In the early 1870s, Lampasas was a wild frontier town where violence escalated after Sheriff S.T. Denson was shot in January 1873 while arresting Wash and Mark Short. Efforts to apprehend the Short brothers were blocked by Ben, Tom, and Mart Horrell and several others, leading Sheriff Denson and the justices of the peace of Lampasas County to seek help from Governor Edmund J. Davis. On February 10, 1873, Davis prohibited the carrying of sidearms in Lampasas, and on March 14 Captain Thomas Williams and seven state policemen entered town to enforce the order. After arresting Bill Bowen for carrying a gun, Williams and two of his men were drawn into Jerry Scott's Lampasas Saloon, where a gunfight broke out between the state police and the Horrell brothers and their associates. Three officers were killed in the saloon, and a fourth was fatally wounded while trying to escape. The dead policemen were buried in Lampasas, while Captain Williams was later reinterred in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin. Additional state police then joined the sheriff and Minute Men companies from Lampasas and Burnet County in searching for the Horrell gang, and four men connected to the fight were arrested. In early May, the gang attacked the Georgetown Jail and freed Mart Horrell and Jerry Scott, remained in the Lampasas area until September, left for New Mexico, returned in 1874, and in 1876 the Horrell brothers were tried for murdering the state police and found not guilty.