I believe the legend of the sacred red fern

Good bye old friend, godspeed

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com.

Today, I am sorry to report, I lost one of my dearest friends.
A man's dog is THAT, of course, but you don't think of it happening — until it does.
Ella, and her sister Jenny, have been part of the family for at least a decade now. Ella, the hound dog of no compromise, the moose, protector, rock, and 'Business Manager,' left us this morning.
“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring — it was peace.” said Milan Kundera.
I have struggled to find peace at times. This is one of those times.
More than 10 years ago Ella and her litter mate came into our lives shortly after the loss of another longtime dog friend, Jake.
There, of course was trouble at first, and chaos. Disagreement. Setting boundaries.
But once she had them all established, everyone knew precisely where they stood.
She added texture, light and shadow to our family's world — as dogs do — to all their families.
Hound dogs particularly, sometimes operate as pairs.
Because of that, I guess I worry, a lot,  for Ella's sister Jenny.
The two, I am convinced, through a weird level of cooperation, would have taken on mountain lions, bears, badgers and devil himself. How many times have they smoothed edges with their bay in the woods? And shared the light and texture and shadows? How many crisis averted just by their presence and companionship?
Uncannily, the two of them likely would have prevailed in any fight. Jenny followed her lead, until now. She will, with a crazy eye, and an odd perspective, in her own way prevail, I'm sure.
Wilson Rawls, of course knew hound dogs.
In his wonderful book, "Where the Red Fern Grows"  he writes:
“Men," said Mr. Kyle, "people have been trying to understand dogs ever since the beginning of time. One never knows what they'll do. You can read every day where a dog saved the life of a drowning child, or lay down his life for his master. Some people call this loyalty. I don't. I may be wrong, but I call it love - the deepest kind of love."
After these words were spoken, a thoughtful silence settled over the men. The mood was broken by the deep growling voice I had heard back in the washout.
"It's a shame that people all over the world can't have that kind of love in their hearts," he said. "There would be no wars, slaughter, or murder; no greed or selfishness. It would be the kind of world that God wants us to have - a wonderful world.”
Though I am a grown man, I am crying, like Rawls did over his pups.
“Some time in the night I got up, tiptoed to my window, and looked out at my doghouse. It looked so lonely and empty sitting there in the moonlight. I could see that the door was slightly ajar. I thought of the many times I had lain in my bed and listened to the squeaking of the door as my dogs went in and out. I didn't know I was crying until I felt the tears roll down my cheeks,”  he said.
I want to find peace. I want Jenny to to learn to find her own independence. I want the texture and light, and shadow. I want Ella's memory to inspire us all.

No short cuts across high saddles above Dunton

 Hard work may never pay off

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

The stories grow like a bad weed in high altitude sunshine on the mountain saddles above Dunton.
If you look down the slopes below — like the miners and outlaws and other desperados of the time — you might understand that hardship, isolation, heartbreak — and realize that hard work may never pay off.
Not far from here, at the turn of the last century,  Matt Warner and his accomplice, known then as Butch Cassidy, (his given name was Robert Leroy Parker) walked into the San Miguel Valley Bank.
Warner pulled the teller over his desk, threatening him with death. Parker filled a bag with cash, eventually calculated to be $20,750. That measures up to more than half -million dollars in today’s currency when adjusted for inflation.
Like Parker, your might have had a bad taste in your mouth and felt mistreated in general.  Perhaps you would come to the conclusion that there might be shortcuts.
"The young man who would become Butch Cassidy was hired to pack ore onto mules and bring the valuable materials from the mines high in the mountains around Telluride down to the mills," writes Stephen Elliott of the Telluride News in 2015.
"Parker was keeping a colt of his on a local rancher’s property, and eventually he decided to remove it from the ranch. After Parker took his colt from the property, the ranch owner accused him of stealing the animal, and he was arrested and tried for the crime in Montrose. He was eventually acquitted but left Telluride to find work on ranches around Wyoming and Montana, until he returned to the box canyon a few years later to begin his life of crime."
Well some might argue about the timing of such a watershed moment. But it is possible that a young Leroy Parker, high on that ridge or some other, stared down at Rico on one side, and Dunton to the northwest, and formulated a plan for an easier, or at least more exciting way to make a living.
He wasn't going to scratch around in a hole, pack busted rocks up the hillsides, or labor arm-deep in blood, cutting meat all day in the butcher shop.
From that ridge, he could have probably seen the Emma, the Smuggler and the American mines.
He might have even spied Joe Roscio, who  arrived in Dunton in the 1880s from Minnesota. Roscio mined on the West Fork while federal troops were still busy chasing off Ute warriors who called the area home, or at least the equivalent of the grocery store.
The Smuggler, a tipple operation, was built on the steep slope on the shady side of the river. Roscio and his wife had at least four children, including boys Joe, Jr., Chuck, and Emilio (Mello).
They mined and survived up there in the high lonesome by also trapping, logging and supplying other miners. They rented cabins, operated a bar and lodge, and reportedly charged a nickel to use the hot springs.
Young Parker, no stranger to the possibility of fun and entertainment of the region, no doubt knew of the operation at the local hot spot. And he was prone to enjoy a leisurely life.
After their first bank job in Telluride, they made a beeline out of town notes Stephen Elliott.
"Warner, Parker and one or two other accomplices then headed west out of Telluride on horseback, urging their horses into a gallop and firing their revolvers as a warning to any would-be pursuers as they left town. The group crested Keystone Hill, a few miles west of Telluride, where a horse relay was awaiting them, one of several relay points manned by friends who were given a share of the stolen money in exchange for their assistance in the getaway," Elliot wrote in 2015.
Warner took credit for having the idea to rob the bank. Both riders with a regional reputation for winning horse races, Warner said he approached his friend and fellow racer Butch Cassidy — and then, his own brother-in-law Tom McCarty. According to his version, Butch was excited by the prospect, while Tom was more reluctant. After riding into town and up to the bank, Warner says he placed his gun under the teller’s nose, while Cassidy gathered the cash, and Tom McCarty held the horses outside.
Perhaps because it was their first bank job, the inexperienced outlaws led the teller outside with his hands up, and in the process, alerted the entire town.
After firing a few shots to back off the crowd, the three or four outlaws, made a beeline out of town, eventually ending up in the mountains near Mancos. Running so fast that they left the fresh horses behind, they ran into one of their former employers, Harry Adsit, who later helped the posse identify them and tell the pursuing group what direction they were headed.
Interestingly enough, Telluride Town Marshall, Jim Clark later confessed to the Gunnison County Sheriff to being involved — by not being involved.
Clark reportedly told the Sheriff he received $2200 of the stolen money as payment for being out of town during the robbery and later acquired one of the horses used in the robbery.
Certain accounts speculate that the two horse racing friends, and now, bank robbers, along with McCarty and perhaps additional accomplices, changed horses in the Cortez area (perhaps even at Longabaugh ranch south of Cortez, home of Harry Longabaugh’s father. Harry, (a.k.a. ‘The Sundance Kid”) would later befriend Cassidy and famously ride with the “Wild Bunch,” in Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Texas and New Mexico.
The Roscios sold Dunton in 1974 to a group of investors from Telluride and the East Coast. Dunton clintele morphed from local sheepherders, valley ranchers, reservation workers, bikers, and hippies playing nude volleyball games in high-altitude surroundings — to high-dollar euro tourists and film stars.
In the 1990s, a group of German Chemical company executives and other European investors affiliated with Christoph Henkel, purchased the little frontier village.
"The interior of each cabin was reborn as a piece of art in its own right -- a magazine stylist's collage — created mostly by Katrin Bellinger Henkel, Christoph's wife," according to the New York Time's piece.
The Henkel family radically transformed Dunton from its rough and ready beginnings to an exclusive resort with pricing North of $1,000 per night.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the drafty old cabins with unchinked logs reportedly suffered from hard use by "outlaw" motorcycle gangs, careless hippies,  and a severe skunk infestation — not to mention party-focused local high-school kids and other miscreants.
In early January 2005,  a New York Times travel piece by Anne Goodwin, described how the Henkel family transformed the resort with museum quality art and Americana to help fetch those bank-robber hotel rates.
Goodwin quoted Tyson Horner, assistant general manager of the place at the time.

"Did you catch those names?" Mr. Horner's eyebrows arched as his practiced index finger nimbly found a prominent "Butch Cassidy," and just below it, a smallish "Sundance."

"Come on," I said. "That's got to be a prank."

"Well," he pulled on the word, grinning broadly, "they're not sayin,' but rumor has it they holed up here in 1889, after they robbed the Telluride bank — their first heist."

Only problem with that, is that it was not likely Cassidy's (Parker's) first legal transgression. He had been suspected of rustling cattle since his teen years in Circleville, Utah, and he was more likely going by another name, like George Cassidy, Tom Gillis, James Ryan, Santiago Ryan, Santiago Maxwell, J.P. Maxwell, James Lowe, Santiago Lowe, George Ingerfield.
And as far as being associated with the Sundance Kid, there also was no record that the two men were associated until later. Though they could have been.
Maybe the Dunton bar has 'Roy Parker' carved in it? Or Harry Alonzo, or Frank Boyd, as Sundance was prone to use as an alias?

Robert Leroy Parker did do a prison stretch in the Wyoming Territorial Prison from 1894-1896 for stealing horses. And in 1887, Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, a.k.a. the Sundance Kid, was sentenced to 18 months in the Sundance, Wyoming jail, for stealing a slow horse.
No evidence suggests that met before Parker was released from prison. But the two incarceration locations are several hours apart — by fast horse.

Perhaps bank robbers did take a short cut along the West Fork of the Dolores River, change to faster horses, and did briefly hide out in Dunton.
Perhaps carving their names in history, and the wooden bar. 

But what names did they carve? It is going to take hard work, hardship, and perhaps isolation and heartache, that may never pay off —before we ever know for sure. 

In the meantime, stories grow like a bad weed in high altitude sunshine on the mountain saddles above Dunton.

Photo Information:
West Dolores Hotel and Bathing House Sept. 18, 1887. Men, women and children in front of the hot springs. Photographed by T.J. McKee. Denver Public Library.

Dunton - Smuggler Mine: Creator: Wolle, Muriel Sibell, Broken lumber and timbers mark the site of the Smuggler Mine, Is Part Of WH906. Muriel Sibell Wolle papers, 1926-1976 Subject Dunton (Colo.); Abandoned mines--Western History and Genealogy Dept., Denver Public Library.

Dunton - Emma Mine: Creator: Wolle, Muriel Sibell, Western History and Genealogy Dept., Denver Public Library, Dunton - 1950 Creator Wolle, Muriel Sibell, 1898-1977 Date 1950 Donor Muriel Sibell Wolle estate, 1977 Summary View in Dunton (Dolores County), Colorado; shows a harp switch handle at a wye in the ore car tracks; dilapidated buildings and mountains are on one side, a sheer cliff is on the other.

Dunton - 1950 : Creator: Dunton (Dolores County), Colorado; shows a harp switch handle at a wye in the ore car tracks; dilapidated buildings and mountains are on one side, a sheer cliff is on the other.  ###

 

Lurid, violent, dramatic incident leads to lynching

No one tried to stop these dispensers of frontier justice.

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Today, Old Town is a busy, vibrant place, full of life and laughter, and love, even ...  The feel of small town America is strong here. Dogs are welcome. Folks are peaceful. But there is a saying about animals, that may apply to something that happened in this normally quiet, peaceful town, on this same day, exactly 130 years ago.
“When the Fox hears the Rabbit scream he comes a-running, but not to help.”
By 1888, Fort Collins was settling down to respectability, says Phil Walker in his 1995 book "Visions Along the Poudre Valley."
"There was electricity and running water in most of the houses. Gone were the days of the wild and woolly frontier town. Gone were most of the saloons the brothels, the gambling halls and the riff-raff that all this attracted. No more was the civil and moral code of the community held in open defiance," Walker wrote.
"Eva and James Howe lived in a little house on Walnut Street, just a half block from Linden Street where Old Town Square is today.  They had a five-year-old daughter. James was a millwright and a very good mechanic and was well-respected in the business community. Eva Howe was a happy, pleasant woman ... quite pretty, and very much liked by all the ladies. Most of the time, the Howes lived quietly as the 1880s rolled by," according to Walker's book.
"But alcohol was eating at James Howe..."
"Herein lies a tale for within this house began a lurid, violent, dramatic incident that ended in murder. A lynching followed the deed," wrote Babara Allbrant Flemming in "Fort Collins: A Pictorial History."
"Mr and Mrs. James Howe lived in the house, then at Linden and Walnut streets. On April 4, 1888, Howe came into the house drunk to find his wife packing to leave him. He became enraged and attacked her with a pocket knife, slashing her throat. She staggered out of the house, though fatally wounded, seeking help, but it was too late. She fell down on the walk and died. Since the house was right down town, everyone around had seen what happened. Howe was immediately arrested, and normal activity halted for the rest of the day," she said.
"That night, when it got dark, the town's newly installed electrical system suddenly stopped working. In the inky blackness, a band of men broke into the jail and hauled the murderer out. He pleaded for mercy, but he was quickly strung up on a derrick being used to build the new courthouse. One account has it that Charlie Clay, the town's black cook and delivery man, sat on the scaffold and played his harmonica while Howe died."
Flemming noted that no one tried to stop these dispensers of frontier justice. And when they had done their work, the electric lights went on again. For a long time, the house was considered haunted, but eventually Daisy Bosworth took up residence there and turned it into a boarding house.
The house was eventually moved to 1314 West Myrtle Street, and is still occupied today. 

Pikes Peak by Cog, 2016

The world famous Cog Railroad to the top.

Photos by Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

 

Danger at the center of the universe

Either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse in modern times

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Yesterday, I was over in Greeley and took the opportunity of time travel, visiting some of my Colorado newspaper roots at Utopia's Newspaper.

"Nathan Cook Meeker, agricultural editor at the New York Tribune, penned an editorial proposing the establishment of a new settlement based on morality and temperance in Colorado Territory," reads a display in the Greeley Museum downtown.

"Union Colony was incorporated in 1869. As the population grew, Meeker quickly saw the need for a local newspaper. With a loan from Horace Greeley, 'The Greeley Tribune' was established and began publication on November 16, 1870.

Later, returning to my office in Fort Collins, I somehow found myself engaged in a Second Amendment argument with a longtime newspaper fellow, and was reminded of J.M. Barrie's 1896 assessment that "The Printing Press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse in modern times, one sometimes forgets which."

Now, of course, there are other technical methods and mechanisms, but the distributive sentiment holds.

The museum display takes note of Nathan Meeker's steadfast dedication to his particular causes in the opinion wars of the time. "We shall improve, not apologize," reads one pertinent headline.

"Early issues focused on farming, prohibition, and Horace Greeley's political aspirations. Meeker had lofty political ambitions both for the colony and the weekly newspaper he published,"the display says.

"Individuals may rise or fall — may live or die — property may be lost or gained, but the colony as a whole will prosper and the spot on which we labor, shall as long as the world stands, be the center of intelligence and activity."

I think that Meeker's editorial is revealing of newspaper editors in general, and the human tendency for writers, and most anyone spouting off, to opine on ways of the world.

Smartest one in the room. No one else really knows what is going on. All others are blind.

In 1878, Nathan Meeker was appointed U.S. Agent at the White River Indian Agency in western Colorado. The next year, he was killed by Ute warriors in what became known as the Meeker Massacre, during the White River War. His wife and adult daughter were taken captive for about three weeks. In 1880, the United States Congress passed punitive legislation to remove the Ute from Colorado to Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation in present-day Utah, and take away some land formerly guaranteed them.

According to the Aspen History Society, “Colorow was one of several leaders of a small, unsophisticated splinter group of Utes in Northwestern Colorado, called the White River Band.

In the spring of 1879, Colorow's followers were pressured by local Indian agent, Nathan Cook Meeker, to plant a field of garden crops in a field they had traditionally used to graze their horses.”
Meeker’s miscalculation made members of the band mad.

“In anger, one of the Utes confronted Meeker and ultimately threw him to the ground. Meeker overreacted and sent telegrams to Gov. Pitkin, 200 miles away in Denver, requesting troops be sent for his protection. The army, lulled by general peace on the frontier, and anxious to give its men some "field experience," sent two companies of cavalry and one mounted infantry, (about 200 men) from Wyoming's Fort Rawlins with specific instructions that the Utes not be molested,” says material from Aspen History Society.

“The Utes, however, clearly remembering the massacre at Sand Creek 15 years earlier, panicked. Many moved to new camps or fled the area. But, in the ensuing confusion, a shot was fired beginning events, which would end in the grizzly death of Meeker and all other agency employees. In addition, 2 women, including Meeker's wife, and 2 children were abducted by the Utes.

Colorow explained at the investigation into these events that the stake driven through Meeker's mouth had been necessary.
"To stop his infernal lying on his way to the spirit world.”

The lesson, I guess, is in the danger in thinking that you are the center of intelligence, when every one else thinks the same thing.

###

Auntie Stone and comfort on the Cache La Poudre

We have come a long way, baby

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

To steal a line from a Loretta Lynn album and old cigarette commercials, "We have come a long way, baby." I wonder what Auntie Stone would have to say?
The average price of homes sold in the Fort Collins, Timnath, Wellington area of Northern Colorado in 2017 was $397,067, according to local real estate experts.
In the early days at Camp Collins, Elizabeth "Auntie" Stone was one of the most beloved figures in the community's history, and a celebrated cook, hostess, and social center of the military camp's life.
The log house, originally built in 1864 near what became Linden and Jefferson Streets, is still in tact in the Heritage Courtyard at 215 Mason Street, where it was finally moved in 1959.
Stone was variously described as the "Belle of the Ball" and attended parties and danced until she was eighty-six.
"Sometimes, she outlasted much younger folks. Widowed at fifty-one, with eight children to support, she married Lewis Stone a few years later and came West, first to Minnesota, then to Denver. She was sixty-three when she came with her husband to Fort Collins to run the boardinghouse for officers at the fort," writes local historian Barbara Allbrandt Flemming in the 1980s.
"Lewis Stone died in 1866, but Elizabeth, undaunted, took part in several successful business ventures while campaigning vigorously against liquor, enjoying parties, and even going camping and fishing at Chambers Lake at the age of seventy-five. In her nineties and in a wheelchair, she cast her first vote," said Flemming.
Edith Bair recalled in oral histories, that when Auntie Stone died in 1895, the firehouse bell tolled 94 times.
After the Camp was closed in 1867, Stone's cabin was moved around in the area several times, and served various purposes.
But Elizabeth "Auntie" Stone will forever be known for the comfort and society she brought to her home and the early outpost.
As relayed in her niece Elizabeth Keay's 1866 diary entry:
"Arrived in Collins last night, found Auntie Stone well, she had a very comfortable home in this country ...  my private room has an ingrain carpet, nice bed, window with sunset view, with hills and the pretty Cache La Poudre."

###

Mad Bomber of Cripple Creek, considers beer keg bombs, poison in Telluride

Orchard confessed to playing a violent, and ultimately, decisive, role in the Colorado Labor Wars

Independence Platform shortly after the bombing.

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

 

Relating the twisting story of union boss “Big Bill” Haywood recently, it was made clear to me that I mustn’t forget the tale of Harry Orchard, the “Mad bomber of Cripple Creek.” 

But according to Orchard's own "Confessions and Autobiography of Harry Orchard," it all started in Telluride.

It was Harry Orchard’s confession to Pinkerton detective James McParland in February 1906 that tied "Big Bill" Haywood and other union officials to the bombing of Independence rail platform, the bombing deaths of two miners in the Vindicator, and the murder of former Idaho Gov. Frank Steunenberg.
“I awoke, as it were, from a dream, and realized that I’d been made a tool of, aided and assisted by members of the Executive Board of Western Federation Miners. I resolved, as far as in my power, to break up this murderous organization and to protect the community from further assassinations and outrages from this gang,” his confession said.
Orchard’s real name was Albert Horsley and he grew up on an Ontario farm with seven brothers. He was also known to use the alias Thomas Hogan. He left Canada, after several years working in a cheese factory, when he was about 30 years old.
Working eventually in a silver mine in Burke, Idaho, Orchard joined the WFM and was among the thousand or so miners that hijacked a Northern Pacific train and then blew up the Bunker Hill concentrator, killing two men. According to his own admission, he was one of two who placed the dynamite and then lit the fuse.
“Orchard’s career as a paid union terrorist began in 1903 when he blew up the Vindicator mine in Colorado, again killing two men, for a fee of $500,” according a biography by faculty of the University of Missouri at Kansas City School of Law. “Six months later a bomb planted by Orchard at Independence train depot exploded, killing 13 non-union miners.”
In the same testimony, he also told of unsuccessful efforts to kill the Governor Peabody of Colorado, and two Colorado Supreme Court Justices. Also he admitted additional murders including deputy Lyle Gregory, of Denver, and the attempted poisoning and then successful bombing of Bunker Hill mining manager Fred Bradley in San Francisco.
Oscar King Davis of the New York Times described Orchard’s testimony in the Haywood trial as follows:
“Orchard spoke in a soft, purring voice, marked by a slight Canadian accent, and except for the first few minutes that he was on the stand, he went through his awful story as undisturbed as if he were giving and account of a May Day festival. When he said, ‘and then I shot him,’ his manner and tone were as matter-of-fact as if the words had been ‘and then I bought a drink.”
Orchard was tried and convicted in March 1908 for the murder of former Gov. Frank Steunenberg. He received a death sentence but it was commuted to life in prison by Judge Fremont Wood and the Board of Pardons and he served out his life sentence, raising chickens and growing strawberries, in Idaho State Penitentiary until his death in 1954 at age 87.

Photo above: George Pettibone, Bill Haywood, and Charles Moyer

In Orchard's own autobiography:
"About this time a mob and the militia ran some more of the union men out of Telluride, Col., in the night, and forbade them to return on pain of death. Mover sent for me to come to Denver, so I got ready and went. I met Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone at Federation headquarters, and they wanted me to go down to the San Juan district with Moyer. They had two pump shot-guns, sawed off so they would go in our grips when they were taken down, and plenty of shells loaded with buck-shot. The reason for this was some one had told Moyer or sent him word if they caught him they would use him as they had the United Mine Workers' officers. Some of the latter had been taken off a train and beaten up and nearly killed. They laid this to the deputies the mine operators had employed," he said.
"The next night Moyer and I started for Montrose, where they had sent John Murphy, the Federation attorney, to get an injunction from Judge Stevens against the militia and citizens of Telluride to compel them to let the union miners return to their homes peaceably and not to interfere with them. We had three six-shooters, and two shot-guns in our grips, which we left unfastened in the seats in front of us, and we sat near the middle of the car; but no one troubled us. We arrived at Montrose and met Mr. Murphy, and he had the injunction all ready. We went on to Ouray, where most of the men were that had been deported, and the next day Moyer sent a telegram to Governor Peabody informing him of the injunction, and wanted to know if these men would have the protection of the militia if they returned peaceably to their homes, and he got an answer that all law-abiding citizens would be protected."
According to Orchard, Moyer said when he sent his telegram to the governor, that he had promised himself that he would never ask him for anything again, and he hated to do it, but this would be the last time. Moyer sent a few men back on the train the next morning, but they were met at a station some distance from Telluride, and forced off the train by militia and armed men, and threatened with death if they attempted to come into town. Sherman Bell, the adjutant-general, had arrived in Telluride, and martial law was declared, and Bell disregarded the order of the court in regard to the injunction.
"After these men were sent back from Telluride, Mr. Moyer was angrier than ever, and he began to advise the men that they could not expect any protection from the State, and the only way was to take the law in their own hands, and go back to Telluride in a body and clean out the town. There were some methods discussed as to the best way to proceed. The first thing that we thought necessary was to get concentrated at the most convenient place, and get what arms and ammunition and other material we would need. We also spoke of filling beer-kegs with dynamite, and attaching a time-fuse, and rolling them down the mountainside into Telluride, as the town was in a cañon with high mountains on either side. Another plan spoken of by Moyer was to poison the reservoir where they got their water for Telluride with cyanide of potassium. This is easy to get around the mills where they use the cyanide process, and of course it is deadly poison and kills any one taking the least particle of it instantly. But Moyer only started to carry out the first of these plans when he was arrested."
Bell disregarded the injunction. Moyer sent word to Silverton, for Frank Schmelzer, the president of the San Juan district union. He wanted to confer with him about what to do with these men who were deported, Orchard said, as there were about a hundred of them stopping at the hotel at Ouray, and paying about $1 a day there, and he said the Federation could not afford that.
More of these deported men were at Silverton. They decided to lease one or more of the idle mines up at Red Mountain. This is about half-way between Ouray and Silverton on the divide, and not far from Telluride, Another man came down from Red Mountain with Schmelzer; his name was Tom Taylor. He had a partner at Red Mountain, and he said there were some large boarding and lodging-houses there, and he thought there would be no trouble in renting them, as almost everything was silver mines around there and they were closed down on account of the low price of silver.
"The object of getting this out-of-the-way place was to have some place to concentrate the men and keep them together, and this place was just where they wanted them, and the lease was all a bluff. The real object was to send these men up there and arm them all, get a car or two of provisions, and send all the outlaws they could get hold of up there, too," Orchard wrote.
He said they also wanted to get Telluride union leader Vincent St. John to go up there and drill these men. "These men were mostly all foreigners—Austrians, Finns, and Italians. They thought if they could get enough men up here in this out-of-the-way place, and have them well armed, and keep them there until the snow got settled in the spring so they could walk on it, some night they could march them over the hill to Telluride and clean out the town. This was the plan, but it was not told except to a very few, and they were well satisfied with it."
"But the morning that we might have finished up and left later in the day, before we got up, the sheriff rapped at the door and wanted to see Moyer. I was sleeping with Moyer, and we got up and dressed, and when we went out the sheriff arrested him. He said they had wired him from Telluride to hold Moyer, and that the sheriff from San Miguel County was on his way with a warrant. Moyer wired his attorneys at Denver and wanted to know if the sheriff at Ouray had any right to hold him without a warrant. I think they told him he had; anyway, he did hold him, and about noon the sheriff and two deputies arrived and took him to Telluride. Moyer had given me some papers and his six-shooter before the sheriff from Telluride arrived, and the Ouray sheriff did not search him or lock him up, but let him stay in his office. The charge they arrested him on was desecration of the American flag. The Federation had sent out by the thousands posters imitating the American flag, with advertising on them. They only arrested Moyer on this as an excuse. They took him to Telluride, and he was released on bail, but the militia re-arrested him right away," according to Orchard.
"I left Ouray that night and went to Silverton with Schmelzer to escape arrest, and Moyer telephoned me from Telluride in a day or so, and wanted me to fetch his things and meet him at Durango, but before we got through talking they cut us off. He was telephoning me just after he was let out on bonds, and while he was talking they cut off the connection, and the militia arrested him right afterward and held him for over three months. That was the last I saw of him for nearly a year.
I stayed at Silverton a few days, and then went back to Denver and reported to Haywood. The lawyers from Denver had gone to Telluride in the mean time, but they could not get Moyer out, as the militia held him under military necessity. A few days after he was arrested, Sheriff Rutan of Telluride came to Denver to arrest Haywood on the same charge, but Haywood blocked his plans by getting a friend in Denver to swear out a warrant on the same charge, and a justice in Denver that was friendly to him put him in the custody of the deputy sheriff, who stayed with him all the time; and he had his case continued from time to time.

Albert E. Horsley, Alias "Harry Orchard"

Albert Edward Horsley, who throughout his life he used many aliases, including Harry Orchard, Thomas Hogan, Demsey and Goglan, was a one-time mine owner.

In 1897, Harry Orchard, along with August Paulsen, Harry Day, May Arkwright, butcher F.M. Rothrock, lawyer Henry F. Samuels and C.H. Reeves, invested in the Hercules silver mine in Idaho.  A decade later, Orchard's ownership of a share in the mine would be used in an effort to impeach his testimony in a murder trial. 

By 1899, Orchard was among the thousand miners who hijacked a Northern Pacific train on April 29, 1899 and then blew up the Bunker Hill concentrator, killing two men.  Orchard was one of the miners who planted the dynamite and lit a fuse.  Six months later a bomb planted by Orchard at an Independence, Colorado train depot exploded, killing 13 non-union miners. 

In his testimony, Orchard also told of other planned killings that for one reason or another did not succeed, all ordered, he claimed by Haywood and Pettibone.  Among the unsuccessful efforts were the assassination of the Governor and two Supreme Court justices of Colorado and the president of the Bunker Hill Mining Company.  The reason for Orchard's life of union terrorism is not entirely clear, but was most likely the result of a combination of factors--anger at mine operators and scabs, union loyalty and greed.

According to "The Third Millenium Online," and other sources, Harry Orchard was a complex individual who apparently had sought opportunity working for both sides in labor disputes.  

"Orchard confessed to playing a violent, and ultimately, decisive, role in the Colorado Labor Wars.  During the Haywood trial Orchard confessed to serving as a paid informant for the Mine Owners Association.  He reportedly told a companion G.L. Brokaw, that he had been a Pinkerton employee for some time.  He was also a bigamist, and admitted to abandoning wives in Canada and Cripple Creek.  He had burned businesses for the insurance money in Cripple Creek and Canada.  Orchard had burglarized a railroad depot, rifled a cash register, stole sheep, and had made plans to kidnap children over a debt.  He also sold fraudulent insurance policies.  Orchard's confession to McParland took responsibility for seventeen or more murders," it was reported.

Orchard also tried to help McParland build a case by implicating one of his fellow miners from the WFM, Steve Adams, as an accomplice.  The effort failed, but it revealed interesting details about the methods McParland used to induce defendants to turn state's evidence."

 James P. McParland