On the early morning of July 20, 1889, Ella with fourteen year
old ward and helper, John L. DeCorey, decided to go down to the
river bottom where Horsecreek emptied into the Sweetwater River,
just about three miles or so from her place to trade with the
friendly Shoshone Indians that were encamped there. She heard
that they would have some beadwork to sell or trade for. While there, Ellen purchased a pair of beaded
moccasins and wore them during the walk home
with DeCorey across Bothwell’s hayfield.
While she was down at the Indian encampment, she did not realize what was conspiring back at her little homestead.
When the cattlemen arrived at Ellen’s house and found her gone, they sent Ernie McLean out checking to see where she might have gone. He rode down toward the river bottom, discovered Ellen and DeCorey at a distance and rode back to tell the others. Not waiting on McLean to come back, the cattlemen began examining her pasture. They found her cattle with fresh new brands, and all their worst suspicions were immediately confirmed.
So, it seemed clear that she was rustling cattle. They now believed what Bothwell wanted them to believe. John Durbin lost his temper and began tearing down Ellen’s fence, yanking the barbed wire fence out.
The following is from a eyewitness account: Gene Crowder, a lad about 14 years was interviewed by the writer of the Casper Mail. It appeared in the August 3, 1889 Carbon County Journal."I was at Ella’s (Watson) trying to catch a pony when the men rode up. John Durbin took down the wire fence and drove the cattle out while McLain and Conners kept Ella from going into the house. After a while they told her to get into the wagon and she asked them where they were going. They told her to Rawlins. She wanted to go into the house and change her clothes, but they would not permit her to do so and made her get into the wagon. She got in then and we all started toward Jim’s (Averell). I tried to ride around the cattle and get ahead, but Bothwell took hold of my pony’s bridle and made me stay with them. I then stayed with Durbin and helped him drive the cattle and the others went ahead and met Jim, who was starting to Casper, just inside his second gate. They made him throw up his hands and I think told him they had a warrant for his arrest, for after they made him unhitch his team, they all came up where the cattle were and Jim asked Durbin where the warrant was. Durbin and Bothwell both drew their guns on him and told him that was warrant enough. They made Jim get in the wagon and then drove back a ways and around the north side of the rocks. John DeCory and I hurried down to Jim’s house and told the folks there that they had taken Jim and Ella and were driving around the rocks with them. Frank Buchanan got on a horse and followed them, and was gone several hours. When he came back, he told us they had hung Jim and Ella".
Frank Buchanan was interviewed and said that when the boys told him Jim and Ella were being taken away by this mob he got his revolver and horse and went around the west end of the rocks and saw them going toward the river. They drove into the ford and followed up the bed of the stream for about two miles, once stopping a long time in the water and arguing loudly, but he could not understand what they said. After they came out of the river on the south side they went toward the mountains and pulled up a gulch leading into the timber and among the rocks. Buchanan then rode around on the south side of these rocky hills, tied his horse and crawled over close to where the party was talking. Bothwell had the rope around Jim’s neck and had it tied to a limb. He told Jim to be game and jump off. McLain was trying to put the rope around Ella’s neck, but she was dodging her head so that he did not succeed at that time. ‘I opened fire on them, but do not know whether I hit any one or not. They turned and began shooting at me. I unloaded my revolver twice, but had to run as they were shooting at me with Winchesters. I ran to my horse and rode to the ranch and told them Jim and Ella were hung and then I started to Casper. I went through Bothwell’s pasture and it was getting dark. I got lost and pulled up at Tex’s ranch about three o’clock next morning. The hanging took place about twelve hours before’.
Tex came to town as stated in the first of this article. Buchanan says that Jim Averell never owned any cattle and that there were none in his pasture at the time of this trouble; that the whole affair grew out of land troubles. Averell had contested the land Conner was trying to hold. He had made Durbin some trouble on a final proof and had kept Bothwell from fencing the whole Sweetwater Valley. Averell favored the settling up of these valuable lands in small ranches. Bothwell wanted the whole country and had said that rich men did not need to obey the laws. Ella Watson had a small bunch of cattle and had come honestly by them. the cattle were all freshly branded, as she only recently got her brand recorded.
Jim Averell was one of the biggest hearted men in the county. No one ever went hungry from his door and his house was always open for all. He was formerly postmaster and held the office of justice of the peace. He was obliging, socialible and always as a friend to the poor man. He had his faults; he was human. It is reported that he lived with this woman Watson at one time, and was not married to her, but if this is sufficient cause for mob law, what a glorious field Wyoming presents for hanging parties. Ellen Watson took up a ranch on Horse creek a few years since and has improved it in a very creditable manner.
Following information taken from George Hufsmith's book:"The Wyoming Lynching of Cattle Kate, 1889". There were two other witnesses to the abduction, whom history seems to have forgotten. They were H.B Fetz, editor of the Sweetwater Chief, and his assistant J.N. Speer. They actually witnessed the whole frightening abduction with field glasses from the rooftop of their new frame newspaper building in Bothwell. They had earlier been alerted by two unnamed cattlemen. They watched the angry procession file right by, or very near, the newspaper office on its way to examine Ellen’s calves, and they watched them parade by again later, when the abductors passed the north end of Averell Mountain and turn south toward Independence Rock.
Neither editor volunteered to give that firsthand testimony about the abduction at the grand jury hearing later in Rawlings. I cannot believe that they did not feel guilty of not saying anything. Her father Thomas Watson met with them after the inquest when he was at her place. He went over to their office and talked with them. I do not know if they told him of seeing her abduction by the cattlemen or not.
There was yet another witness to this abduction, but never said anything at any of the trials. His name was Dan Fitger. He quietly chose to withhold this information. Years later he admitted to his family, that he seen the abduction. He was plowing up a new hay meadow for an experimental alfalfa planting on Schoonmaker’s ‘Gate’ Ranch just north of, and a little downstream from, Devil’s Gate. From this vantage point, Fitger said he clearly saw Tom Sun’s white topped tandem seated buggy and attentively observed the progress of the lynching party down in the river bottom. Also watched as Buchanan followed so far behind.
I believe that most of the cattlemen wanted to just scare Jim Averell and Ella Watson out of the Sweetwater Valley. I believe that Tom Sun had no intentions of hanging either of them. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. They talked about drowning them in the Sweetwater River. Ella quickly pointed out that there wasn’t enough water in the river to give a land hog a decent bath. At that time of the year, the river was pretty dry.
To avoid riding right in front of Averell’s store and alerting anyone who might be there, they turned north up the east side of Averell Mountain and around its north end and then headed southwest across the sagebrush toward Sweetwater River and Independence Rock.
This picture is of Averell's Mountain, taken from the north side of it, standing on Ellen's homestead claim.
The six lynchers tied their horses up in Spring Creek Gulch and had to drag both of their victims over some rocks in Spring Creek Gulch to a sight in Pine Canyon. No one would see them there, it was so secluded from rest of the countryside. High rocks all around and one some lone scrub pine trees there. They picked out a tree that was over looking a small ravine and a rock under neath one of the limbs. Only ropes that they had with them, were the lariats that they used for roping cattle with. They were thin and one of the lynchers made hangman nooses out of the two ropes that they had. Bothwell got the noose over Jim Averell’s head, but Ernie McLean had a time with Ella. She was dodging the rope and screaming at him. Rest of the party just stood back and watched the proceedings, not realizing that they were really going to hang the pair. I believe that they thought, they were just only going to scare them, so that they would leave the area. But A.J. Bothwell had other plans. As they argued with Jim and Ella about leaving the area, Bothwell looked at Jim with towering arrogance and told him that if he wanted to show everyone how brave he was he ought to be ‘game and jump off’, and shoved Jim off of that rock and over the ravine, where he started choking with the tight rope around his neck. At the same time Ernie McLean was trying to put the rope around Ella’s neck. At the same time shots rang out from up in the rocks and John Durbin fell to the ground, hit in the leg. They looked up and seen Frank Buchanan firing at them. Ernie McLean leaped forward and shoved Ella off of the rock too, both of them were standing on. The tree trembled and then both Ellen and Jim were suspended, writhing and kicking. Ella could barely touch the ground with the toes of her moccasins. Neither one of them had their hands tied, so they were probably grabbing at the ropes around their necks, and trying to swing themselves back upon the rock they had been on. The two were banging up against one another and were hitting and gouging and kicking unmercifully and spinning one another around, while they tried again and again to pull themselves up on those thin lariats. Neither one of them had fallen no more than two feet, not enough to break their necks. They were strangling and slowly suffocating. In Ellen’s struggle, she kicked off her newly purchased moccasins. None of the lynchers tried to help them, just stood there and watched them, and probably laughing about it. Then the men stood there watching the foaming blood begin to ooze from the noses and lips of the grotesquely struggling pair grappling for life at the end of cowboys lassos. Silence fell among the men and among the granite rocks as they listened to the gurgling sound of the dying.
The following pictures shows the route the lynchers took.
to a Sandy knoll.
Then they had to go over that sandy knoll into Pine Gulch. 
Then they had to drag Jim and Ella over some rocks before reaching the Canyon they were lynched in.
All of the six lynchers, turned and stumbled over the rocks that they had come up over. None of them saying a word to each other. They left the two hanging there. I believe that they would of been left there for the buzzards and insects if it had not been for Buchanan and his witnessing the event. Bothwell would later acquire her land.
All of those six men had to been bothered rest of their lives over watching two people die a horrible death at the end of a rope. Only the person that was a winner was Bothwell, he finally got rid of them, and later on could acquire their land.
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