It was a December to remember. It was Thursday, December 21, 1876, and the holiday weekend festivities were picking up steam. Friends and neighbors from far and wide gathered in frontier Las Animas, Colorado, to celebrate. Strangers sought camaraderie too, including John and Clay Allison, a couple of drifters on their way to New Mexico.
The brothers partied hearty at the Olympic Dance Hall and Saloon and were soon gloriously drunk. Waving their pistols, they boisterously harassed other revelers and stomped the feet of the dancers. Someone went for help and Deputy Charlie Faber responded. He confronted the Allisons, ordering them to relinquish their guns – a town ordinance made it illegal to possess firearms inside the city limits. Refusing, they laughed and brazenly went back to their drinks.
Deputy Faber went to the nearby Americana Hotel for backup. Explaining the situation, he deputized two men, grabbed the 10-gauge shotgun he stored at the hotel and returned to the saloon. As the lawmen entered, someone yelled, “Look out!” The brothers spun and reached for their guns. Faber fired. Buckshot hit John Allison in the leg, chest and shoulder. Clay returned fire with four quick shots at Faber, hitting him fatally in the chest. As Charlie fell to the floor, the deputized men scattered and the Allison brothers escaped.
John recovered from his wounds and he and Clay were arrested for manslaughter. At the trial, they claimed self-defense and witnesses grudgingly agreed that the deputy fired first. The charges were dismissed. The Las Animas gunfight launched Clay Allison’s reputation as a legendary gunfighter. He then terrorized the area around Cimarron, New Mexico, for the next eleven years and eventually settled in Texas where he died ignobly, breaking his neck in a wagon accident.
Charlie Faber was buried quietly. His is among some 30 unmarked graves in the southeast corner of the Bent County Las Animas Cemetery. Records of its exact location are lost.