"Honesty is the best way, it don't pay to be a outlaw," Rufus "Climax Jim" Nephew acknowledged in 1902. "A feller eats quail one day and feathers th' next, and your trail is kept warm all the time by officers nowadays." Jim, cattle rustler par excellence, just could not heed his own advice.
He had escaped from every jail in the territory except the penitentiary at Yuma, he once bragged to an Arizona official. It was not an empty boast. "Climax Jim is easily the most slippery jail bird in the Southwest," one Arizona newspaper asserted. "It is an old saying that the third time is the charm but Climax has been arrested and tried about forty-seven times and he has always succeeded in getting in the clear," another territorial tabloid proclaimed.
Climax Jim: The Tumultuous Tale of Arizona's Rustling Cowboy is the story of Rufus Nephew, the street-wise kid from Washington, DC, who owed his renowned to the wide loop he threw and the hot running iron, with which he burned his link S brand on cattle throughout southeastern Arizona Territory. Sheriffs could catch him, but capture only offered the opportunity for escape. "In almost primitive Adamic attire," Climax once "delivered" himself from the clutches of Springerville's jail; he repeatedly tested the calaboose at Solomonville and found it wanting; he dug his way through the wall of the Globe lockup. Enhanced by numerous photographs from Climax Jim's personal collection, the saga of this affable rustler and legendary escapologist will inform, amaze, puzzle, and entertain.
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Climax Jim
The Tumultuous Tale of
Arizona's Rustling Cowboy
by Karen Holliday Tanner
& John D. Tanner Jr.
Printed by Arizona Lithographers, Tucson
Arizona History, 102pp. B&W photos. Index. Notes. Bibliography. 5.5x8.5.
Soft cover
and
Fifty (50) signed and numbered limited edition hardbound copies have been issued. A few remain.
ISBN 0-9766-8980-4
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