And he decided he’d better complete the lineup because Mr. Watson had a right to know everything: “And the man who tried to save your daughter, Frank Buchanan. He’s on the run. He’s the one who actually saw the lynching, and they’ll need him to testify against the murderers, so folks are pretty concerned that he stay safe.”
“Of course, without him…” Watson responded, and both men nodded as they imagined the murder charges falling apart. But neither man was ready to face that horrible possibility, so they agreed Buchanan was probably hiding out to keep himself out of harm’s way. That just had to be it. There had to be somebody left to sit in a courtroom and identify the men who killed Ella and Jim.
In his mind’s eye, Pa Watson had been inside that courtroom, watching Frank Buchanan point his finger, one after another, at each of the six lynchers. Even with this news, he refused to let that image fade.
“So there’s nobody to tell me about that day,” Watson concluded, and Durant finally had something positive to share: “No, but there are people in town who are anxious to talk with you. They want you to know what they knew of Ella.” Watson finally had hope that there would be some comfort in this trip.
That night, a small group gathered at the Rawlins City Hall and one of the ladies brought cookies and a pitcher of lemonade. Everyone warmly greeted Tom Watson and as they sat in a makeshift circle on wooden chairs, they told nice stories about Ella and Jim and offered their sympathy.
The next day, Tom Watson took George Durant up on a generous offer. As Tom talked, Durant’s male secretary wrote down the words so the family back home could know what was happening. He started the letter by reporting on the city hall gathering: “The chairman of the meeting said that the hanging of Ella Watson and James Averell was one of the most cold-blooded murders on record, and that something must be done to prevent such crimes. A fund was started to bring those criminals to justice, and there was $75 raised and $100 subscribed that evening.”
Tom Watson had been very moved by the generosity and loving words of the group, and thanked them profusely—hiding the watering eyes that almost gave him away. He didn’t add that to his missive, but asked the secretary to keep the letter so he could add more later.
Then he and Durant climbed aboard the mail stage to Sand Creek, riding several hours to get as close to the ranch house as the stage went. Durant hired a buggy to take them the last twenty miles and on the way, Durant had some sage advice: “I think outside Rawlins, you should travel incognito,” he said, and Watson had already been in W.T. long enough to see the wisdom.
They arrived at the roadhouse as the sun was thinking of setting, finding two men on the property. One was picking through a stack of old wood. The other was picking the ripe tomatoes from Jimmy’s garden. Whatever suspicions Watson had, disappeared when the men immediately greeted Durant warmly. “These men are friends,” Durant whispered, and Watson could see they were and revealed himself.
“Oh, Mr. Watson, this was just terrible,” said J.S. Sapp, who had been Bothwell’s foreman. But Sapp had vigorously confronted his boss on the hanging and of course, Bothwell wouldn’t stand for that and fired him on the spot.
“He fired me before I could quit,” Sapp declared. “I couldn’t work for that man after what he did.”
Watson clasped his hands in gratitude and said it was a brave man who stood up for what was right. “Tell that to my missus and three kids,” Sapp joked. “They’re wondering where the next paycheck is coming from.” The men laughed and Durant offered that Sapp was such a seasoned ranch foreman, he wouldn’t have trouble finding work on another ranch. Nobody then knew that Bothwell would blackball Sapp so nobody in the Sweet-
water Valley would hire him. He ended up moving his family to
Rawlins, where the best he could get was odd jobs.
The other man was Joe Sharp, who had worked the roundup that ended the day of the lynching. “Mr. Watson, I am so sorry for you and your family,” he said in a kind voice. “I couldn’t believe it when I first heard it. I still find it hard to believe.”
“How did you first hear?” Watson asked, and Sharp answered: “It was that boy Ella was raising.”
Then he told how brave little Gene Crowder had run into Bothwell’s pasture on Monday morning, where cowboys were getting their orders for the day, and sobbed out the story about the hanging and that the posse from Casper had just arrived. He named all six men who’d been involved. “I was saddled up right next to Al Bothwell and I turned to him and said ‘Why, you didn’t hang them, did you Bothwell?’ and he never said a word. He just looked at the ground and cowboys all around me were grumbling and swearing and Bothwell reined his horse around and just rode off. We tried to comfort the boy, but he was really broken up. He bolted and ran back toward the ranch house.”
“What happened to the boy?” Watson asked, hoping someone out here would know more than the people in town. Sharp took a secret look at Durant, as if asking for permission to tell the rumor, but Durant was shaking his head in rebuttal, and so Joe Sharp gave the same story everyone would tell Tom Watson: “He just disappeared. Nobody knows what happened to him.”
Sharp was anxious to change the subject. “Mr. Watson, do you want to see your daughter’s grave?”
He gently led the man to the place where Ella and Jim shared a common grave. Watson stood there silently for a long time, his hat in his hand, his head bowed. “I wish my little girl had listened to her mother,” he finally said. “She told her not to leave home. If she had listened to her mother, she wouldn’t be buried here today.”
And then Tom Watson started to sob uncontrollably. Sharp wept his own tears as he watched the man and thought, “His poor little girl, his firstborn baby, lay murdered under all that soft, fresh dirt.”
From the garden and the larder, there was enough to pull together a supper, and Watson was surprised to find he slept through the night. The next day, Durant drove him over to Ella’s claim. He walked into her log cabin and ran his hands over her few belongings.
He found the eagle feathers and a nice saddle blanket. He found the dress she was sewing. He saw that she’d already started canning. He thought it looked like a nice home, but he was glad Ma wasn’t here to see any of it.
In the corral, Goldie was eating hay—the other ponies were gone and nobody seemed to know where. He had brought Jim’s western saddle along—he remembered that Ella didn’t yet have one. He saddled up the old horse for a ride to find the place his daughter died. He had gotten a good description of the site from Sapp, and it didn’t take long before he found the place.
A piece of rope was lying on the ground, and he could see how the limb had been rubbed clean from the lariat’s scrapping. He sat there on Goldie for a very long time, and he never knew before that moment how broken a man’s heart could be.
But Pa Watson wasn’t in W.T. just to cry; he was here to settle Ella’s estate and he acted as Durant’s assistant at the auction on August 31.
Durant was an efficient and diligent executor for the estates. He had already held a chattel mortgage auction in Rawlins to settle Jim’s big debts—and it turned out, the man who was supposed to be such a large-scale rustler was over his head in debt. On the courthouse steps in town—the courthouse that Durbin had helped build with his generosity—he sold off Jim’s major property to repay $430.90 to Rawlins’ leading merchant, J.W. Hugus and $323.80 to saloonkeeper J.C. Dyer. The debts were covered by selling the roadhouse site, the Bain Wagon, a breaking plow, furniture, two bedsteads, and one thousand pounds of oats. Joe Sharp bought Jim’s Regulator clock, which forever would hang in his family’s home.
Now auctions were scheduled at Ella’s homestead and the roadhouse to sell off everything else. A dozen folks showed up to the auction and only a few realized who Tom Watson was. Among the bidders who didn’t know were the two editors of the Sweetwater Chief.
Durant’s secretary
was on hand to write out the sale. His notes showed that Fetz bought her “bed stead” for $3.50 and her wool mattress for $2.00, while Speer spent $3.00 for six chairs, 50 cents for a clock, 25 cents for a rug, and $21.50 for a cookstove. There also were some cows and a horse for sale, as well as furniture. In all, Ella’s belongings brought $241.10.
Then they moved up to the roadhouse to sell off Jim’s last things, making another $174.50.
From those sales, Durant paid the taxes: $6.76 for Ella; $18.68 for Jim. After he took out his fees and some court costs, he gave Tom Watson just over a hundred dollars as Ella’s next of kin. Pa Watson gave Durant half of it back to go into the legal defense fund.
The only things that weren’t for sale were the few things Thomas Watson took home with him—Ella’s sewing machine, one breast pin and earrings, two finger rings, one chain, one pair of bracelets. He thought of taking home the few documents he found—her claim certificate, the application for citizenship, the marriage application—but decided against it.
“Do you need these?” he asked Durant. The attorney saw no need for them, so Pa Watson tore them up and threw them away.
He didn’t recognize the pretty ivory hair comb inlaid with mother of pearl, so he let it go at the auction. He was surprised when a big German man bid the item up to twenty cents and took the ribbing of his neighbors: “Rudolph, isn’t that a little fancy for your bald head,” one yelled. He blushed a little as he took the joke. “You know this is for my Willetta,” he said through his grin, and everyone agreed it would look nice on his missus.
Pa Watson came away from his visit and the auction with a special message for his family. “Our Ellen lived around people who killed her, but she lived around right decent folks, too.”
He took home to his family the stories people told about what really happened, why Ella really died. He took home kind remembrances of his first child.
“See!” Annie insisted. “Those people wouldn’t be so generous and donate to a defense fund if she was the bad woman they say.”
Tom Watson agreed. The thought gave Frances Watson some comfort.
That made Pa Watson’s pronouncement all the more startling.
“We’re never going to speak of Ellen again,” he said in his most authoritative voice. “I want you to burn all her letters, Mother. And nobody in this family will ever discuss this again. I never want to hear another word about Wyoming or lynching or Ellen. She’s gone and that’s the end of it.”
His children were befuddled. “But Pa, you know those men murdered her and she wasn’t guilty of anything,” Franny argued.
“Please Pa, you know she was a good girl,” Andrew said with certainty.
“Papa, you can’t believe she’d ever do those things,” Mary wailed.
“You can’t erase Ellen, Pa. You can’t expect us to forget her.” John was beside himself.
But Pa Watson held firm. “Not one more word,” he scolded, and stomped out of the house.
The only one who ever knew the reason was Ma Watson, who heard the chilling story in their bed late at night.
“He said they’d kill us all if we ever made a fuss,” Pa Watson told her, and it was clear from his tone that the confrontation had been terrifying. “This big stock detective cornered me one day. He told me to go home and forget I ever had a homesteading daughter in Wyoming Territory. If I didn’t, he said I’d be sorry. He said there was nowhere in the country our family could hide. He said they’d kill one child after another and make us watch. I believe him, Mother. I believe them.”
At that moment, Ma Watson felt the first real terror of her life. She agreed that threatening her living family with questions about her dead daughter was too dangerous. So she upheld her husband’s secret and seconded his demand that Ella be forgotten. If nobody talked about her, if nobody asked questions, then they’d be safe.
To prove her support, Ma Watson burned the last letter that had been so dear. But she hid the picture that had come with it. She had only two images of the first child she’d brought into the world—the wedding picture with Pickell that Ella thought had been torn up, and the picture of Ella on Goldie that everyone thought had been burned.
Chapter Nineteen—A Man with Guts
George Durant felt sickly the September day he took Thomas Watson to the railroad station for his return to Kansas.
The lawyer had developed a real liking for this broken man whose daughter had been murdered and then slandered to cover it up. He was moved by the generous donation to the legal fund—he knew the man could have well used that money, and that made the gift all the more precious. He was so grateful the people of Rawlins had stepped up to share the truth and give the father some comfort. But all that can wear on a man, and Durant was feeling sickly.
That afternoon, instead of going back to the office he shared with George Smith, he went home and slumped into his armchair. He couldn’t get the last few days out of his mind. Remembering Ella’s pitiful belongings made him feel even more sickly.
George Durant had looked over the auction items and seen Ella Watson for exactly what she was—a homesteader and homemaker who had a new dress underway and an ordinary cabin. One table and six chairs. One lamp. A washbowl and pitcher. Three flat irons. A mismatched set of dishes. Fifteen chickens. Eight head of cattle.
He couldn’t think of the auction without thinking of John Fales.
Fales spent most of the auction wiping his dripping nose on his sleeve, pretending it was a cold. Fales bought the dress that was nearly done, saying his Ma would finish it. But it was after the bidding, when he took Durant aside, that he branded himself on the man’s mind forever.
Fales handed the attorney the LU branding iron. “I used this to brand forty-one of Ella’s cattle,” he said, with the sound of truth in his voice. “Bothwell and Durbin stole ’em. Ran them out of here after the lynching and put them on a train to Cheyenne the next day. I hear they rebranded them along the way. You want to know the real rustlers here? It’s Bothwell and Durbin. Those were Ella’s cattle. She never rustled. I was with her when she bought them. Saw her sign the receipt. Those cows were in this corral all winter and Bothwell could see them from his front porch. You’re the man in charge of her estate now. What you gonna do about that?”
Durant couldn’t get Fales’ scraggly face out of his mind. He couldn’t stop the man’s words from replaying in his head. He sat there in his armchair, so saddened by all that had happened, and knew exactly why he was feeling sickly. By the end of that afternoon, George Durant determined not to let his conscience make him sick anymore.
He couldn’t let all this go as though the truth didn’t count. As though Ella Watson never counted.
But taking on Bothwell and Durbin? Two men still waiting to face the grand jury over the lynching?
How do you challenge the most powerful men in the Sweetwater Valley? Local icons? Territory leaders? Cattlemen with credentials?
How do you turn around and tell the world the very cattle they claimed were rustled legally belonged to Ella Watson? How do you announce the real rustlers in this story were these prominent men? How do you declare any alibi of rangeland justice was a bold-faced lie?
How do you buck the tide and the power of the Stock Growers Association?
George Durant sat there all afternoon, as the sun went down and a lamp was needed. By the end of the day, when his growling stomach finally told him it was past dinnertime, he didn’t feel sickly anymore.
He made the most important decision of his life. He wouldn’t ignore his conscience anymore.
He got up and selected leftovers from the icebox, and as he sat at the kitchen table, he mapped out one of the most courageous actions any attorney in Wyoming Territory would ever take.
On September 12, 1889, George Durant filed suit on behalf of Ellen L. Watson against A.J. Bothwell and John Durbin. He charged the prominent men
“forcefully took possession” of forty-one head of cattle that were legally branded with her LU brand. He contended they drove the cattle from her corral and rebranded them—all against the laws of the Territory of Wyoming. The suit demanded repayment of $1,100. The total included $600 to cover the cost of the cattle, $250 for damages for the rebranding, and $250 for costs.
The lawsuit raised an uproar. The Carbon County Journal in Rawlins announced the suit with fanfare, driving home the central point: “It will be remembered that at the time of the lynching there were forty-one head of cattle in the Watson woman’s corral. The coroner claims that he ought to have been allowed to take charge of these, but they were driven away by Bothwell and Durbin and sold as mavericks in this city in the name of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association and subsequently shipped to Cheyenne. It is to recover these cattle, which bear Ella Watson’s brand, that the suit has been brought.”
All over W.T., people shook their heads. “George Durant is either the bravest man in the territory or the most foolish,” people said.
“He’s got to have proof that those were her cows,” everyone agreed.
“She had a legal brand?” many said in astonishment—wondering how she ever got that past the association.
Who would dare make such a charge without physical proof?
Proving she had a legal brand was easy. He had the actual branding iron from Fales, and it was in the Carbon County Courthouse that he found the records that she’d duly recorded her LU brand. He could foresee the day in a courtroom when he’d hold that branding iron over his head and get justice for Ella Watson.
But proving she bought the cattle was something else. He had Fales as an eyewitness to the purchase and found another man to back him up. But where was that dirty piece of paper that attested to the sale?
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