If not for a governor’s pardon, Earl Foree still would have been in Wyoming’s state prison during a week in June 1914 as he rode into the Sheridan area on a stolen horse.
The valuable blazed-faced saddle horse he cantered on happened to belong to Big Horn County Deputy Sheriff Frank Rue of Basin.
After stealing the horse, Foree told a man at a ranch in the Big Horn Mountains where he overnighted that he was headed to Sheridan intending to kill people he blamed for putting him in prison 10 years earlier.
Across the globe in Austria, World War I was about to begin after the assassination of the archduke of Austria. Henry Ford had earlier in the year declared he would pay his workers $5 a day for eight hours of work, transforming manufacturing in the United States.
The first commercial airplane flight had taken place a few months earlier on Jan. 1 — involving a passenger ferried from St. Petersburg, Fla., to Tampa.
But Foree, 35, was still living his wild-West outlaw life. And on Saturday, June 13, 1914, he became involved in a gunfight that led to his end, as well as the death of well-respected Sheridan County Undersheriff William Veach and the wounding of Rue.
“Undersheriff Veach Is Shot Dead,” a headline in The Sheridan Enterprise blared June 14. “Desperado Kills Officer, Wounds Deputy and Is Himself Shot.”
Current Sheridan County Sheriff Levi Dominguez said department officers see the news articles chronicling Veach’s death, as well as the death of Undersheriff William McPherren seven years later, every day.
“Both of those stories, and all of the news articles and clippings are in our hallway that leads them to our patrol writing room,” he said. “It’s a solemn reminder of what this job entails and the sacrifice that is made within our profession.”
The roots to the headlines on Veach stretch back to a trial in late December 1903, in which Foree is described in the Dec. 29, 1903, Cheyenne’s Wyoming Tribune as a “well-known ranchman from Slack.”
The paper wrote that he was tried for burning a neighbor’s barn to the ground.
Known Hoof Print
The Sheridan Post reported that the structure owned by E.C. Woodley of Pass Creek was torched on Sept. 27, 1902, and investigators had found hoofprints of a horse having a peculiar mark and known to belong to Foree.
Foree also was overheard at a train depot telling his brother, who had been charged with stealing cattle, that he had “fixed Woodley.”
“Much other evidence was of the same nature was produced, consisting primarily of voluntary statements and admissions made in conversations with neighbors, sufficient to make a very strong case against him,” the newspaper reported.
Foree was found guilty of arson and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Two years later, his family hired attorneys to petition Wyoming Gov. B.B. Brooks to set him free. Foree was released in the fall of 1907 for good behavior.
A short time later in November 1907, a state prison inmate serving a life sentence named Adam Eckhart obtained a pistol and 48 sticks of dynamite. He shot and killed a prison guard and then tried to shoot the dynamite to blow out a prison door to escape.
The dynamite didn’t explode, so Eckhart then turned the pistol on himself.
But questions were raised about how he got the pistol and the dynamite. Foree was named the suspect. When authorities sought him, they learned he was already across the state line.
Authorities caught up with him in a Grand Junction, Colorado, jail cell charged with stealing a horse.
When acting Wyoming Gov. W.R. Schnitger granted Carbon County officials “a requisition on the governor of Colorado for the person of Earl Foree,” a Grand Junction prosecutor refused to let Foree go.
Carbon Sheriff E.M. Horton had intended to bring Foree back to be tried for murder, The Carbon County Journal reported on Feb. 9, 1908.
Pleading Guilty
Instead, Foree pleaded guilty to the Colorado horse stealing charge and escaped trial and a potential hanging in Rawlins.
In the spring of 1914, Foree was let out of a Colorado prison and immediately went back to his old ways.
He set out on a mission of revenge, and traveled back to Wyoming and worked his way up to the Basin area.
As Big Horn Deputy Rue was in Billings, Montana, transporting an inmate, Foree stole a horse from his corral.
Foree was later described by Rue in a newspaper as being about 6-foot-1, 165-170 pounds "with dark hair, buttermilk blue eyes that were glassy and that gave him a ‘maniacal expression.”
After stealing the horse, The Sheridan Enterprise reported on June 14, 1914, that Foree stopped at a ranch in the Big Horn Mountains that was owned by an E.L. Dana.
Dana was one of the men that Foree wanted to kill, blaming him for financing the prosecution of his arson charge in 1903.
Dana did not live there, but Foree told a Mr. Taylor who was the tenant rancher for Dana that he was back in the Big Horn country to get even with those responsible for his arson conviction.
“He said that a preacher had told him that it was Mr. Dana’s money that had convicted him, and he was going ‘to get’ Mr. Dana first,” the Enterprise reported.
Taylor acted to notify all the men named by Foree that he was headed to Sheridan.
Rue also was contacted about his stolen horse while in Billings and decided to head to Parkman to try and intercept Foree.
When he arrived there, he learned that Foree had already left for Sheridan. He contacted the Sheridan County Sheriff’s Office, and it searched Friday evening for the horse and Foree and came up empty.
Finding Foree
Saturday, the search effort continued with Veach and Rue and other officers combing the city for their suspect.
Foree was spotted in a real estate office, and an officer went to tell Veach and Rue about his whereabouts. Rue and another officer went into the real estate office, but Rue failed to recognize Foree, allowing him to slip past them and out the door.
After realizing who he was, the officers involved decided to follow him to see if he would lead them to the horse.
Instead, they saw him enter a store.
As Veach walked by the door to check on the outlaw, Foree ran out and confronted him.
“He said he had work in town and he wanted to know if the officers were for him or against him,” the Sheridan Enterprise reported in its June 14 edition. Veach motioned for Rue to come and join them.
“Aren’t you the man who rode a sorrel horse over the mountains, down the Littlehorn, through Ranchester, down to Parkman and then into Sheridan?” Rue asked.
Foree denied it.
Shootout
The newspaper said Rue then confronted Foree and told him: “You can consider yourself under arrest.”
Rue told the paper that Foree jumped back and pulled his gun and fired.
Both Veach and Rue returned fire.
“The undersheriff, however in spite of the fact that he had a bullet through his heart and another in his back, stood up and was able to fire one shot at the ex-convict,” the Sheridan Enterprise reported on June 14, 1914. “Some say this was the bullet that grazed Foree’s skull and others state that it was Veach’s bullet that hit Foree in the abdomen.”
Rue told the Big Horn County Rustler paper on June 19, 1914 that all three of them were in a clinch and that after he was shot, Rue kept his grasp on Foree and pulled his gun away from him.
“(Rue) says he believes Veach was killed by the last shot fired by Foree,” the Rustler reported.
Eyewitnesses reported that Veach was shot the first time that Foree fired. A grocery store owner on Broadway Street in Sheridan held Veach’s head on his lap as he died, the Sheridan Enterprise reported.
A doctor treated Rue’s leg at the scene of the shooting and a large crowd gathered and talked about lynching Foree, whose leg was broken.
Outlaw’s Wounds
Foree was taken to the jail and examined by doctors, who found three wounds — one in his abdominal cavity, a bullet in his right leg between the hip and the knee, and a bullet graze wound on his skull.
Rue’s injury proved to be a painful muscle wound.
An examination of Foree’s .45-caliber revolver found that he had fired four times, Rue’s .38-caliber revolvers five chambers were all emptied, and Veach had shot his weapon once.
An initial coroner’s inquest ruled that Veach died from a bullet to the heart fired by Foree.
Foree, questioned by the coroner as he lay on a cot, refused to answer.
“Cut it out, cut it out,” the Sheridan Enterprise reporter quoted him as the coroner persisted.
Dana, the ranchman on Foree’s kill list, told the newspaper that he was staying at the Sheridan Inn and on Saturday morning in the dining room he saw Foree enter the corridor to the dining room and look in from the door.
“I looked at him and caught his eye. When he saw me looking at him, he immediately backed out and disappeared,” Dana said. “I hardly knew what to do then, as I had left my gun upstairs in my room and was unarmed.”
He told the paper that he believed he had a “narrow escape” from having a gunfight with him.
Meanwhile, Veach’s funeral on June 16 at his home drew “scores of relatives and friends and members of the fraternal orders” to which Veach belonged, The Sheridan Post reported on June 16, 1914.
Veach’s immediate family then accompanied his body to Hillsboro, Oregon, for burial.
Veach’s Autopsy
But weeks later, Sheridan officials wanted an autopsy to verify the lawman’s cause of death. The doctors traveled to Oregon to perform it.
The Sheridan Enterprise on July 13, 1914, reported that during the autopsy, doctors pulled out a .38-caliber bullet and a .45-caliber one as well. It was the .38-caliber bullet that “penetrated” Veach’s “vital organs in nine different places.”
The .45-caliber weapon used by Foree entered Veach’s left breast, passed close to the heart, but not close enough to cause immediate death, they concluded.
Veach had been killed by friendly fire.
Rue who had just returned to Sheridan to pick up his stolen horse, heard from a Sheridan County attorney about the autopsy.
“Rue broke down as a result of the news and has been in a serious mental state since. Though he is blameless, he feels very badly about the whole affair,” the newspaper reported. “The Veach family knows that the shooting was accidental and puts no blame on Deputy Rue.”
Foree died of his wounds on July 12. He had been told before he died that his bullet may not have been the one that claimed Veach’s life.
“He said that Veach had approached him and acted like a gentleman and asserted that would have submitted quietly to arrest if Deputy Rue hadn’t come upon the scene,” the Sheridan Enterprise reported on July 13, 1914. “He expressed sorrow at the death of Veach.”
Foree’s body was sent to Miles, Montana, for burial.
Rue continued his law enforcement career for a few more years. He later moved to Bridger, Montana, and died on April 20, 1938, at age 69.
The grave of Big Horn County Deputy Frank Rue, whose stolen horse led to a gunfight on June 13, 1914, that claimed Sheridan County Undersheriff William Veach’s life. It was ruled that Rue’s bullet and not the outlaw’s killed Veach. (Courtesy Find A Grave) 
The Sheridan Post carried a story on the death of Earl Foree, nearly a month after he was shot three times in a confrontation with the law. (Courtesy Wyomingnewspapers.com) 
The Sheridan Post reported on the funeral of William Veach and the condition of the man who shot him, Earl Foree, on June 16, 1914. (Courtesy Wyomingnewspapers.com)
Important Memories
Dominguez compared the deaths of Veach and Undersheriff McPherren, who was shot in 1921 during a raid on a bootlegger, to the tragic killing of Sheridan Police Officer Sgt. Nevada Krinkee on Feb. 13, 2024.
Krinkee’s death generated an outpouring support that stretched into the state and nation and will “certainly be remembered 100 years from now and even longer,” for his impact on the community, he said.
In the same way, Dominguez said Undersheriff Veach and Undersheriff McPherren are remembered more than 100 years later.
“It’s important for their families and everybody in the community to know the sacrifice that those three law enforcement officers in our county made,” he said.
Dominguez said his predecessor as sheriff had both Veach and McPherren’s names etched into the National Law Enforcement Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
