A rumored fugitive from Texas, Charles "Leather Britches" Smith arrived in Merryville in 1910 and became known as a deadly marksman whom neither townspeople nor the law dared challenge. Legend says he terrorized local residents by forcing them to feed him and was feared because he vowed never to be taken alive, moved constantly, and received food and shelter from some townspeople who saw him as a hero. His time in Merryville unfolded amid the lumber boom that followed the arrival of the Santa Fe Railroad around 1895, when sawmills, rough new workers, and lawlessness transformed the town, and amid a fierce struggle between the Brotherhood of Timber Workers Union and the Southern Lumber Operators' Association over working conditions and pay. As strikes turned from peaceful protest to street violence, some believed he stood up for mill workers against powerful owners who dominated company towns. In September 1912, a local posse led by Deputy Sheriff Del Charlan found him at Pump House Branch and killed him in a burst of gunfire after Charlan said Smith responded to a surrender demand by lifting his rifle. His body was taken by train to Merryville and displayed outside the jail, but his true identity remained uncertain because although residents suspected he was the Texas criminal Ben Myatt, a Texas deputy said the dead man was not Myatt. With no one to claim the body, the people of Merryville buried him on the cemetery fence line, and conflicting stories endured about whether he had been betrayed, worn down from life on the run, or shot by surprise.