At times, criminal justice in the Old West was almost as painstaking and thorough as we find it today. For instance, due process of law got its due in Montana in the interesting and strange case of William (’Bill’) Gay, a frontiersman who became a well-to-do businessman and then, it was alleged, a killer.

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When Gay was arrested, a Colt Model 1878 double-action revolver with a 43ž4-inch barrel was in a snug-fitting shoulder holster worn under his coat, and an 1875 .32-caliber New Line Model Colt five-shot derringer with nickel finish and mother-of-pearl grips was hooked to his belt. After witnessing Gay’s execution by hanging on June 8, 1896, in Helena, Mont., an old acquaintance, Idaho Sheriff William Ryan, remarked: ‘Bill Gay was one of the bravest men I ever knew, and I have seen many brave men during life in the West. He had been raised on the frontier and was a typical plainsman–one of the class of men now fast dying out, who were always ready to use a gun.’

Born in Virginia in 1844, Bill Gay had become a Westerner by age 14. In the early 1870s when he was about 30, he was a stout, adventurous man engaged in freighting supplies to Idaho mining camps after the goods were offloaded from Missouri River steamboats at Fort Benton, Mont. The Helena Daily Herald newspaper said in an 1895 article that Gay had once helped rescue a female survivor from a wagon-train party that had been massacred, and had once scouted for George Armstrong Custer’s 7th Cavalry. Later, Gay, with his brother Al and John Nelson, spent a winter traveling among and trading with the Sioux. On the day of his execution in 1896, the Herald published a story that said Gay had also been a cattleman and mail carrier.

Gay, according to Sheriff Ryan, was one of the first white prospectors to enter the Black Hills of the Dakotas in the mid-1870s. By the time he left Deadwood in the summer of 1876, Gay had $100,000 in gold. He did not go far. He and brother Al capitalized on the influx of people into Dakota Territory to organize a new town, which they called Gayville. Bill Gay operated a saloon and gambling hall in the town that bore his name. ‘His greatest fault was in helping every poor prospector, miner and the poor people until he was almost beggared himself,’ recalled Gay’s daughter Maud in a Helena Daily Independent article published 11 months before her father was hanged. ‘He will be remembered by hundreds of the old pioneers with feelings of gratitude. But, unfortunately, like most all early pioneers, they are broke or are not in a position to assist him now.’

Gayville was hit by several damaging fires, but a more serious problem surfaced for Bill Gay in 1877. That spring, Gay killed a chap named Forbes for being too attentive to Mrs. Gay. After Gay was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to 15 years in prison, his many friends in Gayville and Deadwood wrote a petition and reportedly spend $40,000 to try and secure his early release. It worked; Bill Gay was pardoned after serving only one year. When he arrived home in Gayville, he was greeted with a brass band.

Despite the reception that greeted Bill’s return, he found things changing for the worse in Gayville. The South Dakota community was in decline, and its future did not look bright or golden. In 1889, Gay and his family, along with his brother-in-law Harry Gross, relocated to Castle in Montana’s Meagher County. At first, Gay did carpentry and odd jobs for others. Eventually, he moved to a ranch six miles south of Castle, but he built his house on land also claimed by N.E. Benson, who owned the Castle Reporter and was chairman of the Republican Party for the area. Reports soon surfaced that Gay and Gross had robbed a store in northern Wyoming. Tensions further increased when Benson’s newspaper published an article that suggested Bill Gay had an incestuous relationship with his daughter.

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