The Mammoth Book of the West (28 page)

Billy Downs was located at one of the wood yards on the Missouri at the mouth of the Musselshell, ostensibly to trap wolves, but in reality to sell whiskey to the Indians. His place soon came to be headquarters for tough characters, and it was but a short time until Downs himself was stealing horses and killing cattle. Downs was a married man and his wife was at the wood yard with him. Because of sympathy for the woman, he was warned that he was being watched and that if he did not change his tactics he was sure to get into trouble. He paid not the least attention to the warning, but continued to surround himself with the worst characters on the river and kept on stealing horses and killing cattle.

On the night of July 4, a committee of vigilantes arrived at the Downs’ place and called on him to come out. This at first he refused to do but after a short parley he did come out, accompanied by a notorious character known as California Ed. Both men plead guilty to stealing ponies from the Indians but denied that they had stolen from white men, but they failed to account for the twenty-six horses in the corral, all bearing well-known brands. They claimed
that the quantity of dried meat found in the house was dried buffalo meat, notwithstanding the fact that there had not been a buffalo on the range for more than two years. In the stable was a stack of fresh hides folded and salted ready to be shipped down the river, all bearing the brand of the Fergus Stock Co. The two men were taken out to a little grove of trees and hanged.

At the time the vigilante committee started for the mouth of Musselshell, another party left for the vicinity of Rocky Point where two notorious horse thieves, known as Red Mike and Brocky Gallagher, were making their headquarters. They had stolen about thirty head of horses from Smith river, changed the brands and were holding them in the bad lands. They had also been operating over on the Moccasin range and stolen horses from J. H. Ming’s ranch and from J. L. Stuart.

When the vigilantes arrived at Rocky Point the men were not there but had crossed over on the north side of the river. The party followed after, and captured them and recovered some of the horses. Both men plead guilty to horse stealing and told their captors that there were six head of the stolen horses at Dutch Louie’s ranch on Crooked creek.

Fifteen miles below the mouth of the Musselshell, at an old abandoned wood yard, lived old man James, his two sons, and a nephew. Here also was the favorite haunt of Jack Stringer. There was a log cabin and a stable with a large corral built of logs, connecting the two buildings. One hundred yards from the cabin in a wooded bottom was a tent constructed of poles and covered with three wagon sheets. At the cabin were old man James, his two sons, Frank Hanson and Bill Williams. Occupying the tent were Jack Stringer, Paddy Rose, Swift Bill, Dixie Burr, Orvil Edwards and Silas Nickerson.

On the morning of July 8, the vigilantes arrived at Bates Point. The men were divided into three parties. Three
guarded the tent, five surrounded the cabin and one was left behind with the saddle horses. They then waited for daylight. Old man James was the first to appear. He was ordered to open the corral and drive out the horses. This he did but refused to surrender, backed into the cabin and fired a shot from his rifle through a small port hole at the side of the door. This was followed by a volley from port holes all around the cabin and in an instant the whole party was in action.

Two of the vigilantes crawled up and set fire to the hay stack and the cabin. The men inside stationed themselves at port holes and kept up the fight until they were all killed or burned up: The cabin burned to the ground. The tent was near the river bank and almost surrounded by thick brush and it was easier to escape from it than to get out of the cabin. Stringer Jack crawled under the tent and reached a dense clump of willows from which he made his last stand. Dixie Burr had his arm shattered with a rifle ball but jumped into an old dry well and remained until dark. Paddy Rose ran out of the tent, passed back of the men engaged at the cabin and concealed himself in a small washout and after dark made his escape. Nickerson, Edwards, and Swift Bill reached the river bank and crawling along through the brush and under the bank, succeeded in passing above the men at the cabin and hid in some brush and drift wood. Orvil Edwards and Silas Nickerson were the only ones that escaped without wounds. After the fight at the cabin the men went down the river and spent the day looking for the men who had escaped but failed to find them.

On the afternoon of the ninth, the fugitives rolled some dry logs into the river, constructed a raft and started down stream. At Poplar creek agency they were discovered by some soldiers stationed there, ordered to come on shore and were arrested.

Notice of their arrest was sent to Fort Maginnis and Samuel Fischel, deputy U.S. marshall, started at once to get the prisoners and take them to White Sulphur Springs. At the mouth of the Musselshell a posse met Fischel and took the prisoners from him. Nearby stood two log cabins close together. A log was placed between the cabins, the prisoners tied to this and shot.

By the time the Stranglers were disbanded in 1884, rustling in the Montana–Dakota range country had been all but wiped out. This was far from true in Wyoming’s Johnson County, where grandee cattlemen were losing steers by the hundred to a motley crew of thieves which included hardened criminals but were mostly homesteaders and disenchanted cowpunchers wanting to establish their own spread. Through the agency of the powerful Wyoming Stock Growers’ Association, the cattlemen determined to protect their property and keep the range open – or, more accurately, under their exclusive control.

Initially, the stockmen employed legal methods, hiring former peace-officers and gunmen to act as “stock detectives”. Posing as genuine cowboys, the detectives spied on the homesteaders and reported evidence of rustling to the barons. To prove brand alterations, the detectives often skinned the hide from stolen beeves; the inner side would reveal the original brand, which the rustler had altered on the outside with a running iron. Suspects were hauled to court, but juries failed to convict. Local people had little sympathy for the big stockmen, who were often wealthy absentees.

The grandee stockmen tried another way. They secured the passing of an extraordinary piece of legislation, the Maverick Act, which made the branding of any unbranded calf by anyone who was not a member of the Stock Growers’ Association a felony. Small ranchers and
settlers were thus unable to round up and brand their own calves without being charged with a crime.

To oversee the efficiency of the Maverick Act, the Stock Growers’ Association hired Frank Canton as their chief range inspector. Previously the sheriff of Johnson County, Canton – whose real name was Joe Horner – had a long history of hired gunfighting and outlawry, including the robbery of a bank in Comanche, Texas. Under Canton’s zealous leadership, Association inspectors at markets and shipping points seized 16,000 cattle not bearing approved brands.

While the seizing of the cattle outraged their homestead owners, the impounded cows’ lack of suitable brands only proved to the grandees that rustling was still a major problem. With the inspiring example of Granville Stuart’s Montana campaign before them, the local stockmen decided that Wyoming – especially Johnson County – required a dose of lynch-law medicine.

Among the first victims was the 170-pound Ella Watson (also known as Kate Maxwell), who ran a saloon in Sweetwater County. Her business partner was Jim Averill, a justice of the peace who liked to scribe letters to the Casper
Weekly Mail
denouncing cattle barons as landgrabbers. By most accounts, the Canadian-born Watson was a prostitute, with mavericked cattle the medium of exchange. These she used to stock a small ranch near the saloon.

Watson and Averill were both warned to leave the area, but refused. One night in July 1889 they were seized in their saloon and taken to Spring Creek Gulch, and hanged. A reporter described the scene when people from Casper found the bodies:

Hanging from the limb of a stunted pine growing on the summit of a cliff fronting the Sweetwater River were the
bodies of James Averill and Ella Watson. Side by side they swung, their faces swollen and discolored almost beyond recognition. Common cowboys’ lariats had been used and both had died by strangulation, neither having fallen over two feet. Judging from signs too plain to be mistaken, a desperate struggle had taken place on the cliff, and both man and woman had fought for their lives until the last.

A local rancher called Albert J. Bothwell was widely believed to be behind the lynching. No indictments, however, were ever returned in the case. Bothwell later appropriated Watson’s cabin and turned it into an ice-house. To justify the murder, subtle propaganda turned Watson into the notorious rustler queen “Cattle Kate”, who “had to die for the good of the county.”

After the execution of Watson and Averill, death spread across the land. A horse-raiser named Waggoner was lured from his home and hanged at “Dead Man’s Canyon”. In November 1891 four vigilantes, including Frank Canton, made a dawn visit to a cabin on Powder River, intending to kill two cowboys turned homesteaders, Ross Gilbertson and a Texan called Nathan D. Champion. The intruders burst in, one of them shouting “Give up, we have got you this time.” The assailant fired and missed. Champion grabbed his gun and put all four vigilantes to flight.

The vigilantes were more successful a month later, shooting two homesteaders as they drove out of Buffalo, the only town in Johnson County.

Such assassinations, however, only stirred up more animosity towards the big cattlemen. They did nothing to curb rustling. When, in spring 1892, the Wyoming Stock Growers’ Association heard that the homesteaders were planning an unlawful pool round-up, they determined on nothing less than a full-scale invasion of Johnson County.

Members of the Association formed themselves into a secret society they called the “Regulators”, electing as their leader former US Army Major Frank Wolcott. The portly, pompous Wolcott owned a large ranch on Deer Creek. At Wolcott’s instigation Tom Smith, a range detective with the Association, was sent south to hire an army of gunmen. The pay offered was $5 a day and expenses, plus a $50 bonus for every homesteader killed. Smith hired 22 gunfighters, one from Idaho, the rest from Texas. Wolcott, meanwhile, journeyed to Denver and hired a special train from Union Pacific – an engine, three freight cars and three passenger cars. When the train reached the state capital, Cheyenne, on 5 April, horses, guns, dynamite, ammunition and tents were loaded aboard. Just after nightfall, the gunfighters entrained, accompanied by five Association detectives and 19 cattlemen, including Frank Wolcott. A doctor Penrose signed on as official surgeon. Two pro-Association newspapermen, Sam T. Clover of the
Chicago Herald
and Ed Towse of the Cheyenne
Sun
, went along as war reporters.

At three o’clock in the morning of 6 April 1892, Wolcott’s army arrived at Casper, end of the line. Here they cut the telegraph wire to Buffalo and set off on horseback for Johnson County. In Wolcott’s pocket was a list of 70 homesteaders and rustlers who were to be executed by the Regulators. During a restover at the Tisdale Ranch, Wolcott learned that Nathan Champion and another homesteader, Nick Ray, were wintering at an old line camp, the KC. Wolcott consulted his list, and found that both Champion and Ray were on it. Wolcott’s original intention had been to ride directly to Buffalo, but now he decided to swing over to the KC and eradicate Champion and Ray first.

The expedition reached the line camp in the bitterly cold morning of 9 April. Inside were Champion – who had already driven off one gang of Stockmen assailants – and Ray, together with two fur trappers to whom they were playing host, Bill Walker and Ben Jones. The cabin was surrounded, and when the two trappers came out they were silently captured. A few minutes afterwards Nick Ray walked out the front door and was wounded by a volley from Regulator guns. He began to crawl back to the cabin, and Champion rushed out into the gunfire, grabbed his collar and hauled him into the cabin.

Besieged on all sides, Champion began returning fire so dense and accurate that he kept his attackers at bay for hours. In amidst the action, Champion somehow managed to write an account of his ordeal in a little pocket book:

Me and Nick were getting breakfast when the attack took place. Two men here with us – Bill Jones and another man. The old man went out after water and did not come back. His friend went out to see what was the matter and he did not come back. Nick started out and I told him to look out, that I thought there was someone in the stable and would not let them come back. Nick is shot, but not dead yet. He is awfully sick. I must go and wait on him.

It is now about two hours since the first shot. Nick is still alive . . .

They are still shooting and are all around the house. Boys, there is bullets coming in like hail. The fellows is in such shape I can’t get at them. They are shooting from stable and river and back of the house.

Nick is dead. He died about 9 o’clock. I see smoke down at the stable. I think they have fired it. I don’t think they intend to let me get away this time.

It is now about noon. There is someone at the stable yet;
they are throwing a rope out at the door and drawing it back. I guess it is to draw me out. I wish that duck would get out further so I could get a shot at him.

During the early afternoon Black Jack Flagg, homesteader, rode by on horseback, trailing his stepson who was driving a wagon. Flagg saw the men around the cabin and guessed what was occurring. When the Regulators fired on him, he yelled to his stepson to jump on one of the team horses and cut the rest loose. Flagg and his stepson then galloped away to Buffalo to raise the alarm.

Realizing that he was losing precious time, Wolcott decided to fire Champion’s cabin. An old wagon was dragged up, piled high with brush and lit. Burning, it was pushed by four men to the side of the cabin.