ArizonaRealCountry.com 41 August 2018 knew how isolated he and Ella Watson were and knew that those that would help were few and far between. Bothwell devised a plot that would not only physically destroy both Averell and Watson but would also smear their reputations. Accordingly, on that hot, late afternoon of July 20, 1889, six armed men led by Bothwell surrounded Ella Watson and one of her ranch hands near her ranch, then forced them to accompany them to Averell's nearby home where they found him on his wagon on his way to Casper and surrounded him as well. The vigilantes took him into custody and despite the efforts of Watson's young cowhand and another cowboy who rode up and tried to follow them, took them to the nearby river and summarily hanged them. Another brave Cowboy, a friend of the two doomed couple named Frank Buchanan, tried to intervene and actually fired his six-shooter in vain at the lynch mob. His efforts not only came to no avail but doomed him as well. It was obvious that Bothwell and his vigilantes would be brought before the courts for the murder of Averell and Watson. What wasn't obvious was the power of Bothwell to make bad things happen - and happen quite soon. First off, the local press had sold their souls to Bothwell and the WSGA. This sad excuse of the Fifth Estate proceeded to cast the honest but extremely outspoken Averell as the leader of a band of notorious rustlers and made the one-time Kansas farm girl Ella Watson out to be a notorious "madam" named Cattle Kate, a prostitute who freely sold her body in exchange for rustled cattle. This sordid smear stayed with her all the way to 1980 when this hapless girl was portrayed in "Heaven's Gate" as a prostitute, albeit one who was also the common-law wife of Averell. But even the lies of a so-called free press did not quell the doubts expressed by local Cowboys and homesteaders who demanded answers as to if the two of them were so bad, why hadn't they been escorted into Casper and made to stand trial. So witnesses had to disappear - and disappear permanently. First to go was the brave Cowboy and friend of Averell's Frank Buchanan, who had vainly opened fire on the lynch mob. He disappeared without a trace just a couple of months after the hanging of his friend, probably "dry-gulched," i.e., assassinated by one of Bothwell's men. The 11 year old (some sources say 14) friend of Ella Watson's, Gene Crowder, who had witnessed the abduction and the hanging, died suddenly of "Bright's Disease," some suggesting he actually had been poisoned, as was supposedly the case of Averell's 22-year-old nephew, Ralph Cole. Helena Huntington Smith's authoritative account of the Johnson County happenings, "The War on Powder River" also strongly suggested that Cole ran afoul of one of Bothwell's hired gunslingers, a former Pinkerton detective turned mercenary thug named George Henderson, who waylaid him near a train station, shot him dead, then set his body on fire. At any rate, all of the witnesses to the atrocity went missing for keeps or were found dead. It would be nice to say that justice won out in the end and that Albert J. Bothwell would be found guilty and to have suffered the same end as the two innocent folks he lynched then smeared. But there was no justice served, period. For not only did Albert J. Bothwell smear the reputations of the doomed couple, he had all of their friends and relations who had witnessed the crime end up dead or permanently missing at the hands of his henchmen. And none were the wiser for it. Even aspiring writer Owen Wister, then traveling through Wyoming would write in his diary dated October 12, 1889: "Sat yesterday in smoking car with one of the men indicted (sic) for lynching the man and the woman. He seemed like a good solid citizen, and I hope he'll get off." It would be pretty obvious whose side Owen Wister would be on. The only trouble is that his own "Virginian" would turn out to be more like evil Trampas and not the taciturn, law-abiding Joel McCrea sort of fellow. But we slightly anticipate events here. As for Albert J. Bothwell, crime did pay as he never served jail time or faced the hangman's rope for his cold-blooded murder spree. He took the hanged couple's land without any opposition moral or physical and with no consequences. After serving on the board of the WSGA, he would move in 1915 to the growing California beach resort town of Santa Barbara - and die there in bed, in 1928. For a time things stayed quiet on the Wyoming Good to Canton meant his employers, the land barons, and stockmen of the WSGA whether they themselves were good or not; evil were the lone Cowboys and the homesteaders, who in Canton's myopic view were out to destroy a pastoral, though as we've seen not exactly virtuous nor tolerant way of life. He may not have been working for Bothwell, but men like Major Frank Wolcott and John Clay were just as ruthless if not just as brutal as Bothwell was and they wanted the menace of the old open range lone Cowboy or the newcomer "Honyocker" off their land and out of their sight. And if that meant drastic measures, well, that's what Frank Canton was hired for. Thus, by the early summer of 1891, the killings began in earnest in Johnson County. Cowboys trying to eke out a living on their small ranches were considered by the big ranchers to be rustlers even if they were not. A corpse here and there, hanging from a cottonwood or riddled with bullets. Many got the hint and cleared out, but there were two tough Texans, two boys who had grown up together and were close friends who ventured to Wyoming to start afresh. One of them was a former gunslinger and cowpoke named Nathan D. Champion. His friend was John A. Tisdale, the former foreman of Theodore Roosevelt's Elkhorn Ranch in North Dakota, who bought a small ranch in Wyoming for himself, his wife and his two small children. He had hoped to live a quiet, peaceful life on the plains. But both men knew another Texan from the old Texas neighborhood, a gunfighter by the name of Joe Horner. Tisdale apparently had some issues with this Joe Horner back home, and now in Buffalo, he had come face-to-face with Horner, now Frank Canton. And Canton made no secret of his animus towards Tisdale. At the same time Champion had some rough dealings with one of the prominent stockmen in the region - whose last name ironically was Tisdale - but this David Robert Tisdale was no relative nor friend of Champion's pal John A. Tisdale even though his own brother was also named John. He was a Canadian, a mean cuss with a vicious streak in him. This David Robert Tisdale mentioned his problems with Champion to Frank Canton and the other range detectives, and very soon an assassination attempt was made on the young ex-gunfighter from Texas. Champion survived this first attempt on his life, but he knew from this time forward he was indeed a marked man. (We'll diverge a bit in the narrative to bring back Owen Wister, who had openly admired the big ranch owners and would make a literary hero out of their favorite gunman Frank Canton.) At about the same time Canton was engaged in a confrontation with his old Texas acquaintance, Owen Wister had accepted the hospitality offered by David Robert Tisdale, the Canadian rancher. He would soon witness a horrific sight and openly regret his decision to stay with the old Canadian Tisdale. For as Wister rode back with the amiable (on-the-surface) Tisdale to his ranch, he increasingly noticed how tired Tisdale's pony was and how angry the Canadian seemed to get by the minute. Finally, when the horse stopped and seemed unable to go any further, Tisdale began to beat the poor animal and kept beating him even though it was clear the horse was worn out. The Range War continued from page 38 PART TWO of The Range War continued in our September Issue. Above left and middle: Husband and wife, Jim Averell and Cattle Kate Ella Watson. Above right: Nate Champion. All three sided with the lone Cowboys and homesteaders and all three basely murdered. plains, but north of the Sweetwater and much closer to the major Wyoming cow-towns of Buffalo and Cheyenne things were getting quite ominous. For the new range detective that the WSGA hired was not a virtuous, law-abiding lawman but a feared gunfighter named Frank M. Canton who played both sides of the law; a one-time outlaw who was convicted of murder and spent time in Texas jails before busting out, changing his name and ostensibly changing his lifestyle. But not exactly. For this Range Detective's real name was Joe Horner and like many other Old West "lawmen" he spent his early life as an outlaw constantly in jail or on the run. Early sources insist that he was born in Richmond, Virginia though more recent accounts claim he was actually born in Indiana. He may have served as a teenage orderly to a Union officer in the Civil War, other accounts claim he drifted into Texas and worked as a Cowboy for a time before getting into a scrape with two "Buffalo Soldiers" killing one of them and wounding the other. He subsequently turned to robbing banks, but after one particularly violent shoot-out was captured by the Texas Rangers. Horner was able to escape from Ranger custody, drifted up to Wyoming, married, and supposedly vowed to change his ways - but as things turned out, this real-life model for Wister's "Virginian" turned out to be much more like Trampas than that heroic "Virginian" figure portrayed by McCrea and Jim Drury.