by Tim Slessor
Charlie Basch’s subsequent “evidence” was to be muddled, contradictory and, in parts, hardly credible. Obviously, he knew what was good for him. His story was that he had been riding towards Buffalo when, coming over the southern rim of the gulch he saw a man leading a loaded wagon away from the track. No, he did not recognize the man and, no, he did not realize that a shooting had just occurred. Did he not think to ride over and see what was going on? Well no, if the man had wanted help, would he not have called out? What about the sounds of the shots that would have killed Tisdale, and then those two horses? Shots? What shots?
The fact was that Charlie Basch thought it prudent to wait 44 years - until he heard that the man he had seen that morning had died. In 1935, a very old Charlie Basch named the murderer as Frank Canton, the same Association “detective” who had been identified by Nate Champion. But back in 1891 the gossip in Buffalo was strong enough that Canton felt forced to demand a court hearing to clear himself. He obviously calculated that he had a solid alibi. He called several corroborating witnesses: the owner of the hardware store, the man who ran the drug store, the steward of the local cattlemen’s club (Buffalo had its own scaled-down version of the Cheyenne Club), and the local doctor. Yes, all these people had seen Frank Canton in Buffalo that morning. But strangely, the question of whether he had been in town throughout the morning was never asked. After all, the murder had taken place less than 8 miles south of Buffalo. Canton could have ridden that distance in 20 minutes. So he could have left Buffalo as late as 9.30, attended to his business at the gulch - taking, say, a cool 15 minutes to shoot Tisdale and the two horses - and still be back in Buffalo in not much more than a further 20 minutes - an hour, say, in all. Yes, it would have taken a good horse and an iron nerve, but no one has ever doubted that Canton had both. On arrival back in town, Canton presumably made sure that he was seen by one or more of his alibi witnesses. There was no jury. The judge, a known ally of the barons, dismissed the case. There must have been a good deal of muttering as folk left the court.
An obvious question arises: why did no one see Frank Canton riding back into town that morning with a horse which would have looked, at the least, stretched and sweaty? Perhaps, like Charlie Basch, they were too fearful to come forward. In his memoirs, Frontier Trails, written 40 year later, Frank Canton covers these various events in a few simple sentences. Why should he do otherwise? After all, as everyone knows, he had nothing to do with the killings:
“In 1891, two rustlers, John Tisdale and Orley Jones, were shot and killed by unknown parties some fifteen miles south of Buffalo. It was whispered among the rustlers and their friends that I was the man who killed them both... I surrendered to the sheriff, had a trial, and I proved by a large number of the best citizens of the county that I was in Buffalo every hour of the day on which Tisdale was killed. In the Jones case the evidence was exactly the same. The case was dismissed, but the rustlers were not satisfied... They wanted some excuse for getting me out of the way, and I knew that they intended to do it the first time they got the drop on me.”
That “fifteen miles” is revealing; by almost doubling the real distance - and I checked the mileage myself - Canton slyly reinforces his alibi; he is really saying that he could not have ridden 30 miles in the one hour that his witnesses could not vouch for.
Back in 1891 in Buffalo, folk were angry. Anyway, a week after that court hearing, someone persuaded another (more sympathetic?) judge to issue a warrant for Canton’s formal arrest. Evidently, under Wyoming law, as the first hearing had been at Canton’s own request, the restriction of “double jeopardy” did not apply. But when the deputies knocked on Canton’s door to serve a warrant, there was no reply. He had left town only an hour or so before.
In his memoirs, Canton’s account of why he left Buffalo is innocence itself: he had decided that it was time to spend some time with his wife’s family, nearly 1,000 miles away, back east in Illinois. A week or two later, the sheriff in Buffalo applied for an extradition order to have Canton brought back from Illinois. Constitutionally, the application had to be routed through Wyoming’s governor in Cheyenne. He dismissed it.
So far, the Association, the Cheyenne Ring, the Wyoming Old Guard, the Barons (at different times all these labels were applied) had managed to contain things, but only just. Now they were worried. Those folk up around Buffalo were getting out of hand; they were altogether too uppity. Something had to be done... And those gentlemen had a point. They were being robbed to ruination. As they saw it, half the population of Wyoming was at it. They never understood that, by denying any cowboy the right to keep some cattle of his own, by preventing anyone who was not a member of their Association from taking part in the annual round-ups, by the blinkered pursuit of their own interests, they were losing (had already lost?) any chance of support from many of Wyoming’s population.
Nevertheless, whatever the Association said, not everyone up on the Powder River was a rustler. Some were honest men who never stole anything. Others were small-scale ranchers who, maybe, did a little rustling on the side. Others were small-scale rustlers, who, maybe, did a little ranching on the side. And a handful, the professionals, were full-time thieves who did nothing on the side. So, apart from a man’s inherent honesty or the fear of being bushwhacked, there was not too much point in going straight: the barons were likely to say that you were a rustler anyway: look at what had happened to James Averell, Kate Watson, Nate Champion, Orley Jones and John Tisdale.
In Buffalo, the recently formed Northern Wyoming Stock Growers Association held further open-to-all meetings. At one such gathering it was decided to ignore Cheyenne’s “official” spring round-up; they would organize their own a week or two ahead of the big ranchers. The big ranchers, furious at this blasphemy, quickly formed a “war committee”, with a fighting fund of $50,000. Both sides, through the newspapers, fired off propaganda salvos. Cheyenne editors wrote about “murderous rustlers going armed to the teeth”; the Buffalo paper declaimed against “paid lickspittles who... have been writing lies about thieves in this locality”.
Printed insults were one thing, armed invasion was something else. A Major Walcott was put in charge; he proposed that as soon as the winter snows had melted and cross-country travel became possible, a small army should be dispatched to settle this insufferable Johnson County business once and for all. But, for the time being, because those Buffalo people had their damn spies everywhere, such plans would have to remain very secret.
John Clay, an Englishman, the Association’s president and one of the leading cattle barons in the northern part of the state, was as keen as anyone to clean up his domain. All the same, he was leery of getting himself too directly involved. Years later, he wrote about a discussion he had with Major Walcott: “The gallant Major said there was an urgent necessity for a lynching bee, especially in the northern part of the state, and he had developed a plan. At that time, like many other cowmen, I was quite willing to draw a rope on a cattle thief if necessary. Yet his scheme was so bold and open that I told him that, as far as I was concerned, to count me out. I went away to Europe on a long holiday.”
So, the gallant Englishman hurried away, leaving the equally gallant Major to get on with organizing his lynching bee. There was one obvious problem: who could be recruited to do the dirty work in the proposed invasion? After all, it would not do, as John Clay had already indicated, for the barons to take to the field themselves. And there would be a marked shortage of volunteers in Wyoming among the cowboys and other lower orders. Also, to beat the recruiting drum around the state would be to give the game away. Problem.
The answer lay 700 miles away in Texas. Agents were sent south to the dusty cow-towns along the Red River. There they recruited a contingent of 22 hired guns. These mercenaries were told that they were needed to put down a gang of dangerous outlaws. Their contracts specified $5 a day and a bonus of $50 for every outlaw captured or killed. They were
not to talk to anyone about where they were going, but were told to make their way to Denver, where they were to wait quietly until horses had been collected, wagons found, munitions purchased. Then there was a train to be arranged; the Powder River country is over 200 miles north of Cheyenne, so if Major Walcott and his mercenary crew could cover part of that distance quickly by train, it would add to the element of surprise.
There was also the awkward matter of Article 19 on the State Constitution. One imagines that the law books came down from their shelves on that one. The Article is specific: “No armed police or detective agency or armed body or unarmed body of men shall ever be brought into this state for the suppression of domestic violence except upon the application of the executive [the Governor] when the legislature itself cannot be convened.” Incidentally, four of the cattle barons had been members of the committee which had drafted the very Constitution they were now about to ignore.
Governor Barber would have known full well what was going on, but a waiver of Article 19 could not be authorized in secret; it would need his formal and open signature. Furthermore, the reasons would have to be recorded. Given that surprise was essential, this posed a real problem. In the end, it seems that everybody in the know connived to look the other way.
The rank-and-file of the expeditionary force were the Texans, now waiting in Denver. Their “officers” were a collection of ranch foremen and range detectives. Frank Canton (back from his in-laws in Illinois) was among them. In command was Major Walcott, manager for a Scottish ranch company, and nearly 30 years earlier a respected officer in the Union Army.
That winter, the final task of the self-appointed Star Chamber in the Cheyenne Club was to draw up a “wanted list” of all the people considered to be the enemy. Many years later a member of the organizing committee said that “when the list was finally completed...the number stood at an even seventy. It was decided that these must be exterminated by shooting or hanging.” The list included Sheriff Angus of Buffalo and three of Johnson County’s elected commissioners (councilors). A wide range of small ranchers, a local journalist and several store-keepers were also set down for “severe treatment”. In later years, it became an honor among Wyoming folk to have been on that roll-call. But at the time, the cold nerve of those respectable gentlemen sitting round a table sifting through their death list took some beating. Interestingly, a young cowboy known as Butch Cassidy was also on that list.
In Cheyenne, even at night, a six-carriage train with more than 50 people aboard, plus horses and wagons, comprised far too much of a circus to keep secret. As well as the mercenaries and their “officers”, there were wagon drivers, a surgeon and a two-man press corps: one from the Cheyenne Sun and the other, a brash young go-getter from the Chicago Herald. Despite a cover story that the expedition was a survey party for a new railroad “somewhere up north”, by the time the “special” steamed out of Cheyenne, anyone hanging about the Union Pacific depot would have easily guessed what was going on. Indeed, someone hurried round to the telegraph office to send a coded warning to Buffalo. It never arrived. Presumably, someone had cut the wires.
A little before dawn the engine sighed to a stop on a desolate siding where it was reckoned there were no inquisitive eyes. The train had come 120 miles. It was cold. The wagons were manhandled off the flatcars and loaded with stores. When all was done, Major Walcott ordered the crusade to saddle up and move off. By daylight they were clear of the railroad and hidden in the sagebrush eating breakfast.
If its purpose had not been so cold-blooded, there was more than a touch of the comic about the operation. Before breakfast was over, several horses had broken loose, never to be recovered. There was trouble fitting the untested wagon harness, and the gentlemen who were running the show were thoroughly muddied up with the gummy clay of those parts. As they set off, one of the journalists found that his piles were playing up so badly that he could not ride his horse; he transferred to a wagon. Doubtless, the Texans, as is still the habit with folk from those parts, were not saying much but thinking plenty. But still, at $5 a day...
It began to snow and, by the afternoon, their northward progress had slowed right down. Instead of reaching a remote and friendly ranch, they had to spend the night in the open. They were so exhausted that when they did reach the ranch-house the next day they decided to rest up for 24 hours. Presently an advance man (he who had cut the telegraph wire?) rode in to tell them that two of the men on their death list were living at a one-roomed ranch-house just a few hours ride to the north. Major Walcott decided on a dawn attack. Two or three of the other “officers”, led by Frank Canton, pointed out that the delay would cost them the advantage of a surprise arrival at Buffalo, the target that really mattered. The Major huffed and puffed and tendered his resignation. For the sake of unity, the dissenters withdrew their objections.
One of the “wanted” men in that cabin was the same Nate Champion who had so effectively defended himself against attack in that same cabin only a few months before; the other was a petty rustler called Nick Ray. There were a couple of other men staying the night as well: out-of-work cowboys who were doing some trapping to eke out a living through the winter. They all slept late that morning, oblivious to the 50 armed men who now lay in cover just 100 yards away.
The Major guessed, from the wagons parked outside, that there must be other men inside besides Champion and Ray. To give him credit, he held back from a direct assault - rushing the doors and shooting the men in their bunks - because he did not want to kill anyone who was not on the list. This regard for the niceties of what they were doing was to hold them up for several hours. It was time they could ill afford. Eventually, one of the cowboy-trappers came out to get some water from the nearby stream. They waited till he was out of sight from the house and then quietly jumped him. Presently, the other trapper came out, presumably to see what had happened to his friend. They jumped him too.
A few minutes later a figure recognized as Nick Ray appeared in the doorway; he looked around and began walking toward the stable. He was on the death list. The gunmen waited until at least six of them had a clear shot. The impact of the fusillade, at such short range, would have been colossal - enough to hurl him back several yards, almost to the doorway. He was more dead than alive. Incredibly, Champion, firing with one hand, managed to drag Ray inside with his other hand.
They shouted at Champion to surrender; he replied with shots. Over the next couple of hours they poured shot after shot into the cabin, some say as many as 200. But the walls were too thick. Champion, by changing his position too frequently for the attackers to bring their rifles to bear accurately on the chinks in the wall, kept up a remarkable return fire. For the Major it was most frustrating. Eventually, some men were sent off to get some hay from a nearby barn. They would burn Champion out.
During this lull, a man and a boy were distantly seen coming down a track. A posse immediately rode out to capture them: it was vital that the secret of the invasion did not get out. But the two “intruders” had guessed what was happening; they immediately turned and made their escape. It was as well that they did because Jack Flagg (there with his son) was on that death list. One doubts if Paul Revere would have had anything on the speed of their dash to spread news of what they had seen.
Major Walcott now knew that the secret was out. They would have to move much faster. But they had to fix Champion first. They loaded a buggy with hay and a few dry bits of timber. Then, while the best shots among the Texans gave covering fire, the hay was lit and the whole contraption was given a hefty push down a slight slope toward the cabin. The timbers of the cabin took several minutes to catch. Champion now had three choices: he could surrender, and end up on the end of a rope; or he could be roasted alive; or he could make a dash for it. He waited for a few minutes and then ran nearly 50 yards through the smoke before they got him. It took four shots. They turned him onto his back and someone pinned a note on
to his bloody chest: “Cattle Thieves Beware”.
There was one small problem: what to do with those two trappers. If released, they might warn people to the north - but that had already happened when Flagg and his son had got away earlier. So, in the end, the Major let the trappers go, telling them to ride south and to keep their mouths shut.
In mid-afternoon, the invaders saddled up and moved on. They had to make up lost time, so they rode through the evening and then on into the night. Eventually, sometime in the early hours, they pulled into a remote ranch-house, the TA. Here, in quarters provided by an absentee Association member, they reckoned that they could spend a few hours resting before moving on the final 13 miles to “take” Buffalo. The confident and arrogant seldom see much need for haste. But Frank Canton, who undoubtedly had a more realistic appreciation of what Buffalo had in store now that it had almost certainly been warned, would have been frantic with these delays.
Canton’s concern was justified. In Buffalo, the rumor was that a murdering gang of at least 100 Cheyenne thugs, with hang-ropes looped over their saddles, was on its way to sack the town, seize all property, and exterminate the leading citizens. In some desperation, Sheriff Angus appealed to the commandant of the nearby US Cavalry base at Fort McKinney. But the Colonel said that he could not help in what was obviously a civilian matter without specific orders from much higher up the military ladder.