that had been aroused by the previous murders, and a meeting was
called at which Frank Benton, an ex-sheriff of Johnson County, was
by common assent adjudged the person guilty of Ranger Jones’s death,
and he was sentenced to die by the hand of the first of the settlers
who had a chance to pot him. It was further agreed to discover, if
possible, the ringleaders of the “White Caps,” and either to lynch them
or drive them from the country. But the searchers were unable to find
Benton, who, having heard of the plans laid for his taking-off, held a
hasty consultation with Dr. Hays and Ben Williams, two of the leading
cattlemen, and then boarded a train at Cheyenne and fled to Texas.
Once there, he began scouring the country for “bad men.” Any man who
had some other man’s blood on his hands found favour with Benton, and
at the little town of Utica, where he made his head-quarters, he soon
gathered together as choice a collection of “toughs” and murderers as
could be found in any one hundred square miles on earth. These men
he hired to go with him to Wyoming and kill “Rustlers.” They signed
a contract to stay with him for six months and were to receive fifty
dollars apiece per month, and one hundred dollars were to be divided
amongst the bunch for every man that they killed.
Late in April the band, consisting of sixty men, with Benton and a
negro cook, boarded a train on the M. K. T. for the north. At Omaha,
where they outfitted, they bought up practically all the ammunition in
the town, as well as large quantities of provisions, bedding, tents,
and other articles. They were joined here by Dr. Hays, who, after
expressing himself as being well pleased with the appearance of the men
selected, informed Benton that horses and supply wagons awaited him at
Douglas, Wyoming. Before parting from Benton he gave him a revised list
of some forty men of whom the cattle kings were desirous of ridding the
country.
On Thursday, the 27th of April, the little town of Douglas was
surprised and terrified by the appearance of sixty armed men who
alighted from the Elkhorn train. The strangers paid but little
attention to the townspeople, but hastened out to the E----Y ranch near
the town, where their horses awaited them. Here they pitched camp for
the night, and at daylight the next morning set off for the north-west,
camping that night on the banks of Wild Horse Creek, some forty miles
from Douglas. By Saturday night they were within sight of the Powder
River, but were halted by Benton in the hills south of the river until
it became dark, when they advanced, and, after fording the river,
camped in a large cottonwood grove for the night. At two o’clock in the
morning they were awakened, and followed their leader on foot for a
couple of miles, when, just as day was breaking, they came to a little
log-house near the banks of the Powder River. The building was on the
claim of a small rancher named Ben Champion, and stopping with him at
the time was another rancher named Billy Ray. Both men had received
White Cap notices, and were living together for greater security.
Swiftly the men under Benton--who were known thereafter as White
Caps--surrounded the ranch and lay concealed, awaiting the appearance
of the hapless ranchers, who were to be their first victims. About five
o’clock the door opened and Billy Ray stepped out.
“Get breakfast, Ben, and I will look after the horses,” he called out,
cheerily, as he started for the log stable near the river bank.
Half-way there he paused and partly turned as if to retrace his steps.
Thinking that they had been discovered in their hiding-place, Benton
gave the order to fire, and poor Ray fell riddled with bullets.
“Now for the house, boys! Get the other one!” yelled Benton, and he
headed a rush at the log building. The rush, however, ended in a wild
stampede for shelter, for, regardless of the bullets smashing into
the logs around him, Ben Champion appeared in the doorway with a
six-shooter in either hand streaming fire and lead. One White Cap lay
dead close beside the body of Billy Ray, and another one was painfully
trying to drag himself into shelter with a broken leg trailing behind
him.
From all sides a perfect hail of bullets was now poured into the log
cabin, and but for the seasoned logs stopping a large proportion of the
bullets no man could have lived inside for five minutes. As it was,
bullets were constantly getting in through the chinks and crevices
between the timbers. After the first charge failed, Champion, knowing
that it was only a question of time before the White Caps killed him,
sat down at his table and wrote a letter of farewell to his mother and
sisters in far-away Vermont. He also, from time to time, wrote down
short comments on the battle in progress. This blood-stained diary,
which is now the property of the State Historical Society at Cheyenne,
reads as follows:--
“Six o’clock.--It is just about an hour since they killed Billy, and,
while bullets have been buzzing around in here pretty lively ever
since, I am still untouched. I just wrote a letter to my mother.
“Seven o’clock.--As I was writing in this book before a bullet smashed
up my left arm pretty badly, but I have it tied up and the bleeding
stopped. Now I have got my revenge, too, for as I shifted from one end
of the shack to the other I caught one fellow trying to run up here
with a bunch of burning brush in his hands. He’ll not need brush to
keep warm where he is now.
“Nine o’clock.--Still on deck, but getting kind of wobbly on the pins
from loss of blood. Have been hit four times.
“Nine-forty a.m.--Well, good-bye everyone. They set a load of hay on
fire and let it run down the hill against the side of the shack and the
roof is all ablaze. I am waiting till the smoke settles over the main
bunch a little thicker and then I will try to get in amongst them with
my six-shooter, if I can, before they down me. Good-bye.--BEN.”
A whiff of wind from the north blew a heavy cloud of smoke low down
over a bunch of White Caps lying in the shelter of a small creek some
fifty yards from the cabin, and when it lifted Ben Champion stood
amongst them with a smoking revolver in his hand. A moment later he lay
dead on the sand with over forty bullets through his body, but in that
short space of time his deadly Colt had sent two more of the White Caps
to their last reckoning.
[Illustration: “BEN CHAMPION APPEARED IN THE DOORWAY WITH A SIX-SHOOTER
IN EITHER HAND STREAMING FIRE AND LEAD.”]
While the White Caps were burying their dead, the horses and wagons
were brought up and the outfit cooked their breakfast on the embers
of the burning logs. Then, placing their wounded comrade in a supply
wagon, they moved up the river in search of more victims. Surrounding
two ranches, they crept up to them, only to find them vacant; they were
too late, for their firing had attracted the attention of a rancher
named Whitmore as he stopped to water his horse at the ford a mile
below Champion’s ranch, and he had ridden up close enough to see the
finish of the unequal fight, and had then spurred his horse up the
river, warning the settlers that the much-talked-of White Cap invasion
had begun. The news spread over the country like wildfire, and, instead
of fleeing from the danger-zone, the ranchers and cow-punchers buckled
on their guns and headed for the scene of the fight. They started
in ones and twos, but as they got closer in they began to gather in
bunches of ten or twelve, all spoiling for a fight, if there was a
prospect of avenging the death of their comrades.
In vain did Benton and his regiment try to close with any of these
bunches; their horses were fresh, and they would run as long as chased
by the White Caps; but once let the chase cease and they were back
again, waiting for a chance to sneak up under cover of a hill or
ravine to pour in a volley of bullets and again take to their heels
if pursued. By three o’clock there were fully fifty men harassing
the White Caps, and Benton decided to make for the shelter of the
A--T ranch on Crazy Woman Creek, some fifty miles to the north-west.
The first few miles was an orderly march, but the “Rustlers,” as the
other side called them, were constantly increasing in numbers and
pressing in closer behind. At five o’clock Benton gave his men the
order to strap their ammunition on to the backs of the wagon horses
and to abandon the wagons and supplies. From an orderly march their
ride had now degenerated into a wild dash over the barren sage brush
flats for refuge in the far-off ranch. Darkness alone saved them from
extermination, and as it was, only forty-five powder-stained, worn-out
White Caps rode up to Dr. Hays’s A--T ranch just as the sun rose on
Monday morning.
After a hasty breakfast they set to work barricading the windows and
doors of the stout log-house, as well as building a fort of stones
around the well and cutting a trench from there to the house and the
barn, a large two-storey frame structure which was rendered almost
bullet-proof by lining it with bales of hay. Noon found them well
prepared for a siege--found, too, close on three hundred Rustlers
watching them from the surrounding hill-tops.
A long-range fusillade was kept up all day on Monday without effect on
either side, and Monday night also passed uneventfully. Tuesday found
the Rustlers entrenched in rifle-pits and stone forts within easy range
on all sides of the ranch buildings. They had received large quantities
of ammunition from Buffalo, which was only fifteen miles north of them,
and had also brought up the tents and provisions abandoned by the White
Caps near the Powder River. All day long the numbers of the Rustlers
kept constantly increasing, till by nightfall fully five hundred men
were pouring lead into the buildings and forts on the A--T. The firing
kept up all Tuesday night, and under cover of the darkness the Rustlers
advanced their rifle-pits to within two hundred yards of the ranch
buildings. Seated on the top of a pile of earth and thinking himself
safe in the darkness, young Tommy Arnold, of the Rustlers, fired a shot
at the dark mass of buildings in the valley. Quick as lightning came an
answering shot, fired at the flash of his gun, and young Arnold pitched
forward, shot through the breast. Angered at the death of Arnold,
several Rustlers digging a pit near him seized their rifles and poured
in a volley of bullets at the spot where they had seen the gun-flash
in the valley. With five further shots, however, the hidden marksman
wounded two of them and threw dirt into the faces of a couple more, so
that they were soon glad to quit the unequal duel. The man who did this
shooting was afterwards discovered to be an ex-United States marshal
from Oklahoma, named Smith. He was wounded on the last day of the
fight, and afterwards died from his wounds.
On Tuesday afternoon Bob Snelling and John Pettybone, two of the
richest ranchers among the Rustlers, rode over to Fort McKinney and
offered the commander there two thousand dollars for the use of his
cannon for one day. Of course, the commandant had to refuse, and he
further took warning, so that that night, when a party of Rustlers, led
by Tom Ray, arrived with the intention of stealing the gun they found
it had been wheeled into the guard-house and a sentry stationed over
it. Not to be daunted by these failures to secure a big gun, old Jack
Flagett, a veteran of the Civil War, essayed to make one. He secured a
team and drove to Buffalo, returning with a number of lengths of iron
piping. He first placed a three-inch pipe around a two-inch and pounded
the intervening space full of wet sand, repeating the performance with
a four and six inch pipe. The whole affair was then chained securely
to the stump of a tree on the top of a hill about five hundred yards
from the A--T buildings. Next the amateur artillerist rammed in a
couple of pounds of powder, and, for a projectile, put in five pounds
of dynamite. Then he called out to some near-by Rustlers: “Come over,
boys, and watch me blow that White Cap outfit to Hades!”
He was about to set a match to the touch-hole when one Fred Johnston
interfered.
“Better set it off with a fuse, Jack,” he said.
“Well, to satisfy you, I will,” replied Flagett; “but there is no
danger, as this gun can stand anything.”
A six-inch fuse was then placed in the gun and lighted, and everyone
retired into an adjacent pit, dragging old Jack with them. For a moment
all was silence; then came an awful ear-splitting report, and a cloud
of dust settled over the rifle pit. When it cleared away all trace of
Flagett’s cannon and the stump as well had disappeared. Not a piece
of either was ever found, though Hall Smith, who was in charge of the
cook-camp half a mile farther back, swore that he heard a piece of pipe
whistle over his head a few seconds after the explosion.
Wednesday night passed very quietly, the White Caps being short of
ammunition, and the Rustlers busy in the construction of a movable
fort on wheels. They placed three mountain wagons in the shape of the
letter V, and built a framework of poles between them. This frame they
covered with bales of hay and suspended other bales from it clear to
the ground. There was room within this curious fort for twenty men,
and loopholes were left in the front sides for firing through as they
slowly propelled it forward. It was the intention to roll this up
within throwing distance of the ranch buildings, and then to demolish
them with dynamite bombs.
On Thursday morning, just at sunrise, the ponderous engine began to
crawl forward on its half-mile journey. Slowly but surely it crept
along, till at ten o’clock it was less than three hundred yards from
the ranch. In vain did the White Caps concentrate their fire on the
moving fortress; their bullets were absorbed by the hay as water by a
sponge. Inside the beleaguered ranch all was excitement and terror.
Only too well did they know the fate that awaited them unless the grim
monster advancing on them was checked. Benton called his boys together.
“Boys, we must stop that fort or die like rats in a trap,” he said. “I
want twenty men to follow me. Each will take a torch in one hand and
his six-shooter in the other, and I promise one thousand dollars to the
first man to fire the hay walls of the fort.”
The moving fort was now less than a hundred yards from the house, and
the furious fire from the hills and pits that had covered its advance
died down as the Rustlers lay, with their loaded rifles silent, waiting
for some move on the part of the White Caps.
Within the ranch-house all was quiet. The twenty men selected for the
dash stood with their right hands clenched around the butts of their
heavy Colts and their lefts grasping kerosene-soaked torches. All eyes
were fixed on their leader, who stood next to big Ben Williams, who
was noiselessly removing the bars from the door. “Ready, boys!” came
in clear, low tones from Benton as the last bar was lifted from its
socket. Every man braced himself for the leap--ready, in fact, anxious,
to have the dreadful suspense at an end, though each well knew that
the opening of the door would be a signal for five hundred rifles to
sweep the space between the house and the fort with a perfect hail of
lead. Quickly the door swung open, and Benton leaped out. His eyes
swept the surrounding hills; then he turned and tried to leap back into
the protection of the log walls again. But all in vain! Quicker than
thought came a flash of fire from a loophole in the fort, and Benton
fell in the doorway with a bullet from Tom Champion’s rifle through his
lungs.
“Keep back, boys!” he gasped. “Stay inside. You’re saved--the troops
are coming.” They dragged him in, but these were his last words; the
heavy hand of the avenging angel had fallen on him, and he had gone for
a final reckoning.
“To the loopholes, boys!” shouted Williams, who had now taken command.
“Shoot as you never shot before. If we can hold them in check for five
minutes we are saved.”
From loopholes and cracks thirty-five rifles concentrated their fire
on the hay fort, and the furious storm of lead caused Champion and the
twenty men behind the bales to lie low and hug the ground. They knew
that the fire could not long be sustained at that rate, and that when
it slackened they could advance with fewer casualties. Glancing from
a loophole to the north, Tom Champion saw two lines of brown-coated
men, riding furiously in the midst of a cloud of dust, sweep over the
hills less than a mile away. “Boys, the troops are coming!” he shouted.
“Quick! light a fuse and try a throw from here.”
Hastily the bomb was prepared and thrown. The five-pound parcel of
dynamite circled through the air and fell only ten feet short of the
wall. For an instant there was silence; then came the explosion, and
for a few minutes all was hid in a blinding cloud of dust. When it
settled it revealed a gaping hole in the side of the house and the dim
forms of men inside striving desperately to replace the dislocated logs.
“To the loopholes, boys! Pick them off!” cried Champion, but before
a shot could be fired, between them and the house swept a line of
cavalry, and the fight at the A---T had passed into history.
Clothed in the uniform and authority of the United States army, fifty
men from the Thirteenth Cavalry robbed five hundred raging Rustlers of
their prey. No true American can fire on the army uniform, and cursing
and furious, but powerless to interfere, the Rustlers could only stand
by and watch thirty-five men--all that were left of the invaders--come
forth and surrender themselves to Captain Watterson and his men, to be
transported to Cheyenne for trial for the murder of Ray, Champion, and
others. They were ultimately released without the formality of a trial
after some of the moneyed cattle kings had conferred with the State
officials.
[Illustration: “BENTON FELL IN THE DOORWAY WITH A BULLET FROM TOM
CHAMPION’S RIFLE THROUGH HIS LUNGS.”]
Dr. Hays, Ben Williams, and other of the leading cattlemen fled from
the country, never to return. Their buildings were burned, their horses
and cattle shot on sight by the Rustlers, while their calves bore the
brand of the first man to see them. Many a wealthy rancher in that
district to-day owes his start to the calves he gathered up when the
big outfits went to pieces.
So ended one of the most sanguinary cattle wars that the West has
ever witnessed. All that remains to-day to recall it is a group of
bullet-scarred buildings, surrounded by weed-grown rifle-pits, some two
hours’ ride south-east of Buffalo, near the junction of Muddy Creek
with the north fork of the Crazy Woman.
THE WIDE WORLD: In Other Magazines
A HETEROGENEOUS COLLECTION.
[Illustration]
For one wishing to study the ways of the lowest dregs of this earth,
I would advise him to give the slums of London a rest, and watch
the throngs who besiege the offices of the agents who undertake to
supply the cattlemen with help at Montreal. German and Russian Jews,
Dukhobhors, Italians, negroes, Dr. Barnardo boys, homesick for their
beloved slums; broken-down “sharks” and “confidence men” from the
large cities of the States; one-time moneyed youths from the larger
English towns, who have run through the capital given them to start
in business, and are returning on the chance of getting more. All
bustling and hustling each other after the same prize--a free passage
to London, the home, and often the grave, of the desperate.--“THE
CAPTAIN.”
TRAVELLING IN ICELAND.
By the average individual (unless he happens to be a salmon-fisher)
Iceland is imagined to be a place somewhere within the region of
the Arctic Circle and to be a land of eternal winter. The fishing
enthusiast knows it only as a paradise of his craft and values it
accordingly. Some tourists visit the island for a week or so in summer,
and get as far as Thingvellir, or if they are not too saddle-sore they
may see Geysir. But only a very select few have travelled for weeks on
the hardy little ponies and known to the full the exceeding delight
of day after day spent in the wonderful Icelandic air and of riding
through the green valleys and fording the numberless rivers and streams
of Iceland. To those who can ride and are keen on an open-air life and
who are lovers of scenery the island should appeal, and this should
apply even more so to those tired of the ways of cities, for there are
no railways in Iceland, no motors, and there were until very recently
no telegraphs.--“WOMAN’S LIFE.”
A LUCKY FALL OF SNOW.
On the Trans-Siberian Railway not long ago some train-wreckers,
anticipating the Continental express, had been busily engaged for some
hours tearing up the permanent way. But, in the meantime, so heavy a
fall of snow had occurred that the mail had been completely blocked
some few miles before reaching the work of destruction. In this way
the robbers were defeated of their prey, and the gangs of workmen who
afterwards went out to clear the line discovered the damage on digging
away the snow.--“TIT-BITS.”
WOMEN’S SPORT IN SWEDEN.
In no other European country do sports occupy so large a place in
women’s lives as they do in Sweden. This is especially the case in
winter, when traffic and social intercourse are hindered by the snow
and, but for outdoor games and exercises, life in the great castles and
country estates would be monotonous and dull for the women of the upper
classes. This is the time, however, when the Swedish ladies most enjoy
themselves, for they pass their days in skating, skiing, tobogganing,
coasting, and in training for the races which take place at Stockholm
and in most of the more populated parts of the country.--“THE
LADIES’ FIELD.”
AN UNCONVENTIONAL AMUSEMENT.
The “Mengeleusha,” or “slippery place,” near Kuala Kangsar, Perak,
Federated Malay States, is a solid piece of granite, about seventy or
eighty feet long, standing in a stream of water and forming a sort of
waterfall. The water flowing down this rock makes it as slippery as
glass, and the amusement is to slide down the rock and splash into
the pool beneath. This snapshot shows an Englishman half-way down the
slide.--“THE STRAND MAGAZINE.”
[Illustration]
Odds and Ends.
A Battle-Royal “You Dirty Boy”--Bavarian “Death-Boards”--An
Extraordinary Sacrifice, etc., etc.
Our first photograph represents what must have been a battle-royal, and
one which ended fatally for all concerned. It took place during the
night, in the back yard of a house in Central Queensland, Australia,
and the combatants were all found dead in the morning exactly as seen
in the photograph. It is supposed that the snake must have bitten the
kitten, and the mother cat, coming to its rescue, fought the snake and
broke its back, but not before she had been fatally bitten herself.
Cats are well known to be very clever at breaking snakes’ backs with
their claws.
[Illustration: A BATTLE ROYAL WHICH ENDED FATALLY FOR ALL
CONCERNED--THE SNAKE KILLED THE KITTEN, AND THE MOTHER, COMING TO THE
RESCUE, KILLED THE SERPENT, BUT SUCCUMBED HERSELF TO THE SNAKE’S BITE.
_From a Photograph._]
The top snapshot on the next page was taken during a tramp through the
jungly district around Sourabaya, a small town in Java. The picture
shows a Javanese woman washing her child under a falling stream of
water. Evidently the youngster is not enjoying the performance,
and evinces his disapproval of the proceedings by kicking out in
all directions and struggling vigorously. As a result of these
contortions the outline of his body in the picture is rather obscure.
It is interesting to note how the water has been brought to the
rudely-constructed circle of masonry which serves as a reservoir.
Having no system of pipes to facilitate the distribution of water, the
natives fall back on Nature to assist them in this direction. They cut
down betelnut trees, split them in half from top to bottom, and scoop
out the inside substance, thus making a series of cylindrical troughs.
These are dried in the sun, after which a number of them, joined end to
end and placed at a gentle slope, will convey water from any natural
source to within convenient distance of a village or group of houses.
The end of one of these artificial water-courses is seen in the picture.
[Illustration: “YOU DIRTY BOY”--A JAVANESE MOTHER WASHING HER CHILD IN
A “HOME-MADE AQUEDUCT.”
_From a Photograph._]
Here is a curious little snapshot from Java. The ancient cannon seen
in the photograph is situated near the railway station at Batavia, the
capital of the island, and is believed by the natives to possess the
peculiar power--particularly strange in the case of so incongruous an
object as a cannon--of enabling childless married people to raise a
family. In pursuance of this strange belief many offerings are placed
by the superstitious near the cannon; three are seen in the foreground
of the photograph. Another legend which attaches to this particular
gun is to the effect that when it and another piece of ordnance, which
is also situated somewhere in the island, are brought together, the
Javanese will become a great and independent nation.
[Illustration: AN ANCIENT CANNON TO WHICH PEOPLE MAKE OFFERINGS IN THE
BELIEF THAT IT ASSIST THEM TO RAISE A FAMILY.
_From a Photograph._]