6 6 WILD WEST JUNE 2019The range used by the big cow outfits was not considered private;
they were used by all stockmen. Our company ran a roundup and
a mess wagon and provided a simple, economical way for small
cattle owners to handle their stock. We furnished everything and did
most of the work. All they had to do was get their stock after it was
gathered, at no expense to them.
I went into Browns Park to make similar arrangements and got
cold-shouldered. My offer was rejected with ceremonial courtesy.
On that mission I did not meet Ann Bassett, but I received a letter
from her soon afterwards, advising that neither I nor the Haley
outfit were desirable; and when if necessary for me to visit Browns
Park, would I please confine myself to road travel, for the tracks
of Two Bar horses and cattle were obnoxious. That impertinent
demand was not in the form of a joke. Not by any means; it was
an open defiance straight from the shoulder.Regardless, Bernard continued to carry out the bidding of
his employer, Haley, who set in motion a series of events aimed
at taking over the small ranches and gaining control of the park’s
rich grazeland. Bernard assigned a few of his hired hands to
patrol the line for rustlers. He later explained his motivation:
When small ranch seekers came to squat on our ranges, I was
not in sympathy with them and used every means in my power
to move them on, using force if need be. Every poor family
moving in a covered wagon to settle on a lonesome claim, to
chuck into a little rough dugout or a dirt-covered log shack, broughtback memories of bedbugs, my childhood and my little sad mother
in poverty, drudging wearily along and bravely enduring such an
existence. The thought of struggling individuals going the hard way
and bucking against odds they could not conquer was hateful and
turned me sour.Around 1883 Haley had joined with four other large cattle
companies in Routt County to form the Snake River Stock
Growers’ Association. Its objective from the outset was to drive
out the few sheep ranchers in the area and gain control of Browns
Park. The group included Haley’s Two Bar, Jerry Pierce and
Joe Reef’s Sevens, the Yampa Valley Livestock and Land Co.’s
Two Circle Bar and Charles Ayer’s Bar Ell Seven. The fifth
member of the group was John Coble, of the Wyoming-based
Swan Land and Cattle Co. The men established their own “cattle-
man’s committee,” similar to the Cheyenne-based Wyoming
Stock Growers’ Association. They considered anyone who con-
tested their control of the open range a menace, labeling some—
rightly or not—rustlers. The committee soon accepted five more
Routt County ranchers as members.
Meeting in secret in late 1899 or early 1900, the committee
members each agreed to pay $100 a month to Ayer, who would
use the funds to hire a private stock inspector, ostensibly to pro-
cure evidence of rustling in the Browns Park area. Bernard
attended the meeting on Haley’s behalf. “John Coble had like
grievances in his part of the country, and he offered a solution
to the problem that would wipe out the range menace perma-Browns Park Cowboys
Among them, front and center, is Isom Dart, who was born into
slavery in Arkansas in 1849 under the name Ned Huddleston.DE
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