he disapproved of the way Elizabeth was running things. Herb was a deeply religious man with a strong moral sense; moreover, in Arkansas he had been an officer of the court, sworn to uphold the law. It could be that he refused to have anything to do with any activities smacking of illegality, no matter how Elizabeth and the neighboring ranchers might justify them.
An example of the opposing attitudes of husband and wife is the story Ann tells of the day on which one of their cowhands, Jack Rollas, was shot:
He was a pleasant-mannered young fellow from Texas who came to the Bassett Ranch in 1882. A good hand with horses, he was hired to break broncs on the ranch. It was in the late fall of that year that three strange men arrived about noon, and were asked to eat dinner with the family. While Mrs. Jaynes, who cooked for us at the time, was preparing the meal, one of the strangers asked her if Jack worked there. Mrs. Jaynes replied, “Yes, that is Jack saddling a horse at the corral.” The three men walked from the kitchen and went on down to the corral. One of them pulled a gun and shot Rollas as he was reaching for a bridle. He ran behind a barn, where he fell, mortally wounded.
The ranch hands, Herb, and Elizabeth managed to get the men at gunpoint while Mrs. Jaynes rushed out and gathered the children into the shelter of an outbuilding. Rollas had been carried into the bunkhouse, and the furious Elizabeth marched the marauders in to confront him.
The one who had done the shooting said his name was Hambleton and that Rollas had shot and killed his brother in Abilene, Kansas. Hambleton had trailed Jack Rollas for two years to kill him. Rollas confirmed Hambleton’s statement in part, explaining that a man of that name had married his sister. He abused the sister and Rollas had killed for it.
Mother spiritedly informed Hambleton that it was not the custom of the northwest to shoot an unarmed man in the back. By the determined threat of her leveled Winchester, she lined the trio up against the bunkhouse wall, and directed the wounded Rollas to kill his assassin, or all three men, if he wanted to.
Rollas was too weak to hold a gun, and he died a few hours later. While mother and Mrs. Jaynes were administering to the dying cowboy, father and Perry were guarding the prisoners. Harry Hindle went to notify the settlers of the park, and to get Charles Allen, Justice of the Peace, to the scene of the crime. [This was before Herb’s own appointment as justice of the peace.] Night came and father began to think with deepening apprehension. A lynching could be in the making. He advised the captives to go to the barn and feed their horses, and he warned them to ride directly to the county seat, over a hundred miles away, and surrender themselves to the law. When neighbors arrived at the Bassett ranch, the murderer and his companions had escaped. Naturally, they failed to do as father had instructed, and were never heard of again. . . . The method subscribed to by father in the matter of advice to the shooters would have been in direct conflict with the opinion of mother and Mrs. Jaynes. Therefore, he did not commit himself and tell the true story for some time afterwards. . . . [italics added].
Although Ann’s accounts of Brown’s Park life are sometimes slightly colored, Elizabeth’s domination and Herb’s subservience in this instance have a ring of unvarnished truth.
While Elizabeth was undoubtedly the head of the Bassett family, J. S. Hoy exaggerates when he calls her head of a “gang.” (As far as is known, the term “Bassett gang” was used only by Hoy, not by other contemporaries.) She was primarily a rancher managing a herd of legitimately acquired cattle which was increased by calves from legitimately owned cows. It is unbelievable that this woman, this gentlewoman, was a “night rider” engaged in actual rustling on a large scale. Moreover, since large-scale rustling was unacceptable to all ranchers, large or small, her neighbors would have stopped her, distasteful as it might have been to them to prosecute a member of the “weaker sex.”
But while Elizabeth may not have been a night rider there is a tradition that she did brand more lost calves and butcher more stray beef than less energetic ranchers might have done. There is also an undocumented story that she added to her herd by buying cattle at cut-rate prices from professional rustlers, who normally took their stolen cattle either to Rock Springs to be butchered and sold to the mining camp, or down to the Mormon farmers in Ashley Valley, always ready customers. Given Elizabeth’s character, it would not be surprising if she had done so, especially in those earliest days when the family was living hand to mouth. She absolutely had to build a herd, or “turn tail and run” for an uncertain future in California. In that sort of dilemma, Elizabeth would have put her own survival before a rich man’s property rights.
An interesting story is repeated by Burroughs, in Where the Old West Stayed Young, involving five hundred head of Middlesex cattle purportedly made off with in a single raid. “Cornered in Zenobia Basin on Douglas Mountain, it is said that Elizabeth Bassett and her helpers ’rim-rocked’ the herd, i.e., drove them over the cliff into Lodore Canyon, thus destroying the evidence that might have been used against them.”
Elizabeth’s grandson, Crawford MacKnight, made a notation in the margin of his copy of Burroughs’ book: “I think this ’rim rock’ business is all B. S. What in hell would they do with that many cows, even if they had gotten away with them?”
Crawford’s objection is practical, for rustling is a stealthy business, and hiding five hundred cows would be as difficult as hiding a Greyhound bus. Still, old-timers remember the pile of whitened bones that could be seen in Ladore Canyon for decades.*
There is a possibility that Middlesex had decided to summer some of its own cattle in Zenobia Basin and that Elizabeth, enraged at this intrusion on “her” range, told her cowboys to rim-rock the cattle. Possibly the story grew in countless tellings into a case of rustling. If, for whatever reason, Elizabeth actually did push those cattle into Ladore Canyon, she must have sincerely mourned the destruction of good beef.
A more credible story is told by Edna Bassett Haworth, who remembers Herb telling her mother Ruby about the early days at the ranch. Herb heard a terrible bawling out in the corral and went out to find that it was full of calves. The calves were not yet weaned, so the corral was besieged on all sides by cows bearing various brands, bellowing loudly for their young ones to be returned to them. In the middle of the uproar was Elizabeth, calmly using her branding iron.
Herb had a habit of clicking his heels, a silent way of showing disapproval or frustration. When Ruby asked Herb what he had done about it, Herb told her that he had “clicked his heels and walked away.”
Poor Herb! He was a strictly moral man in a world where morality was sometimes considered an unaffordable luxury. Left alone, he might have been defeated by the special needs of survival in this harsh situation. Everyone respected him—his grandson Crawford says that he was the finest man he ever knew—but his wife, his children, and his neighbors all knew that in Brown’s Park he was entirely out of his element.
NOTE
*The most spectacular elements in Brown’s Park are two cliffs between which the Green River leaves the Park. John Wesley Powell, the explorer of the Green, named them “The Gates of Ladore.” In establishing a Brown’s Park post office, the Post Office Department spelled it “Lodore.” The two spellings have existed simultaneously ever since.
THE BASSETT GANG
In the pioneer west, where survival was serious business, no decent rancher would turn away a hungry man. A traveler in strange country felt no hesitancy about stopping at any ranch house along his way if he had a tired horse and an empty stomach.
The Bassett ranch was the first one in clear view on the trail leading into Brown’s Park, and because of its location it became the nearest thing to a country inn. There was usually at least one guest at the dinner table. He might be a neighbor returning from town, a cowboy searching for work, or a suspicious-looking character of dubious reputation. It made no difference. All were welcomed and treated as honored guests, in accordance with the universal custom of the west and Elizabeth’s own Southern open-handedness. Cash might be scarce in a bad year,