Distinctly Montana Magazine

19 w w w. d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m by NICK MITCHELL S tringer Jack, real name Jack Stringer, was represen- tative of many of the badmen and rustlers that plied their trade in the waning years of the open range. For one, he used to be a buffalo hunter, but that job had gone the way of so many once lucrative but ultimately ob- solete jobs of the frontier, like trapper, tracker, skinner, and before too long, cowboy. Such men, desperate to find work, discovered that their morals, no doubt once strongly held and firm, were irreparably eroded by hardship and want. He turned to horse thievery. Stringer was "a tall, handsome young fellow, well educat- ed, and of a pleasing personality," sporting "piercing gray eyes, white even teeth, and pleasant smile" during a time in which all of the above were at a premium. No wonder, then, that he soon gathered a coterie of like-minded thieves and criminals around him. Men like Swift Bill, Paddy Ross, Orvil Edwards, and Silas Nickerson—men with nothing to lose ex- cept for the chips on their shoulders and their lives, of course. Stringer Jack, and many more like him, gathered on the Musselshell River, where they struck out as far as the Dako- tas to gather and trade in ill-begotten horse flesh. There were plenty who had reason to want the horse thieves taken care of—among them Granville Stuart, cattle baron, politician, and sometime vigilante. Other cattlemen, like the French adventurer and wax-mustachioed rancher Marquis de Morès, also found themselves vexed. A cabal of rich cattlemen met in Helena in 1883 to discuss what was to be done. The wide-open space and lack of law enforcement offi- cers made for ideal livestock-rustling conditions, the men agreed. But they couldn't agree on a solution. At an im- passe, they agreed to table the issue until the next year. The next year, they still could not agree on what to do. Some were in favor of raising an army to clear the territo- ry of rustlers—to engage, in short, in open-range war. Stu- art, for his part, argued against that course, saying that the rustlers "were strongly fortified, each of their cabins being a miniature fortress… [each] armed with the most modern weapons and had an abundance of ammunition, and every man of them was a desperado and a dead shot." Furthermore, he said, the law was on the side of the rus- tlers, and the vigilantes, if successful, would probably be liable to go on trial for murder. But Stuart had been crucial during Montana's first brush with semi-official vigilantism when a gang of amateur law enforcers killed and hanged the corrupt Sheriff Plummer and his "Innocents." Stuart was no stranger to the kind of justice meted out at the end of a rope or gun barrel, and his public vote of "no" at the stockgrowers association meeting of 1894 may have been to provide plausible deniability in the bloodbath that was to follow. Stuart convened a second, less formal meeting at his ranch two months later. There, addressing an audience comprised of a few august cattlemen and their most reliably itchy-fingered gunhands, he outlined what may have been his plan all along: Form into small, mobile groups of vigi- lantes, seek out the known cattle rustlers and horse thieves, and terminate their lives by rope or by lead. Comparing notes, they agreed on some targets. Hard cases like Sam McKenzie, the half-Cree half-Scotch who claimed to be a wolf hunter but made his living steal- ing horses in Montana and selling them in Canada, then stealing Canadian horses and selling them back across the border. Concluding that "[u]nfortunately we have no proof that would convict" McKenzie, Stuart nevertheless vowed STUART WAS NO STRANGER TO THE KIND OF JUSTICE METED OUT AT THE END OF A ROPE OR GUN BARREL

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