CSD Staff

Daily Cartoon

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Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Cartoon 1: Wednesday, April 22, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Daily Cartoon 1: Wednesday, April 22, 2026

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's managing editor, Greg Johnson.

Greg Johnson

Crime & Courts

Courts

A Tinder date gone horribly wrong ended with a Newcastle man dead with a hollow-point round in his chest and a South Dakota man facing a second-degree murder charge — and vastly different stories from the couple who had just met for a hook-up.

The woman Drake Alexander Ingalls of Belle Fourche, South Dakota, had driven nearly 90 minutes to meet this past weekend told investigators that Ingalls “did not need to shoot that gun at all.”

Ingalls, however, says he shot the other man in defense of his Tinder date after the woman screamed for “help” several times, according to an affidavit of probable cause written by Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation Agent Zack Miller.

The shooting happened a little before 5 a.m. Sunday, and Ingalls had his initial court appearance Tuesday, where a Weston County Circuit Court judge gave him a $250,000 cash-only bond and set an Aug. 19 preliminary hearing.

By the time Newcastle police responded to the home of the victim, identified in court documents as Jason Greene, he was lying face-down on the floor and obviously dead, wrote Miller.

An officer “entered the trailer home and located the victim … lying face-down on the floor between the hallway and living room with a large pool of blood underneath his chest,” the affidavit says. “Officers and emergency medical personnel confirmed Greene was deceased.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What She Said"}]

In separate interviews with the woman and Ingalls, both told investigators how they met on Tinder and had been talking for anywhere from a couple weeks (according to her) to a few months (according to him) before Ingalls drove to Newcastle on Saturday so they could meet up, the affidavit says.

They had a room at a local hotel and had been drinking for hours by the time the woman got a text from Greene calling her a “whore,” Miller wrote.

The woman then allegedly proceeded to claim Greene had mistreated her, but later told investigators that Greene had “never assaulted her and the two were not in any physical altercation,” the affidavit says.

Upset after getting the text, the woman asked Ingalls to take her to Greene’s place “so she could talk to him,” Miller wrote.

The woman “told Ingalls about the text message and that Greene had abused her in the past,” the affidavit says. “(She) told Ingalls that if he heard her yell for help to come and help her.”

Greene didn’t know they were coming to his residence, the document adds. Miller’s affidavit also doesn’t elaborate on how the woman and Greene knew each other.

The woman and Greene were in a “heated verbal argument” with her “yelling loudly,” which Ingalls reportedly heard, the affidavit says. So, he left his car outside the trailer and went to the woman.

The woman also told investigators that she didn’t actually see the shooting, “and adamantly stated Greene never assaulted her and the two were not in any physical altercation,” the affidavit says.

She continued to say that Ingalls “did not need to shoot that gun at all,” Miller wrote about her statement.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What He Said"}]

That’s not how the confrontation went down, however, Ingalls said in his own interview with investigators, the affidavit says.

“Ingalls claimed he came around a shed and observed Greene struggling with (the woman) near the doorway threshold,” Miller wrote. “Ingalls described the struggle as Greene behind (the woman) and he had his arms hooked under her armpits and another hand on the back of her head or hair, and it appeared he was trying to pull (her) into his trailer.”

Ingalls said he tried to pull the door open, then pointed a handgun at Greene and demanded he let the woman go, according to his statement detailed in the affidavit.

“At which point, Ingalls said he fired his handgun,” Miller wrote. “Ingalls could only see Greene’s chest as (the woman) was in front of him and he believed he shot him right in the middle of the chest.”

That’s when Greene stumbled back into the trailer and fell onto the living room floor.

Ingalls had the gun because he had it in his car and grabbed it when he heard the woman yell for help, the affidavit says.

“Ingalls retrieved his 9 mm Glock 17 handgun from the center console of his car and chambered a hollow-point round into the handgun as he approached the side entrance of the trailer,” Miller wrote.

Ingalls and the woman then got back into his car and drove around the block before returning to the scene and the woman called 911.

If convicted of second-degree murder, Ingalls could get anywhere from 20 years ot life in prison, a fine of not more than $10,000, or both.

Newcastle highway sign Drake Alexander Ingalls 8 12 26

<title>Tinder Date Ends With Newcastle Man Shot Dead, S.D. Man Facing Murder Charge | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Tinder Date Ends With Newcastle Man Shot Dead, S.D. Man Facing Murder Charge

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Around Wyoming

Growing up, Texan James Neeley had never heard of mountain man Jim Baker, who was a frontier scout, trapper and early non-Native settler with ties to both Colorado and Wyoming when the West was young.

A sister’s genealogy search changed all that a couple decades ago. On Saturday, he was among a handful of Baker descendants who gathered for a photo commemorating the Little Snake River Museum’s work to preserve the cabin Baker built when he settled in present-day Savery in 1873.

Members of HistoriCorps and other volunteers in the Savery area spent last summer hand-hewing cottonwood logs to replace water-damaged logs at the cabin. The work is not finished, Little Snake River Museum Director Lela Emmons told Cowboy State Daily. 

Efforts are already underway to raise additional funds to keep the restoration going, and to source more of the huge cottonwood logs 

“There’s still another 10 or 12 logs we need to replace,” she said. “Getting those logs is the hardest part of the whole thing.”

Large cottonwood logs aren’t simply available at Home Depot or some other lumberyard.

“We have to find the right cottonwoods, get them milled,” she said. “And they’re so heavy, you can’t just lift them up. You have to hire a guy with a big backhoe or something who can lift them.”

It’s a fuel-intensive process, Emmons added, which means the logs must be sourced as near to the museum as possible.

Once they have the right logs, they’ll also need to bring HistoriCorps back to do the work, which will cost around $40,000 for another two-week stint.

Emmons said she hopes to identify grant funding to help with that.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Best Shot In The West"}]

Neeley drove from Texas with his wife, Sandra, just to learn more about his ancestor and see the cabin where Baker once lived.

“I would be a first cousin, three times removed,” Neeley told Cowboy State Daily. “So, there’s a lot of people here who know more about him than I do.”

The work done on the cabin, which is a rare surviving structure from the mountain man era, is “wonderful,” he said. 

“It’s an important part of history and, of course, if it deteriorates, nobody can enjoy it,” Neeley said. “So it’s really nice that they have done this. A lot of people, at least in our part of the world, are not familiar with Jim Baker. They’ve heard of Jim Bridger, people like that … but (Baker) was an important character, too.”

Kit Carson, in fact, has been quoted in newspaper articles of the time saying Baker was the “best shot in the West,” next to himself, of course. When Carson sent invitations to 18 mountain men for what would be their last trapping event together in 1851, Baker was on that list. 

Bridger, when he was looking for an elite scout to help him at Fort Phil Kearney, hired Baker. Baker was also one of the scouts for Gen. John Charles Fremont’s third expedition to explore and map the American West alongside Carson, and he was part of the 1841 Bartleson-Bidwell Party, among the earliest wagon parties bound for California.

Baker’s contemporaries certainly thought he was important. But unlike them, Baker was not interested in publicity, biographer Leighton Baker wrote in his book, “The Red-Headed Shoshoni.” 

Baker loved the mountains and hated the spotlight. So, when Ned Buntline suggested writing a biography about him, Baker flat out refused. 

He did not care if the world forgot who he was.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Too Many People"}]

In fact, when Denver became too populous for his tastes, he packed up and in 1873 moved to Savery, where he built a two-story cabin with a third-story tower as his home. The tower, dismantled in 1881, was so he could climb high and see far — just in case any of the American Indian tribes who disliked him decided to come to call. 

Baker is thought to be one of the first non-Native settlers in Denver. He was later honored with a stained-glass likeness at the state Capitol, and he became one of the first settlers of the Little Snake River Valley. 

The cabin itself has lived several lives. 

Baker first built it from massive cottonwood logs felled by himself and some of his children along the Little Snake River. They squared the timbers by hand with broad axes and not much else.

After Baker’s death in 1898, there was a tussle between Wyoming, Colorado, and Savery over who would keep the cabin. 

Wyoming won the first round of that battle, and Baker’s cabin was displayed in Frontier Park in Cheyenne for 60-some years starting in 1917. Then, one year, the cabin was disassembled and stored, never to return as a display at Frontier Park. 

Savery still wanted Baker’s cabin though, and was eventually successful in convincing the state to send it back home to the Little Snake River Valley in 1976.

When it arrived, it was like a giant pile of scattered Lincoln logs, with few numbers explaining how the cabin had been put together. 

Original photos of the cabin and miniature models of the logs were used to figure out just how to reassemble the cabin in its present location, a mile from where Baker had originally built it.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Fight Is On"}]

Three decades before Baker built his fortified cottonwood cabin near Savery, he’d already helped make the surrounding landscape part of Wyoming history.

In 1841, near the Little Snake River Valley, Baker was among trappers who survived the fight that gave Battle Mountain its name. 

The conflict also became associated with Battle Creek, Battle Pass, and Battle Highway — place names that still mark the country where Baker later chose to make his home.

The battle is one of the most stunning tales of the mountain man era.

That summer, Baker had been trapping in the Green River country. Bridger decided to send the young scout to warn French-Canadian trader Henry Fraeb, who was building a trading post somewhere near the confluence of Battle Creek and the Little Snake River, that large war parties of Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho were gathering in the region.

Bridger wanted Fraeb to abandon his exposed trading post and come back to Bridger’s camp along Henry’s Fork of the Green River, where he and his men would be much safer.

But Fraeb wasn’t keen to abandon his post. 

One day, while Baker and a few companions were hunting bison and cleaning their kills in the vicinity of Fraeb’s outpost, they saw huge puffs of dust suddenly appear over the southwest flank of the peak now known as Battle Mountain, which was then called Bastion Mountain. A large allied war party of Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Sioux — what Baker relative Chilly Rollingson calls the “Platte River Indians” —  then came riding down the southwest side of Battle Mountain. 

They were making a beeline for Fraeb’s trading post — exactly the scenario Bridger had feared.

Baker and his companions raced back to the outpost to help defend it and their lives. In the ensuing battle, Fraeb was among the first killed.

Baker, just 21 or so at the time, stepped up to take command, and his fellow scouts would later credit him with saving their lives. 

Baker, in an account decades later in a Denver newspaper, said the Indians numbered 700 or more. Other accounts have put the numbers anywhere from 200 to thousands. 

Baker told the newspaper he and the men hid behind stumps and positioned dead horses as breastworks to withstand what was about to happen.

With their manpower limited to about 24 scouts, and scarce quantities of ammunition, Baker told the men they had to make every shot count. That meant waiting until their attackers were close enough to ensure each bullet was going to hit someone or a horse. 

Baker and the men with him believed they were going to die. All they could do was make their own lives as costly as possible.

Baker’s strategy worked better than they could have imagined. Each time one of their fellow warriors fell, the Indians would stop their charge and draw back. Eventually, with only five horses left to fight over, the Indians decided to take their dead and wounded away and leave the trappers alone.

It was a stunning reversal of fate for the surviving trappers.

Carson, who told a Denver reporter he heard the story later from Indian points of view, said the warriors believed a supernatural force had turned the fight against them. They could not otherwise see how a battle where they held such overwhelming odds went so poorly.

Bastion Mountain was renamed Battle Mountain after the fight, and a different mountain was renamed Baker’s Peak.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Keeping History Alive"}]

In later times, some of Baker’s favorite trails, drawn out on his trapper maps, have become paved highways today. 

Many people travel these routes who do not realize how these roads came to be. 

The preservation of Baker’s cabin, as the mountain man who helped settle this area of the West, is a “big responsibility,” Cynthia Reschke Collyard told Cowboy State Daily. 

She now lives in Colorado and is a direct descendant of Baker. Her great-grandmother was Baker’s daughter, Jenny, making him her great-great grandfather.

“This is rightly where it belonged, because this is where it was originally built,” she said. “But it’s a big thing for a little museum to take on the care of something like this, outside in the elements.”

She hopes to see the restoration work continue, knowing some logs on the cabin have rotted and need to be replaced. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"The restoration so far is good, she added."}]

“It’s been done in the nick of time,” she said. “And I think a lot more work needs to be done. I don’t think it’s finished by any means.”

Collyard has been actively working through tribal records to learn more about Baker, trying to separate facts from “barstool” storytelling through the years, which have muddied the historical waters.

What she hopes for, more than anything, is for Baker and his role in history to be remembered accurately.

That’s a goal important as well to other Baker relatives such as Rollingson and Paul and Michael McAllister.

The McAllisters have donated rare Baker photos and artifacts to museums in Craig and Savery, as well as donated time to helping preserve Baker’s cabin.

“History is important,” Michael said, noting that he and his brother both helped mill and square many of the new cottonwood logs for the restoration. “Anytime you can keep history alive, it’s all for the good.”

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<title>Jim Baker Descendants Celebrate Work To Save Forgotten Mountain Man’s Savery Home | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Long before he built his cabin in Savery, Jim Baker led two dozen men in an 1841 fight that gave Battle Mountain its name. Now his far-flung descendants and a tiny museum are fighting time, money and rotten logs to save the frontier scout’s last home.

Jim Baker Descendants Celebrate Work To Save Forgotten Mountain Man’s Savery Home

<title>Brent Bien’s 50% Property Tax Initiative Puts Wyoming Homeowners First | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wyoming’s first citizen initiative on the statewide ballot in 30 years would cut the taxable value of a primary residence by 50%—a first step toward Brent Bien’s goal of eliminating residential property taxes.

Brent Bien’s 50% Property Tax Initiative Puts Wyoming Homeowners First

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Wyoming Life

Sports

Another Wyoming woman is leading the herd in 

Lindsay Woods of Jackson is one of the 43 riders participating in the Mongol Derby 2026, a 620-mile horse race in Inner Mongolia. As of Monday, she’s made her move and is poised to win it all.

 as "a washed-up Pony Clubber now cowgirlmaxxing in Wyoming" on the Mongol Derby website. She put a positive spin on her prospects, saying that if she does get "lawndarted" by a semi-feral Mongolian horse, "she might at least get a nose job out of it."

“I came to compete with the variables within my control and hopefully have a couple giggles with the things that aren’t,” Woods said in a video filmed before she started the arduous race. “I’m really looking forward to coming off the start line, seeing a little carnage. I’m excited to see what the steppe’s got in store.”

Dozens of friends are supporting her from afar. Nobody’s heard from Woods since the race started Aug. 4, but the updates they’re getting are extremely promising.

“She’s one of the toughest, most positive women that I know, and she is a top-notch equestrian,” said Amberley Baker with the Jackson Pony Club. “She is in it to win it.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Race So Far"}]

According to the Mongol Derby’s official website, Woods was 

She and Rangna Roux from South Africa, pushed beyond Horse Station 15 to “some extra kilometers between themselves and their closest rivals.”

 puts Woods at Horse Station 19, with Roux and Laura Van Laar of the Netherlands. Only six stations remain between Woods and a potential first-place finish.

[{"type":"text","text":"Woods’s friends and family are extremely excited about her progress."}]

“Nobody wants to jinx it,” Baker said. “It’s like the Super Bowl of horse races. She’s been in the lead for a few days now, but we don’t know if she’s teamed up with the other riders. Everyone at the barn has seen how much she's put into this, both physically and mentally.” 

Baker and her daughter have been taking riding lessons with Woods for years. Many other young women in the Jackson Pony Club are eagerly following her progress, confident she has what it takes to succeed, she said.

“I would say she's inspiring the next generation of endurance riders,” Baker said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Dangerous Derby"}]

The Mongol Derby follows the "postal route" established by Genghis Khan across the Mongolian Steppe in 1224. Horse messengers used the route so the leader of the Mongol Empire could communicate with the far-flung corners of his conquests.

Today, the Mongol Derby holds the record for the longest multi-horse race in the world. Participants ride "semi-wild" Mongolian horses between 25 stations along the 620-mile route.

Riders change horses every 25 miles, which amounts to 25 horses for the entire race. They can only ride for 11 hours a day, or they incur penalties that affect their time and place in the highly competitive 10-day endurance race.

the Mongol Derby. She split the victory with fellow rider and now lifelong friend Willemien Jooste of South Africa in July 2022.

"The ride itself is really about physical fitness, not necessarily horse ability," Griffith said. "You need to be a good rider, but it's really about physical and mental endurance. You have to be prepared for 10 days of long hours in the saddle. If you're mentally prepared for that, you can do anything."

[{"type":"text","text":"Physical and mental fortitude is critical, but it can only do so much."}]

The Mongol Derby is notoriously treacherous. Riders have gotten lost and injured, sometimes to the point that they can't continue.

[{"type":"text","text":"One rider has already dropped out of the 2026 race due to an injury."}]

Griffith said she met with Woods a few times before she departed for Mongolia and shared what wisdom she could, mostly about equipment, the horses, and strategy.

“I tried to give her all the knowledge I could, but her race will be different than mine,” she said. “It will be her own race with her own challenges.”

Having followed her entire journey to this point, Griffith said Woods is “doing wonderfully, so far.”

“With some good luck and good horses, I think she should continue to do really well,” she said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Strength And Strategy"}]

Woods did everything she could to prepare for the Mongol Derby when she got one of the highly coveted spots in the 2026 race, Baker said. She said she rode through the Wyoming wilderness at every opportunity.

“She was out on her mustang pretty much daily, putting in the miles in the mountains to get ready for this race,” Baker said. “I encouraged her to rest, recover, hydrate, and sleep before she left, because she was training very hard.”

Griffith said one key element to a successful race is strategy. With the limitations imposed on riders, they have to outthink as well as out-ride the other participants.

“I would say the most difficult part was trying to balance wanting to be competitive and ride as quickly as you could, while trying to balance the health and welfare of the horses," she said. “The ‘semi-feral’ horses have been ridden plenty, but they’re grumpy and might bolt or gallop off, so picking the right horse is important.”

If anyone rides past 7 p.m., they incur a 2-minute penalty for every minute beyond it. After careful planning and “an agonizing walk,” Griffith and Jooste crossed the finishing line at 6:52 p.m. on July 31, 2022, with eight minutes to spare.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"It’s stressful, adventurous and lots of fun,” Griffith said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"In It To Win It"}]

Because of the intensity and remoteness of the Mongolian Steppe, nobody’s heard from Woods. Baker, Griffith, and others are clinging to every update on the Mongol Derby’s website and live map, along with any Instagram posts.

“I expect her to finish in a few days,” Baker said. “She could be done in two days.”

Having a partner is a good strategy for a successful race, but that’s another thing nobody knows about Woods’ progress. She might have teamed up with Roux and Van Laar, or she could be riding solo.

According to Griffith, having a partner can be “pretty fluid”, depending on the person and the horses.

“I think it is easier to ride together if you can, but it’s also hard to stay together,” she said. “Your horse might pulse down at the same rate, or you might be ready to leave, or somebody might get a penalty.”

The landscape itself is a constant challenge. That’s why Griffith said one of the most important factors is also one that nobody can control or prepare for.

“You need a fair bit of good luck,” she said. “What if you get a penalty? What if your horse goes lame? What if you get bucked off and lose a horse? There are just so many variables in the steppe that you can only do so much.”

Still, that might be where Woods has an inherent advantage. The Mongolian Steppe is rugged, dangerous, and treacherous, but not dissimilar from where Woods lives and has been training.

“Mongolia itself is a lot like southern Wyoming with its rolling hills and breaks, but it's covered with grass instead of sagebrush," Griffith said. "The terrain is super similar. The temperature is very, very similar. The nights are chilly, but the days can be hot, and the weather blows through quickly. For Wyoming riders, there’s comfort in that terrain.”

Finishing the Mongol Derby is enough of an accomplishment, but everyone following Woods knows how tenacious she can be. 

Regardless of the success of her strategies and alliances, Baker is excited for Woods, as are Griffith and all the people cheering her on from afar. She’ll be hailed as a hero when she returns to Wyoming, no matter what, they say.

“No matter how it turns out, she'll make Wyoming proud, but she’s in it to win it,” Baker said.

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<title>Jackson Woman On Track To Win 620-Mile Mongol Derby | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Jackson's Lindsay Woods was one of the top three riders Monday and is poised to win the Mongol Derby 2026, the longest and most arduous multi-horse race in the world. If she wins the 620-mile marathon, she'll become the second woman from Wyoming to do so.

Jackson Woman On Track To Win 620-Mile Mongol Derby

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Sunday morning, I threw some clothes in a bag and headed east, Sturgis-bound.

For hundreds of miles, Wyoming unspooled beneath a great blue sky, the prairie rolling toward the horizon through cattle, sagebrush and long stretches of nothing at all, until the earth began to rise and the plains folded themselves into the dark, pine-covered ridges of Meade County.

[{"type":"text","text":"Motorcycles seemed to materialize out of thin air."}]

One became three. Three became 20. Packs merged with packs until the highway itself appeared to be migrating toward Sturgis, chrome flashing in the sun and the low thump of exhaust echoing off rocky bluffs.

I left the interstate for an old highway where limestone walls rose around the road, waterfalls spilled from cliffs and disappeared into the trees, and the air seemed to change as the prairie vanished behind me.

[{"type":"text","text":"I had crossed into the primal kingdom of the Black Hills."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"A crow cawed from somewhere above, and a shiver ran down my back."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Too late to turn back now."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Pantydropper"}]

For most of the year, Sturgis is a South Dakota town of close to 7,000 people. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Then August comes."}]

, transforming the place into a temporary city of chrome, leather and humanity, with Main Street as its pulsing center. I was told about half-million people were there Sunday.

Somewhere near the entrance, a 66-year-old Louisiana man was waiting to show me the ropes.

Manny Myers was sitting in a low-slung, tricked-out trike customized down to the smallest details, his gray beard hanging down his chest in two long braids and not one but three packs of Marlboro Blacks riding in the pocket of his sleeveless orange shirt.

The Pantydropper — the name of this wild beast — was painted with ghost flames and built around a 350 V8 car engine sitting obscenely exposed in front of us.

The name is a nod to the toll, but "You get a free ride," he told me with a smirk, because he knows my aunt.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"It goes zero to 100 in a second,\" he said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"This was not reassuring."}]

Climbing into a three-wheeler called "The Pantydropper" with a 50-year Sturgis veteran who boasted "it goes zero to 100 in a second," ended up with me at the wheel and the flashing lights of a South Dakota patrol car behind us.

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