As the sounds of the gun battle died down on the remote ranch in Idaho the posse, a mixture of Idaho lawmen and Montana ranchers, came out of hiding.
Two accused horse thieves from Wyoming, Mike Burnett and George Spencer, lay dead in the dirt.
Deputy Sheriff Sam Swanner bent down and picked up the nickel-plated Colt. 44 from the body of Spencer and claimed it as his own.
That gun was nearly lost to history until Swanner’s grandson began researching the history of his late grandfather’s ivory-handled pistol and trying to connect with the man he had never known.
The story began in Wyoming.
The Outlaws
Wyoming cowboys Burnett and Spencer were among a loose group of horse thieves that included Butch Cassidy and Al Hainer.
They had worked together in the Wind River Country and Owl Creek range of Wyoming and were known to steal from rich ranchers and small farmers. These homesteaders they had stolen from had enough and were about to make examples of these two young cowboys.
Historian Mike Bell in “Incidents of Owl Creek” writes that rancher John Chapman had been tracking the two cowboys since fall 1891 with the help of outlaw turned informant, Alfred “Slick” Nard.
Stories had already begun to leak out to the Idaho authorities that thieves were on the other side of the Teton mountains.
When the thieves moved south from Montana, they raided the Poindexter and Orr horse herds near Dillon. Bell believes that the thieves then broke up and Burnett and Spencer eventually arrived in Idaho with their stolen horses.
They were introduced to a rancher, Pierce Cunningham, in the fall of 1891 who allowed them to stay on his ranch.
According to Bell, Mike Burnett was a slender, dark-haired, experienced cattle herder from Oregon who had worked for some years in the Big Horn Basin.
George Spencer was from Illinois, about 30 years old, sandy-haired and heavier than Burnett.
The cowboys had a herd of horses with them and needed hay and a place to stay for the winter.
Cunningham agreed to allow them to use his place on Spread Creek, about 25 miles north of Jackson’s Hole. However, he also arranged for his partner, Swede Jackson, to share the place with them as he had suspicions about the pair.
Over the winter, rumors began to circulate that Burnett and Spencer were horse thieves and that the owners of the stock they had were tracking them down.
According to the account of pioneer Fritiof Fryxell, Cunningham went to Spread Creek and told the pair to leave as soon as they could.
A posse was formed of Montana ranchers.
Samuel Cole Swanner was the deputy sheriff for Jackson’s Hole and was asked to join the group, apparently to put the law on their side.
The Blackfoot News on April 30, 1892, reported of their inclusion in the posse in an article headlined, “Wyoming Officers meet two Rustlers in Jackson’s Hole. They left the Rustlers and Returned Home.”
“He was a lawman, but he had no jurisdiction in Wyoming,” Swanner’s grandson, Tom Neiwirth said. “He was just along in case they found these guys in Idaho on the way over.”
Neiwirth said his grandfather crossed over Teton Pass on snowshoes in April 1892 with the rest of the posse. They got to the Cunningham ranch during the night and surrounded the place.
The day before the fight, Spencer and Burnett had moved their horse herd into the hills in preparation for leaving the valley, according to the Cheyenne Leader on April 29.
Burnett and Spencer were a day too late.
It is believed that this is the gun that Deputy Sheriff Sam Swanner lifted off the body of outlaw George Spencer. The known facts are that Swanner was present at the gun battle where Spencer was killed, the gun was made prior to 1892, there is a firsthand account of an ivory handled six-shooter being picked up by a deputy sheriff and the gun belongs to the family of Swanner. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
Tom Neiwirth, grandson of Deputy Sheriff Sam Swanner, was given a Colt six-shooter by his sisters. It was his grandfather’s gun and history points to the gun once belonging to George Spencer, a horse thief killed in 1892. It is not known if the holster was Spencer’s or one that Swanner had. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
George Spencer, an accused horse thief killed in a shootout with a posse, was said to have had an ivory-handled Colt. It is almost certain that the gun was picked up by Deputy Sheriff Sam Swanner and handed down to his grandson, Tom Neiwirth. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily)
The Shoot Out
The Wyoming Tales and Trails website quotes correspondence from Jackson’s Hole settler Robert E. Miller, who says he was also present at the fight.
“Well, we reached their camp and surrounded it before day break, seven men in the stable with their saddle horses and five men behind a knoll in front of the house, 75 yards and 50 yards from the house and laid in wait for them to get up and come out to feed and I tell you it was a long wait, for it was cold and we had to keep quiet,” he wrote.
At dawn, Spencer left the cabin to either feed the horses or investigate the barking of the ranch dogs. Eyewitnesses said Spencer moved cautiously and climbed over the fence into the corral.
“We let him come within 15 steps of us before we ordered him to throw up his hands and walk in,” Miller said. “But no! He stepped one step back, pulling his six-shooter, leveling at the cracks through which our seven guns were pointed and which he could see was sure death to him, but he was too slow.”
Spencer opened fire, emptying his pistol and putting a shot through the hat of one of the posse.
They returned fire.
A man named Karnes had brought his shotgun to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger, but it misfired. Another posse member, Goodwin, fired a shotgun blast that knocked Spencer to his knees.
“He emptied his six-shooter at us after he was down and made the splinters fly around us plenty,” Miller said. “He never spoke a word.”
A returning volley from the seven posse men ended Spencer’s career. He died riddled with bullets.
Burnett’s Last Stand
According to B.W. Driggs in “History of Teton Valley, Idaho,” Burnett is alleged to have said, “I guess the game is up. We might as well go out and take our medicine.”
He burst from the cabin armed with a six-shooter and a Ballard rifle.
Bullets slammed into the logs of the cabin next to him, but his firing drove the posse back to cover. One of his bullets tore through the hat of Jack Williams, a Montana rancher.
The posse members tried to parley with the horse thief.
“I suppose you intend to murder me as you (did) Spence,” Burnett said. “All I want to see is the heads of some you bastards.”
Despite his bluster, Burnett was outnumbered and outgunned. The young thief could not hold back the tide of lead.
One of the Montana men in the stable said, “I will get that man,” and fired.
The Winchester round smashed into Burnett’s shoulder, tore through his body and exited the other side.
The Cheyenne Daily Leader later reported that Burnett “died as he had lived — a desperado of the most confirmed sort.”
The lawmen recovered 53 horses that had been stolen from Wyoming and from Montana.
After the gun battle was over, Swanner bent down and picked up the fine, ivory-handled Colt. 44 from the body of Spencer.
In 1892, Deputy Sheriff Sam Swanner was part of a posse that gunned down two horse thieves, Mike Burnett and George Spencer. Swanner picked up the gun from the body of Spencer and passed it down to his son. It is now in the possession of his grandson, Tom Neiwirth. (Courtesy Tom Neiwirth) 
The Cunningham Ranch became the scene of a gun battle in 1892 between two horse thieves and a posse of men who were part of a “war of extermination” against the horse thieves. Mike Burnett and George Spencer, two men in their late 20s or early 30s, were both gunned down at this site. (Courtesy Mike Bell, "Incidents on Owl Creek") 
Pierce Cunningham had allowed two strangers, Mike Burnett and George Spencer, to stay on his ranch with their herd of horses. When he heard rumors that they were horse thieves, he told them to leave. They were preparing to leave when a posse arrived and gunned them both down. (Courtesy Mike Bell, "Incidents on Owl Creek") 
This map shows the site of the Pierce Cunningham ranch. His 1906 claim is outlined in black. The stars show the site of the Cummingham brother’s cabins. The northernmost star is the site of Pierce Cunningham’s cabin. The Snake River is upper left, and the Triangle X ranch at bottom center. (Courtesy Mike Bell, "Incidents on Owl Creek")
The Ivory-Handled Gun
Neiwirth inherited an ivory-handled pistol from his grandfather and started to find accounts linking the gun to the battle.
“I didn't know that my grandfather had even been involved at first,” Neiwirth said.
He began following clues that led him to a Western history conference. It was there where Neiwirth attended a talk by Bell in Cheyenne and felt that his suspicions about the gun might be true.
“I mentioned in passing that an Idaho deputy, Sam Swanner, was part of the posse that went into the Teton Valley and shot down the guys at the Cunningham Ranch,” Bell said. “When I came off the stage, this guy introduced himself and said, ‘You're talking about my granddad.’”
Bell said he was then stunned when Neiwirth told him he had the pistol that had been taken off the body of the dead horse thief.
“That's like electricity when he produced this pistol,” Bell said. “I'm thinking, ‘This is this artifact. This was involved in the gunfight at the Cunningham cabin when these two horse thieves died.’
“There's something profound and sad about that.”
For Neiwirth, Bell’s stories and reaction made him more sure that the gun was an important part of history.
The gun was made in 1888 and is a special edition single-action Army revolver called the Frontier six-shooter.
“They started making this in the same cartridge that Winchester made their 1873 lever action rifle, the gun that won the West, as they call it,” Neiwirth said. “Colt started chambering these for the 4440 cartridge, which the Winchester rifle was designed around.”
While Neiwirth cannot say definitively that his is the gun from the outlaw Spencer, he is 90% certain that it is.
For Bell, the more they research the gun, the more certain he is that it once belonged to the horse thief.
“Tom has the ultimate provenance that it was handed down through the family from Sam Swanner,” Bell said. “Last week, we consulted one of the historians in Cheyenne who's an expert on Colt's firearms, and he confirmed it's of the era.”
The gun was traced to a store in Ogden, Utah, which also confirms it in the right era. Bell said that they will now be pursuing sales records and other lines of inquiry to prove that this was Spencer’s gun.
Family Heirloom
For Neiwirth, the Colt .44 is also a connection to the family he never knew.
He had been adopted out when he was 3 days old, and by the time he had found his birth family, both his parents were gone.
“I think a lot of adoptees always have kind of a curiosity about your biological family,” Neiwirth said. “I just called one of my sisters out of the blue and said, ‘You know, do you have a brother that had such and such a birthday?’ So, I was able to connect with them.”
His sisters gave him the family gun, telling him that it was rightfully his.
He grew curious to know more about his birth family and began researching the family line, discovering his grandfather for the first time.
“He seemed to me to be one of those people that when something happened in the Old West, he was coincidentally there,” Neiwirth said. “He died in 1941, so I was able to talk to some people who knew him, his neighbors, who still own on the ranch next.”
As Neiwirth continues to dig into his family’s history, the gun he has connects him to the grandfather he never knew even existed.
“He was a postmaster at one time. He was the roads commissioner. He was a probate judge,” Neiwirth said. “He did a little bit of everything. He was a civilian scout for General Howard during the Nez Perce War and helped guide the army through Yellowstone National Park because he was familiar with the area from living right there.”
Neiwirth is especially grateful for the gun he can trace back to an actual event that his grandfather Swanner was involved in.
“When you have an artifact like that put in your hands that was used in that event, it sort of brings it back to life again,” Bell said. “This pistol was used in a confirmed event. And it's being handed to me by a guy whose grandfather took part in that event.
“It makes the gunfight all come alive.”
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
