Most days, Owyhee County Sheriff Tim Nettleton worries more about overladen beet trucks than he does about desperadoes. The slightest reminder, however, turns the Idaho lawman's thoughts back to the frigid January day six years ago, when a quiet trapper named Claude Dallas ruthlessly gunned down two game wardens, instantly creating the Legend of Claude Dallas, and a major migraine for the sheriff. One recent day, as cold winds whistled across the jackrabbit badlands and swirled outside his cramped office, Nettleton kindled yet another cigarette, propped his scuffed cowboy boots on the desk and pondered the renegade Dallas, who's been on the loose since a jailbreak last Easter Sunday. Abruptly he blew out the match and turned, a flinty glare transforming his hound-dog eyes. The sheriff wanted Dallas, dead or alive. "If they'd bring one of his hands back from Mexico, I'd be happy, I guess," drawled the lean and lanky lawman. "I just wanta know something's been done."
Remarkably few neighbors share the sheriff's straightforward sentiment. Dallas, say his cheerleaders, is not a ruthless killer; rather, he's the last American hero, a vestige of the Old West, a virtual Jeremiah Johnson. In a land of thundering silence and splendid isolation, where a trapper can hike for days without stumbling across another's tracks, this version of the story has grown into a powerful myth. Sure, his fans admit, Dallas killed two men on that terrible day in 1981, but they were just game wardens, the lowly emissaries of flower-fondling environmentalists. Today, in what remains of the Old West, this harshland sustains, just as it destroys, and each man at times becomes his own law: justice is simply survival. This sovereign streak fuels a wicked disdain for any authority -- especially game wardens.
As the New West encroaches on the wilderness, any heroes are welcome. To his fans, Claude Lafayette Dallas Jr., a hardened 36-year-old, embodies bull- headed heroism. As a boy, Dallas read Zane Grey, trapped animals on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and harbored a dream to head West. In 1968 he did, and started as a buckaroo on a ranch in Oregon. Acquaintances called him gentle, quiet, a loner. Dallas earned a reputation as a hard worker and a fellow who'd stare you straight in the eye. "Buckarooing," he once explained in charming simplicity, "is just a man doing his job, working with livestock on horseback, doing whatever work that has to be done on horseback regarding livestock and cattle, you know." But as the cow business faltered, Dallas turned to trapping and hunting the backcountry from Tonopah in Nevada to Steens Mountain in eastern Oregon.