Plentywood herald. [volume] (Plentywood, Mont.) 1908-current, 1931-01-29
w. w. JAYC0X, PIONEER RANGE BOSS, WAS ASSOCIATED WITH
LATE CHARLES M. RUSSELL, COWBOY ARTIST, DN EARLY DAYS;
WAS WYOMING SHERIFF TWO TERMS DURING ITS HECTIC DAYS
[BY F. B.

w. w. Jaycox of Hinsdale, Valley
county, Montana, former range boss
for the old Bear Paw pool, and later
manager for the Square" cattle out
fit, owned by Milton Miner of Fort
Benton, has lived for the past 30
years on his ranch in Truax coulee,
about 10 miles south of Hinsdale.
An old-timer by the name Of Walsh,
known as "Six-shooter Bob" had
"squatted" as a settler on then I'M
surveyed lands on the tracts now en-
braced in Jaycox's ranch. "Six-shoot-
er Bob" had also conducted a little
log saloon, store and postofiice at "old'
Hinsdale, about two miles east Of the
present site of the village and there
were wont to congregate cowboys.
sheepherders, rustlers and outlaws on
the dodge, "tin-horns" and the flotsam
and jetsam that made up the restless,
floating population of the late eighties
and early nineties, in this, the last west
and then, as now. the biggest free
range area in the United States. six
shooter Bob" had come from the South
with trail herds from the Panhandle
of Texas to the cattle country of Mon
tana, newly opened up after the sur
render of Sitting Bull and the prin-
cipal war-chiefs of the Sioux. Walsh
as a boy of 16 had taken a mans part
in the rustler war in southeastern
Montana in which rustlers, ranchers,
and civil officers from North Dakota,
South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana,
with U. S. deputy marshals fought out
the issue at old "Stoneville," now
dubbed Alzada in Powder River county.
But this is another story. Walsh was
associated with the Curry boys, out
laws of the Little Rockies, in the PLAN
ming and preparation for the hold
up of the Great Northern express car
in the cut near Wagner, Mont, in
1901. An apparently inoffensive chap
named TruaX, a settler further up the
same coulee in which Walsh had estab-
lished his own settlement-claim. was
murdered in cold blood by Walsh in
a saloon in Hinsdale, for which he was
convicted and sentenced to life i'm
prisonment, although finally paroled
about 1913, returning to his old haunts
and dying a couple of years ago as a
county charge. 1t was always thought
that the killing was inspired by a
quarrel over division of the loot taken
in the hold-up.
Walsh's wife, left destitute and
without means to travel to relatives
after her husbands conviction, sold to
Jaycox whatever equity in her hus-
bands squatter's claim Injured to her
following his incarceration to serve out
his punishment, and Jaycox has made
his home on this ranch for the past
30 years. His wife was Mile Deegan,
daughter of James Deegan, first sher-
if Of Valley county. Deegan had been
an employe and freighter for the Hud-
sons Bay company in the Winnipeg
Cypress hills area, and later operated
as an independent trader with his
home and trading post at the Dee
gan Crossing" on Milk river, earlier
known as Parents Crossing" site of
the new highway bridge two miles
east of Hinsdale. While working for
the Bear Paw pool, and later while
manager for the Square" Jaycox be-
came associated with the late Charles