Milam County in the 1870s had its fair share of lawbreakers, but aside from a reformed member of the James Gang operating a livery stable in Rockdale, encounters were rarely heard of between Milam County lawmen and key villains of the hour including John Wesley Hardin, Sam Bass and Bill Longley.

Milam County sheriffs of that era, William Edward Mitchusson and Mitt Livingston, no doubt had heard of Hardin gunning down Brown County deputy sheriff Charles Webb; Bass’ four train robberies in the Dallas area; and numerous shootings credited to Wild Bill Longley.

As the public gobbled up newspaper accounts and pulp novels of the outlaws’ reign of terror in the west, law officers kept up with the desperados’ movements through bulletins, lists of fugitives and wanted posters. Likely, Milam County’s peace officers surmised the rural, agricultural-supported, cash-poor county to be safe from confrontations with pistol-packing hooligans.

Thus, on the morning of Sunday, Nov. 19, 1876, Milam County sheriff’s deputy Matt Shelton did not recognize the infamous William Preston “Wild Bill” Longley when he met the outlaw on a road outside the railroad town of Milano.

A thriving community, the Milano of 1876 unfolded across 12 city blocks platted in 1873 by the International & Great Northern Railroad. The town, about a mile west of today’s Milano, boasted a U.S. Post Office, Lawson McCelvey’s grocery store, Joe McGee’s saloon, A.S. Russell’s hotel called the Russell House, a school, a section house and homes for railroad workers.

Deputy Shelton was headed into Milano on horseback “returning from Cameron and when within a few miles of Milano, he came upon three men armed with shotguns and six-shooters,” the Galveston Daily News reported on the second page of its Nov. 25, 1876, edition.

“He was riding faster than they and as he passed him, they asked about some horse thieves, whom they said they were hunting,” the paper reported.

After exchanging a few words with the deputy sheriff, one of the men “lowered his gun upon Shelton, the others at the same time presenting their six-shooters and ordering him to dismount.”

Shelton was ordered to turn over his valuables, about $20 and a “fine six-shooter.” Leaving Shelton unharmed but on foot, the trio rode away, taking his horse, which they released on the road about a mile away. Shelton retrieved his horse and enlisted help from “several large parties,” but the three men had disappeared. Law officers mistakenly believed the perpetrators belonged to “a regular gang” who made frequent trips from beyond the Brazos River.

The newspaper reported that law officers thought they were “returning with the fruits of their last incursion and took Deputy Shelton in just for the fun of the thing.”

A year later after Longley was apprehended and gave detailed confessions of his crimes, law officers learned that the man who stole Shelton’s nickel-plated Smith & Wesson six-shooter was indeed the notorious Bill Longley.

Ed Bartholomew’s book “Wild Bill Longley, a Texas Hard-Case” described Longley’s version. Longley had freed his friends, brothers Jim and Richard Sanders, from the custody of a deputy sheriff and after visiting Longley’s girlfriend, Miss Lou, learned that a law officer had seized a photograph of the outlaw and planned to circulate the likeness across the state.

Longley devised a plan to pose as a lawman taking two outlaws into custody. “They journeyed through many towns and villages and Bill later said that they were not questioned or detained,” Bartholomew said.

Riding from Delta County through Corsicana, Mexia and Bremond, the trio arrived in Milam County to visit a third Sanders brother, George Sanders. The next day, the party left, but was stopped by a deputy sheriff somewhere on the road to Milano, Bartholomew wrote in his book.

Longley attempted to bluff the officer claiming he was trailing a horse thief.

The officer was suspicious, so Bill dropped his irons on him and took his pistol from him. Then they took to the oak barrens, leaving his horse some distance down the way. Bill took his Smith & Wesson and still had the pistol in his possession “when he was taken for good,” in De Soto Parish, Louisiana.

After leaving the Milam County deputy on the road, Longley and his companions departed for Old Evergreen in Lee County, where they learned that the new governor had placed a higher price on Longley’s head.

Another Longley biographer, Bell County Attorney Rick Miller, detailed the outlaw’s encounter with the Milam County deputy in his book titled, “Bloody Bill Longley.”

Longley told Shelton he was a peace officer hunting a horse thief, but when the deputy offered to accompany the trio to Milano, the outlaw feared he would be asked to produce papers.

“So I thought I would just take his pistol and quit the road,” Longley was quoted in Miller’s book. “I did so and we left him standing in the road, a-foot as we took his horse, which we told him we would turn loose a mile down the road and we did so.”

Shelton apparently learned that he had encountered Longley the next year when the deputy rode to Giddings to take Longley’s friend Richard Sanders into custody and return him to Milam County.

Longley told law officers after his arrest that after disarming Shelton, they rode to Lee County and spent a few days in the vicinity of Evergreen.

Longley was captured June 6, 1877, by Nacogdoches County Sheriff Milt Mast and two deputies, while he was residing in De Soto Parish, Louisiana, under the alias of “Bill Jackson.” He was taken back to Texas, tried for murder in Lee County and sentenced to hang for the murder of Wilson Anderson. His appeal was dismissed in March 1878.

On Oct. 11, 1878, Longley was hanged in Giddings. He was buried in the Giddings Cemetery.

The Brenham Daily Banner of Washington County reported in January 1881 that Milam County Sheriff Wyatt Lipscomb had bought the gallows on which Longley had been hanged “to remove it to Cameron to hang one ‘Hubby.’” Milam Hubby, a convicted murderer, was sentenced to hang on Feb. 4, but the death sentenced was commuted to life in prison by the governor.

What became of the Longley gallows was not reported. Neither is there any evidence that Matt Shelton recovered the pistol that was stolen from him.