A few stories survive about the immediate aftermath of that
terrible tragedy. One was from Charles Countryman, who owned the
Bar H6 Ranch in the shadow of Split Rock. He woke up the next
morning and open the door and went outside. He discovered someone sitting on the
porch steps sobbing. When Charles saw the person, he asked who he
was and what he wanted. The person got up and told him that they
had just hung a man and a woman the night before. The person was
Ernie McLean. Countryman, told him, he didn’t want to hear
anymore about it, and ordered McLean off of his property.
Another story involves John Crowder, the father of Gene Crowder,
the sometimes freighter from Whiskey Gap. John Crowder had bought
a horse and wagon from a neighboring rancher, named Irving Hays
from the North side of Whiskey Gap and was on his way to Casper.
He was camped out along the Oregon Trail very near where the
lynching took place. Early in the morning a cowboy rode up and
warned him about what had happened there the previous afternoon.
Upon hearing the terrible news, Crowder promptly unhitched the
horse, struggled up on its back and galloped away leaving the
wagon standing there in the sagebrush flats where it remained
unmolested for three years before Crowder suddenly returned
briefly and drove it off. After that, John was never seen again.
Gene Crowder disappeared after the incident also, which means he
went back home to his father and his father left the area with
him, so that he didn’t have to testify what he witnessed, and
maybe have something happen to him.
Another story was the morning following the lynching. The
ranchers and their roundup cowboys were gathered on horseback in
a large circle on Schoonmaker’s old ‘Gate’ Ranch, just north of
Tom Sun’s Hub and Spoke Ranch on the Sweetwater River. Cowboys
were receiving roundup orders for the day from the ranchers, when
brave little Gene Crowder rode up with tears in his eyes and
screamed in front of everyone that Ellen and Jim had been lynched
and shouted the names of all six of the cattlemen involved. Joe
Sharp simply didn’t believe it, but as he mounted next to
Bothwell, he whirled around in his saddle and asked ‘Why, you
didn’t hang them, did you, Bothwell?’ Bothwell never answered him
or even looked up but just kept looking down at the ground.
Everyone else was struck mute.
Frank Buchanan left the lynching sight and rode toward the north
east going along the Oregon Trail towards Casper. Casper was
forty miles away. He finally arrived at E.J.’Tex’ Healy’s log
cabin at the head of Fish Creek about twenty five miles southwest
from Casper, about three in the morning. Buchanan told Healy
about the pair being lynched by the six cattlemen. Healy told
Buchanan to stay at his ranch and rest up, because he looked so
tired from the long ride there. Healy told Buchanan that he would
finish the ride into Casper to get the Sheriff. Healy hastily
dressed and mounted his horse and made the twenty-five mile trip
into Casper to tell the startled Deputy Sheriff Philip Watson. It
was a little before Sunday noon.
As soon as Deputy Watson heard the story, he rounded up about
seven able bodied men and deputized them. Warrants were sworn out
for the supposed lynchers. He was aware that the coroner should
be in attendance to hold a proper inquest over the bodies. He
couldn’t find the regular coroner, Dr A.P. Haynes, so he
deputized Dr Joseph Benson, in his stead to serve as Acting
Coroner.
Back at Tex Healy’s Ranch, Frank Buchanan awakened and rode back
to the Averell’s road ranch. He discovered Cole, DeCorey, and
Crowder already at work making caskets out of rough pine lumber
for Jim and Ella.
In Casper the next morning, which was Monday, the coroner’s posse
was anxious to get going, and they started out for the Sweetwater
post office about forty-five miles away. It was well after dark on the evening of Monday, the twenty-second when the posse reached Averell's ranch. The posse wanted to
wait till daylight to go get the bodies. But Watson order them to
go out at once and get them. They used lanterns from Averell’s
place to light the way to the sight. Frank Buchanan guided them five miles farther to Spring Creek gulch. There in the darkness of early Tuesday morning their lanterns found the dangling bodies, which had been there in the July heat for two and a half days.
Hanging from the limb of a stunted pine growing on the summit of a cliff fronting the Sweetwater River, were the bodies of James Averell and Ella Watson. Side by side they swing, their arms touching each other, their tongues protruding and their faces swollen and discolored almost beyond recognition. Common cowboy lariats had been used, and both had died by strangulation, neither fallen over two feet. Judging from signs too plain to be mistaken a desperate struggle had taken place on the cliff, and both man and woman had fought for their lives until the last. wrote the first reporter to talk to members of the posse.
Their bodies were cut down and taken to Averell’s road house,
where Justice of the Peace B.F. Emery, a Casper attorney,
solemnly swore in those present and held an official coroner’s
inquest over their bodies. resulting in a verdict to the effect
that the deceased met their death at the hands of John Durbin, Tom
Sun, A.J.Bothwell, Robert Conner, Robert Galbraith and a man
named Earnest McLean.
The bodies were placed in one box and buried at Averell’s Road
ranch. There was about a foot of water in the bottom of the
gaping hole due to its location to Horse Creek and the
Sweetwater River on both sides, so the men probably dug down
about five feet.
Someone rounded up two oak wagon wheels and placed them side by
side over the fresh graves. Although the wood today has rotted
away, the remaining old iron hubs and iron tires, now broken and
encrusted with over a century of heavy flaking rust, still
survive there.
After the burial of the pair, Sheriff Watson and his posse
proceeded to the ranch of Tom Sun, who admitted he was one of the
lynchers and really gave the names of the others. He stated
further that one of the shots fired by Buchanan at the lynchers,
when they were in the act of stringing Averell up, struck John
Durbin in the hip, inflicting a slight wound. The wounded man had
been taken to Sand Creek, and Sun did not know whether he was
badly hurt or not.
Taking Sun into custody, the party next proceeded to the ranch of
A.J. Bothwell, who also readily admitted that he had assisted at
the hanging. He told Buchanan and Healy, that both would go over
the range in the same way if they did not leave the country and
on being told that he would be taken to Rawlins, he advised the
Sheriff to take a look at every tree he came to on his way back
to Casper, for he would be likely to find six or eight more
cattle rustlers hanging by the neck when he returned from
bringing them to jail.
I was told by a descendent of a small rancher that lived in the
area of the Sweetwater river, that Bothwell had some of his
cowboys, ride to the different homesteaders and small ranchers
and told them, if they changed the story or told the true story,
that they would end up like Jim and Ella did, or get burned out.
Several of the smaller ranchers were afraid of Bothwell.
Deputy Philip Watson arrested rest of the lynchers, and took them
to Carbon County, and turned them over to Sheriff Frank Hadshell,
of Carbon County. The following day, on July 26, 1889, the
Cheyenne Daily Leader reported: A Rawlins telegram says that all
the men were arrested by Sheriff Hadsell of Carbon County and
given a preliminary hearing yesterday afternoon. Bail was fixed
at a $5,000 bond. Each lyncher was
allowed to post each others bond.
The acting Carbon County Prosecuting Attorney, H.H. Howard, was
on the side of the cattlemen, and found Deputy Watson’s coroner’s
inquest illegal and then ordered a replacement coroner’s inquest
made up of jurors who were nowhere near the lynching. On July 23
Howard sent Coroner Bennett, who was also a justice of the peace,
to the gravesite to hold a new inquest over the graves. It is
during this second inquest that we learn that Tex Healy and a
cowboy named Charles Buck, who lived about four miles northeast
of Tex on Poison Spring Creek, dug the actual grave and that
nephew Ralph Coe actually helped carry his uncle’s casket into
the grave.
J.A. Bennett, stated in the second inquisition, that the bodies of
Jim Averell and Ella Watson were buried at Averell’s ranch, and
were not fit to be exhumed. This automatically put the first
inquisition into legal aspects, accusing the original lynchers.
After the inquisition, the witnesses began to disappear, before
the actual trail can be brought about.
Ralph Cole died not too long after the lynching August 25, 1889,
possibly from being poisoned, by the help of a doctor on the
lynchers side.
Gene Crowder disappeared, after the lynching and never seen
again. In a newspaper account, he and Buchanan were hiding in
Casper. and before the trial.
John DeCorey, went back to Steamboat Springs, Colorado. But they
never summoned him for the trial.
Judge Samuel T. Corn, presided over the grand jury proceedings in
the Watson-Averell case. The grand jury met in Rawlins in October
1889 following the lynchings.
Frank Buchanan, disappeared, and maybe was bribed to leave the
countryside, before the trial. He was last seen in protective
custody in Cheyenne. Right in the middle of the cattle barons
country. He was seen a year or so later by a news editor by the
name of W.R.Hunt, a reporter for the Chicago Inter Ocean during
the time of the lynching.
Some of W.R. Hunts excerpts from his note book, years 1890-1920 is in George Hufsmiths book The Wyoming Lynching of Cattle Kate, 1889.
The notebook was discovered in the Kansas City attic of an
elderly widow named Hartwell during construction of a new wing on
her home.
It tells where Buchanan, the main witness wondered over the country for the next year or two. Hiding from the lynchers, and fearing for his life.
Since all of the witnesses disappeared before the grand jury
could be convened in Rawlins, on October 14, 1889, Judge Samuel
T. Corn, could only dismiss the jury. by saying. "The
indictments were not a true bill. The grand jury at the present
term of court, having failed to find a true bill of indictment
against the above named defendants, or either of them, it is
ordered by the court that the above named defendants and each of
them and their bonds be discharged." The six lynchers walked away
free men, without even being tried for murder.
Some of the above information was taken from the book by George Hufsmith, "The Lynching of Cattle Kate, 1889".
In Helena Huntington Smith's book "The War On Powder River" she states: No attempts were made to investigate these three disappearances or the boys death, nor were any questions ever asked of the men most likely to be involved. Upheld by most of the money and all of the influence in the Territory and openly applauded for what they had done they were completely immune to consequences and their arrogance knew no bounds. They were even rewarded. Bothwell and Tom Sun had been named to the executive committee of the Wyoming Stock Growers' Association in the spring of 1889, Sun served until 1910 and Bothwell until 1902. John Durbin was appointed to the committee the following spring.
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