Clouse Caseburg told Isom Dart, “…he would have Nat Rasper’s head if he had to rob his grave to get it .”- William G. Tittsworth
One of the more challenging tasks in writing history is figuring out what the heck happened. By its very nature, history is a retelling of the records and accounts those who witnessed or claimed to know something about events in the past. Historic sources recount myths, legends, and rumors that make the past so compelling.
People and the records they produce lie, a lot. Humans are heavily influenced by their awareness of audiences, causing them to shade things to put events in the best light. Many of our ancestors took great satisfaction in passing along tall-tales and outright confabulations. Accounts of the past sometimes are the products of poor memories or dementia. Newspapers of the period were infamous for changing facts to improve sales. Politics and money add their spins to historical writings.
Those caught up in life-or-death situations may not grasp the entirety of an event. Many were so high on adrenaline they retain little memory. Traumatic stresses can and do scramble and sometimes erase memories. Drunkards make more than their share of history, creating some of our more unbelievable stories. People are exceptionally creative in falsifying documents. All these factors, and more, create challenges to cogently relaying history. This is one of those stories.
The major source for this article is William G. Tittsworth who was a witness to the wild goings on in the wide-open world near the southern borders of Wyoming. William lived trapped, ranched, and traded in the territory from 1868 to 1880. William was there to chronicle the fading of the 19th Century and the blooming of the 20th Century.
His book, Outskirt Episodes (1927), includes descriptions of the expansion era in greater Green River Basin, though it strays far afield to Arkansas and Oklahoma.
There are mentions of bear hunting, elk hunting, ranching, the Overland Trail, the railroad, cattle barons, coal mining, Indians, the Great Diamond Hoax, dinosaur hunting, bilking Indians out of their treaty annuities, vigilantes, tie-hacking, telephone line construction, and a panoply of outlaws. It all is great subject matter, but there is a problem, besides William’s overuse of demeaning racial epithets.
Was William G. Tittsworth, an aspiring novelist, a man subject to memory lapses, or a damned liar?
The denizens of larceny and violence who Hollywood and dime novels promote to star status plied their trade in the Outskirts. You will find the likes of Butch Cassidy, Tom Horn, Anne Bassett, Jack Bennett, Jack Slade, and Jack Morrow.
The Outskirts included Browns Park, a place where outlaws came together for grand balls and Thanksgiving celebrations. Being outlaws, these criminals sometimes stole from each other, resulting in many being put in graves by fellow highwaymen instead of the law. Outlaws informed on each other and sometimes joined possies hunting their former partners.
Browns Park was a lawless place where outlaws could come and go almost as they pleased. Raids by vigilantes and the law rarely reduced the abundant supply of rustlers, murderers, and robbers populating that harsh environment. It was only after a telephone line was built connecting the area with Rock Springs that the outlaw period came to its end.
The free use of aliases and nicknames by the inhabitants of Brown’s Park (a.k.a. Brown’s Hole), Dutch John, Point of Rocks, Green River, Fort Bridger, and the nearby expanses of the Red Desert, complicate tracking the threads of history. Robert Leroy Parker (a.k.a. Butch Cassidy) and Tom Horn (a.k.a. Tom Hicks) are the best known.
Lesser outlaws like Isom Dart (a.k.a. Ned Huddleston, Isam Dart, and others) Ike Randall (a.k.a. Ike Lee), and many more fought the law and each other in a confusing mix of changing loyalties and identities. William Tittsworth may have made things worse by concocting his own alternate names for his contemporaries. It seems that Nat Rasper was a fabricated name for Matt (or Mat) Rash.
The Backstory
The story of the collecting of Nat Rasper’s skull began long before his untimely death, reputedly at the hands of Tom Horn. The tale begins with the family of Ute warrior Old Pony Beater.
Old Pony had taken a captive Shoshone woman, Tickup, and her beautiful daughter, Mincy, under his wing. Old Pony’s reputation was that of a cruel drunkard.
Tickup and Mincy sought to escape their captor and were taken in by Ned Huddleston (later known as Isom Dart). Ned was a Black man. At that time he was fairly new to the territory. Those were tough times to be a Black man in the Outskirt. The locals rarely missed an opportunity to castigate his abilities and his heritage.
Like so many of his detractors, Huddleston (Dart) had an attraction to larceny and earning ill-gotten gains. He hoped to parlay Tickup’s contacts among her people into a lucrative business. Tickup and Huddleston lived a comfortable life with each other for a while and he became fond of the comely Mincy hoping to have her for his housekeeper when she grew up.
When Huddleston heard that Old Pony Beater was nearby looking for Tickup and Mincy, it was time to move. Though a strong man, Huddleston did not consider himself a fighter. He chose to avoid trouble with Old Pony if he could.
The aggrieved Ute Indian persisted despite Huddleston’s clever efforts to hide. Old Pony Beater found their location and confronted Huddleston. The tenderfoot was no pistoleer, and he tripped while trying to draw his pistol.
Old Pony jumped on Huddleston beating him before lashing him to a log. Old Pony Beater led away Tickup, Mincy, and all of Huddleston’s horses, packed high with Huddleston’s goods. The Black man was left tied there to freeze to death, a fate he avoided. There might have been times when Huddleston might have preferred that end than what was to follow.
Not All Endings Are Happy Ones
Huddleston had not lived up to the code of the Outskirts. There were those who would have relished a blazing guns confrontation between the Black man and the Indian. Huddleston was ridiculed for not being able to best his opponent and the label of coward became attached to his name. He departed his camp in shame but the story was only beginning.
Ten days later Tickup returned to Huddleston’s camp with all of his possessions. She wanted a return to their agreeable arrangement. Huddleston wasn’t at the camp and when informed that he had departed, Tickup announced that Old Pony Beater drowned. She claimed that while traveling to the Ute camps through Flaming Gorge the old man’s horse broke through the ice.
Some believed that Tickup had something to do with the sudden demise of her despised husband. There was no way to prove what happened one way or the other. The Green River had another secret to keep.
Tickup was a realist. Since, Huddleston was long gone, and no one seemed to know where he went, she left to rejoin her people at Fort Washakie.
A Troubled Reunion
Huddleston was bereft without Tickup and Mincy. Not knowing about Old Pony Beater’s demise, he pulled together a small group of friends to protect him on the journey to the Ute camps. It turned out neither Old Pony Beater nor his family had been seen in the camps. Feelers were sent to the Bannocks as well. Where could they have gone?
One of Huddleston’s companions learned that Tickup had taken up with a young Indian. The friend informed Tickup that Huddleston was looking for her. By then he was desperate for her return but she refused to go back. She was most proud of her handsome, young warrior. Huddleston was crushed. He offered to trade five ponies for Mincy. While Tickup’s young man was for the trade she refused the deal.
That is when things turned tense. Huddleston demanded his missing property that Tickup had taken. The young man stood up to protect Tickup.
In the fight that ensued, Huddleston pummeled the young man’s face until Tickup interceded. She slashed at Huddleston’s head with a stone axe, disfiguring an ear by hacking off all but the lobe.
The village was in favor of burning Huddleston at the stake but his friends arranged for his escape. It was a near thing. Narrow escapes followed Huddleston like a shadow.
Huddleston spent a period in seclusion before joining the Tip Galt Gang on a horse-stealing raid. He and his larcenous compatriots spent cold nights stealing ponies from the Shoshones and took the purloined ponies in the direction of the Sioux camps hoping to place the suspicion on them.
A Night to Remember
Unaware Huddleston and the Galt Gang were a hundred miles away, Tickup was worried that he might fulfill his threat to steal Mincy.
During a night of exceptional revery, the drunken Tickup believed she saw someone approaching her lodge in attempt to kidnap her daughter. The intruder was drinking water from a stream when Tickup took a pistol from Clouse Caseburg who had passed out in a drunken stupor.
She came up behind the unsuspecting visitor and shot him in the back of the head before tossing the pistol away. In her inebriated condition she did not realize she killed her young suitor.
And Then… Things Got Crazy
At this point Tittsworth’s telling of the tale becomes complex. Two Shoshone men entered the village with news that there had been a battle nearby and three of their companions had been killed.
The army had been sent for, as they were charged with keeping the peace. A black wig was found near one of the corpses that was quickly identified by Mincy as being similar to a wig that Huddleston wore in villages when he wished to appear to be an Indian.
The corpse of Tickup’s young man soon was discovered next to Clouse Caseburg’s pistol. At first suspicion for the murder went to Caseburg, who had been passed out most of the night. The army arrested Clouse who pled his innocence.
But when Tickup realized she had mistakenly killed the young man, she confessed. She received a severe beating by her kinsmen before being expelled from the reservation. Caseburg was banished along with Tickup. It was the start of a new chapter for each of them.
Meanwhile, a band of Sioux warriors pursued Huddleston and Galt’s band of pony thieves, but the two were saved by the timely intervention of Texas cowpunchers.
After being driven off, the Sioux performed a night ride through the Red Desert and got ahead of the pony thieves. The Sioux recovered their horses the next day. Some days it just doesn’t pay to go along with your new friends on a horse-stealing raid.
A New Start
The partnership with Tip Galt and his gang was terminated in a maelstrom of lead. Huddleston was not with them at the end. It was another lucky escape for him.
When he found the Galt Gang’s bodies where a posse left them unburied to feed the buzzards his lucky star helped him further. As he examined the bodies, Huddlstone found quite a bit of cash stuffed in their pockets and used the windfall to subsidize his switch to a new identity and a more charitable outlook on life.
Ned Huddleston faded into history and Isom or Isam Dart entered the story.
Dart did not forget Tickup and Mincy. He sent them money and hired Caseburg to take them to Oklahoma. Tickup and Mincy had fallen in with Jack Bennet, a notorious outlaw, who had a scheme to sell liquor.
Caseburg rescued the two women and placed Mincy in a school. Dart rented land near his former family and Caseburg also rented land in Indian Territory and kept a watch on Tickup and Mincy.
With Caseburg’s help Dart kept his presence and new identity a secret from the women. He also gave up his stealing ways and over the next few happy years, he and Caseburg prospered. Mincy grew into a handsome woman. What could go wrong?
And… The Answer Is…
What did go wrong was the appearance of a young Texan with a “self-oiling tongue.”
Nat Rasper (a name Tittsworth made up for Mat Rash) had plenty of money and drove a fancy buggy with one of the best matched teams seen in that area of Oklahoma. It turns out Rasper had stolen the team and rig in Arkansas a few years before, but that is another story.
The impressionable Mincy was ensnared in the spider’s web. Caseburg attempted to keep Mincy from losing her heart to the rake Nat Rasper. Caseburg bought Rasper’s fancy rig. Even so, Rasper continued to take Mincy on moonlight rides in the buggy.
When Caseburg attempted to discourage the two with a more direct approach, Rasper beat him soundly, leaving the older man with two blackened eyes and a grudge swelling in his breast.
Meantime, Dart heard that Jack Bennett and his outlaw friend Bill Pigeon were in the area and had joined up with Rasper. Caseburg suspected that the three intended to take Mincy, so he and Caseburg sold their crops and possessions in preparation for a move.
Before they could make their escape, Caseburg was attacked in his home and tortured to reveal the location of his money. The thieves hoped to make a rich haul but could only find sixty dollars.
Dart took Caseburg to his camp and nursed his wounds. Meantime, Pigeon drove the fancy buggy and team to Fort Smith and Bennett attempted to sell Caseburg’s horses while Rasper dressed Mincy in Pigeon’s clothes and headed back to Brown’s Hole.
There the three partners in crime intended to meet again to divvy up the take. Mincy was to be turned over to Bennett at that time.
It was a good plan, except that Pigeon and Bennett didn’t get away from what they had done to Caseburg in Oklahoma and soon were locked up in the Fort Smith jail.
A note from Caseburg under the name of “Claude Casebeer” to Bud Benler dated about three weeks after the looting of Caseburg’s ranch announced that, “Seven days from the ranch we found Mincy’s remains. Clear case of fiendish desertion on a desert, without food or water.”
“Caseburg has sworn to get Nat Rasper’s head if he has to scratch it out of his grave with his bare hands.”
In fine Old West tradition Clouse Caseburg then disappeared. The man assumed the new moniker of C.C. and set out to find Nat Rasper. The image of the tattered clothes that once belonged to Pigeon beside the bleached bones of a young woman, ate at his soul. He finally found Rasper and bided his time.
Bennett and Pigeon were released from Fort Smith jail at the end of their sentences and returned to Brown’s Park. Bennett was unaware of Mincy’s fate and wanted to use her in a business venture. He suspected that Rasper had stashed the girl somewhere perhaps for Pigeon. By then the two former friends, had become sworn enemies.
But outlaws don’t change their ways and Bennett assembled a gang to rob a gold dust shipment from a stage, but the gold had been safely shipped on the railroad. Accepting defeat Bennett and his gang returned to Brown’s Park with little to show for their efforts. At the same time a large posse swept through the area seeking to end the reign of outlaws in the Outskirts. The posse caught Jack Bennett and hanged him from a gate in lower Brown’s Hole.
Ironically, Pigeon was a member of the posse that ended Bennett’s life, he’d succeeded in eliminating the former partner he hated so much. Pigeon also soon met his own fate when he goaded Ike Lee (a.k.a. Ike Randolph) into a fight. Ike shot Pigeon in the mouth. In the Clay Basin of Wyoming there is a lonely grave where Bill Pigeon was laid to rest.
But the story doesn’t end there. Nat Rasper had been fired from his position of foreman in Tim Kinney’s ranch. Undaunted Rasper stole a few cows and grabbed as many mavericks as he could and soon had a fine herd of cattle.
The young Texan was reputed to be one of the leaders of the cattle rustlers in the Brown’s Park area. He and Isom Dart joined together for a while but Dart held a grudge against Rasper for Mincy’s fate and the two argued about her in the presence of Tom Horn.
After the argument Dart left but Horn stayed with Rasher for a while. On July 10, 1900, Felix Myers and William Ryfe discovered Rasper’s putrefying corpse. He had been shot three times with thirty-thirty caliber rifle. This unsolved murder was thought to be the Horn’s handiwork.
Subsequently, Dart was also murdered with a thirty-thirty caliber rifle and his murder also is unsolved. Even though Anne Bassett, Rasper’s (Mat Rash’s) fiancé, had no qualms about proclaiming Horn’s responsibility for the killings.
What about that Skull?
During Rasper’s burial ceremony a brooding C.C. sat apart from the other attendees. When Charlie Sparks visited the grave shortly after the ceremony it was clear that the burial had been tampered with.
Sparks was enough of a busy body to bring up the subject of Rasper to C.C. on several occasions. For the longest time C.C. played dumb but eventually was frank about his low opinion of Rasper and mentioned how the outlaw had a role in the death of an innocent woman.
When news of the killing of Nat Rasper reached his family in Texas, they travelled to Brown’s Park area and exhumed the body. Those who knew Rasper were surprised his skull was missing three teeth in front. The man hadn’t been missing any front teeth. Whose skull was that?
When Bill Pigeon was shot by Ike Lee in the mouth, the word was that three of Pigeon’s teeth were carried off by the bullet. It was known that herders passing through the Clay Basin had found Pigeon’s grave to be disturbed. Next to the grave was the discarded image of a young, beautiful woman. Charlie Sparks observed that C.C. paid the kingly price of three dollars for the image. When asked, C.C. said it was his property.
Sparks then put the clues together. C.C. had waited after Rasper’s burial and removed his head. When Rasper’s family came to retrieve the remains, C.C. took Pigeon’s head and placed it on Rasper’s body. At that time his only image of his beloved Mincy fell out of his pocket and was found by those herders.
After a time, C.C. unashamedly bragged about having the trophy head of an outlaw. He had taken dark revenge for the loss of Mincy and his beatings. Some said he displayed the skull at his ranch but he soon left the wild and tumble world of Brown’s Park and returned to Oklahoma.
Was All That Vengeance Necessary?
Little did C.C. know, Mincy was not dead. The skeleton Clouse found was not Mincy. According to Mincy, it was the skeleton of an Indian woman who died of a rattlesnake bite. Mincy swapped the corpse’s clothes for those of Bill Pigeon before returning to her home in Oklahoma.
The very alive Mincy married Ben Burley, the friend who took over both Clouse Caseburg’s and Isom Dart’s abandoned holdings in Oklahoma, but that is the start of another story.
Perhaps someday archaeological investigations may investigate the truth of William Tittsworth’s story. Does Bill Pigeon’s corpse have a head? For now, the Red Desert keeps its secrets. That’s not a bad thing.
Terry A. Del Bene can be reached at terrydelbene@me.com
