Pierce Cunningham sold hay to two strangers in the fall of 1892, and let them winter in his cabin near Spread Creek. Boone tells what he saw there on a winter visit, and what happened at that cabin the next spring, on the stretch of highway leading to it.
Here's a question to chew on down this long straight road. You know a man's about to be killed. One word from you would save him. And he's a thief. Do you say it? Pierce Cunningham faced that a few miles on from here, at a low sod-roofed cabin in this same sage. In the fall of eighteen ninety-two a pair of strangers came through, George Spenser and a younger Oregon boy named Mike Burnett. They bought about fifteen tons of his hay for their horses, and he let them winter at his Spread Creek cabin, with his partner, a big Swede. That winter a rumor came down the valley that those horses were stolen. So before the snow was gone Cunningham strapped on snowshoes and went up to see. He went out with the pair of them after the horses, and there were the brands, changed. He knew. He could have told them what was coming. He went home and didn't say a word. Come spring he did order them off, and they went. Then they came back for some horses, on exactly the wrong day. April of eighteen ninety-three. Sixteen armed men rode up the valley. They'd asked Cunningham along and he'd refused. In the dark they ringed that cabin and settled in to wait. At first light the dog started barking. Spenser pulled on his clothes, strapped on his revolver, and headed for the corral. All winter, the Swede said later, neither man had gone armed like that. Somebody hollered to throw 'em up. He drew, fired twice, went down, and went on firing from one elbow until he couldn't. Burnett came through the door with his rifle, and a bullet tore into the log beside his face. He brushed off the splinters, drew with his left, and shot the top out of a hat on the ridge. Then he walked to the cabin's corner and stood in plain view, daring them to show themselves. That's where they killed him. His rifle went off as he fell. No inquiry. No trial. Cunningham said the orders had been to kill, not arrest. Asked if it was a local matter, he said, "Oh no, it wasn't only local." Then word went round that Cunningham must have warned them. He denied it. Blamed for the one decent thing he'd had the chance to do, and hadn't. It took him thirty-five years to tell the whole of it. Then he showed where the two of them lay and marked the spot with two timbers. Late, and I'll take it. Years after that, the badgers told it plainer. They brought the bones up into the sunlight.
Photo: Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress, HABS WYO,20-MOOS.V,2--2 (cropped) · Public domain