by Tim Slessor
It was becoming very obvious to the people of Buffalo and Johnson County that they could rely on no one but themselves. Accordingly, Sheriff Angus assembled and then led a large posse out on a sweeping reconnaissance to the south. Within a few hours, drawn on by the smoke from the still smoldering KC cabin; they found Nate Champion’s body and the note on his bloody chest. On their way back to Buffalo they spied what they had been looking for: an unusual amount of activity around the TA ranch-house. By the time they got home late that night they had ridden nearly 100 miles. They and their horses were exhausted. Nevertheless, with fresh horses, they were off again well before dawn. But this time the posse had grown to a small cowboy army. It set out for the TA ranch.
As the early light of the morning crisped the surrounding hilltops on that cold April day, the gentlemen from Cheyenne pulled themselves slowly from the snugness of their blankets. Presently, Major Walcott was called to a window. He would have been dumbfounded by what he saw. Skylined, but just beyond rifle range, more than 100 horsemen were silently watching. Through his binoculars he could see that they were all armed; some were dismounted and lying half-hidden on the snowy ground.
Frank Canton was called. Through those binoculars he identified a number of men who were on “the list”. He and his companions were surrounded by a siege-line that included many of the very men they had come to hang. Presently, bullets began to thump into the heavy timbers of the ranch-house and the nearby barn.
Major Walcott and his “invaders” were luckier than they deserved: the ranch and its cluster of out-houses were built of heavy pine logs. (In the more than 120 years since, nothing much has changed, not even the loopholes cut by those Texan mercenaries.) Provided that no one showed himself unnecessarily, they knew that they could hold off their enemies as long as the food, water and ammunition lasted. Each man had about 100 rounds, but food was going to be a problem because two of their supply wagons had fallen behind the previous evening and were still somewhere out in the sagebrush. The Major and his lieutenants must have decided that when news of their predicament leaked out to their supporters back in Cheyenne, a relief column would be organized. But rescue would take several days. Meanwhile they had best reinforce the ranch with any spare timber that was lying around and then hang on as best they could. One wonders what the Texans made of the whole business. After all, $5 a day was all very well, but...
In fact, Sheriff Angus and his cowboy army had found those supply wagons some way short of the ranch; under their tarpaulins were food, suitcases of personal baggage, ammunition and two boxes of dynamite. There must have been some rough humor about the use to which the dynamite might now be put.
By that afternoon, there were nearly 200 men surrounding the ranch. Starting as soon as it was dark, they began to move in closer and dig shallow trenches. Those besieged in the ranch also used the night to strengthen their defenses. The siege was going to be a drawn-out business.
Starting the next morning, rifle fire was directed at the horse corral to deny the invaders any means of escape; their horses were picked off one by one. At the same time, one or two particularly good shots were employed as snipers against the ranch-house. Consequently, when one of the “officers” (and a baron in his own right), Bill Irvine, was sitting by a window at the back of the ranch-house (where he thought he was safe), he took a direct hit on his big toe, from a range of nearly 400 yards. Elsewhere, well back from the siege-line, men were at work on two of those captured wagons. Roped together, and with a shield of heavy logs hanging on the front and sides, they were converted into a bulletproof fort on wheels. A dozen men, crouching behind the logs, intended to push the whole contraption until they got close enough to throw grenades made with the dynamite found in the wagons the day before. Someone had the notion of wrapping oily sacking around some of the grenades and so turning them into incendiaries.
Meanwhile, far away in Cheyenne, there had been no news from the north for nearly a week. True, the Governor and his friends in the Association had not expected to hear anything for the first few days, but by now they must have been getting uneasy. Had something gone wrong? If so, what? After all, Major Walcott should have reached Buffalo several days ago; he would immediately have ordered the telegraph line to be repaired and then sent some message of his success. The Cheyenne establishment was worried. Maybe they should send someone north to find out what was going on.
By the Tuesday evening the rolling fort was complete, for use at first light the next day. Now there were at least 400 men camped in the hills around the TA ranch. Some time on that same evening, a telegram arrived in Cheyenne. It did not come from Buffalo but from Gillette, a small town 70 miles to the east. Who sent it, to whom and what it said is a mystery. But we know exactly what action Governor Barber took when he read it. Within an hour, a flurry of priority telegrams was on its way to the divisional army commander in Omaha, to Wyoming’s two senators in Washington and, highest priority of all, to the President:
“An insurrection exists in Johnson County in the State of Wyoming against the government of said state... Open hostilities exist and large bodies of men are engaged in battle... United States troops are stationed at Fort McKinney which is about thirteen miles from the scene of the action which is known as the TA Ranch. I apply to you on behalf of the State of Wyoming to direct the US troops to assist in suppressing this insurrection. Lives of a large number of persons are in imminent danger. Amos W. Barber, Governor, Cheyenne.”
It was the least the Governor could do for his friends. But Washington’s clocks were two hours ahead of those in Cheyenne and by the time the telegram reached the White House, the President had gone to bed. No one was willing to wake him up with a panicky request for help from some politician somewhere out on the god-forsaken prairies more than half a continent away.
When no presidential authorization had come through by midnight, a sleepless Governor Barber telegraphed the Wyoming Senators again. Maybe they had been out that evening, so had not received his first message until they got home. Anyway, as soon as they learned what was happening they hurried round to the White House. They got the President out of bed and persuaded him of his responsibilities. So, sometime before dawn, the silence of the sleeping orderly room at Fort McKinney (outside Buffalo) was broken by the sudden clattering of the telegraph; the line had been restored just a few hours before. Colonel Van Horn was immediately called from his quarters. He read his instructions; he was to cooperate with the state government in “suppressing the rustler disorders”. He gave instructions for three troops of his cavalry to muster for departure within 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch (sic!), as the sky lightened, the “invaders” could see and then hear that fortress wagon creaking forward. Obviously, the rustler army was going to try to set fire to the place, just as they themselves had done only two days before at the KC cabin. All they could do was to wait until the wagon was really close and then hit it with such a weight of rifle fire that, somehow, they might halt the thing. But that plan could use most of their remaining ammunition. What then?
Of course, anyone who has seen a few Westerns will already know the answer to that question. If one were writing the screenplay it might run as follows:
“The scene begins with a slow montage of drawn and unshaven/bearded faces; we begin to realize they are peering through rifle slits. We cannot see what they can see, but we begin to hear what they can see: a distant creaking and the faint sound of men straining and exhorting each other while pushing something very heavy. The camera just watches the apprehension on those faces. Then it cuts to a high (crane) shot of the ranch-house and its neighboring barn; it pans across a corral of dead horses; it continues panning, to pick up an armored wagon being pushed forward foot by foot. Then, if the location geography allows, the camera slowly zooms onto a distant skyline. Like ants, a line of cavalry emerges, pennants flying. Then, with a cut to a mid-shot of the horses and t
roopers, the soundtrack bursts in to a rousing cavalry air. Intercut hooves and relieved, even smiling faces. Roll credits.”
Well, something like that anyway.
In real life it was not quite so straightforward. It seldom is. As soon as the besiegers heard that the cavalry was on its way - the word would have traveled ahead - they began a continuous and rapid fire into the ranch-house and the barn. It was an individual and collective act of frustration, to inflict as much damage as possible in the short time remaining. But once the cavalry had actually arrived and halted, Sheriff Angus gave the order to stop firing. It would have taken some minutes before the shooting raggedly died away, leaving only the smell of black powder and a smoky haze drifting off in the wind.
The Sheriff was surprised to be told by the cavalry Colonel that his orders had originated all the way from Washington, maybe from the President himself. The Sheriff agreed to lift the siege and to allow the military to take the surrender of the invaders, provided that they were all taken into the army’s custody pending their eventual transfer to Wyoming’s civil authorities for trial. Then the Colonel and a small party, including the Sheriff, rode down to the ranch-house. Major Walcott emerged; in a thoroughly bad temper, he objected to the presence of the Sheriff and made it very clear that he was not surrendering; at most, he was agreeing to give himself and his crew into the protection of the US Army, of which he himself was a retired officer. He demanded safe passage back to Cheyenne as soon as possible. While the details were being worked out, the cowboys on the hills moved forward. They were very angry, but somehow a loose discipline held and no one made a move against “the enemy” who now came out from the ranch-house and the barn to give up their weapons to the soldiers. Wagons were brought forward and the invaders, some defiant, some dejected, climbed aboard. One can be almost certain that there would have been, at the very least, some shouted insults from the watching and still-indignant crowd: “murderers, assassins, bastards!”
By 10 o’clock, as 400 armed men looked on, the army wagons were moving off. In two and a half days, despite the thousands of rounds that had been fired, the only casualties were Mr. Irvine’s toe and two of the Texans who had both accidentally shot themselves in the foot. The affair at the TA ranch was over. But that is not quite the end of the story.
***
In 1984 I was making a documentary about the settlement of the high plains. The TA Ranch was still there and, with permission from the owners, we filmed the barn where the Texans had holed up and, more specifically, we focused on the rifle slots which they had hurriedly made in the log walls. After 92 years, except for a car and a pick-up truck outside the main ranch-house, and the fact that there were more trees, I doubt that very much had changed.
In 2007, 23 years later, I was staying with some friends in Buffalo. We phoned to see if I could revisit the TA Ranch again. It had changed hands, but the new owners, Mr. and Mrs. Gadson, were most welcoming. Surprisingly, they knew something about me because, some years before, they had got hold of a copy of that film. Indeed, they sometimes ran it for their guests. They fed me and asked me to stay the night. They put me in the very room where Billy Irvine had his toe shot off by that distant sniper. I may say that, before getting into bed, it was something more than mere superstition that prompted me to draw the curtain across that window.
***
No event in the history of the history of the West has been more flagrantly misrepresented, sometimes with great skill... by writers ignorant of the ways of the old West.
A comment in Guardians of the Grassland, an official history of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, published by the WSGA in 1971
The Cheyenne Club is long gone. But the Wyoming Stock Growers Association still exists. Indeed it flourishes for, as any Wyoming car license plate will tell you, this is the Cowboy State. In short, beef is still very much “the business”.
Today, if one calls at the Association’s offices as I did - admittedly over 20 years ago - one will meet a thoroughly welcoming, cooperative and friendly bunch. But while they see no need to apologize for the dubious activities of some of their forebears -after all, it happened a long time ago - one senses that there is still just a touch of embarrassment about those far-off events. Maybe it is a case of “least said, long-time mended”. Anyway, in an official history of several thousand words, the Association advances a brief and neatly neutral rationale of the Powder River “invasion”. After mention of various other early “invasions” into Wyoming, such as that of tick-fever, Splenic fever and sheep (true cattlemen don’t much appreciate “woolies”), it comes to the point:
“Then there was another invasion - the invasion of Johnson County in 1892 which was not unrelated to some of the ‘invasions’ heretofore mentioned. Rustling was only the immediate cause of it. It was the tangible cause that the cattleman could see, and he fought against it. The transition had to be made from the open-range system to that of managing smaller herds of cattle on privately owned hay ranches and pastures, but nowhere was the transition fought so bitterly as in Wyoming. Johnson County was practically bankrupt after the invasion; cattlemen who took part suffered heavily - their cattle weren’t safe on the ranges. And the Wyoming Stock Growers Association suffered too.”
Fair enough. But it might be even fairer if, instead of just saying that Johnson County found itself “practically bankrupt after the invasion”, it explained that the County ran its treasury dry in its efforts to bring Major Walcott and his crew to justice. The fact is that the barons employed every imaginable legal and quasi-legal maneuver to prevent the whole murky affair being dragged into the daylight. The process of obfuscation began as soon as Major Walcott climbed into one of those cavalry wagons at the TA Ranch.
Long before the wagons were back at Fort McKinney, the Major was already letting the Colonel know just what he expected of him. One can conclude that the Major and his lieutenants were in a hurry to get back to the state capital as quickly as possible in order to start generating a smokescreen over any attempt by Sheriff Angus to expose their conduct as being in blatant breach of Wyoming’s constitution, to say nothing of their personal involvement in two murders. The Major might also have been worried about those two trapper-cowboys he had “released” back at Nate Champion’s cabin. Were they even then telling what they knew?
Well, yes, they were. Within a few days of their “release” they were in the town of Casper where, once they heard what had happened to their recent captors, they got drunk and talked to anyone who would listen. They became local celebrities, and got drunk some more.
The dangerous news of these two gossips was reported in Cheyenne at about the same time that Major Walcott and his 44 comrades-in-arms arrived back from Buffalo. Together with their army escort, they had had a rough journey, beginning with a five-day wagon ride through freezing temperatures and snow blizzards to the nearest railroad at the small town of Douglas. There, a crowd had gathered to shout and jeer. But, still with their cavalry escort, they had boarded a train and a day later pulled into Cheyenne. Now they were confined in some comfort at the local army base, Fort Warren, but not so confined that they could not first pose for a group photograph. Meanwhile, their cronies worked on the problem of the charges that the folk up in Buffalo insisted on bringing against them. The Major seems to have been much less concerned with his legal predicament than with revenge for the humiliation he had suffered. Apparently, even on the train he had been boasting that Johnson County would be punished within weeks. “The bloodshed is not yet begun”, was his reported comment. He had a plan.
But first there was the need to silence those boozy blabbermouths up in Casper. Maybe a dose of lead-poisoning in some bar brawl would be sufficient? But might that be too blatant for anyone to accept as a credible coincidence? Instead, the two men must be removed as far as possible from Wyoming. To this end, emissaries were sent to Casper to explain to the two cowboys where their
best interests lay. They were told to sober up, shut up, and mount up - for a ride eastward to Nebraska. They were accompanied by a pistol-toting posse. On their arrival at the Nebraska line, a local Sheriff (a friend of Buffalo’s Sheriff Angus), who had been tipped off by telegraph, arrested the two cowboys for theft: a charge he dreamed up to provide a pretext for holding them safe from their trigger-happy escort. The escort was arrested too, on principle. There followed a hectic few days while the telegraph lines ran hot with warrants, counter-warrants, charges, subpoenas and every legal device that imaginative Western lawyers could dream up.
The upshot of all these dodges was that the two cowboys were taken a little further east to appear before a judge who, advised by friends on the telegraph from Cheyenne, seems to have known his duty. He quickly turned the prisoners over to two Federal Marshals who had just arrived from Omaha with warrants for the two men on charges of having, at some quite unspecified time, sold liquor to some Indians. Being a federal offense, this required that the case be heard in a federal court. The nearest such court was in Omaha, 400 miles further east. Given that it would take time to assemble all the witnesses, the case would obviously take several months to come to court; meanwhile the prisoners would be held in custody and, thereby, unable to spill any damaging beans.
However, unexpectedly, the federal judge in Omaha saw through all these shenanigans; he released the two cowboys on bail of their own cognizance. The Association was most unhappy; Omaha was a mere 600 miles from Wyoming. Not far enough. So now Cheyenne played a trump card. It dispatched a lawyer to persuade the two cowboys that, at the end of just a few more days on a train, untold wealth could be theirs. The lawyer looked after them all the way to Rhode Island on the Atlantic seaboard, where they were each given a carefully post-dated check for $2,500, cashable only at a local bank. So, they would have to remain in Rhode Island in order to collect their money on the day the checks eventually became valid. Some say that the checks bounced. It seems probable.