All the Mahans were not as illustrious as Adelaide and Jesse. Alan Mahan, a cousin of my father’s generation, achieved an unhappy fame. He was involved in not just one, but two shoot-outs, and my father never tired of telling the tale of his pistol-toting kinsman. He was nearby for both events.
Alan Mahan, left, standing with his hands in his pockets, hat nattily cocked, was a sport. Whiskey was his weakness and his ultimate downfall.
According to my dad, Alan was a member of a group of rough young men in the Randolph community (Bibb County) who called themselves the Dirty Dozen. He joined with Scott Cox, Grove Cleveland, Morgan Smitherman, and others, mainly to have a good time being rebellious. Alan, at that time a merchant in town, decided one night to have a crap game for this crowd. At the end of the game when they were counting up, Alan and his good friend Scott Cox got into an argument and had a falling out. In fact, Alan got so mad that he ran Scott out of his place of business.
Major Howison’s hotel in Randolph, Alabama. Alan Mahan owed his life to the Major, who built his hotel in 1886 across the railroad tracks from the depot, near where the Mahan-Cox duel occurred.
Scott had been a friend of my grandfather, and, because my grandfather’s home was so full at that time, Scott had invited two of my father’s older brothers to sleep at his house. They were there when Scott came back to his house after the argument with Alan. They said he picked up his pump shotgun and left. He returned to Alan’s store, where he saw Alan coming out on a little platform, getting ready to lock up. Scott opened fire. He hit Alan in his shoulder, leg, and groin. Alan, near death, dragged himself a couple of blocks to the old hotel that was run by a wealthy merchant, Major Allen P. Howison. Immediately, Howison telegraphed the Southern Railway and had them send a special train from Wilton, an engine and a caboose, to take Alan to the hospital in Selma. Miraculously, the doctors in Selma saved him.
As for Scott, he walked directly back to his house after the shooting and told my father’s brothers that he had just killed his best friend. Luckily, he was wrong, of course, and no charges were ever filed against him. After all, the families were close. The resolution was an agreement that Scott would leave Randolph and never return.
Alan, who owed his life to Major Howison, went down to Brent, Alabama, to manage a farm for him as a means of paying off the expense incurred in his rescue. With him he took his new bride, Para Splawn, his longtime sweetheart. He stayed in Brent until 1923, when for some unknown reason he moved to Montevallo. He and Para lived in the Hoskin house behind the Methodist Church.
The marshal in Montevallo at that time was Dan Walker, a native of Randolph and supposedly a friend of Alan’s. But their friendship came to an end on a tragic day in November 1923.
On Thanksgiving Day, Alan and the barber Roy Tatum went bird hunting. They might have started drinking during the day, but they certainly hit the bottle hard when they returned to Roy’s barbershop on Main Street that afternoon. Roy, who lived in his shop, decided to take a bath and change clothes, and Alan said he was going home. But for some reason he returned. Roy let him in and went back behind the partition to change clothes. What followed was inexplicable to those who knew Alan. Although Roy was his friend, Alan began shooting up the place. Apparently in his inebriated condition he just wanted to have a little fun, and he fired the pistol repeatedly. One of the bullet holes went through a plate glass window, and when my father bought the barbershop from Roy in 1927, the patched-over hole was still there.
Somebody noticed what was happening in the shop and called Dan Walker, the marshal. He came right away, and he told Alan he wanted to take him home. In those days the streets were not paved, there were no street lights, and there were gullies between Roy’s shop and Alan’s house, but Marshal Walker managed to get him home, taking a great deal of abuse off Alan in the process.
The next morning, Para said, “Alan, you ought to go up and apologize to Mr. Walker for the way you treated him last night. He brought you home and you treated him something awful.” Alan sent word for Marshal Walker to come see him, but Dan didn’t come for Alan to apologize to him. In the meantime, a bootlegger named Dewey Lucas, who was an enemy of Dan Walker’s because he wouldn’t let him sell his liquor in Montevallo, came to see Alan, bringing some moonshine with him. They started drinking during the day, and late in the afternoon they decided to go to the restaurant run by Dan Walker’s wife, the Wiggle-in Hot Dog Cafe. The establishment was located on Main Street, just across the street from Tatum’s barbershop.
Mrs. Walker was alarmed when she heard they were coming that way, so she sent word to Mr. C. L. Meroney, a merchant just down the street, to come get Dan and keep him out of Alan’s way. Mr. Meroney complied, taking Dan to his store. He told Walker, “Now, Dan, the thing for you to do is to go home and let this thing blow over.” Dan seemed to agree. While the two were talking, Alan and Dewey arrived at the cafe, taking seats at a counter in the back.
Just as Marshal Walker was leaving Mr. Meroney’s store to go home, a fellow named Ollis Wooley walked up and said to Dan, “I’ll be damned if I’d let anyone run me out of my place of business.” That was like waving a red flag in front of a bull’s face. Dan Walker had a high temper, so instead of going home he marched right back into the cafe, walking behind the counter where Alan and Dewey were seated. “Alan,” he said, “I understand you have come up here to kill me,” and he hauled off and slapped him very hard. That took some courage because Alan was stout as a bull and could whip just about anybody.
When Alan stood up, ready to fight the marshal, Dan pulled out his gun and started shooting. At the same time, Dewey Lucas started shooting, and in the end both Dan Walker and Alan Mahan lay mortally wounded in the doorway of the cafe, Alan killed by Dan Walker and Dan Walker by Dewey Lucas. Neither died immediately, but were taken to Wilton so that they could be placed on a train due at the time and taken to Selma for medical treatment. It was very strange: at one end of the platform lay the wounded Alan, and at the other end lay the wounded Marshal Walker.
Dad, who lived in Wilton at the time, was present that night at the train station, and he rushed to get Alan’s sister Sarah, who also lived in Wilton. When they arrived a few minutes before the train got there, my father took her up to Alan’s cot. He was facing the railroad tracks, clearly in a terrible condition. Sarah began crying and asking Alan what did he want her to tell his mother, reminding him how much she had suffered after the first shooting some years before. Alan just waved her away, then turned over and faced the wall. He died at that point, his death witnessed by my father.
Mr. Walker was down at the other end of the platform. Daddy said he was hollering like a goat being slaughtered. He lived long enough to get to Selma, but he didn’t make it through the night.
The loss of the two lives seems to have grown out of trivial circumstances. Daddy always said that Alan wasn’t a killer, that he just got wild when he drank. Some people thought the animus between Alan and the marshal must have grown out of a more serious cause. The rumor was that Alan had been messing around with Dan Walker’s wife. If true, that might explain such a violent response. Dewey, it would seem, had his own resentments. In the end, he was tried for the crime, but was acquitted. Montevallo, in those days, was a place of violence, and justice was not easily come by.