I want to tell that our friends saw these men convicted of first-degree murder.
I want to tell that Pa and Ma got some peace, knowing justice was done.
I want to tell that our loved ones watched these men hanged by the neck until dead.
I want to tell all that.
But I can’t.
Because none of that happened.
Part Two: What Happened Next
Chapter Fifteen—“Cattle Kate” is Born
Edwin Archibald Slack had a busy Sunday ahead of him that hot July 21st of 1889.
The publisher and editor of the Cheyenne Sun planned to accompany his family to the Presbyterian Church to hear the famous visiting contralto Madame D’Arona Dawson. Capitalizing on his one free day—the Sunday paper was already on the streets and there was no Monday paper—he intended to spend the afternoon at the baseball game at the fairgrounds where the Cheyenne Capitals would face off against the Sandens of Denver. To top off the day, he was taking his family to dinner at the Normandy, the restaurant his newspaper declared the “finest in the city.”
But Slack did none of those things on that Sunday. He missed out on obligation and fun alike because he’d have had more important things to do. Stock Detective George Henderson showed up at the Slack residence and impatiently knocked on the front door.
“What the…” Slack muttered, as he hefted his six foot one, two hundred thirty-pound frame from the breakfast table. The minute he saw it was Henderson, he knew something big was up. It took only the whispered words “double fuckin’ lynching” to tell him just how big.
Wyoming Territory was home to dozens of newspapers, but the only ones that really counted were the Cheyenne dailies. The rest were weekly publications in rural towns. What they said might matter at home, but they carried no weight in the capital city, or anywhere else in the nation.
In the capital city of the Territory of Wyoming, the pecking order started with Ed Slack and his Sun. His Republican daily was the most prominent and important western voice outside Denver.
Slack believed a frontier newspaper’s role was to “boom the town,” and he was an unapologetic booster. His paper bragged about Cheyenne’s rapid growth and prosperity. He highlighted the cultural offerings that proved the town was “civilized.” He touted new businesses and the natural resources of the territory. It goes without saying that he was the best friend of the cattle industry that dominated the entire economic picture of W.T. He’d championed them in the bonanza days when there were 100 times more cows than people in the territory. He hung with them now that the bonanza was waning and the cattle industry was just holding on.
He wasn’t the only editor who understood that, like the Indian and buffalo, cattle could go away, too.
Slack’s attitude made him a wealthy and prominent man. He bragged that the Sun had “the largest city and territorial circulation.”
But Ed Slack didn’t get all his prominence from his newspaper. He got some from his famous mother. Esther Hobart Morris had twice distinguished herself as a groundbreaking woman. First, she was instrumental in 1869 in convincing Wyoming Territory to defy every other government in the nation by giving women full voting rights. One year later, she became the first woman in the nation to hold a judicial position, serving as a justice of the peace. Slack’s newspaper spread the word about this remarkable woman that Wyoming would always revere. He crowned her “the mother of woman suffrage in Wyoming.”
Yes, Ed Slack had it good. His voice was strong. His word meant something.
Slack seldom looked over his shoulder, but when he did, it was to watch his biggest competitor and political opposite, the Democratic Cheyenne Daily Leader, whose own bragging rights were “the oldest daily in the territory.”
For the rest of America, the only news ever telegraphed out of the territory came from one of these dailies. Their voice was the voice of the West for readers in New York and Boston and Chicago and Omaha. Slack had never been more aware of that than on Sunday, July 21, 1889.
He instantly knew this would be a national story. It was paramount to put the lynching in the right light. He hurriedly dressed and headed off to his newspaper office in the center of Cheyenne. On the way, he took note that the cattlemen’s Cheyenne Club on Seventeenth Street—normally dead as a doornail on Sunday morning after a busy Saturday night—already showed signs of life.
“Archy” Slack had spent many a fine evening enjoying the Mums champagne and Roquefort cheese imported for this exclusive club some called “little Wall Street.” He counted its members in the Wyoming Stock Growers Association as not only his friends, but his benefactors and major advertisers. If you asked him which side of the bread his butter was on, he’d tell you it was the side with the fine cattlemen of Wyoming Territory.
Knowing some of those fine cattlemen were involved in a double-fucking-lynching in the Sweetwater Valley made Ed Slack’s heart race.
George Henderson knew it would. He knew hearts all over Cheyenne were beating at stroke level, ever since Durbin’s telegram last night laid out the basics. The wire ended with four words that were often the marching orders for George Henderson: “Take care of it.”
Henderson hadn’t become the territory’s richest stock detective by being unimaginative. His name didn’t inspire fear or disgust because he was timid. He could read these cattlemen like a book, and no matter where the storyline wandered, the important part was that it ended up on their side.
Henderson couldn’t count the nights he’d downed Bothwell’s whiskey while listening to his wails about that “fucking Watson woman” and her “fucking partner, Averell.” How many times had he eaten one of Durbin’s steaks while the man preached his gospel of never being run out by settlers again? How many times had he ridden by the Watson claim on Horse Creek and wished he could burn down her stupid log cabin and tear out her silly corral?
Oh, he well knew the men who’d done the dirty deed last night—Sun’s involvement was the only surprise—but he knew their victims, too. And that was the problem.
Averell was about the most prominent and respected settler in the Sweetwater—postmaster, J.P., all of it—and Ella Watson, well, if George Henderson were called to testify about that good-looking woman, the first words out of his mouth would be, “She makes the best pie I’ve ever tasted.”
But he wouldn’t tell Ed Slack any of those things. No siree. Not when he had to spread the word that they’d been hanged. That would never do. They couldn’t be upstanding citizens. They had to be despicable lowlife rustlers. They couldn’t be helpful neighbors who could be counted on in a pinch. They had to be ruthless criminals who’d terrorized the good cattle-raising families of the Sweetwater Valley. They couldn’t be lynched in a lawless act. They had to be receiving their just rewards in a clear case of rangeland justice.
And there had to be something extra special for the woman—they hanged a fucking woman! She couldn’t have a shred of decency, or the old code would kick in. It wasn’t only the rule of the sea that women and children were saved above all others. It was the rule of the West, too. Only a coward or a cur would not step in front of a bullet or an arrow to protect women and children.
The only way to get everyone to forget chivalry, was to make the Watson woman contemptible. She had to be a female of the lowest order. She had to be doing the things no decent woman would do—living the life that women and men alike would turn their backs on. She had to be a filthy whore.
Nobody had to spell out this story to Henderson—his years of working for the stock growers had primed him. Now he needed to get the Cheyenne editors to see it his way. Either he did that, or he’d better hightail it out of the territory, because this wasn’t an assignment that allowed for failure.
This assignment demanded Henderson at his best, and at his best—the man was proud of this—he could not only lead horses to water, he could made them drink.
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“Ed, you know how bad the rustlin’s been out there—the courts are worthless. They won’t convict a rustler for anything, and these two were the leaders of the pack. You just could hear ’em laughin’ at the cattlemen that they could steal all they wanted and nobody would do a fuckin’ thing. I saw it myself plenty of times. And I did what I could to stop it—you know that—and these two were the worst. On top of that, they were such lowlifes. The Averell guy had a string of prostitutes at his place. She was one of ’em—his madam, if I’m not mistaken.” Henderson’s speech did not fall on deaf ears.
“So he ran a hog ranch?” Slack tsked, using the favorite slang for a house of prostitution. “How low can a man go?” Slack started scribbling notes as he sat behind his big oak desk in the Sun office. Henderson sat across from him, filling in any blanks.
“You know, those names sound familiar,” Slack mused, and Henderson worried that maybe the Sun had reported on Averell’s prestigious appointments. Boy, that could pose some real problems. He was already concocting a counter story—a face of respectability hiding a tawdry whorehouse—when Slack continued: “Averell. Averell. Wasn’t he that Harvard man who came out here?”
Henderson had never heard of any Harvard in Averell’s past—was quite certain no Ivy League college had ever seen him—but he didn’t correct the publisher. He could see right away where Slack was going—from fine schools to a filthy end. It was exactly the kind of story they were looking for.
“And Ella Watson,” Slack said slowly, letting the name slide off his tongue as he tried to remember. “Oh right. We’ve had her in the paper before. A bad character, I tell you.”
Henderson had no idea why Ella Watson had ever been mentioned in the Cheyenne Sun before, but he didn’t care. A “bad character” was all he had to hear. Whatever story Slack was thinking about, it was about a bad woman and that was perfect. It was imperative the Watson woman be mentioned in nothing but the worst possible light.
Slack was on a roll. “Nobody’s gonna cry for her. She wasn’t a decent woman. She was the kind of woman we don’t want in W.T. So was he. We’ve got to get rid of these lowlifes. Once decent folks see they were bad rubbish, they’re going to see how this happened. Now, who were the ranchmen that were driven to desperation?”
Henderson carefully unveiled the powerful names of the men who had been in attendance. Slack whistled through his lips as he stared at the stock detective.
“You can’t be serious. This isn’t even possible. Henderson, are you sure?”
Henderson nodded with certainty.
“I know these men,” Slack said quietly, as the story sunk in. “My God, Bothwell and Sun are on the executive committee of the stock growers! Cap’n Galbraith represents that county in the legislature—isn’t he running again? And Durbin. His family practically built W.T.”
Slack sat quietly, doodling on his notepad. Henderson got nervous. Should he let the man develop his thoughts or should he push some more? Henderson decided to hold his tongue. You had to be careful with these newspapermen. They liked to think they were the ones who saw the truth in a story. They liked to think they were the smartest men in the room. Pushing now might insult him. Henderson’s armpits were sweating through his shirt when Archy Slack finally made his pronouncement.
“Nobody’s going to believe those good men would do something that wasn’t justified.”
Henderson was the happiest stock detective on Earth when he heard the words out of Slack’s mouth: Bad character. Lowlifes. Hog ranch. Good men. Justified. Henderson could already taste the fine whiskey he’d be able to afford with the hefty bonus for this Sunday’s work. He left the Sun’s office for the Cheyenne Club, anxious to report this was going even better than expected.
Of all the things Edwin Archibald Slack had planned for this Sunday, creating a western myth had not been on the agenda. But he started writing a story that would do just that—create an Old West legend that would last, unchallenged, for nearly a century.
Slack’s words erased Ella Watson—homesteader, secret wife, foster mom, wannabe citizen—and replaced her with Cattle Kate—rustler and whore.
If he ever learned what really happened in the Sweetwater Valley that fateful Saturday, he didn’t bother to print it.
Chapter Sixteen—How to Stage a Hanging
Albert John Bothwell had been waiting for this morning all winter. It had been a decent winter, as things go in Wyoming Territory. Nothing like the ones so vicious they killed the cows on the open range. No, last winter had been fine and those mama cows had pushed out a whole lot of new calves. Just yesterday, they’d finished the spring branding and now he could relax.
He and the boys were camped in one of his hay fields. Cookie had rustled up a fine breakfast of flapjacks and coffee and of course, steak.
They’d been at this since mid-May, the crew traveling throughout the Sweetwater Valley to brand the new calves of 1889. Bothwell was one of the commissioners overseeing this roundup for the Stock Growers Association. He was joined by Tom Sun and John Durbin—most of the cattle being branded were owned by these three and it was tradition that the main cattlemen supervised the branding. Some nights, all three men bedded down with their cowboys, but forty-seven-year-old Durbin had already decided that part of the ritual was reserved for younger men. At forty-five, Sun wasn’t far behind in that thinking. Bothwell still found it invigorating, but his thirty-five-year-old bones weren’t as brittle yet.
They were finishing up the strong coffee when Ernie McLean raced up, stammering that he’d found twenty cows recently shot and their calves nowhere around.
“Some…some…somebody’s steal…steal…stealing mavericks,” he stuttered.
Everybody instantly suspected it was the nesters who were ruining the valley for honest cattlemen. As Durbin liked to say, you see a settler and you’re looking at “a thief or potential thief or sympathizer with thieves.”
Bothwell grabbed at any opportunity that came along. Some crumbled like sand in his hands, but others left a nugget of gold. And on the morning of July 20, 1889, Bothwell knew he was reaching for the gold. He now saw the opportunity he’d been waiting for since he first spied that woman who dared defy him.
“Bet it’s that whore over at Averell’s.” Some of the cowboys looked at him in surprise, because they knew he was talking about Miss Ella, and they knew she was no whore.
“Ernie, go check,” Bothwell yelled, giving orders to the small-potatoes rancher who was always so eager to please. McLean jumped on his horse—grabbing a flapjack on the way—and headed off toward Ella’s claim.
He got there and saw fresh brands on the small herd in her corral and knew this was exactly what Bothwell wanted to know. She must have stolen these cows and branded them as her own and that was the very definition of rustling. He raced back with the news.
“Goddamn, Holy hell, Christ Almighty, that’s fuckin’ enough,” Bothwell swore, on hearing McLean’s news. “I’ve had it with these rustlers,” and he knew full well he wasn’t the only one with that thought. “They think they can steal our cattle and nobody’s going to do anything. The courts sure fucking aren’t. We can’t get a conviction if the guy has his arm up the cow’s ass. They’re laughin’ at us. They think they’ve got a free fuckin’ ride. And I tell you, that Watson woman is one of the worst. She and Averell have been making trouble in the valley for years, and now they’re rustling. When are they going to be stopped?” His face was red with anger, and around the circle, other men felt their blood pressure rising.
“There’s no fucking respect,” Durbin declared.
Tom Sun agreed, “There’s no respect.”
“We have to stop them,” Bothwell pronounced, and he didn’t get any resistance. “I say we go get ’em and show them what for.”
Somebody else suggested they “arrest” them and take them to Rawlins, but Bothwell snorted at that. “Yeah,
like that would do any good. We’ve got to make an example of them or this rustling will never stop. I say we string ’em up as a warning that we’re at the end of our rope. Hey, that’s a joke!” But nobody else was laughing.
Tom Sun, who’d come over from his ranch this morning in his new buggy, protested immediately. “Al, stop talking like that.” He argued—“vigorously,” some of the cowboys would later report—that the most they could do was scare them, and that would put the fear of God in others.
“Okay, okay, okay,” Bothwell backed off. “But we’ve got to scare them for good, because I want them out of this valley.”
Bothwell jumped on his horse and yelled “follow me” as he took off. Durbin was just as hot—his Irish temper was always just under his skin—and that wannabe Ernie McLean would do anything Bothwell suggested, so he saddled up.
Just as they were leaving, Cap’n Robert Galbraith rode in and was quickly informed of the situation. “I’m in,” he announced, and turned his horse around.
The group stopped at the offices of the Sweetwater Chief, the phony newspaper set up to sell lots in the “Town of Bothwell.” The Chief was in a new flat-topped building that sat all alone on the prairie, but oh, the stories it printed to laud the wonderful “community” it pretended was all around it. Cowboys said you didn’t need to know much more about Red Vest than that he could afford his own newspaper, and Bothwell had smiled when he overheard the remark.
The editor and his assistant—Henry Fetz and Isaac Speer—were there and so was Bob Conner, whose own ranch bordered Ella’s claim.
“Bring out John Barleycorn,” Bothwell yelled at the editors. Nobody thought it was too early to drink because when you’re on the trail of rustlers, it was time to drink. One, two bottles of whiskey disappeared that morning as the cattlemen broadcast their complaints about all the nesters that had moved into their pastures and put up the hated barbed-wire fences.
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