The Bassett Women

Grace McClure

• Publisher: Swallow Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780804008778
• eBook ISBN: 9780804041034
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

In the late nineteenth century, Brown's Park, a secluded valley astride the Utah-Colorado border, was a troubled land of deadly conflict among cattle barons, outlaws, rustlers, and small ranchers. Homesteader Elizabeth Bassett gained a tough reputation of her own, and her daughters followed suit, going on to become members of Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch's inner circle. Ann—who counted Cassidy among her lovers—became known as "queen of the cattle rustlers." Both sisters proved themselves shrewd businesswomen as they fended off hostile takeovers of the family ranch. Through the following decades, the sisters became the stuff of legend, women who embodied the West's fearsome reputation, yet whose lived experiences were far more nuanced. Ann became a writer. Josie, whose cabin still stands at present-day Dinosaur National Monument, applied her pioneer ethics to a mechanized world and became renowned for her resourcefulness, steadfastness, and audacity.

For The Bassett Women, Grace McClure tracked down and untangled the legends of Brown's Park, one of the way stations of the fabled "Outlaw Trail, " while creating an evenhanded and indelible portrait of the Bassetts. Based on interviews, written records, newspapers, and archives, The Bassett Women is one of the few credible accounts of early settlers on Colorado's western slope, one of the last strongholds of the Old West.

APPENDIX

Confidentially Told

Thank heaven for librarians! Catherine T. Engel of the Colorado Historical Society unearthed for me “Confidentially Told” after I had despaired of running down this apocryphal piece that Ann mentioned in her correspondence with Esther Campbell as having been written by her husband Frank Willis.

The Historical Society obtained this manuscript from Mr. J. Monaghan, who had once edited the Civil Works Administration’s historical reports for Colorado and who then went to Illinois to be State Historian for the Illinois State Historical Library. Mr. Monaghan sent the manuscript to Mr. Le Roy Hafen (editor of The Colorado Magazine at the time Ann’s biography was published in its pages) with the following covering letter:

I am enclosing the article about which I spoke to you. It is entitled “Confidentially Told.” There is really some very good northwest Colorado history in this manuscript. Unfortunately, the author whose name at present must be withheld, tried to make a story out of it and in so doing hurt the history. Frankly, I suspect that the author was Queen Ann, but I am not sure. In time it will come out. . . .

Mr. Monaghan was mistaken when he attributed the manuscript to Ann, although she undoubtedly added her own touches and anecdotes here and there. However, from examination of this manuscript and Ann’s own unedited writings, it is Frank’s work, based primarily on his recollections of the times he worked with Hi on the Larry Curtin ranch in Brown’s Park when Hi was running cattle there after his divorce from Ann. Frank is described by the MacKnight family as a prime storyteller with an almost photographic memory of long-past events.

As Mr. Monaghan pointed out, it is unfortunate that Frank made a story of his conversations with Hi Bernard. If it were possible to separate without question the things that Hi said and anything interpolated by Frank or even Ann that was obtained from other sources, this manuscript would be the definitive document on Tom Horn’s employers in northwestern Colorado. Even so, the story is worth preserving because it points up so vividly the attitudes of the big cattlemen. The whole rationale of the range warfare in the Wyoming Basin is encompassed within its pages. And not unimportantly, it contains some very funny stories and a last intimate glimpse of our cast of Brown’s Park people.

Frank’s written style clouds his reputation as a storyteller. His spelling is often so bizarre that it is distracting to a reader. I have presented his manuscript with all its faulty sentence structure and punctuation intact, but the spelling has been corrected for fear Frank’s excellent remembrance of what Hi Bernard said to him might be buried under a deluge of “sics.”

I will repeat it as I heard it, from the low spoken words of Hi Bernard, the quiet reserved man of mystery. I spent the summer of 1917 with him on the old Curtin ranch in Brown’s Park. We were out away from other human contact by the great barriers of mountains and stream. There wasn’t much for us to do but ride over the meadows and foothills and watch the cattle and horses grow fat. The stock belonged to Joe Jones and Hi Bernard. I was representing the Jones interests. We were batching and I was kept on my toes when helping with the household chores, stepped up to exact precision of order and neatness, demanded by this punctilious aloof man, who could cook to perfection, and would sit down to the carefully arranged table to drink cup after cup of strong black coffee, and merely nibble at a few bites of the food so painstakingly prepared.

Bernard slept as sparingly as he ate. In some unaccountable way I could see a similarity between this man’s life and Green River. The river silently slipping by the ranch, its deceptive surface broken occasionally by the backturn of the warring riptides, the undertow rebelliously rushing against the stream as if in protest to natural forces that were sweeping the churning quicksands into the thundering, gaping jaws of Ladore Canyon.

One day in midsummer, right out of the nowhere, came a visitor, the elderly, highly educated, James [Jesse] Shade Hoy. An eccentric recluse who lived ten miles to the north and on the opposite side of the river. His small log cabin was half hidden by giant cottonwoods, and set in the middle of his vast acreage of meadow lands. Hoy was one of the early settlers of Brown’s Park. Upon his arrival, according to rules of Western hospitality, preparations for dinner was started, and to have a little extra special service for a guest, I went to the garden and picked a small pail of luscious ripe strawberries. Mr. Hoy offered to wash and hull the berries. He placed three dishes in front of him. Carefully sorted and counted each berry so there was a like number in each dish. There was one extra berry left, so he took a knife and cut it into three equal parts placing one part on each of the three dishes for greater equality. Bernard winked knowingly at me.

When we were seated at the dinner table, the conversation drifted around to Brown’s Park, history, and to Hoys recital of how he had written articles to various newspapers, and to the governers of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, suggesting ways and means to rid the country of migratory criminals. My protests were in vain he said until my brother Valentine Hoy was shot and killed by Harry Tracy while Valentine, with other settlers of the Park was trying to run down and capture the Utah and Wyoming murderers Tracy and Johnson. And that, remarked Hoy, was the beginning of the end of outlawry in Brown’s Park. At that point Bernard took up the conversation and he added. Yes Hoy, you overstressed the desirability of Brown’s Park as a perfect and secure retreat for thieves and outlaws. By your writings, many of them widely circulated, advertised the place that otherwise would never have been known to exist.

You put out the bait that attracted the flies. Some of your vicious writings gave all of the inhabitants of the park, yourself included, the reputation of being thieves and crooks of every description. A man that would write and have published such stuff about his own community, a place where he has lived for over forty years, and has valuable interests is a dam fool.

And because of your prenatal affliction, and the loss of a few mental marbles, which is no fault of your neighbors, you strike at them and write your vindictive brainstorms and sow your vengeance broadcast over the entire nation. Your publications are the foundation for a grave injustice to the people of this section. I will refer you to one article in particular. I have it here, and will read it to refresh your memory.

Quoting you. “Brown’s Park is a den of unclean beasts, and a roost for unclean birds.” In this writing that was published in a lengthy article, you make no exceptions, you classify your neighbors, your brothers and their families all in the one melting pot of criminality. You wind up with a special peck at Charley Crouse, by naming him as the bellwether of the whole bunch. You have been sending out such messages for twenty years or longer. What could you expect the result to be? Hoy gave a shocked reply. Bernard you are not a gentleman. And who are you to make such accusations? We the people of Brown’s Park, have endured the slings of arrows, and suffered the hardships of pioneering life, but we were never disgraced, humiliated, and insulted, until you dragged your swinish carcass across our fair land.

The argument was gaining momentum by leaps. Bernard quickly picked Hoy up there, and opened fire on his past history. Hoy you are the first cattle thief to enter your “fair land” you stole a bunch of cattle belonging to the Interior Department and headed them for Brown’s Park in 1870. Your outfit was picked up in Wyoming by Secret Service Agents and the stolen stock recovered. To keep out of Federal Prison, you sailed to Europe, and remained in France and Switzerland for several years. When your brother Valentine Hoy was killed, you were too cowardly to go with the Posse to bring in the body, you hid in your house until Mrs. Warren and Josie McKnight coaxed you out. By that time I was fidgeting in my chair. Again Hoy struck back, and hit the bulls eye. Bernard, you beetle browed scoundrel you hired Tom Horn to kill our respectable citizens to gain a footing in this country, when that failed, you married one of our most outstanding girls [Ann Bassett] to further your greedy cause. To emphasize that heavy blow below the belt, Hoy emotionally beat the table with his fist, and sent some of the food-laden dishes spinning to the floor with a loud crash, as he shouted. “How could she so disgrace Brown’s Park? How could she?”

That question was to be answered by both men as they went stumbling for their guns.

I had anticipated just such a climax, and had been edging my chair a little closer to the gun rack in a corner of the room, and near where I sat. The old boys bore the reputation of being quick and accurate lead tossers. Seventy years, more or less on the rough, had slowed their movements down perceptibly which gave me a jump ahead of them on the gun grab. I stepped quickly into an adjoining room, and cached the deadly weapons in a closet and returned to the scene of action. The old codgers were throwing rights and lefts at each other with might and fury. It was an unscientific scrap, with more misses than hits. The intended haymakers that landed lacked punch, and ended with mere taps. They finally went into a clinch, then slipped to the floor, upsetting the table as they went down to become entangled in tablecloth, broken dishes and food. The fight then developed into a scratching, hair pulling contest, Bernard who was partially bald stole the show in the hair handicap, as Hoy had an abundance of hair.

When Bernard got a good hand hold and began to pull, I expected to see a toupee lifted from Hoys pate, but I was disappointed, the hair stuck. I had been told that he wore a wig, but his pulling incident was convincing evidence that I had been misinformed, for at each jerk, Hoy would let out a blasphemous yell of indignation. When the contestants were completely exhausted, and unable to do anything but lie on the floor and glare at each other, Bernard barked chokingly, Bill get that slimy old bastard off of this ranch. I took over, and helped Hoy to his feet, he regained his wind and made it to the corral on his own power. While I was saddling one of Jones’s gentle horses for Hoy to ride home, he sat braced against a haystack dabbing a handkerchief at his scratches and bruises, and growled to himself. “Look at that, the blood of an aristocrat, my own blood, spilled by a lump of putrid clay.”

Soon he spoke in a louder, more excited tone of voice, come here Billie, I may be severely injured. My head wounds are oozing clotted blood. I walked quickly to the injured man, and after a careful examination of his head, the greatest tragedy of the entire affair dawned upon me, and I said bluntly.

Man this is not clots of blood in your hair, its strawberries. And there they were, the juicy berries we had intended to eat for dinner, hopelessly mixed up in Hoys unsightly mass of hair. Until then I had watched the performance with impersonal amusement. The thoughts of a choice meal that I had been cheated out of, welled up, and changed my attitude surprisingly. My patience was exhausted. I spoke rather decisive[ly]. “Get on this horse Mr. Hoy I’m taking you to the boat landing, and will row you across the river, to your home.”

The trip was made more uncomfortable by Hoys mutterings of vengeance against his adversary. I left him in his tree covered bower to restore his homeland to the culture he was so boastful about. When I returned to the Curtin ranch, the ravages of battle had been carefully cleared away, and a dinner of fresh cooked food placed on the table for me.

Bernard sat on the porch quietly smoking his pipe and watching the fluffs of smoke as they climbed up to join their kind, and float away into nothingness. After eating a hearty meal, I joined him, and lit a cigarette. As I did so, Bernard dusted the ashes from his pipe and placed it on an ashtray. He began to talk as if to himself. He did not mention the recent battle, and spoke as if he was hardly aware of his one man audience. He sat motionless, his cold blue eyes continued to gaze tranquilly over the tree tops, he talked of his boyhood. I was born in 1854 near Knoxville Tennessee. My father went away to become a soldier in the Rebel army, mother was left with my baby brother George and me, on a farm to make our living, with no help but an aged negro woman. In the beginning we had some stock and could raise vegetables and fruit to supply our needs. Then the Union Army came by our place on a raid and took most of our stock. Later they returned, gathered our crops for themselves, and took away our last cow. How we managed to live I do not know. Father came home wounded by a minnie ball. He traded the farm for a team of mules and an old covered wagon. Our household goods that could be hauled, were loaded on the wagon and we started west, on a long slow journey to Texas.

Some young boys might have enjoyed this trip as an adventure, but it will always remain a horror to me. I can remember my mother in a faded and patched calico dress, cooking our scant meals over a smoking campfire, and washing our ragged clothes by a creek. When we reached Texas father rented a small farm near Houston on shares. I came down sick with smallpox. I had to lie on a hard pallet in a desolate old adobe house, “alone most of the time,” with nothing to do but count the bedbugs crawling up and down from one crack to another. Around us to the north and west was cow country. While the Civl War was going on cattle branding had been neglected, and the cattle had become as wild as deer. On moonlight nights they came out of the brush to graze in open country; anybody who could catch and brand them became the legal owner. Some of the most wealthy cattle men of Texas got their start in business by “moon shining” cattle.

Catching and branding wild cattle by the light of the moon. When I was twelve years old I was hired by Chas Chisholm to help with the moonlight roping and branding. With my first money earned I bought a secondhand Mexican saddle, chaps and spurs. On dark nights we worked in daytime, locating the best feeding grounds to be worked when the moon shone again. On one of these scouting trips, another boy and I were riding along a wagon through dense timber; suddenly, two armed and marked men stepped from the brush. They grabbed our horses bridle reins and demanded silence, then jerked our horses into concealment beside the road. The order for silence was wholly unnecessary, for we were so scared that neither one of us could have uttered a sound. There was dull stillness for a few minutes. Then we heard the brisk clap, clap of horses feet on the dry road, and a team and buckboard came into view. Two men sat in the front seat of the buckboard, and two men in the back seat. The masked holdups sprung in front of the team and covered the buckboard riders with shotguns, and ordered them to get out and line up.

The holdups tied the hands of the disarmed men behind their backs, and ordered two of them to get back into the buckboard. They tied a rope around the neck of each of these men, and threw the loose ends of the ropes over a limb that projected across the road. They tied the ropes securely, and untied the hands of the other two men, but did not give them their guns, and ordered them to get in to the buckboard and drive off. As the team started, one of the holdups jumped at the horses, and slapped at them with his hat. The team ran down the road at breakneck speed. When the buckboard was jerked from under the tied men they were left dangling by the neck from a high limb. The masked men turned to us and shouted. You kids get out of here and head for home. We did so and without any lost motion.

When we reached home, and very much excited, father told us that the County sheriff and his deputy had been held up and relieved of two prisoners, men that had killed a girl some distance to the east a few days before. I had seen my first lynching party in action and never went in that direction again. When I was fifteen years old, I started up the trail with cattle as a cowpuncher, with one of Mavricks [sic] herds bound for Wyoming. It was a herd of about eight thousand young steers, and we traveled right along, barring a few short delays, caused by mud, flood, and Indians. Milt the negro cook and mess wagon driver had made the trip up and down the trails several times, and he knew more about the trails, campgrounds, watering places, and fords, than most of the cowpunchers did. Milt bragged continually, “I knows every watah hole between Copus Christi Texas and de C-a-n-a-d-i-e line.”

One feature of the trip Milt did not like too well, was the danger of encountering Indians. The Indian question sent chills of dread up his spine, and the cowboys were not making things easy for him. They knew Milts habit of keeping one ear to the ground when trail hazards were discussed, and of his special alertness when they went into a huddle and spoke low, to talk of Indians. The boys whispered among themselves, just loud enough for Milt to hear, that a negro’s scalp was worth three or four times more to the Indians than a white mans. When the herd reached the Red River we were met by white men who warned us to look out for Red skins on the war path, saying several whites had been killed fifty miles west of us.

Milt listened attentively while this bit of news was going around, and when the time came for him to shove off ahead of the herd to pitch camp and cook supper, he hedged and made excuses.

He had forgotten his directions and was having dizzy spells, and might drop off of the wagon unless some of the boys went along with him. None of his lines worked, and finally Jack Hunter the trail boss used some persuasive words that started Milt on his way alone. He had been out of sight of the herd an hour or so, when more whites came and reported that quite a band [of] renegade Indians were on the prod, and were headed toward where the wagon was to camp. The boss became a little worried, and several of us lit out with him to overtake Milt, to protect his kinks, and save our grub.

We circled the chosen camp spot, and discovered the wagon top, but no smoke of a campfire.

We kept alon...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Arkansas Travelers
• Brown's Hole
• Cattle Fever
• Ranchers and Rustlers
• The Bassett Gang
• The Harvest
• The Survivors
• The Outlaws
• The Shooting of Jim McKnight
• Scars and Two Bars
• Hi Bernard
• Queen of the Cattle Rustlers
• The Drifting Years
• Photographs
• Cub Creek
• The Last Love
• Ann and Eb
• An Uncommon Woman
• Apricot Brandy and Chokecherry Wine
• The Cattle Trial
• A New Crusade
• Queen Ann of Brown's Park
• Old Jose
• Requiem
• Appendix: "Confidentially Told"
• Notes on Sources
• Bibliography
• Locator Map of Brown's Park Area