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Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

John “Josh” Deane was 16 years old when he left his home in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, for the Wild West in 1872, lured there by the adventures he had read about in the 10-cent novels of his day. 

Instead of the excitement he dreamed of, the teenager found life a struggle just to survive.

Deane eventually took a job for $75 a month driving freight, a profession known as "bull whacking." 

By 1876, Deane was 20 years old and landed an opportunity that he considered an advancement in life. 

He was hired as a government dispatch carrier at the princely sum of $125 a month. 

In 1928, Deane told his story to a biographer about he carried one especially important dispatch, related in his own words in the book “The Mayor of Meeteetse.” 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Rumors Of A Fight"}]

Deane had arrived at Fort Brown in the middle of June 1876 and was told by Col. Julius Mason to remain a few days. 

Mason had just arrived himself from Fort Riley, Kansas, and was concerned because there were rumors of a fight with the Indians in the Rosebud country. 

“A little later, he decided to send me to the camp of Custer and Reno and told me to select an Indian to accompany me,” Deane said. “I picked Niogen Doget, a Shoshone, and we started out on the morning of June 24, with our saddle horses and one pack horse.”

The two men had orders to reach their destination as quickly as possible, so they traveled fast and light. 

Crossing Cottonwood Creek, they made our way up the slope of the Owl Creek Range. 

On the summit of the mountains, Deane described pausing to look down for the first time into the Big Horn Basin which would one day be his future home. 

“From my point of vantage, I could see the Big Horn River and could trace its course for many miles, by the line of cottonwood timber along its banks,” Deane said. “Not a human being, nor a sign of human habitation, was visible in all the valley.”

As Deane and Niogen Doget took in the view, they were unaware of the danger that Custer, Reno and the others would be facing the next day along the Little Bighorn River.

Deane said that the Pryor Mountains were dimly visible, and the Big Horn Range, with snow-capped Cloud’s Peak, rising in its midst, was easily discerned. 

Only a few miles beyond the smooth northern slope of the range on which they stood, the men could see the peculiar, brick-red, conical hills of the hot springs region, in which the town of Thermopolis would later spring up. 

They descended the northern slope of the mountains, passing close to the spot where Col. Torrey’s Embar Ranch would soon to be situated, the same ranch that Butch Cassidy and others of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang would be working on in the 1890s. 

He forged unnamed creeks and swam rivers in his haste to reach the camps. 

As the two men traveled with the dispatch from Fort Brown on June 25 and 26, they were completely unaware that the Battle of the Little Bighorn, known as the Battle of the Greasy Grass by the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes, was being fought. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Reno Sick in Tent"}]

On June 27, Deane said that he and Niogen Doget reached the head of what is now called Reno Creek. 

They followed down a long bench, hunting the camp of Custer and Reno. 

“As we drew near the camp, which was on the bank of the Little Big Horn River, I could see dead horses and other traces of a fight,” Deane said years later in 1928. “Sergeant Ned Bowling, whose widow is still living in Lander, Wyoming, greeted me and pointed out Reno’s tent.”

Deane said he hurried over to the tent but was surprised when Reno’s orderly would not let him inside. 

Deane was told that Reno was ill and unable to receive dispatches. 

“I was sent to the second in command to whom I handed over the small locked pouch, used by the government for secret messages, and the sealed envelope containing the key,” Deane said. “As he tore open the envelope, I remarked that I would look around a little and return later.”

Deane was ordered instead to wait while the officer prepared dispatches about the battle to send back to Fort Brown. Deane was then told to start back with the messages at once. 

“My curiosity was now thoroughly aroused, as well as some resentment,” Deane said. “When a man has just covered 170 miles, in two days, it must be a very urgent matter which sends him back over the same route, without at least, one night’s rest for himself and his horse.”

Deane could see that “serious things had been happening.” 

He described how the faces of the officers were grim and haggard; there were dead horses and bandaged men, and Reno was evidently seriously wounded. 

He pulled his friend Bowling to one side while waiting for the dispatches and asked what had happened. 

Bowling told Deane that Custer and Reno had quarreled at Rosebud, and Custer, impetuous and hot-headed, had taken a small group and gone ahead to attack the Indians, without waiting for Reno’s support. 

Deane learned that Custer and his men had ridden forth upon a rolling ridge and were going so fast that the ammunition wagon and Gatling gun could not keep up. Indians, outnumbering his forces 10-1, were in ambush in the timber along the Little Big Horn River, which paralleled the ridge. 

Bowling said that Indians had pushed upon Custer’s little group, taking them by surprise, cutting them off from the retreat and from their ammunition, and had them at their mercy. 

The soldiers had put up a brave resistance, but when their ammunition was gone, they were helpless and were slaughtered without quarter by the furious Sioux.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Battle Scene"}]

Deane said that Reno, coming along later in the day, had a skirmish with the Indians, in which he lost a great number of men. 

The rest of the soldiers were so exhausted that no attempt had as yet been made to bury the dead from the Custer massacre. 

“As a matter of fact, except for a thin layer of soil thrown over the bodies where they lay, they were left untouched for many months and then buried in one huge pit, above which stands the Custer monument bearing their names,” Deane said.

According to Deane’s account, small stones were set up at the spot where each man fell, and where he lay before each soldier was given a permanent resting place. 

Custer, alone of the victims of that day’s slaughter, is not buried on the field, Deane said. His body was removed to the East.

“Orders or no orders, I could not go back to Fort Brown without a glimpse of that battlefield,” Deane said. 

When his dispatches were ready; instead of starting back, Bowling and Deane slipped away to the spot, only a short distance from the camp, where the soldiers lay dead. 

“As we approached the scene of the massacre, we saw a horse quietly grazing on the hill side, apparently the sole survivor of the recent battle,” Deane said. “He had a bullet wound in his neck, but was not seriously hurt, and as I happen to know, died many years later, of old age.”

The scene that Deane observed before him was one that remained with him for the rest of his life. 

He described how men and horses were lying where they had fallen, scattered singly or in groups of twos or threes, on both slopes of the ridge and on its summit. 

“Most of the bodies were fairly close together, but occasionally we noticed small groups or individuals at some distance from the rest,” Deane said. “Piles of empty shells could be seen everywhere.”

As Deane walked among the battlefield, he said that none of the soldiers appeared to have more than two or three cartridges left. 

The whole field, as indicated by the positions of the dead, was about a square mile. 

He said that the bodies of the men were all on this unsheltered ridge, where sagebrush was the only vegetation, but dead horses were scattered through the timber close to the river. 

There were no dead Indians to be seen, though they must have lost at least as many men as the whites. 

They had evidently paused long enough after the fight to gather up their own dead, as well as to take the scalps of a good many of their victims. 

“We came upon General Custer lying across the neck of his horse, a pistol in his hand,” Deane said. “The Indians must have respected his rank for he still wore his scalp. 

“I remember noting that he had yellow hair, a fact which I have since had to dispute with several people who have insisted that Custer was dark.”

The scene Deane described decades after the fact matched that of Captain Frederick Benteen, battalion leader of Companies D, H and K who walked the battlefield on the same day. 

“The only approach to a line was where five or six horses found at equal distances,” Benteen reported. “Ahead of those horses there were five or six men at about the same distances, showing that the horses were killed and the riders jumped off and were all heading to get where General Custer was.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Delivered Dispatch"}]

After walking the battlefield, Deane and Niogen Doget reached Fort Brown late in the evening of the second day. Deane went immediately to Mason and handed him the envelope and dispatch pouch.

“Huh! Hell of a note! Did you hear the details?” Mason said after reading the dispatch. 

Deane repeated to him what Bowling had told me of the cause of the affair and described the battlefield as he had seen it. 

Mason appeared disturbed but made no further comment, except to wonder if the news had been dispatched to other quarters. 

Deane told him that dispatch carriers had been sent to Helena. 

“I should have reached my destination, however, before they did theirs,” Deane said. “There was no telegraph line at Fort Brown so we were unable to pass the news along before it had reached the world through other channels.”

Robert Hall, the telegraph operator at Fort Stambaugh, about 50 miles south of Fort Brown, had the distinction of first wiring the news to the headquarters department at Omaha. 

General Crook at Fort Rosebud had dispatched Shoshone Indian runners to Fort Stambaugh, as soon as he heard of the catastrophe. 

Stambaugh had a telegraph line, but there was a break in the wire, just then, which had not yet been located. 

The commanding officer had relays of horses sent out along the telegraph route and gave Hall the dispatches with instructions to ride along the route until he found the break in the wire. 

He found it at a point about 50 miles from the Fort, and from there he sent his news to Omaha.

“Nothing more that was exciting or worthy of special notice occurred during my career as a government dispatch carrier,” Deane said. “I made only the usual routine trips from one fort to another.”

A year later, Deane had not saved much of his money and had grown weary of the monotony of the long, lonely rides over the hills. He quit the job of delivering messages for the military and headed to Green River.

Eventually, Deane returned to the Big Horn Basin during a more peaceful era and settled in Meeteetse where he was appointed mayor. 

There, he lived his last years as an old timer of the region and became famous for his barbecues.

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

<title>Wyoming History: The Courier Who Carried First Dispatch From Custer’s Last Stand | Cowboy State Daily</title>

John “Josh” Deane came West looking for adventure — and got more than he bargained for when he took a job as a military dispatch rider. It was 150 years ago that he found himself carrying the first message about Custer’s last stand to Wyoming’s Fort Brown.  

Wyoming History: The Courier Who Carried First Dispatch From Custer’s Last Stand

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming’s oil, gas, coal, uranium and other minerals were not its only buried wealth from August 1933 through at least several months of 1934.

There was also a good portion of $90,000 in $20 bills buried somewhere near Cheyenne, part of a ransom payment in the July 22, 1933, kidnapping of an Oklahoma oilman.

Nearly a century later, it’s still not known for sure of all of that money has ever been found and there’s still loot still buried somewhere in Cheyenne.

The kidnappers were Machine Gun Kelly and Albert Bates, and the Cheyenne money represented Bates’ cut of the loot. 

It was buried by Bates’ wife of three months and her 21-year-old son. 

FBI documents from the time are not clear about whether all of that money was removed or recovered; however, a 1934 Oklahoma newspaper article seems to indicate the money was eventually dug up and taken to Oregon.

Regardless, the ground somewhere around the Wyoming Capitol in those months played a part in one of that decade’s notorious gangster sagas.

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

One year after Congress passed the “Lindbergh Law” making kidnapping a federal offense if the victim is transported across state lines, Bates and Kelly went to the Oklahoma City home of Charles Urschel.

With his wife, Urschel was playing cards on a screened porch with Walter Jarrett and his wife. The Urschels represented millions of dollars in oil wealth.

Two masked men, one with a machine gun and one with a pistol, opened the door at 11:15 p.m. on Saturday, July 22, according to FBI documents dated Oct. 15, 1935. 

The men asked Urschel to identify himself. When there was no response, they took both men.

“After warning the women against calling for help, they marched Urschel and Jarrett to where they had driven their car, put them into the back of the Chevrolet sedan and drove them away,” the FBI file states. 

“Mrs. Urschel, in accordance with the (U.S.) Attorney General’s advice to the public, immediately telephoned J. Edgar Hoover,” the documents continue. "Special agents were sent to Oklahoma City where an extensive investigation commenced.”

Jarrett was released by the kidnappers 12 miles outside the city after they had identified him through his wallet and robbed him of $50.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"$200,000 Demand"}]

The FBI initially let the ransom process play out. 

Another Oklahoma oilman friend was contacted days later through a Western Union package with a letter from Urschel detailing how the kidnappers wanted $200,000 and asking him to be an intermediary.

An elaborate scheme involving a newspaper ad, post office box, and train trip by Urschel’s friend carrying a new suitcase full of the cash in $20 bills was outlined by the kidnappers. 

The FBI’s policy at the time was to try and ensure the safety of the victim.

When it came time to provide the money, the family, with counsel from the FBI, went to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and got $200,000 in $20 bills. 

All the serial numbers on the 10,000 bills were recorded.

The train scheme to deliver the case was followed, and on July 31, Urschel was taken to Norman, Oklahoma, given $10 and released.

Though blindfolded and with cotton in his ears for some of his transport and captivity, the oilman’s description of sounds of oil rigs, airplanes and snippets of conversation helped the FBI pinpoint the Texas ranch of Machine Gun Kelly’s wife as the place he was held captive.

A raid on the ranch found Kathryn Kelly’s parents admitting that they had stood guard over Urschel and told agents that George “Machine Gun” Kelly and Bates had kidnapped him. 

At their home, the agents also arrested a Kansas State Penitentiary escapee who had $700 worth of Urschel ransom money on him.

The FBI put out nationwide information for law enforcement to be on the lookout for Bates and the Kellys.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bates Arrested"}]

On Aug. 12, 1933, Bates was arrested in Denver after returning from a trip to Oregon. 

Colorado detectives received a tip he has appeared at the train station and arrested him for robbing the First State Bank of Louisville, Colorado. They also started looking for his wife.

“Detectives Henry Tormay and Harry Bernstein, who arrested Bates, began a search here Friday for Bates’ wife, who is said to have come to Denver and is believed to be using the name ‘Mrs. George L. Davis,’ an alias police say Bates used,” the Fort Collins Coloradan reported on Aug. 18, 1933.

FBI documents dated April 25, 1934, from the agency's Salt Lake City office show the agency still actively looking for Clara Feldman, Bates' wife, who also was using the name Ruth Johnson. 

Agents also were doing research trying to track a Chevy automobile. A Salt Lake City agent also was sent to Cheyenne to dig into “undeveloped leads.”

“Will secure all information possible, helpful in locating Ruth Johnson (Clara Feldman) and (the name was blacked out),” the agent wrote.

But Bates' wife was not found until months later. 

The FBI’s tactic of copying the serial numbers of all the $20 bills and distributing that information to banks across the country paid off.

“Urschel Ransom Found In Oregon,” the Morning Oregonian newspaper reported on Nov. 8, 1934. “Officers take $1,360 off driver hurt in crash.”

The driver was Alvin Scott, 46, who on Nov. 2 was involved in a high-speed crash that put him in the hospital in critical condition. 

Police found $1,360 in $20 bills linked to the kidnapping. 

Clara Feldman’s sister, Margarette Hurtienne, was his housekeeper. His and Hurtienne’s arrests led agents to Feldman and her son, Edward, 21, and his wife, Betty, in Dunsmuir, California.

Clara Feldman, aka Clara Davis and Clara Bates, told FBI agents that she and her son had traveled from Denver to Oregon with Albert Bates in August 1933 — just after the kidnapping — to visit family and they had returned to Denver without Bates.

She had not been aware of her husband’s return to Denver until she heard from a released county jail cellmate who brought a message from Bates to her apartment.

The message was brief: “Look in the suitcase.”

When Feldman opened it, it was filled with $20 bills.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Vicinity Of Cheyenne'"}]

An FBI memo to J. Edgar Hoover on Dec. 16, 1934, states that Edward Feldman told agents that in the year prior they buried the money “in the vicinity of Cheyenne” and stayed in the area for two or three weeks, maintaining contact with a family in Denver connected to Margarette Hurtienne.

A Casper Tribune-Herald Article on Dec. 18, 1934, reported that Laramie County Sheriff George Carroll told local reporters that Feldman and her son were just a few steps ahead of the FBI and law enforcement in 1933 when they were in the region.

“The sheriff said he received information that persons sought in connection with the federal search for the Urschel ransom money were in Cheyenne,” the newspaper reported.

Both Clara and Edward Feldman told the FBI that once they buried the money, they were contacted by noted Denver attorney Ben Laska, who was going to defend Albert Bates at the kidnapping trial in Oklahoma. 

Laska confiscated their identification papers and told Edward Feldman to use the name “Axel C. Johnson” and to go to big cities in the East to live.

Laska weeks later contacted them and asked for $10,000 to represent Bates. That would be the equivalent of $248,000 in 2026 purchasing power. 

The Feldman’s delivered Laska $8,000 of the ransom money, they told the FBI.

“Laska then asked for a diagram of the place where the remaining ransom money was buried,” the FBI reports states. “Edward Feldman furnished him with a fictitious diagram.”

Edward Feldman told agents he later delivered $2,000 in additional ransom funds to Laska and another attorney while they were in Oklahoma defending Bates at the trial.

The Feldman’s and Hurtienne agreed to testify about those payments for the feds and were extradited to Oklahoma.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Guilty Pleas"}]

Feldman and her son went on to plead guilty to conspiracy charges related to the kidnapping cash and testified against, Laska, who also had been charged for his part in accepting what he knew to be the ransom cash. 

They were given five-year suspended prison sentences and placed on five years of probation.

Laska was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

FBI files in the case report that the Feldmans after their arrest gave agents information to where more than $38,000 of cash was buried. 

But the FBI files do not make clear where they recovered the cash.

However, the Tulsa World reported on Dec. 18, 1934, that the cash ended up on the West Coast after reporting the amount the Feldman’s buried in Cheyenne was “about $75,000 of the money” from Bate’s $90,000 haul.

The newspaper reported that the Feldmans removed “the money after a year and transported it to Oregon and Washington.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Cash Unaccounted For"}]

FBI files do not account for the close to $25,000 not recovered from the Feldman’s or their associates such as Scott and Hurtienne that represented Bates’ haul from the kidnapping.

Clara Feldman and her sister may have used part of the funds for their wardrobe. During their first court appearances in Oregon following their arrest, The Oregon Daily Journal on Nov. 10 reported on their court attire.

“Both Mrs. Hurtienne and Clara Feldman are attractive women. They wore brown fur coats of expensive make and their entire ensembles were of corresponding color, even to their shoes, hats, dresses, scarves, purses, gloves and hosiery,” the newspaper reported.

For their actions in the kidnapping, Bates, George “Machine Gun” Kelly and his wife, Kathryn were sentenced to life in prison. 

Both men were sent to Alcatraz. Bates died on July 4, 1948 of heart disease while at Alcatraz.

Kelly died on July 18, 1954, after being transferred Leavenworth prison in Kansas.

Kathryn Kelly was initially sent to a Milan, Michigan prison and was released in 1958. She died in Oklahoma in 1985.

Edward Feldman died on March 11, 1977 and is buried in Medford, Oregon. His mother was listed in the 1940 U.S. Census as living in Portland, Oregon. Cowboy State Daily could not determine her date and place of death.

Laska was paroled from prison in 1941 and later pardoned by President Harry Truman for his role in accepting the cash and directing the Feldman’s actions.

And decades later, it’s possible there's $25,000 still buried somewhere around Cheyenne.

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<title>$25,000 From 1933 Kidnapping Ransom Could Still Be Buried Somewhere In Cheyenne | Cowboy State Daily</title>

FBI files from 1933 reveal that $90,000 in ransom loot from a Machine Gun Kelly kidnapping scheme ended up buried somewhere around Cheyenne. Whether all the loot was ever recovered remains a question with about $25,000 still unaccounted for.