In the lawless town of Arland, Wyoming, Belle Drewry was shot to death in a revenge killing in 1897.
She had arrived about seven years prior and knew the area’s notorious outlaws well, such as the Woodriver Horse Thieves.
Her beloved was in prison for murdering a romantic rival and Drewry was plying her trade in the remote sage.
Before her murder, Drewry had worked in the town’s saloon and dance hall. This Old West lady of the night was known as a petite red-headed beauty who wore a beautiful blue dress, earning her the nicknme “Lady in Blue.”
Arland was an unruly frontier town of Wyoming located about 25 miles south of present-day Cody and was the first settlement in northwest Wyoming.
It had a reputation for unrestrained violence and murder, said Wyoming historian Clay Gibbons. It was in Arland that Belle was murdered and buried with a three-gun salute.
Nearly 90 years after the Lady in Blue was killed, Gibbons and fellow historian Bob Edgar were determined to honor the memory of this “soiled dove” by exhuming her body.
They also wanted to move her remains from an unmarked and nearly forgotten grave to Old Trail Town in Cody, where they planned to give her a proper burial where she could be honored.
Love Triangle
According to the history plaque erected in Drewry’s honor, it is suspected that she drifted West from the mining towns of the Black Hills.
Historians surmised that she seemed to be drawn to the dark side of life and felt comfortable in that element.
The Sundance Gazette newspaper reported that in 1888, 21-year-old Belle Drewry was arraigned in court for theft alongside a piano player who was known to be an outlaw with an unsavory reputation.
After arriving in Arland, Drewry was involved in a love triangle with W.A. Gallagher and Bill Wheaton, cowboys who wee both courting Drewry.
Ultimately, Gallagher was shot and killed by Wheaton, the man Drewry favored.
Gallagher’s best friend, a dude who went by Blind Bill, attempted a showdown with Wheaton to avenge Gallagher’s death. Blind Bill also was killed.
Drewry and Wheaton were both charged with premeditated murder in the death of Gallagher, apprehended and taken to the county jail in Lander.
However, the charges against Drewry were dismissed at her preliminary hearing. Wheaton’s charge was later reduced to second-degree manslaughter and he was sentenced to eight years in the Wyoming Penitentiary at Laramie.
Killed A Cowboy
Drewry continued her activities in the Arland-Meeteetse country, and in early 1897, she and three of her girls threw a party.
Everyone was drinking and the cowboys proceeded to shoot up the place.
“Some cowboys were raising all sorts of hell and Belle Drewry pulled a gun, shot and killed one of the cowboys,” Gibbons said. “His buddies threw his body over the saddle and they headed out that night.”
An unknown assassin came back to the house and murdered Drewry, apparently in revenge for the cowboy she had shot.
A 30-year-old Drewry was given a respectable burial on the hill overlooking Arland and laid to rest in a red wood coffin, wearing a cobalt blue silk dress with a black sash, according to accounts from the time.
“They fired three rounds from a rifle and they threw the shells in on the grave,” Gibbons said. “They put a tombstone up on the grave that said, "Belle Drewry, 1867 to 1897, Woman in Blue, with heart so true.'”
According to Gibbons, after Belle died, the town of Arland pretty much dried up.
What was left of the buildings had been taken away, some into the new town of Meeteetse when the bridge was built across the Greybull River.
Others were scavenged so that today, there is nothing left there to tell where the site of the town of Arland was.
Honoring Her Memory
Edgar had previously helped exhume and move the bodies of Gallagher and Blind Bill to the Old Trail Town when Gibbons suggested they do the same for Drewry.
The ranch where Drewry was buried was about to be turned over to creditors, so Gibbons said he knew he had to act fast.
He called and told the creditors that the ranch had a grave up on top of a hill and the tombstone had long been gone. Edgar remembered seeing it there and knew which grave it was.
“I told them that Belle was part of a very important historical story that Bob has done so much work in saving the story and the history,” Gibbons said. “And we'd really like the opportunity to exhume this grave.”
After the creditor board met, they agreed to allow them to proceed.
The date was set for Oct. 12, 1986, and Gibbons said he started to have mixed feelings.
He hoped that moving Drewry was the right thing to do and would properly honor her memory.
Digging Up History
It was a small group that met in Meeteetse at Lucille's Cafe the morning of the disinterment to head to the hill to find Drewry’s grave.
Under Edgar’s direction, they took video of the rocks that were lying on top of her grave so they would know how to place them back on top when they were done.
“We moved the rocks carefully to the side, and we started digging,” Gibbons said. “And boy, I tell you what, it was rough digging. It was a rocky son of a buck on that hill.”
Every time they put their shovel in the ground, they would get a clang from hitting a rock, and Gibbons described the rocks as the size of two fists.
“I couldn't help but think that there's no way they buried her 6 foot deep in rocks like this,” Gibbons said. “They probably just got it deep enough to cover it up so the coyotes couldn't get to it.”
However, 72 inches into the hole, they finally came to the skeletal remains of Belle Drewry.
Edgar was down in the hole with her, sifting the dirt through a screen, and Gibbons described his works as very meticulous, thoughtful, and honorable in the methods that they used.
“As we got down to the skeletal remains of Belle Drewry, I thought about how she was described,” Gibbons said. “She had a very petite head, narrow eyes.”
When Edgar lifted Belle’s skull in both hands out of her grave, he turned upward to Gibbons who was recording the exhumation.
“You can't get any closer to history than this,” Edgar said.
Still Blue
Gibbons said it was amazing to see Edgar in that moment as they all confirmed that the history accounts about Drewry appeared to be accurate.
Even the dress, which at first appeared black, proved to a be the cobalt blue she was known for.
“It had gold-embroidered flowers on them, so they were quite intricate and involved,” Gibbons said. “She had some ribbons around her also that were tied in”.
Larry Edgar who had painted the depiction of Drewry as The Woman in Blue was present and at first was disappointed to see the black dress until they discovered that at the nape of the neck in the back was a streak about a half inch wide and 4 inches long cobalt blue.
The dress had just turned black after nearly 90 years in the grave.
Edgar had brought a hand-made and lined pine coffin with them for Drewry. Very carefully, the men took the bones of Belle Drewry and put them in her new coffin.
“We put that coffin in Bob's old Chevy pickup,” Gibbon said. “We drove down off the hill and back down where the town of Arland was.”
When they exhumed her grave, Gibbons said that they also found three shells from a 45-70 rifle. Apparently, after her burial, the Lady in Blue of Arland was given a proper goodbye.
“They had fired a salute over Belle's grave and had thrown the shells into the grave,” Gibbons said.
That night, as the men were at the location of the deserted town of Arland, Edgar took his Colt 45 and fired three shots over her coffin into a small rock.
Belle Drewry’s remains were taken to Old Trail Town and put in the back of an old horse-drawn hearse that was at the museum.
The bones were stored there in the pine coffin until the day of the funeral, April 9, 1987. Belle Drewry was reburied next to Gallagher and Blind Bill after 90 years apart.
“Before the funeral started, we had a snowstorm blow through Old Trail Town,” Gibbons said. “It was an emotional day.”
A three-shot salute was fired over the grave of the murdered soiled dove and the shells were thrown into her final resting spot where she remains, remembered by all those that visit Old Trail Town.
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
