It was 31 degrees below zero on Nov. 28, 1896, when Walter Punteney disappeared into the raging blizzard wearing only his underclothes.
He had been jailed in Thermopolis, Wyoming, on charges of stealing from his former employer and friend, Judge Jay Torrey of the Embar Ranch.
Outside a fearful blizzard had been raging and it was assumed that Punteney had frozen to death on his way to the outhouse. A witness claimed that they saw the body of Punteney in a snowdrift near the jail and a search party was sent to verify the report.
Instead, Punteney had run off to join his friends in the remote Hole-in-the-Wall country and became the outlaw he had been accused of already being.
During Punteney’s lifetime, before Robert Redford made Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid household names in the 1960s, Walter Punteney was well-known throughout Wyoming by ranchers and lawmen as a friendly cowhand.
If you looked at the newspaper record and memories of the old-timers, Punteney and his best friend, Tom O’Day, were more well-known that Cassidy and many other known outlaws of that time.
He soon had earned the nickname “Wat the Watcher” as a lookout for the gang, alongside O’Day who was known as “Peeps.”
By the early 1900s, he had retired from active outlaw work and ran cattle on his ranch in the remote regions of Hot Springs County along Bridger Creek.
It was also a great place to hide from the law and there were at least two shootouts at his home.
When Tim McCoy, future movie star and a young starry-eyed greenhorn, met the former outlaw, he described Punteney as a short, bowlegged cowboy with a quick smile. His gray eyes twinkled with good humor, and he was a good, faithful friend.
Punteney was known for his skill with the horse, an expertise that served him well when he first arrived in Wyoming as a teenager.
He also had a reputation as being an overall cheerful fellow.
Early Years
Walter Punteney was born into a well-to-do family on May 1, 1870, in rural Kansas. His ancestry can be traced back to France where the Punteney family was forced to flee from religious persecution.
They were millionaires, until the French government seized their bank accounts. The family eventually settled in America where they began to build back their fortune and were fiercely protective of their new homeland and freedoms they found here.
His father, Eli, was a college-educated abolitionist, who filled their spacious two-story family home with a library and the papers of the day.
Punteney was the seventh child of 13 and the first to leave home. In 1888, the teenager arrived in the Wyoming Territory, two years before Wyoming was granted statehood. He was already an expert horseman and knew cattle thanks to his rural childhood.
Punteney did not begin as an outlaw when he first arrived in this remote territory as an 18-year-old. Much like his future friend, Butch Cassidy, who was four years his junior, Walt began as a law-abiding cowhand.
His younger brother, Veazy, or Vede as he was known, joined Punteney in Wyoming and the two kept in contact with their family back in Kansas as they worked the range as stockmen.
Cowboy Hero
By 1892, Punteney was a trusted employee on the large Embar Ranch on Owl Creek and was responsible for the breaking and handling of their horses. That spring, 25 of the ranch’s horses were stolen by thieves and driven from the county.
According to the Fremont Clipper newspaper, three cowboys, Virgil Rice, Jacob Price and Walt Punteney “faced the hardships brought on by a winter trip and went in pursuit.”
The paper described the chase as difficult as they followed a trail through snow and mud.
“The trail of the horse thieves was snowed under no less than three times but still these men pushed on,” the Clipper said.
Despite the storms that hindered the cowboys and hid the trail, the horses were successfully tracked back to Alliance, Nebraska to the John Nutcher farm.
Joe Nutcher had worked with Punteney and the others on the Embar Ranch the previous year and claimed his innocence of the crime.
With the help of the local sheriff, the Embar cowboys captured Joe Nutcher and Ed Nye. Nutcher admitted to having the horses but claimed to have a bill of sale from his brother, Billy. Despite his pleas of innocence, the two were taken to Wyoming to face charges.
Joe was subsequently sentenced to four years in the penitentiary for buying the stolen horses from his brother and Nye was sent to jail.
As for Billy Nutcher, who actually stole the horses, he avoided the Embar posse and arrest by going to Ravenna, Nebraska, to the home of his in-laws.
For their part in recovering this herd of stolen horses for the Embar Company, Judge Jay Torrey, the president of the ranch, awarded Punteney and his comrades with new saddles and outfits with silver tips of the finest quality for their dedication in capturing the thieves.
He gave a heartfelt speech about the morals of the genuine cowboy.
“These saddles and equipment will always bear testimony to the fact that you are men of integrity, hate wrongdoing and possess all the other elements which go to make up sturdy manhood,” Torrey said. “Our company is represented by faithful, honest men.”
For his efforts in capturing the horse thieves, Walt Punteney was promoted to the Assistant Cattle Foreman overseeing more than 12,000 cattle.
During these years of working the stock for other men, he and his brother Vede moved in the upper circles of Hot Springs County, rubbing elbows with the prominent and respected men of the time.
A New Chapter
Three years later, in 1895, Punteney was given an opportunity of a lifetime through these friendships. Bill George, of Orin Junction, was at the Embar the day Punteney asked for and was given his wages due him from Judge Torrey.
George said that as Punteney took his leave, Torry expressed a regret at his loss from his employ.
Punteney and another Embar man, Fletcher Kirkendall, had pooled their money together to obtain a five-year lease of the old Padlock ranch.
Their lease included all the farming implements and one hundred head of choice young brood cows.
Besides the income from the hay grain and produce from the ranch, they were to be given one-half interest in the one hundred cows and all their increase at the end of the five-year contract. All the taxes were also to be paid by the Padlock company.
But their good fortune wasn’t to last.
In the winter of 1896, Kirkendall was arrested for branding maverick calves of their former Embar employer and killing some steers belonging to J. L. McCoy of Denver.
According to the Wyoming Derrick newspaper, Kirkendall weakened in the hands of the officers and made a full and complete confession.
Punteney was also arrested and accused by his once friend, Judge Jay Torrey, of helping to steal the Embar calves and horses.
This was the same ranch that had helped send Butch Cassidy to the penitentiary in 1894, two years prior, for being in possession of a stolen horse – reportedly sold to him by none other than Billy Nutcher.
While being held in the local jail in Thermopolis, Punteney made his daring escape.
Punteney escaped into the blizzard and made his way to the Hole-in-the-Wall. To this day, there are those in the Punteney family that believe that it was his younger brother Vede that had helped with the escape and supplied Punteney with warm clothing and a fast horse.
Regardless of who his accomplice was, Punteney escaped his jailers, and, under the alias of Jones, he officially began a new career as an outlaw, specializing in calf branding of other men’s cattle, especially of the CY cattle in Natrona County.
Wat The Watcher
Years later, Punteney admitted that he was indeed part of this outlaw element, and it had grown beyond mere rustling of mavericks.
“It happened a few years back,” he told Tim McCoy, a young curious cowboy and future author. “See, there was a time Tom, a couple of other fellows and I robbed a bank.”
One summer day, Punteney was standing on the dirt streets outside Happy Jack’s Saloon in Thermopolis, talking quietly with a few friends. Soon after, they mounted their horses and rode out of town together.
Their destination was Dickinson, North Dakota to rob a bank. It was June 1897, mere months since Walt’s escape from jail.
The other men were Harvey “Curry” Logan, Tom “Peep” O’Day and Willie Roberts. Somewhere along the way, they changed course and headed to Belle Fourche, South Dakota, instead.
They camped about 20 miles from town and Logan scouted out the bank and saloon. He decided it would be a simple heist to rob the saloon where a massive steel safe harbored the house’s share of the considerable gambling revenues.
They rode into Belle Fourche, tying their extra horses in a grove of timber just outside of town. Upon arrival, their lookout, Tom O’Day, tied his horse outside the saloon while Walt and the others entered the bank.
According to Punteney, O’Day went inside the saloon which they had all agreed would be the easiest target to rob. He was leaning against the walnut bar, sipping from a shot of whiskey, keeping a look-out when the sounds of the bank robbery erupted in the streets.
Punteney, a sack of silver coins thrown over his shoulder, saw O’Day run out of the saloon, cursing. Punteney jumped on his horse, fleeing with Logan and Roberts from the angry mob that had gathered and was shooting at them.
As the outlaws fled the town, O’Day thought quickly and tried to deceive the mob into thinking he was just a law-abiding citizen witnessing a robbery.
Punteney heard his friend shout, “I’ll get ‘em, I’ll get ‘em!”
However, just as O’Day mounted, his horse reared and bucked him off. O’Day jumped up and grabbed a mule instead. Trotting past the bank, he was heard to yell, “I’ll pursue the varmits, boys, I’ll get ‘em!”
As O’Day passed the bank, futilely kicking the mule to try and pick up some speed, somebody shouted, “He’s one of them!”
Before Tom O’Day knew what was happening, a shell from a Winchester buried itself in his shoulder and he flew out of the saddle and lay on the ground, dazed.
Stories vary how he was exactly captured with one of the more popular accounts saying that he fled to the alley and was captured in the saloon outhouse where he was reportedly hiding.
In the meantime, Walt Punteney was trying to make his own escape. Several miles outside town, the posse closed in.
A rifle shot caught him just below the right shoulder, knocking him to a muddy ditch, where he lay motionless.
“It was the sack,” Punteney said when relating the story, “Damn! When that shell hit, it crashed into that sack of silver. The impact was terrific, and I’m sure it saved my life because the posse rode by, thinking I was deader ‘n hell.”
Punteney was eventually caught and arrested for the robbery. However, he had two of the best lawyers in the region, Temple and McLaughlin, defending both him and O’Day thanks to the intervention of their mutual friend, Butch Cassidy.
Witnesses Bob McCoy and Mike Brown, riding in from Wyoming, claimed that the men had been at Brown’s ranch just outside of Thermopolis at the time of the robbery.
The jury acquitted both O’Day and Punteney and they returned to Hot Springs County as free men.
As for the silver sack, years later a grinning Punteney told McCoy, “Well, the sack was pretty well torn, as you can imagine. And some of the silver was scattered all over that ditch and across the trail.
“It was a mess. Now, I ain’t making no confessions, understand? But you must agree that I’ve got myself a right nice little homestead.”
Reformed Outlaw
In 1899, the Pinkertons, who constantly kept check on their outlaws, noted in the Pinkerton Denver File 1728, “Putney has settled down in Lost Cabin and seems to have reformed.”
After a series of assassinations of their members, the Hole-in-the-Wall gang did split up and began to go their separate ways. Punteney stayed in the Hot Springs County area.
He made good on his homestead that the silver from the Belle Fourche robbery helped buy and it was known to be a place of safety for those in need.
In 1904, he was accused in the Basin newspaper of harboring horse thieves. Twice there were shoot outs between the sheriff and outlaws that occurred at the Punteney Ranch.
The Natrona County sheriffs kept as close an eye as possible on his remote ranch, knowing that wanted men often worked for Punteney.
By 1910, at age 40, he had been married just three years and had two small daughters with his wife, Alice. By the early summer of 1912, they had a third daughter but misfortune struck the family. The Punteneys lost their ranch on Bridger Creek to delinquent taxes.
In the spring of 1915, Punteney had reversed his fortunes and was running cattle on his Camp Stool Ranch near Crow Heart Butte, west of Riverton.
However, he and Alice had divorced by then. She took their daughters to Lander where she married a prominent dentist and raised their children among the elite of that prospering western town.
Punteney lived out the rest of his life as a businessman. At Lenore, he ran the Crow Creek Stock Company and pursued several successful ventures.
After his divorce from Alice and his subsequent remarriage, Punteney moved on to Pinedale in the mid-1920’s. There, he built a saloon which eventually became the popular Cowboy Bar.
Walt Punteney lived out the rest of his life in Pinedale, visiting his former friends from time to time in his old haunts in Hot Springs County to reminisce about the not-too-long ago past.
He died in 1950, a Wyoming Cowboy to the end.
Contact Jackie Dorothy at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com
