting Magnag and Canete Railroad when it was completed in the 1880s. Running by monthly, the two observed its routine for several months in early 1875. The train was responsible for the delivery of gold to local banks as well as weapons to local garrisons. Larcus reasoned that, in addition to the obvious value of the gold, government-procured munitions would be a valuable trading asset with other gangs. Between the proliferation of weapons and a prestigious "score", Larcus believed he could rebuild his reputation. Larcus and Colla gathered four hired guns to join them for the heist which occurred in late May 1875. It was successful, and his effort to sell guns to other gangs worked as anticipated, restoring his standing among outlaws and allowing him to return to Aliania as a far richer man. Larcus and Colla would form a new gang with the four men they used for the train robbery, a gang that newspapers would go on to call the "Seamus Express" due to its association with train robberies.
Seamus Express gang
The Seamus Express gang was formed in May 1875 following the first of eighteen successful train robberies by Slingin' Seamus. The next seven years would be Larcus's career "peak", as the gang was extremely successful over this time, successfully robbing seventeen more trains while failing on only four occasions. This made Larcus rich and the Urcean frontier a dangerous place to be given the widespread proliferation of military arms among criminal gangs. During this period, Larcus operated openly within Aliania and became de facto leader of the town; as a result, it entered a period of steady population and economic decline such that, by 1880, it was a glorified gang camp, with about twenty camp followers (mostly prostitutes) and about forty private citizens, with a saloon (that Larcus now owned) being the focal point of town. Administrative problems and lack of available manpower meant that efforts to arrest Larcus were poorly organized, and following the defeat of a large posse of about twenty five men in July 1877, the Royal government ceased sending men after Larcus and instead focused on train security. With each successful robbery, the gang grew, going from the original six (Larcus, Colla, and the original four train bandits) to over thirteen men including Larcus and Colla. The gang remained proficient in small scale cattle rustling schemes between major heists, and by 1878 most ranchers would divert their herds in circuitous routes to avoid Aliania.
During this period, much of Larcus's attention focused on his rivalry with Marcus Enni, who on two occasions hired assassins to try and kill Larcus. The rivalry came to a head on August 19, 1879, when the Seamus Express gang ambushed the Enni gang in the town of Buscharach, far from Larcus's Aliania in Callan along the Via Antonia. As both gangs fought, Enni tracked down Larcus. Both men agreed to a one-on-one duel which would allow the gang members of the other to go free; Enni pledged revenge for the death of Gaius Mór. Eyewitness testimony is contradictory; some stated that the men had a conversation in which Larcus maintained his innocence, but most witnesses say neither men said anything. Larcus drew first and killed Enni in the duel, ending the five year old rivalry. Larcus honored the agreement and let Enni's men go. Newspapers at the time stated some of Enni's men joined the Express Gang, and historians believe the gang had somewhere between twelve and seventeen steady members during this period.
Beginning in mid-1880, efforts were made to pacify parts of the frontier, this time employing other means besides large armed posses. In November of 1880, the Royal authorities entered into secret negotiations with Larcus, offering to legitimize his control over Aliania as a nominal government official along with a subsidy in exchange for Larcus and his men "settling down" there and no longer engaging in train heists or cattle rustling. Historians are divided on whether or not this was intended as a temporary solution after which time Larcus would be liquidated, but Larcus appears to have thought the offer genuine. He would write that agreements with the Royals "was not in his character" and that such an agreement would be a "comfortable retirement, or in other words death" that did not suit his needs. He decided to leak the correspondence to the papers, causing a major political scandal but also leading to some of his men leaving the gang. Rejecting the offer and leaking the papers lead to a renewed effort to hunt Larcus down and would prove his undoing. Throughout 1881, a plan was devised to trap Larcus away from his base of power in Aliania by running a train through Somerville, which was relatively nearby but far enough away that the gang could not easily retreat if an ambush was set.
Somerville train heist and last stand
Larcus was tipped off about the largest government train to date coming through the south to Canaery in the fall of 1881. The train, they said, was being rushed with lax security due to an urgent military need to reinforce Halfway. The efforts of the gang were effectively placed on hold throughout much of 1882 in preparation for the heist. In March 1882, Michael Colla began to suggest privately to Larcus that the heist may be a trap, but Larcus refused to act on this advice. Scholars believe there were two possible motivations for this, the first of which being that he was blinded by his own success and refused to believe the government was coming for him, and the second of which being is that he knew it was a trap but believed he could make the government look foolish once again. In any event, the gang rode out of Aliania for the last time on August 25, 1882 and reached Somerville the next day, waiting for the train to come near the town. The scheduled appearance was on September 1, and the gang rode to meet the train, and rainfall and distractions in town lead to a failure of the gang to scout out ambush sites ahead of time. As the gang stopped the train, government soldiers swarmed out of it and also began shooting at the gang from elevated positions above the intended heist point. Following minutes of shooting, Larcus ordered the gang back to Somerville to try and hold out there, only to find that soldiers were occupying that location too.
Legend states that Seamus, like with his encounter with Enni, challenged the Royal Army captain - John Mico - to a duel, only to finally have met his match as Mico managed to draw and shoot first. There are significant problems with this story, however; many of its details appear to directly mirror the Enni incident. While the newspapers only say that Larcus was "gunned down", photos of his body after death appear to indicate several bullet wounds, indicating that he may have been shot from multiple directions by many different soldiers. Regardless, the "last stand" - the duel with Mico - became the stuff of legends in the following years.
Legacy
"Slingin' Seamus" is the best known gunslinger of the Urcean frontier, and is considered emblematic of the entire "old south" period. In the years and decades following his death, as public interest in the frontier grew, his life became subject of significant legend and many tales were attributed to his life. The exploits of Slingin' Seamus have been put to film several times, most notably in the 2003 Primo Kino production Last train to Somerville. Larcus' grizzled apperance and determination has also been influential on many fictional characters of the Frontier film genre. Yonderian director Mathieu le Fêvre has referred to Larcus as "the quintessential outlaw". Yonderian crooner Dom Martinez recorded the ballad Slingin' Seamus which details the life and crimes of Larcus for his album Dom Martinez sings songs of the Frontier.
Michael Colla, Larcus's companion, would survive the Somerville train heist and, following a pardon, would tour the country throughout the 1880s and early 1890s with a stage show detailing the life of "Slingin' Seamus", bringing Colla wealth and notoriety. During the '97 Rising, he was recruited by Legitimist forces as a brevet colonel of cavalry, which he raised among outlaws and cowboys in Afoncord. Colla was killed in battle during the conflict.
Larcus has become a symbol of Afoncord, and a statue of him stands in the town square of Aliania today near a museum detailing his life and the frontier period in general.