Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1909-10-06
CHAPTER XIV.
The Sunday Murder.

Banks posse, leaving Medicine Bend
before daybreak, headed northwest.
Their instructions were explicit: To
scatter after crossing the Frenchman,
watch the trails from the Goose river
country and through the Mission
mountains, and intercept everybody
riding north until the posse from
Sleepy Cat or Whispering Smith
should communicate with them from
the southwest Nine men rode in the
party that crossed the Crawling Stone
Sunday morning at sunrise with Ed
Banks.
After leaving the river the three
white-capped Saddles of the Mission
range afforded a landmark for more
than 100 miles, and toward these the
party pressed steadily all day. The
southern pass Of the Missions opens
on the north slope of the range into
a pretty valley known as Mission
Springs valley, and the springs are
the head-waters of Deep creek. The
posse did not quite obey the instruc-
lions, and following a natural instinct
of safety five of them, after Banks
and his three deputies had scattered,
punched again, and at dark crossed
Deep creek at some distance below the
springs 1t was afterward known that
these five men had been seen entering
the valley from the east at sundown
Just as four of the men they wanted
rode down South Mission pass toward
the springs. That they knew they
hn n
their way through the line which Ed
Banks, ahead of them, was posting at
x every gateway to Williams Cache, was
probably clear to them. Four men
rode that evening from Tower w
through the south pass; the fifth man
had already left the party. The four
men were headed for Williams Cache
and had reason to believe, until they
sighted Banks men, that their path
was open.
They halted to take counsel on the
suspicious-looking posse far below
them, and while their cruelty ex-
hausted horses rested, Du Sang, al
ways in Sinclairs absence the brains
of the gang, planned the escape over
Deep creek at Bags crossing. At
dusk they divided; two men lurking in
the brush along the creek rode as
close as they could, unobserved, to-
ward the crossing, while Du Sang and
the cowboy Karg, known as Flat Nose,
rode down to Bags ranch at the foot
of the pass.
At that point Dan Baggs, an old 10"
connective engineer, had taken a home
stead, got together little bunch OF
cattle, and was living alone with his
son, a boy of ten years. 1t was
hard country and too close to Will
liams Cache for comfort, but Dan got
on with everybody because the tough
est man in the Cache country could
get meal, feed for his horse, and
place to sleep at Bags, without
charge, when he needed it.
Ed Banks, by hard riding, got to the
crossing at five o'clock, and told Baggs
of the hold-up and the shooting Of
Oliver Sellers. The news stirred the
old engineman, and his excitement
threw him off his guard. Banks rode
straight on for the middle pass, leav-
ing word that two of his men would be
along within half an hour to watch the
pass and the ranch crossing, and asked
Baggs to put up some kind of a fight for
the crossing until more of the posse
came up-at the least, to make sure
that nobody got any fresh horses.
The boy was cooking supper in the
kitchen, and Baggs had done his milk
ing and gone back to the corral, when
two men rode around the corner Of the
barn and asked if they could get
something to eat. Poor Baggs sold his
life in six words: why, yes; be you
Banks men?"
Du Sang answered.: mo; we're from
Sheriff Coon's Office at Oroville, look