It was the summer of 1904 when two disguised men rode into the small town of Thermopolis under the cover of darkness.
They were wearing masks and heavily armed when the pair entered the doctor’s office. They needed his help but secrecy was vital. After telling him that they had an emergency that needed his attention immediately, the doctor gathered his supplies and then was blindfolded.
The doctor was loaded into a buggy and for miles rode over rough terrain. Their destination was a remote winter camp miles from Thermopolis.
Once there, he was taken into a room where blankets were hung up around a bed so he could not recognize where he was. The injured man had been shot through the groin with a soft-nosed rifle bullet and had been tended to as best as possible under the circumstances.
The doctor dressed the wound and was taken back home just as the sun was rising.
Shoot Out
What led to this kidnapping lays shrouded in mystery but some facts are known.
Thieves had stolen two horses, saddles, chaps, and a six-shooter from the McDonald Ranch and headed about forty miles southwest to a place of refuge. They arrived at the Walt Punteney ranch on Bridger Creek, a neighbor of two homesteader families, Picard and Hayes, to hide out.
Walt had been a member of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang but was now “peacefully” raising cattle. He was known to harbor outlaws and there had been more than one shoot-out at his ranch.
Deputy Sheriff Leonard Beard and Alva Young trailed the thieves up the Red Valley to Punteney’s ranch. Once there, they saw two men riding over a hill to the west.
The officers followed the men on horseback, and while they were riding into a gulch, they saw a man coming back on foot over the top of a hill. The outlaw was ready to dissuade the men from following using his stolen six-shooter.
The officers dismounted and hurried into a small ravine for cover. A gun battle between the horse thieves and the officers ensued, the gunshots echoing off the hills.
Suddenly, one of the outlaws was hit. His partner immediately came out of hiding with the two stolen horses and helped him mount.
Desperately, the outlaws made their escape. The sheriff tried to follow them through the maze of hills but lost their tracks.
Safe Haven
The outlaws rode up Bridger Creek to the 2B Ranch on Lysite Mountain. According to one of their sons in an interview years later, sisters-in-law Mary Hayes Picard and Lottie Hayes were alone on the ranch taking care of their sick children. It was a beautiful sunny day and they were not expecting any visitors.
Their husbands were a few miles away, out on the range, tending to their livestock. Too far away if trouble erupted.
However, these outlaws were seeking help, not trouble.
Seeing the man’s injury, the women quickly went to work to dress his wounds. They treated the gunshot with kerosene, one remedy for all cures in the Wild West. The man needed shelter so Mary and Lottie hid him in the potato cellar with his partner standing guard.
When their husbands returned home, they were shocked to learn what had transpired.
Recognizing the mess they would be in if the lawmen discovered the outlaws, David Picard and Leroy Hayes were said by historian Tacetta Walker to have immediately moved the injured outlaw to the Picard’s Lake Creek winter camp. It was located on the opposite side of Lysite Mountain, twenty-five miles from Thermopolis.
The wounded man was put in a cellar away from the cabin, while his partner again stood guard.
Two days later, seeing that the outlaw was still in a bad way, the two ranchers are then believed to have masked up and went for help. It was nine at night when they kidnapped the Thermopolis doctor and brought him to the injured outlaw.
The doctor was given a generous fee for his troubles and told to remember nothing that had transpired that night. A few nights later, he was once again fetched in the same manner to treat the wound, which had become infected. The patient was delirious.
The physician told the men that, in his opinion, death would result within a few days. He was then blindfolded and returned to Thermopolis as before and was again given a large amount of money for his troubles.
The doctor received no more calls to tend the wounded man.
Who the outlaw was, or even the doctor, remains a mystery although there is evidence of just who all these players most likely were.
Friends Of The Outlaws
During these early years, the outlaws roamed the countryside but there were never any reports that they stole from the Picard or Hayes families. Rather, the gang was on friendly terms with these remote ranchers on Bridger Creek. Members of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang would stop by and help with the ranch work in exchange for a meal or pay.
Anybody who showed up at the ranch hungry, was fed along with their horses. Outlaw Tom O’Day especially was a good friend to the family, a cowhand who was good at working the horses.
Their friendships with the outlaws extended beyond mere Western hospitality. David Picard was believed to be one of the Wyoming ranchers who had an agreement with Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch. Picard always kept fresh horses in the family corral.
According to his son Raymond, as a boy of about seven, he would wake up to find different horses in the corral than the ones from the night before.
This horse exchange was never discussed but was just part of life on the frontier.
Although it wasn’t well known at the time, the Hole-in-the-Wall gang spent a lot of effort planning a robbery and part of that planning was having fresh horses.
Butch Cassidy painstakingly laid out an escape route in advance, bolstered by relay teams of fresh horses that would be always available at certain corrals such as the one at the 2B Ranch.
The Wounded Outlaw
It will never be known for certain just who the injured outlaw was on this summer day in 1904 that ended up on the Picard doorstep. The kidnapped doctor’s identity is also shrouded in mystery.
The June 2, 1904, edition of the Wyoming Derrick reported, “One of the thieves supposed to be Koch, the man who killed Flockmaster Vedder several years ago in Deer Creek Park, was shot twice and was taken away by his partner on one horse.”
The paper went on to say that it is believed that the two thieves were receiving protection from some of the local ranchmen and that medical aid was procured from Thermopolis for Koch.
Decades later, in the 1920s, Natrona County historian Alfred James Mokler said the outlaw was none other than the notorious Harvey Logan a.k.a. Kid Curry. The doctor he named as Dr. Julius A. Schulke, one of the founders of Thermopolis and the man who had invented the name of the fledging town which meant Hot City in Greek.
However, Schulke had died the year before of a morphine overdose and the newspaper reports of the time claimed that the wounded outlaw was John Koch, a known thief and killer.
In the 1930s, Author Tacetta Walker had named Kid Curry as the bandit as well. She also named Sheriff Frank Webb as the lawman who shot him and Dr. Richards as the kidnapped doctor.
Walker said that after losing the trail, Webb called on another doctor in Thermopolis, Dr. Hale, and asked him if he had been called out to attend to a wounded man but Hale assured him that he had not. He told Webb that Dr. Richards was out of town and that possibly he knew something of the matter.
When Richards drove back into Thermopolis, he had with him an old fellow known as Missou who had been injured. A gun had accidently gone off and scratched his leg. According to Walker, this gave Richards, who had his orders to keep still, an alibi.
He told Webb that he had been called out to attend to Missou. Although Sheriff Webb felt skeptical about this, the trail had gone cold and the horse thieves were never caught.
Author Mike Bell researched the circumstances around the gun battle and believes that the dates align for it to be Koch who was shot, Dr. Richards as the kidnapped doctor, and Sheriff Beard as the lawman who shot Koch.
However, the story had been widely believed for over 100 years that the outlaw was the more well-known Kid Curry and has become part of Curry’s mythology.
Outlaw John Koch
The outlaw that Sheriff Beard said he shot was John Koch, an immigrant from Germany. He already had brushes with the law when he arrived in America in 1889 at age 16.
By 1892, 19-year-old Koch had been sentenced to two years of hard labor for robbing homes in between Wyoming and the bad lands east of Hot Springs, South Dakota.
Three years later, in August 1895, Koch was out of prison and working for a flock master north of Casper. It was there that he killed a fellow sheepherder and father of two young children, Henry Vedder, in a dispute over grazing rights. He was acquitted after a hung jury and his case was dismissed without a trial.
After being released, he robbed another sheepherder camp and Sheriff Joe Hazen went in pursuit. Hazen and Ed Llewellyn shot at Koch with their revolvers but he responded by dismounting and drawing his Winchester. Outranged, they retreated and returned to Douglas.
Hazen was pursuing the outlaw’s trail as Koch went on a robbing spree, stealing horses, saddles, and robbing the Fairburn, South Dakota station agent. After losing his trail once more, Hazen returned to Casper. Six months later, Hazen was shot and killed pursuing the men who had robbed the Wilcox train on June 2, 1899.
By 1900, Koch had taken the alias of Alexander Larron and was captured as a horse thief in North Dakota. He was sentenced to two years of labor but escaped a year later.
He reappeared and by 1904 was back to his thieving ways and didn’t hesitate to use his gun, even if it was just to club someone. Sheriff Beard knew Koch from earlier encounters and claimed it was this young outlaw he had shot during the gun battle at Punteney’s ranch.
The Farmer Gets His Man
Sometime after the gun fight, Koch was seen heading to Canada to torment our neighbors to the north. He kept up his pillaging ways and was arrested once more.
Late in June 1907, after escaping from jail again, Koch finally met his end.
He was using the alias of Alexander Larron and had threatened to kill a North Dakota farmer, Thomas Kerr, on a country road. When Koch reached for his pistol, Kerr pulled out his 30-30 rifle and put a bullet through Koch’s hand.
Kerr’s horse spooked and the farmer kept firing, not sure if he had hit Koch or not. Bell wrote that the second shot hit Larron in the left side and by now, both horses were frightened and wildly bucking. A third shot from Kerr hit Koch in the back of the neck and threw the outlaw off his horse where he was dead before he even hit the ground.
Koch had met his end not by the lawmen who still pursued him, but by a farmer defending himself on a country road.
However, it was not the end of a legend. The stories persist to this day of the gun battle at the Punteney Ranch and the bullet holes still can be seen in the blacksmith shop.
Although we may never know for sure, facts seem to suggest that it was Koch, not Kid Curry, who had been rescued by the Picard and Hayes families in remote Wyoming after his shootout with the authorities pursuing him.
These ranchers are believed to have risked themselves to kidnap a Thermopolis doctor to tend to a horse thief’s life-threatening wounds.
It was the Wild West and as shot rang out over the hills, the ranchers on Bridger Creek showed true Wyoming hospitality to the outlaws.
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com
