Wyoming Peace Officer: An Autobiography

By Joe LeFors, Dean Krakel and Nettie LeFors

Joseph “Joe” S. LeFors was a U.S. Deputy Marshal who pursued several train robbers and other outlaws in the northwest.

Born in Paris, Texas, in 1865, LeFors grew up to be a cowboy, and after driving a herd to Wyoming in 1885, he stayed there. Later he would become an inspector-detective responsible for tracking stolen cattle in Wyoming and Montana. In the process, he was involved in several gunfights. In 1899, he rode with a posse sent to capture those responsible for the Willcox Train Robbery and was appointed as a U.S. Deputy Marshal the same year. In this capacity, he pursued several train robbers and other outlaws in the northwest.

In 1901, he became famous for arresting and documenting a confession from the former lawman turned hired killer, Tom Horn. Horn was later tried and sentenced to death. and hanged. In 1902, Lefors allegedly worked for the Iron Mountain Ranch Company in Helena, Montana, to infiltrate a gang of cattle rustlers. However, he was unsuccessful in aiding the gang and was fired in 1904.

Afterward, little is known about his life other than he died on October 1, 1940, and is buried in the Willow Grove Cemetery in Buffalo, Wyoming.-Kathy Alexander.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Braunfell Books
• Release date: Feb 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781805230854

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© Braunfell Books 2023, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1

DEDICATION 4

PREFACE 5

Acknowledgment 6

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 7

1—A New Home 10

2—On East Cantonment 18

3—Riding The Pony Express 23

4—North Again Through the Indian Country 31

5—Back In the Panhandle 40

6—Punching Cows and Trailing Rustlers in Wyoming 50

7—A Livestock Inspector 57

8—Rustling to Survive 68

9—A Fight in the Hole-In-The-Wall 75

10—The Stories of Sam Mulky and Curley Farland 86

CURLEY FARLAND 89

11—Still in Pursuit of Thieves 92

FLAT NOSE GEORGE CURRIE 94

12—The Wilcox Train Robbers 98

13—In the U.S. Marshall’s Office More Train Robbers 104

14—After a Counterfeiter 114

15—The Tom Horn Case 116

16—Capture of Tosah, Shoshone Indian 130

17—Trailing Billy Nash, Robber and Horse Thief 139

18—A Fire Bug At Work 143

19—With The Wool Growers Association 147

CATTLE AND SHEEP MEN FIGHT 147

20—An Extortionist Who Wanted $5,000 153

21—Sunset Trail 159

APPENDIX 161

LEFORS ITEMS FROM THE WYOMING STOCKGROWERS COLLECTION Courtesy Archives and Western History Library, 161

LEFORS’ EXPENSE ACCOUNTS 163

JOE LEFORS, Insp. 165

JOE LEFORS, Insp. 166

LETTERS CONCERNING TOM HORN—TAKEN FROM THE FILES OF THE FIRST JUDICIAL DISTRICT OF WYOMING, CHEYENNE 166

WYOMING PEACE OFFICER

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

BY

JOE LEFORS

DEDICATION

Dedicated to

My Son and Pal

EARL G. LEFORS

PREFACE

Wyoming History is new, thrilling, and controversial. Political birth, cattle wars, lawmen and gunfighters all remain very much alive in the minds of its elders. The transition of the geographical area to become Wyoming was as sudden as it was violent, and the equal of any in the Rocky Mountain West.

Basically the area was settled by two great forces: first was the iron thrust of the Union Pacific Railroad in ‘67 and ‘68; secondly were the cattle drovers, with their huge herds of wild critters—up from Texas. This later group of citizens were often lean hard men well supplied with muscle and profanity.

Rapidly Wyoming became the gem of grazing lands in the booming new industry of the west. First in the growth of the cow business came hard work, then prosperity and expansion—followed by over-expansion, depression and tragedy. It was at its zenith in the mid-eighties. In this story of rise and fall is arrayed a colorful pageant of personalities. Some of these men were good and have been made out to be bad; while others were bad and have been made to appear good. In describing the so-called gunfighters of Wyoming, regardless of which side of the law-fence they were on, one common denominator stands out—that is, the element of controversy...

For one to understand the whole picture of Wyoming’s thrill packed story would be a tremendous task and require research beneath the surface of personalities and events, into economics, history, sociology, geography and just plain politics. Much has been written—much more needs to be properly written.

This book, the autobiography of Joe LeFors, is a contribution to the overall picture of the Wyoming West and it throws new light on both people and events. In the life and adventures of Joe LeFors, pony express rider, cowboy, brand inspector, U.S. Marshal, and Pinkerton like detective, one can find much of the story of Wyoming’s transition from the lawless to the law abiding.

Mr. LeFors was said to have feared neither man nor beast. As brand inspector he saw that hundreds of illegally branded cattle were returned to their rightful owners. He dared to go into the Hole-In-The-Wall, a fortress of thieves, and roundup stolen stock. He was a tireless tracker of law breakers, once in pursuit he seldom gave up the chase. Joe LeFors alone had the daring to set the stage, and trap Tom Horn into a confession that led to Horn’s dramatic trial and execution.

His courage of steel, combined with a heart of gold and a sense of fairplay won him the respect of all. Tradition says he was the real Whispering Smith of book and movie fame. Joe LeFors passed away October 1, 1940 at his home in Buffalo, Wyoming—in the heart of Johnson County and in the heart of the country he loved and dedicated his life to—that of upholding law and order.

DEAN KRAKEL,

Laramie, Wyoming.

Acknowledgment

The manuscript written by Mr. LeFors, was one of his most cherished possessions; getting it published was one of his fondest dreams. My husband was a wonderful story teller; he had written this story of his life at the urging of his family and friends.

Agnes Wright Spring typed the manuscript and assisted him in arranging the material. They had hoped to find a publisher, but the depression years were too difficult.

Mr. LeFors passed away in 1940. His death was followed by the war and post war conditions. Publication was not feasible during this ten year period.

In May, 1952, I gave permission to Mr. N. Orwin Rush, Director of the University of Wyoming Library, and Mr. Dean F. Krakel, Archivist at the same institution, to have copies made of the manuscript, and the original placed in the University Western History Library. I wanted to be sure the manuscript would be preserved.

The typing of copies was done by Miss Dorothy Stull of the Archives and Western History Library staff.

Mr. Krakel suggested the manuscript be read by Mr. Jack Costin and Mr. Howard Woodard of the Laramie Printing Company of Laramie, Wyoming. We agreed to publication on satisfactory terms.

I am grateful to the University Archives and Western History Library for the use of three photographs and the LeFors letters and accounts from the Wyoming Stock Growers collection; to the Union Pacific Railroad Historical Department for one photograph, and to Mr. W. A. James, Laramie County, Clerk of Court in Cheyenne, for permission to use the Tom Horn, W. D. Smith and Joe LeFors correspondence on file there.

Photographic work was done by Joe Kay and Ludwig photographic studios in Laramie.

It is to the above mentioned that I wish to express my appreciation for assisting in publication.

MRS. NETTIE (JOE) LEFORS,

Buffalo, Wyoming.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Joe LeFors

Bob LeFors and Joe LeFors in 1870

Theodore Roosevelt’s Ride from Laramie to Cheyenne, May 30, 1903

Hole-In-The-Wall Bandits

Joe LeFors at His Best

Posse Which Trailed the Wild Bunch

Wrecked Express Car After Blasting of Safe in the Wilcox Robbery

Tom Horn in Laramie County Jail

Jim Tosah

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1—A New Home

The sun has set on the cattle days of the big open range, where the clatter of horns and the rattle of hoofs can be heard no more. Where are the cow punchers of yore? Gone, the most of them, to the great beyond.

If the reader will follow me in this true story, I will try to reproduce, in words, some of my experiences in real life.

It is no purpose of mine, in writing these pages, to make heroes of criminals nor romance of crime as many western story writers have tried to do.

I am writing of the west by request of some old time friends in order to leave some data behind. I served twenty-five years as a peace officer for both State and Federal Government, and I think that I am qualified to speak of outlawry in those days.

Many of the outlaws that I have trailed for days and days were possessed of master minds and the most unscrupulous principles. Armed with the very best saddle guns made him a formidable foe.

The secret of me still being alive today is due to my knowing how to keep my own council and keep the outlaw guessing concerning my movements.

Waylaying and taking a pot shot at an officer was one of their favorite pastimes. Billy Dean, Joe Hazen, Tyler, Jenkins and several other sheriffs and their deputies have been shot from ambush by thieves and ill doers and yet not one was ever convicted for shooting an officer.

I was born in Paris, Lamar County, Texas in 1865.

My mother, Mahala West, was a native of Tennessee, having been born on May 11, 1827. My father, James J. LeFors, was born near Louisville, Kentucky, on July 8, 1808.

After living in Texas from the first year of the war until the spring of 1865, my family moved back north where my father leased a farm from Major John Page, fifteen miles from Fort Smith in the Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory. There we lived until my mother died on August 21, 1875. It was there that I started to school and had as playmates Choctaw Indian children. Major Page was a Choctaw and received his title while serving in the army during the war.

Soon after mother’s death father leased a farm from Johnson Thompson, two and one-half miles south of Vinita, Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory, on which he raised wheat and corn for three years.

In 1878 we again pulled up stakes and headed for the Panhandle of Texas. After fitting out three wagons, covered with sheets and bows, my father loaded up our household goods and supplies and with six of us boys started from Vinita for the Panhandle. Two wagons were drawn by horses and one by a yoke of oxen. We also had six saddle horses in our outfit.

Our trail was almost due west to Fort Sill and then north by northwest to Fort Elliott. The road we had to travel led us through Weewooka, Smith, Paulis, Claremore and Elm Springs. At Elm Springs we struck the Boggdepot and Fort Sill freight road which afforded us much better traveling. And a few more days found us in Fort Sill. Our trip to that point was uneventful.

Upon our arrival at Fort Sill we were informed that all the Indian tribes were restless; that the Cheyenne tribe had broken away from the Fort Sill reservation and was heading north and that the soldiers had so far been unable to stop them.

We were warned that if we proceeded further north on the Fort Elliott road we might have serious trouble even though the soldiers were scouting in the north in order to stop any further outbreaks in that direction.

After a few days rest of our stock there didn’t seem to be anything else to do but go on, so we started. A man named Rodgers, who had been wanting to go north, joined us. Traveling was necessarily slow on account of our wagons being heavily loaded and having one team of oxen.

We averaged about fifteen to twenty miles a day along the road from Fort Sill to Fort Elliott which was only a dim government trail, chiefly over prairie country and rarely traveled. You might say it was not much more than a few wagon tracks.

The first day out from Fort Sill we saw many Indians going in the direction of the fort, supposedly to draw rations. They had strings of pack horses and travois as in those days they had no wagons. The travois consisted of two poles, two ends of which were lashed to the horse’s sides with a rawhide breast strap and back band, the other ends dragged on the ground and were fastened together in the rear with a sort of basket arrangement. In these baskets we could see skins of deer and buffalo.

We followed the old government trail up Cash Creek until we had passed Lookout Point, then pulled our wagons close together and went into camp. At dark, we smaller boys kept watch over our stock and were later relieved by the older boys who did the night guard.

Rodgers came in handy around camp as three of us were small. I was then only thirteen years old, next to the youngest.

It was June 18, as near as I can place the time, and we had been gone from Vinita about five weeks.

Everything went well the first day and night out of Fort Sill and on the second day, getting off with an early start, we pulled on following the old government trails in a north direction, paralleling the Wichita Mountains, keeping at most times on the east side of Cash Creek which ran nearly due south.

Right after breaking our noon camp on Cash Creek, where we had stopped to make some coffee, we became doubtful concerning the dim road we were following. The road forked and we took the plainer of the two branches which led to the west in the direction of the Wichitas. At about two o’clock we found ourselves in the edge of the mountains in a horseshoe bend of Cash Creek.

Suddenly there was an awful yelling and swarms of Indians rose up on all sides of us. They had evidently been watching us and as soon as we passed through the gap with our wagons they had swooped down on us on foot and on horseback.

Evidently we had gotten off the main Fort Sill and Fort Elliott road and had headed our outfit straight into the Indians’ camp. We stopped our teams and waited for a few moments. My father, being an old man and very level headed, ordered the boys not to shoot.

We will try to make peace with them, he said. If we open fire on them we are sure to all be killed. There are too many of them for us.

Yelling and howling, the Indians circled the wagons, closing in little by little. When they saw we were not going to fire on them they came up to the wagons. Some commenced to unhitch our work teams, others jumped into the wagons and took all of our firearms, consisting of a few cap and ball rifles, one Spencer rifle, a rim fire cartridge gun, two muzzle loading shot guns, and three or four cap and ball pistols. Then they marched us into a group and proceeded to unload the wagons, taking everything: saddles, harness, horses and all. We found ourselves entirely empty handed and in the clutches of the Comanches.

We sat in a little group on the ground with the Indians in a circle around us, about six deep. Rodgers was the one they first picked on. Not seeming to like him on account of his red hair, they passed close to him and caught a thumb and finger full of hair and jerked it out. Rodgers was young with good nerve, so he just gritted his teeth and said nothing.

The circle around us did not lessen very much during the night. There we sat without grub or water. The next morning we would go to the creek nearby and get a drink with about six Indians following there and back for each white man.

By nine o’clock in the morning the band that had captured us, which numbered perhaps one hundred, kept gradually increasing up to a little after noon. Then we saw some Indians coming up from the brush near the creek bringing some poles. To one end of these they tied a cross stick some eight feet high and set the other end in the ground. When Rodgers witnessed this job he said, Boys they are preparing for a scalp dance.

Then we all realized what those posts meant. As the other Indians gathered in they camped on the creek, leaving the ground clear around the scalp post.

While we were thus in our little huddle, one large Indian with white woman’s hair braided into his own and with a big pistol buckled on, sat on the ground directly in front of me. He seemed to be studying me. His head was tucked down, yet his eyes were looking up. All at once he made a quick move and had me in his arms and started for the creek below our camp. I made no struggle. He carried me to his own camp some quarter of a mile away and put me down. There were several squaws and some children at the camp. One Indian boy, who was about my size, talked to me for a few minutes and tried to be good to me. He had some things, rawhide rope and an Indian-made rawhide saddle which he showed me while he kept jabbering away. I could not understand anything he said. Then he tried to explain by signs and we got along very well. All the time I was uneasy as to what was happening back up at the wagons. I guess I was with the Indian boy for an hour or better. Then I started back to my brothers and to my surprise I was allowed to go.

Soon after I reached the wagons someone exclaimed, There’s a man coming through the gap on a hard run.

He came direct to us. It was an Indian bareback with just a strip of rawhide around his horse’s neck and a half-hitch around his horse’s under jaw. His horse was all out of wind, showing he had made an awfully fast ride for some reason. He had a rifle lying across his horse in front of him and the wooden gun stick for the muzzle loading gun cross-wise in his mouth. This Indian did not speak a word, but talked very fast with the other Indians in the sign language. His horse was still panting when he whirled quickly and went back through the gap the same way that he had come.

We did not understand this move. The Indians, who had all jumped to their feet at the first sign of this strange visitor, now hurried off in the direction of their camps, leaving us guarded by only some twenty-five redmen.

During the next hour we didn’t know what to expect. All eyes were trained on the gap in the low-lying hills where the strange Indian had so swiftly departed. We didn’t dare think what might happen.

All of a sudden someone exclaimed, What is that glistening in the gap? We all looked. We could not see very plainly on account of the rough ground and the many scraggy rocky points in the gap. We strained our eyes. And then like a clap of thunder from a clear sky, a bugle sound came to our ears.

Soldiers, everyone shouted. There were other blasts from the bugle and sure enough soldiers came into sight through the gap.

There they were—one company coming straight towards us and another company swinging to the right and yet another to the left. We expected to see a fight. The soldiers came to within a half mile of us. Three men, two officers and the interpreter approached us and stopped. Three Indians rode out to meet them and came to a parley which lasted about an hour. Then the officers came to talk with my father and learned from him that the Indians had taken everything we had, leaving our wagons empty.

By this time the government supply wagons came in sight and pitched camp near us and soon gave us food.

The next morning a general reckoning with the Indians began. The officers of those three companies of the Tenth Cavalry (colored troops), commanded the Indians to return all of our horses, oxen and everything they had taken from us, which they did with the exception of the food. That we did not get back.

Returning our property to us, however, required much talk and going back and delivering each time a little bit more until they wore out the patience of the commanding officer. Exasperated at last he told the Indians to bring the things in or go to jail. Though greatly outnumbered, this officer did not hesitate to tell the Indians just what they had to do.

After we had gotten back our possessions we prepared to start back to Ft. Sill for a new outfitting of supplies.

At once those three companies of the Tenth Cavalry rounded up all of the miscreant Indians and headed back for Ft. Sill. We followed, taking the best part of two days for the trip.

Again we camped on Cash Creek west of the block house. The block house which was for the protection of all the soldiers and the inhabitants of the Fort, was a real block house or stockade, with heavy walls and port holes for the use of rifles and fire arms in case of a siege. Much might be said of this wonderful building and I am told that it stands there to this day.

North of Ft. Sill and in plain sight of the blockhouse some eight miles away and on a very high point of the Wichita mountains stood a Lookout house built of heavy stone, constructed to make it impregnable. This sentinel was always provided with means to communicate with the fort and the blockhouse. From this position every part of the surrounding country could be seen. And from this point no mass formation of Indians could swoop down on the fort without being warned beforehand.

After a few days rest at Fort Sill we again commenced to prepare for another start north. Much information of a startling nature was coming in about the Cheyenne, who had made the break north. According to report, settlers were being killed, schoolhouses being burned on the Kansas line and children and teachers were being massacred. The Indians were said to be destroying everything in their path.

These reports gave us considerable worry, not only for our own safety, but because the three oldest boys of our family, Perry, Bill and Sam, were somewhere near Dodge City fattening southern Texas steers on the Kansas range to be shipped to the eastern markets.

Brother Sam, we knew, was driving a herd for Quinlen to be fattened and shipped from Dodge City and brother Bill was driving a beef herd for Hood and Homesley. While Perry was trailing a herd that year to Pine Ridge, S. D., for a government contractor to furnish beef for the Red Cloud faction of Sioux Indians.

These three brothers were planning to join us after those cattle were disposed of in the fall. We did not know where they were except in a general way and thought that they should be near Dodge City by this time of the year.

They had left Vinita the year before and had driven cattle to Dodge City, passing through the Panhandle. They told my father what