Hawkins Hawks Hideout

(UNM) Photograph shows a group of men and women posing in front of an underground hideout. Text on reverse reads "This is the famous rendevous of Hawkins and Spikes, notorious New Mexican desperados, killed in 1903. There were port holes every few feet. The cave was 12 feet by 14 feet and contained a chimney. I'll not name the persons. Located near Caprock in the vicinity of Tucumcari."

Outlaws Abandon Fort: Cattle Stealing "Mesa Hawks" Pursued by Officers

An early, and quite sensational, account of cattle rustlers in the Quay Valley.

The Spikes - Gholson Feud

The Spikes brothers, playing with guns.
(Find-A-Grave)

Sam Gholson, alleged bad
guy in all this, though
I have my doubts.

(Digging History) This family feud simmered quite awhile before it ended in the early 1900’s in eastern New Mexico, in an area now known as Quay County. 
The feud began in east Texas during the Civil War when the two patriarchs of the Spikes and Gholson families crossed paths, or should I say just “crossed.”
John Wesley Spikes (see this week’s Tombstone Tuesday article here in case you missed it) was a member of the Texas 12th Cavalry, whose job was rounding up draft evaders.  During the Civil War men were often recruited with the “point-of-a-gun” rather than willingly join the cause. Continued

Stately Spikes Manor. Reminds me of that line in the movie Dillinger, "Decent people don't live that good!" Anywho, the historian J. Evetts Haley wrote a history of the XIT Ranch naming the Spikes' guilty as charged. The Spikes family sued for libel, lining up every Spikes from here to the Atlantic to file a separate case. First up was old Fred Spikes himself, who lost, meaning that the jury wasn't convinced that he wasn't a cattle rustler. Nevertheless, with a half dozen more cases left to go, the XIT settled out of court for a pittance. Today's lazy historians see "out of court settlement" and assume that the Spikes brothers were as pure as the driven snow. But that jury didn't think so; no sir, they did not. See XIT Libel Suit Won by Defendants