Whitehill first met Tucker in 1875, when the latter drifted into Silver City, New Mexico, after managing a stage station near Fort Selden.
Just as he rounded a corner on Broadway Street, Dan Tucker shot him in the neck in full view of many citizens, the young Whitehill being one.
Another incident, occurring in 1877 and also witnessed by Wayne Whitehill, concerned a report that a Mexican man was intoxicated and throwing rocks at people as they passed by, on a side street in Silver City.
Tucker responded, with several young boys running a short distance behind, due to his being somewhat of a fascination to them and an enigma to the locals after the first shooting.
Tucker's unit along with elements of the Texas Rangers and U.S. Army was involved in fighting at San Elezario where suspected members of the Mexican "mob" of the "Anti-Salt Ring" there were killed and a large portion of the population fled across the border into Mexico.
By later accounts, Tucker brought the town's violent crime rate under control quickly, and was feared due to his lack of hesitation when he deemed violence was necessary to solve a problem.
By newspaper accounts from the Grant City Herald, in November 1878 Tucker was shot and wounded during a shootout with cowboy Caprio Rodriguez, when the latter resisted arrest following a disturbance in a saloon.
In early May, 1880, Sheriff Whitehill dispatched Deputy Tucker to track down two suspects who had broken into a prospector's cabin and stolen numerous goods and personal property.
In 1882, James H. Cook became the manager of the "WS Ranch" and later would comment Tucker was, to his personal knowledge, involved in several gunfights as a shotgun rider while working for Wells Fargo.
On August 24, James D. Burns, who worked as a deputy in the mining camp of Paschal, in Grant County, entered the "Walcott & Mills Saloon".
Deputy Cornelius A. Mahoney attempted to disarm Burns, but he refused, saying that as a law officer he was entitled to retain his weapon.
A decision to file charges against McClellen and Moore was made, based mainly on the fact Burns had been extremely popular with the local miners, and there was a loud public outcry for justice, despite the shooting having been justified.
McClellen was released on bail and, while riding after an all-night drunk, his horse threw him and he died of injuries from the fall, thus never coming to trial.
Soon after, Whitehill lost the election for Sheriff and Tucker was dismissed by his successor but continued as a Wells Fargo shotgun messenger.
[1]: 74–78 On December 14, 1882, Tucker was ambushed by a Mexican man as he entered a brothel in Deming to investigate a complaint, which turned out to be false.
[1]: 78 After Tucker recovered from his injury, he found he could not tolerate the rough ride aboard a stagecoach and got a job as Special Officer for the Southern Pacific Railroad.
On November 24, 1883, Tucker led a posse, in pursuit of bandits who had derailed and robbed a train near Deming, killing the engineer and messenger near Gage Station.
In November of that year, Tucker arrested York Kelly, an outlaw who had killed three men and murdered a woman who was eight months pregnant during a bank robbery in Bisbee, Arizona.
[3] He was also a subject in the book Deadly Dozen, by author Robert K. DeArment, who included Tucker as one of the twelve most underrated gunmen of the Old West.