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souri or nearby Fort Buford. J.C. Collins had been
living in a rented shack in Mondak, and in a dis-
pute with the shack's owner, Collins allegedly beat
his landlord's wife with his fists. Sheriff Thomas
Courtney and Deputy Richard Burmeister, both
just four days into their terms with Sheridan Coun-
ty, responded to the call and searched for Collins at
the bridge work camp. Collins opened fire on the
lawmen, killing Sheriff Courtney. Burmeister died
from his wounds a short time later. Collins fled into
the woods near the river but was forced to surren-
der when a mob of townspeople tracked him down.
They wanted to kill him on the spot but were con-
vinced by authorities to allow him to be jailed in
Mondak. Some time after nightfall, a crowd of peo-
ple descended on the jail, doused it in kerosene
and set the building ablaze. In the bedlam that fol-
lowed, they broke Collins out of his cell, dragged
him to a telegraph pole and hung him, firing their
weapons dozens of times into the swinging corpse.
Newspaper accounts of the incident mostly tell the
same story, although the lack of reputable witness-
es make it impossible to confirm, and different ver-
sions of the story have surfaced over the years.
As for Mondak, Prohibition took the wind out
of the boozy town's sails in 1920. No longer the
county seat, it saw several government offices
shut down. Frequent fires crippled the downtown
area, and people steadily moved away. The final
blow came in August of 1927 when John Phil-
EDNOR
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