A beautiful spring day in the late 1800s quickly turned sinister for two young men as their horses became frightened and refused to settle down despite the abundance of fresh water and green grass.
Uneasy, the friends still made camp near what's now modern-day Newcastle, and soon faced the most frightening night of their lives when skeletons moved in the dark when they unknowingly fell asleep under a hanging tree.
Melvin D. Quick often claimed he came to the Wyoming Territory to chase the Indians out of the country so soldiers could arrive. However brave he was in battle, Quick experienced a night of terror that he remembered in vivid detail even 50 years after the fact.
He shared the following story with writer Olaf Kongslie.
“My friend, Slim, and I were riding from the new settlement of Custer to Wyoming,” Quick said. “We had ridden for that day and as the beautiful spring sunset faded in the west we began to think about supper and our night’s lodging.”
It was nearly dusk when the two men decided to stop by a little creek that babbled through a grassy draw. A clump of tall pines sheltered the glade and Quick said he thought this would be an ideal spot to spend the night.
Heavy black clouds and flashes of lightning appeared on the southern horizon. Quick figured the stand of pines would shelter both man and beast if the rain came in their direction.
“We expected the horses would be glad to stop and crop the new grass but to our surprise they snorted and shied away from the bank leading down to the draw,” Quick said.
Thinking that their nervousness came from the oncoming storm and the loud claps of thunder that echoed across the hills, Quick and Slim dismounted and led the horses down the bank.
However, the horses rolled their eyes suspiciously and seemed ready to bolt, so they quickly tied them.
Creepy Camp
“We skirmished around and soon made a fire and had the coffee boiling, but there was something in the air that was disturbing,” Quick said. “The wind made weird noises in the trees, as though some giant was twirling and swishing an invisible lasso about them.”
He described how the thunder “growled” and the lightning “lashed its wicked whip.”
The horses refused to feed steadily but would snatch a bite and raise their heads to snort and sniff the air. The men smelled it, too. When the wind veered down the draw it brought a faint odor of carrion.
“We began to wish that we had not stopped in this place, but it was too late to go on then,” Quick said. “We hastily swallowed our supper of hardtack, dried beef, and coffee.”
The wind grew in intensity and snuffed out the fire. The darkness settled thick and black about them. By the flares of lightning, Quick and Slim managed to undo their bedrolls and tarps.
“We dragged these to a clump of pines, hoping to find some shelter beneath their wide branches,” Quick said. “We crouched there under our tarps on the thick carpet of pine needles and hoped for the best.”
Soon the rain began to fall in big drops. Quick said the wind blew down the draw and the great pines swayed and creaked loudly.
“Then, as often happens in the hill country, the wind went down, the thunder and lightning died away in the distance and a deep silence settled over all,” Quick said. “We were very tired, so we stretched out on our bedrolls, but sleep would not come to our eyes.”
He said it was as if some awful thing was brooding in the night.
“We strained our ears at every sound but the stillness was broken only by the thud of our horses’ hooves on the soft turf and their occasional snorts,” Quick said.
The Ominous Night
A creaking sound came from the branches above them, as though someone was up in the trees rocking in an old, squeaky chair. The rocking was slow, but the effect was far from soothing to their nerves.
“We had the 'jim-jams' and we could not explain the gooseflesh that broke out down our spines,” Quick said. “The night was unusually warm for that time of year, but we felt cold.”
Finally, they could take it no longer and the two friends dragged themselves out of their bedrolls.
They built a fire in the open, near the creek, and boiled more coffee. They sat there in the night, drinking their coffee, but Quick said that they could not dispel the “queer” feeling of something unnatural about the beautiful place.
They sat by their fire until long after midnight. Finally, completely worn out, they sought their beds once more. They fell asleep, but it was far from restful.
“I dreamed of a skeleton rocking in my old Grandad’s easy chair,” Quick said.
He woke as the first gray light of dawn touched the sky and was in the middle of a yawn when his eyes were suddenly snapped open by a surprising sight.
Two pairs of booted feet dangled above their heads.
The boots rocked in the breeze to the accompaniment of that strange creaking noise that had haunted Quick’s dream.
“I sprang from the tarps with a yell,” Quick said. “Slim awoke and looked wildly about and when he glanced above, the way he scrambled out was nothing slow either.”
Horse Thieves Hung From Trees
Dangling in the morning air, not 10 feet above their bed, were two corpses.
The men were dressed in the full regalia of cowboys, from bandana neckerchiefs to spurs, and their hollow eyes stared down upon them.
“We did not gaze long on this grisly sight, for our yells had stampeded the horses and we had to keep them from breaking loose,” Quick said. “Then, as soon as we could, we bundled our things together and took off down the draw.”
The horses were eager to go and Quick said they galloped like mad for some distance. Neither Slim nor Quick were in the mood for breakfast and they did not stop riding until early noon.
“Afterward we learned from a rancher that the hanged men were horse thieves,” Quick said. “They had been hanged the previous fall and left to dangle warning before the eyes of others.
“Such was primitive justice in the early days of the country.”
And such was the spookiest night Quick ever spent under the Wyoming skies.
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
