ON THE FRINGE 321 



The ' woman-strangler ' alluded to was a certain 

 George Westlake, as I will term him, one of the first 

 of a series of smaller home-bred cattle-owners who 

 have gradually supplanted the large western cattle 

 companies. A year or two before this man had 

 played a leading part in a Sand Creek tragedy. A 

 settler named Jim Avril and his wife had accumu- 

 lated a herd of cattle in a manner that was altogether 

 too barefaced and inartistic. That the possessor of 

 an original herd solely consisting of two ragged old 

 Texas cows should within a year or so be possessed of 

 quite a respectable number of cattle, many of them 

 undoubtedly borrowed from native, as well as British, 

 owners, was too much even for Sand Creek philo- 

 sophy. One dark night a band of masked and 

 mounted men rode up the creek, and next morning 

 the corpses of Jim Avril and his wife were found 

 hanging to a cottonwood-tree close to their own 

 door. 



George Westlake was generally accredited by the 

 countryside with being the ringleader in this lynch- 

 ing episode, and was ever thereafter known as the 

 'woman-strangler.' As a matter of fact but this is 

 another story he was never quite able to live down 

 this baneful reputation, and in process of time was 

 compelled to leave that part of the country. But 

 the point here relevant to my narrative is that in 1893 

 he appeared as the instigator of, and the chief prose- 

 cuting witness in, the trial I went to Caspar to see. 



The defendant, as I have said, was Boney Earnest, 

 an old acquaintance of mine. He had been assistant- 

 manager of our cattle company for a period, and in 

 physique and general appearance was a splendid 

 specimen of western manhood. His youth had been 



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