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Mr. Lemons, and his two sons, owned a large herd of goats which they kept in the vicinity of the Chisos mountains [9]. Mrs. Lemons, and the rest of the family, lived in Marathon. Mr. Lemons was in Marathon one day, when a white boy approached him for work. (It was later learned that the boy came into Marathon hidden away in a box car). Mr. Lemons decided to try the boy as a herder. A few days later the boy got his hands on a gun and killed Mr. Lemons and one son. The other son escaped with a serious wound through the face. The wounded boy walked twenty-five miles to another ranch to get help. If I am not mistaken, it was the Buttrill ranch. By the time he got help back to the ranch and the bodies were removed to Marathon several days had passed. The Chitosos mountains are some ninety miles below Marathon and the roads at that time were very bad.
The officers finally apprehended the desperado barricaded in an old abandoned adobe house. After a while a little persuasion got him to come out. He was only a boy about sixteen or seventeen years of age. He had run away from an uncle in another state. The uncle was the guardian for the boy, who was to inherit quite a sum of money when he became of age. The only motive for the killing, that could be imagined, was that the boy wanted to be a bad man from the West. It was learned that he had been reading murder stories and had pondered on the subject until he was thought to be unbalanced. He was returned to the custody of his own state.
[9] Martin Donell Kohout, "CHISOS MOUNTAINS," Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/rjc37), accessed August 18, 2012. Published by the Texas State Historical Association
